Lassie Lou
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
As we speak right now, if you were to look on Wikipedia at the “List of Surviving Silent Film Actors,” you would find only 13 confirmed names. This list is of course dynamic, so it is going to change for some readers of this posting, but at the current moment you would find right smack in the middle of this list Lassie Lou Ahern. Lassie appeared in six of the earliest Our Gang comedies in 1923 and 1924, returning for a brief appearance in their 1926 short Thundering Fleas, which also starred Oliver Hardy. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s hard to believe that someone whose career started on the squeaky clean sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet could take so many sharp left turns. Ironically, it’s because of his Ozzie & Harriet connection, in which he played Ricky’s frat brother Fred in 19 episodes between 1956 and 1963, that I was most interested in meeting him. His 1960’s sitcom connection didn’t stop there either, as he also made appearances in The Donna Reed Show, Hazel, and Mister Roberts, not to mention a handful of dramas and westerns. 
When I found out that Larry Drake was going to be at the HorrorHound convention in Indianapolis on September 8, 2013, I was excited to add him to my list because of his ultra-creepy starring role as Robert G. Durant in the Liam Neeson vehicle Darkman. As an added bonus, he had a small part in the original Karate Kid movie as the ‘Yahoo #1 at Beach.’ You might actually recall him as the guy who tells Mr. Miyagi to ‘kindly remove (the bottles) yourself, Mr. Moto” … to which Miyagi karate chops the top half of the bottles off, prompting said yahoo to promptly remove the bottles. 
Sandy Claws huh? Ooooh, I’m really scared. If you just sang that out loud, chances are you might be as big of a fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas as I am. Every since its release I’ve been entranced by its macabre and comic nature, with the creative notion of Halloween and Christmas colliding as its impetus. All of the songs in the film are fantastic, but standing out further than any of the others is the rousing Oogie Boogie Song, sung by none other than the Oogie Boogie Man. But every rotting burlap sack needs and voice, and his was provided by Ken Page. 
One of my favorite go-to films when I want to laugh is Seems Like Old Times starring Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Charles Grodin. This trio is superb, but they are also swimming in a sea of scene-stealers in their supporting cast, chief among them was T.K. Carter who played the ‘recovering thief’ Chester, whom Goldie’s sympathetic character groomed into her chauffeur. T.K. gets all of my attention in every scene he is in, and that pretty goes for anytime he appears onscreen in any film.