“The Exorcist” Stairs
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
At left and below is a series of shots from the classic horror flick The Exorcist. Truth be told, I hadn’t seen the film in a long, long time (yet I naturally will never forget many aspects of it – like the tried-and-true projectile vomiting scene, for instance). But because it had been so long, I scarcely remembered the classic stairway sequence from the film – although I didn’t have the heart to tell Bob, who was excited to escort me to this location in Washington D.C. on the Georgetown University Campus. But once I returned home and re-viewed the scene where Father Karras plummets to his death outside of Regan’s house, I naturally appreciated the fact that I had taken the picture at the bottom of the page…which is also special because it was the very first one of our Virginia trip taken on August 4, 2007. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »
I was never a huge fan of Laverne & Shirley, but growing up in the fabulous 1970’s, I’m sure there were numerous occasions where it was on the television in front of me and I was watching. And who at that time hadn’t heard of greasers and weirdos Lenny and Squiggy? So it was neat to see David Lander (that is, Andrew “Squiggy” Squiggmann) make a rare appearance at the February 2007 Hollywood Collectors Show. Lander also happens to be the son-in-law of Edith Fellows, one of the former Our Gang members who Bob knows and I have met a few times over the years. 
Originally, to me, the Culver Hotel was merely a Laurel and Hardy film location. Seen in several of the Laurel and Hardy silents, such as Putting Pants on Philip, We Faw Down, Leave ‘Em Laughing, and Forty-Five Minutes from Hollywood, among other Hal Roach silents starring Our Gang and Charley Chase, the hotel has always stood tall among the little town of Culver City where so many classic films were made in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The hotel has also gained much noteriety as the lodgings for the actors portraying the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. The Chevy Chase film Under the Rainbow helped perpetuate the myth that the little actors were a bunch of perverted sots…and that film, too, also filmed its exterior shots at the Culver Hotel. 
The Outsiders certainly ranks somewhere high in my echelon of movies. A cult-classic from 1983, I well-remember the Outsiders craze that swept the teenage girls of the day when they saw this band of attractive guys (and mostly future stars) in the single-page pinups in teenybopper magazines like 16. At the head of the heartthrobs was C. Thomas Howell, who had also made an appearance in the classic E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial. I can distinctly remember the cooing over Mr. Howell from one of the older objects of my affection, Missy Karver from our Gem City Classics Chevy Club. His popular teen films poured out for a few years before the good roles finally dried up: Red Dawn, Tank, Soul Man, The Hitcher to name the ones I recall. 
Washington D.C., Colonial Beach, Pope’s Creek, Stratford, Port Royal, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Richmond, Charles City, Williamsburg, Jamestown, Roxbury, Brookneal, Appomattox, Lynchburg, Lexington, Staunton, Charlottesville, Stanardsville, Barboursville, Montpelier, Orange, Culpeper, Arlington, and back to D.C. If it exhausted you to read all of these Virginia cities, imagine how I felt after visiting all of them over the course of one week. Tiring, yes, but never dull. My friend Bob and I had a fabulous time touring historical Virginia as well as taking in a few sites in Washington D.C. from August 4-12, 2007. I must warn you now, the postings pertaining to this trip will likely linger on into 2008.