The Terrible Catsafterme

After our Clearwater, Florida trip, I rounded out the rest of the Summer of 1985 collecting autographs, performing the duties of my paper route, and all of the other things described in my Summer ’85 posting. Occasionally my friend Jeff Flinn and I would bicycle to each others houses and see what trouble we could find. Smoking was often our goal. Other times, we just wreaked havoc around the neighborhood. Once I spit on Bud Nye’s truck when I was collecting for my paper route and they put me off until later. Kelly spotted me doing this from her windown and soon enough, Kenny Carroll was tracking me down, telling me that Bud was driving around looking for me. So I bit the bullet and went over to his house and apologized. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday, July 31, 1980 brought a very exciting series of events at the Hollywood Sons of the Desert convention. While the preceding days brought excitement in meeting fellow Sons, watching Laurel and Hardy films that I had never seen before, and my first brushes with L&H royalty and fame, this day was really the kicker. This day would bring my first exposure to L&H film locations and many celebrities from the films of L&H and the Our Gang. It was my first trip to the Music Box stairs, Big Business house, downtown Culver City, the first time I saw Hal Roach himself, as well as Spanky, Buckwheat, Butch, and many other Our Gang members. What a day! Read the rest of this entry »

In the late 1940’s – long after Hal Roach had sold the rights to his Our Gang series to M-G-M – the Roach studios made an attempt to cash in on the success of their mega-series that had run for well over twenty years between the two studios. This attempt came in the form of another assemblage of young actors in two new films called Curley (1947) and Who Killed Doc Robbin? (1948). The efforts were weak at best and not widely accepted as a substitute for the original Little Rascals series. Read the rest of this entry »