It was a most lucrative visit to Culver City the morning of Saturday, October 9, 2010 – what with finding all of the new Little Rascals locations and all – but I was in a hurry to get to the Hollywood Show at the Burbank Mariott Hotel and Convention Center. This was to be my eighth collector show in Burbank, sixth at this venue, and second of the year. This was the reason for my whirlwind California trip; I was happy to be here but also in a bit of a rush to get signatures from and photographs with a lengthy list of celebrities before we had to move on to the next activity of the day.
Jimmy and I picked up David as his place at around 11am and headed toward the show near the Burbank airport. In fact, in an effort to run through the McDonalds drive-thru, we actually ended up driving through the airport, which is right across the street from the Marriott. I had already ordered tickets for Jimmy and me online so they were holding them at will call.
Although I have a bit of love/hate relationship with these type of shows – often feeling as though I’ve opened up my wallet far enough, just inviting the raping of my funds – I actually felt rather good about this one. I’ve come to budget a total of $30 per person and this time I’m happy to say that I over-budgeted. Sure, there are a few who charge exorbitant amounts, but at this show, it seemed for every one of these, there were several who offered free photos with them when I bought something, posed for free when I didn’t buy anything, or were only charging $10 for autographs.
The line-up itself was pretty top-notch too. I was particularly excited for the big reunions of the Twin Peaks and Revenge of the Nerds cast – as well as some mini-reunions of I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Mod Squad. I picked up just one person each from the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Summer of ’42, and the Dave’s World reunion. I ignored the big Land of the Giants reunion and the small Love Story reunion.
The disappointments were when they dropped Betsy Russell, John Savage, and Pam Grier (who had only appeared on the list for a few days) from the guest list, and when I found out that John Schneider and KISS’ Bruce Kulick would only be present at the show on Sunday, after I was long gone. Notable names that were in attendance but I skipped were Ali McGraw, Bai Ling, Eric Roberts, Nicholle Tom, Stephanie Zimbalist, Spencer Davis, Roy Thinnes, Dale Midkiff, Jackie deShannon, John Kerr, Bob Gunton, and Lynn Borden.
Had I not seen many of the celebrities here at earlier shows, I would have dropped an unprecedented amount of money. Those who were here whom I had already met were Tippi Hedren, Terry Moore, Shirley Knight, Ryan O’Neal, Rene Beard, Mickey Dolenz, Nancy Allen, Kimmy Robertson, Denny Laine, Bernard Fox, Bill Daily, David Naughton, and Margaret O’Brien, who showed up unannounced. As for the others who were to make there debut on The Terrible Catsafterme, please begin the trail of celebs from this show here.
I had about three and a half hours to get everyone on my list and I came in just under the wire. Jimmy was kind enough to stick with me and take photos for me and David took a few of his own during breaks from browsing the memorabilia. Surprisingly, I didn’t run into too many people I know at the show, but did hang out for a bit with my good friend Steve Cox, and got a photo (once again) with Scott Schwartz , who played Flick in A Christmas Story and Master Bates in The Toy, as he meandered through the crowd.
With Scott Schwartz of Christmas Story, The Toy, Kidco, and porn fame
The reason we were under a bit of a time constraint was that there was a special 25th anniversary performance of the California Artists Radio Theatre (CART) going on at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn elsewhere in Burbank. Oddly enough, this was where the collector shows used to be held when I attended in 1995 and 1997. I would have loved to have actually seen the show, but I knew there was no way to get there by the time it started at 1:30pm.
Steve had told me about this show and I decided to meet him over there at 3pm so that we could wait until the show ended and then wander inside of the Beverly Garland Theatre to meet some of the performers who had starred in it (beginning here). I will be doing separate postings on some of these celebs, but two of those whom I met are shown below. The big disappointmet was that Norman Lloyd, who had been in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur was a no-show to the event.
I didn’t really know who Samantha Eggar was but I saw others getting photos signed by her, so I had her sign the show’s program and I got a nice photo with her. After I got home, I looked her up to find that she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in the 1965 William Wyler film The Collector, and voiced Hera in the Disney animated version of Hercules. Maybe not a household name in my house, but not exactly a slouch by any stretch of the imagination.
With Oscar nominee Samantha Eggar at the CART show
David immediately recognized Tom Williams for his role as a salesman in one his favorite TV series’ Alice. We really enjoyed talking to him about this show and he was quite impressed that David could quote some of his lines verbatim. Williams forte is in voice-over work and among his many credits, he provided the bark of a dog in Seinfeld, Baby Stephanie in Newhart, and a goose, dog, and fly in Life With Lucy!
With Tom Williams aka Baby Stephanie aka dog
CART program signed by Tom Williams, Ian Abercrombie, and Samantha Eggar
Since the Beverly Garland hotel was just a stone’s throw from it, we swung by the Brady Bunch house located on Morning Glory Circle. It’s so cool to stand next to this house. I previously visited this great location in 2005 and did a full posting on it, found here.
David and I wait for Marcia and Jan to come out and join us for Mongolian Barbecue. Table for four!
Originally, David, Jimmy, and I were going to meet Jimmy’s parents and John and Janet Duff to see the one-woman performance of A Conversation With Edith Headstarring Susan Claassen at the El Portal Forum Theatre in North Hollywood at 8pm. However, Ms. Claassen apparently was sick and we found out that morning that the show was cancelled. There really wasn’t much time to find anything else to do, so we just decided to have our leisurely dinner as planned.
We had a bit of time to kill before we had to meet everyone, so we stopped by Petco so that Jimmy could look for a dog toy for Elbie and David could get some food for his cat Flo, then completed our journey down Ventura Boulevard until we made our way to Mogo’s Restaurant in Sherman Oaks.
So many dog toys, so little time
This was a fun place to eat. We started out with eggrolls and fried rice, then you went up to the bar, chose your frozen thinly sliced meats (beef, pork, turkey, lamb, chicken, or any combination), added noodles, sauces, and vegetables to your taste, and then watched them cook it all on a mongolian barbecue. It was all-you-can-eat so I took two trip up to the bar. It was fun to socialize with the Duffs, and naturally I brought along Little Bob, since the big one was still gallivanting around Lone Pine.
Kris, Ellen, Jimmy, me, Little Bob, John, Janet, David, and Big Jimmy at Mogo’s
After-dinner fun with texting and chopsticks
Since our show was cancelled, we spent longer just chatting at the restaurant, then Jimmy, David, and I went back to David’s place for a bit to check out Tom Williams in Alice and some other video delights, while checking out some of David’s amazing Disney collection.
David and some of his Disney collectibles
After about a half-hour, Jimmy and I headed back to his place in San Pedro. He took Elbie for a walk and I think I had fallen asleep already by the time he got back. I had an extremely early flight to catch.
I got up at 4am and Jimmy had me at LAX by 5:30. There were very long security lines and I got to experience the new X-Ray style security screening in lieu of the regular old metal detector. I was using Ashleigh’s bag and apparently she had left hairspray in one of its pockets, unbeknownst to me. Although it hadn’t been an issue getting out to Los Angeles, they took it away from me leaving Los Angleles.
I sat next to some revolting cougar-type woman on the first leg of my flight, which departed at 6:30am and landed in Denver at 9:50am (losing one hour). The flight from Denver left at 10:45am and arrived in Dayton at 3:20pm (losing the next two). The portly gray-headed gentleman next to me didn’t bother me except when his arm hair brushed up against mine.
Dad picked me up and took me back to get my car at his place. I checked out the tachometer that he designed for the ’57 Chevy and pet some of his six cats. One in particular named Milton sadly got hit by a car and died just four days later.
After I got home, April Jones came over to visit me wearing cute shorts. Yes, the weather merited it. We watched the Dallas Cowboys get defeated by the Tennessee Titans, much to her chagrin.
2010 will continue…
Follow the trail of celebrity encounters at the Hollywood Show here…
Follow the trail of celebrity encounters at the CART show here…
Return to the beginning of the trip here…
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