Culver City Parade and Seeing Hal Roach…and More
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
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 »
Autograph collecting has always been a fun hobby. But I’d have to say it used to be more enjoyable in the past before it became so god-awful commercialized. It used to be that gathering autographs was the combined result of effort, talent, and luck. Now it’s mostly about the money. I don’t want to come down too hard on the Ray Courts Hollywood Collector’s Show or the celebrities who attend it, but it seems to me that the hobby is just getting out of hand. On Friday morning, February 16, Bob picked me up from David’s house and we headed for the show, held in Burbank. On the way, we stopped to see the grave of Oliver Hardy in Valhalla Cemetery, which meant more to me than most of the living people at the Courts show! 
I’ve just spent well over an hour scouring photographs, documents, and collapsing inward inside my own head trying to piece together my trip to Hollywood during the Summer of 1995. If I had to do it all over again, I would be sure to keep some notes as to what I did on an important trip like this. For example, in the picture at left, I have no idea why I’m posing in this doorway! When it comes down to it, the dates aren’t all that important, but they are nice to know. Fortunately, I have enough memories and photos to keep the trip alive in my head for the time being as I try to record what we did. 
The name Hollywood ’80 had entered the common vernacular of most Sons of the Desert members – both to those who had been fortunate enough to actually attend it, as well as to those who had only heard tales of the legendary convention. So it was in deliberate reference to that Sons convention’s nickname that I named an article I did for Dante’s Info #13 as Hollywood ’95. This particular vacation to California was not a convention, but my third journey to the wild western state in a successful attempt to recapture the magic of Hollywood ’80. 
A while back, I posted some great vintage