Kristy and Brad: Little Darlings
Sunday, June 10th, 2007
I was rather excited to meet Kristy McNichol at the Hollywood Collectors Show during the February 2007 show. Not sure why. Mostly because she was such a teen magazine cover star during the days that I picked up every issue of 16 Magazine (mostly for the KISS articles) during the late 1970’s. I thought she was cute in pictures from the film Little Darlings, a flick that to this day I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen. I also never saw her on the TV show Family, which she starred in for four years, but I’m sure I caught her in some ABC Afterschool Specials and I know I saw her in Two Moon Junction. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not exactly sure when I met Joe Rock at Hollywood ’80. His autograph is wedged into my little album right between the technical stars and the Our Gang stars. It would make more sense for him to be on the technical panel, but I have a faint memory that he was actually hanging around the Our Gang meet-and-greet. In any case, I know that I met him since he signed my autograph album – and that is good enough for me! 
These interesting photos from our 1985 Florida trip tell the story of our visit with Ira and Mildred at the Teakwood Village mobile home in Largo, less than ten miles south of where we were staying in Clearwater Beach. All eight of us went: Bill, Dottie, Dad, Mom, Lora, Robby, Denise, and me. We played a rousing game of scrabble and sipped on ginger ale. Mildred made snacks for us. Dad didn’t play because he never plays games. Not sure why Denise didn’t play but she was probably fiddling with the organ. Ira didn’t play so he could hang back and chat with Dad…and snap four great candid shots of us around the table, rolling our dice. 
Tongues were abuzz immediately as word circulated around the grand room at the Beverly Garland Hotel where the Summer 1995 Hollywood Collectors Show was being held on June 24. Long before the days of The Girls Next Door and he had sealed his reputation as a creepy, perverted old man, Hugh Hefner entered the building. He was with a minor acquaintance of mine, Dick Bann. Dick was co-author of two of my favorite books, Laurel & Hardy (the giant picture book) and Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals – which happened to be the book that I was toting around collecting signatures for my friend Henry Sorenson. Although Dick and I are not exceptionally close, we have certainly grown to be friends over the years.