Sometimes celebrity encounters can lead to one or more of those fun ‘a-ha’ moments when you realize things about them that you never did. Sometimes it comes during the encounter through chatting, or seeing a photo on their table of them in a film or TV show that you never knew that they did, but often it comes into research that follows the encounter. Either way, the Montgomery siblings were full of them. Most notably, I had them on my list to pick up signed photos of them at the Hollywood Show on August 4, 2012 – but I had no idea that they were even siblings.
The realization came when they were sitting next to one another and I realized they had the same last night. I was interested in picking up Lee Montgomery’s autograph because he has portrayed the lonely boy Danny Garrison in the cult classic thriller Ben, which was perhaps best known as the sequel to Willard that Michael Jackson wrote the sentimental theme song for.
I have always been partial to former child actors, so even though I hadn’t actually seen Ben, I thought I’d grab the signed photo from it. Later on I realized that Lee Montgomery was the male lead in a teen film from the 1980’s called Girls Just Want to Have Fun that I had seen numerous times. He looked so incredibly different that I just didn’t recognize him at all. He now more closely resembled David Cross than Joey Lawrence.
Among his other interesting credits were the role of Mallory’s love interest in the second episode of Family Ties, and a fifth season episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
His older sister Belinda Montgomery had no less of an interesting acting career. I knew her best from the TV comedy-drama Doogie Howser, M.D. She played Doogies mother Katherine Howser. She had also appeared in virtually every TV drama show of the 70’s and 80’s including Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Quincy M.E., Fantasy Island, CHiPs, Dynasty, Magnum P.I., and so on and so on…
Her acting has been infrequent in recent years, but she has concentrated on her hobby of watercolor painting. In fact, she had greeting cards for sale at her table with her designs and she actually peddled a few to my friend Ashleigh.
Each of the Montgomerys charged an additional $5 for photos with them in addition to the autographed photo fee of $20. That was a bit of an ‘a-ha’ moment too, as their appeal went down slightly due to this. But nevertheless I was glad to have met both of them.
Celebrity encounters of the Summer 2012 Hollywood Show will continue…
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