Forest Lawn Glendale
Friday, May 3rd, 2019
Although I had visited this cemetery back in 1995, I didn’t make my triumphant return until April 30, 2018. It’s a very important cemetery for Hollywood history and is packed to the rafters, er, the sod, with movie royalty. And yet I wasn’t really looking forward to tackling it again, because 1) the cemetery doesn’t want you taking pictures so you have to be sneaky, 2) the cemetery is not helpful in assisting with locating graves, 3) the cemetery is huge, and 4) the cemetery is exceptionally hilly. Nevertheless, with my friend Bob in tow – or rather towing me – we set out to conquer at least a smattering of these very important graves. We did fairly well considering most of them are flat with the earth and thus not easy to spot… which would explain why this group took part of one day (even if it was only about fifteen minutes) and then a second visit on May 2 when we spent another three hours and fifteen minutes. So here’s who we were able to see during this visit: Read the rest of this entry »
Watching Laurel & Hardy films has been such an integral part of my psyche ever since the age eight, that devouring them through sight and sound is just a part of how my pay my respects and reverence to the films. Certainly meeting the folks who worked in them has been one of the great joys in my life. Sadly they are almost all gone now, but coming in at second place as a way to actually become ‘part’ of these films is to visit the places where they shot them. More specifically, to actually stand in the presence of buildings and landmarks that can be seen in the films. 
If you’re an actor that only has one film to your credit on the imdb – even though it was an uncredited role – you can’t really do much better to have it be in a Laurel & Hardy film. In their 1945 film The Bullfighters, my personal favorite of the boys’ later films, they visit a bull farm to look for a bull for Stan to battle, hoping for a ‘blind and contented’ one to fit the bill. The man who runs the farm has a boy named Pancho, who admits he is afraid of the bulls, despite the efforts of Richard K. Muldoon, who is trying to fill Stan with confidence that he will be safe in the ring. Pancho then inexplicably fires off slingshot that knocks off Stan and Ollie’s hats. 
Words can never adequately describe the thrill of meeting an former Our Gang member whom I’ve never met before for the first time. It plays tricks on the mind to realize that a kid who was in such an iconic group of motion pictures, particularly ones that have been solidified in my psyche for the past forty years, is now the very same person standing directly in front of me, now fully grown, in living color, and three dimensional. In the current day there are so few Little Rascals left with us, that it adds an even greater dimension of poignancy.