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Topic Started: May 20 2014, 11:54 AM (1,956 Views)
The Batman
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moodyhound
Jun 3 2014, 04:58 AM

These comments made me wonder what the average age is on serial watchers/collectors. ^o)

Well, head over to my new poll, Moody, and perhaps we'll find out:


http://s13.zetaboards.com/In_The_Balcony/topic/7200262/1/




Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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riddlerider
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Re: the effect of conventions and film festivals on serial fandom and collecting. This could be another really long post but I'll try to keep it short.

Serial fandom developed in the early 1970s along two tracks — not quite parallel, but traveling in the same direction. It was a factional element in two groups that both held conventions: comic fans and B-Western fans. Comic conventions frequently screened 16mm prints of serials based, naturally, on comic strips or comic books: Flash Gordon, Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Dick Tracy, Blackhawk. The dealers' rooms of these conventions were mainly filled with sellers of comics, pulps, Big Little Books, and other paper collectibles, but you could occasionally find dealers who sold 16mm and vintage movie memorabilia — still, posters, pressbooks, etc. Originally the movie screenings were considered to be of secondary importance, but they quickly assumed greater prominence. I should note that by this time very few TV markets were playing serials any more, so there was a great hunger for them among fans who had seen them on TV in the Fifties and Sixties.

To the best of my recollection, Kirk Alyn was the first major serial star to appear at one of these hybrid comic/serial conventions. Being a great guy and a polished speaker, he was an immediate favorite and made several appearances per year at various cons around the country. I met him at the first such con I attended, the 1973 Houstoncon run by Earl Blair, Roy Bonario, and other Texas fans with multiple collecting interests. Earl himself was a bootlegger of 16mm serials duped from prints he rented or borrowed from other collectors. In addition to Kirk, the '73 Houstoncon lineup included Bill Witney, Dave Sharpe, Frank Coghlan Jr., and Billy Benedict. Pa Stark may remember somebody I missed; I met him there for the first time. Fellow Balconeer Black Tiger, whom I already knew from Joe's Place in NYC, was also there. The big serial attraction that year was the recently-uncovered Spanish-titled print of The Lone Ranger Rides Again, a legendary "lost" serial. It was a bit of a disappointment, but every person at the con was delighted to have had the opportunity to see it. I seem to remember the other complete serials shown that year being The Spider's Web, Perils of Nyoka, and one of the Dick Tracys. A couple of the 1966 Republic feature versions were shown too. I still have the program book.

The panel discussions were highlights because here, for the first time, we were hearing how serials were made from the people who made them. This was a religious experience for me. Most guys were casual fans, content to see the movies and get autographs, but I was fascinated by the history of these things. So I became determined to attend as many of these conventions as I could afford. Unfortunately, as a college student working part-time in the evenings, I couldn't afford many of them. But the next year's Houstoncon topped the list, because in addition to most of the aforementioned '73 guests, Earl also got stuntmen Tom Steele and George De Normand to attend. You have to remember, many of these people — especially the stuntmen — were convinced they were either unknown or forgotten. The stuntmen were shocked to learn that we fans could watch a Republic fistfight and pick them out among the doubles. (Both Dave Sharpe and Tom Steele looked at me goggle-eyed when I casually mentioned recognizing them in the "gags" they executed in Blazing Saddles, which had been released shortly before the '74 Houstoncon.) But once they realized we were genuine in our interest and admiration, they regaled us non-stop with great stories — reminiscences they'd kept bottled up inside them for 30 years or more. Billy Benedict and Dave Sharpe actually worked up a little routine where one pretended to insult the other. Billy were then throw a punch at Dave, who would "take" it by doing a complete backflip. I saw them do this at two conventions in as many years.

Meanwhile, the same period saw a surge in the number of 16mm B-Western collectors, mainly in the South. Most of these folks had originally seen the films in theaters, which wasn't surprising given that B-Westerns were popular in that region and had gotten playdates in neighborhood houses and at drive-ins as late as the early Sixties. The first Western Film Festival was held at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis during the summer of 1972. Its founders were Mitch Schaperkotter, Packy Smith, Wayne Lackey, and Tommy Floyd. The guest stars were Lash LaRue, Max Terhune, Don "Red" Barry, Sunset Carson, and Russell Hayden. Serials and B-Westerns seemed to go hand in hand to most of the former "front row kids," and many of the surviving B-Western people had also been active in serials. There were Memphis festivals in '73 and '74 too, but I could only afford one major trip during those summers and chose to attend Houstoncon instead.

Packy was running the Western Film Festival by 1975, when he moved it to his home town of Nashville. That's when I decided to go, especially because the organizers had decided to add stuntmen, writers, directors, and leading ladies to their guest lists. My first Western Film Festival was also the first to which I brought a portable cassette recorder and began conducting interviews with the guests, who were unfailingly cooperative. The first star to sit for me was Jennifer Holt, and our conversation initiated a friendship and correspondence that lasted many years. I was the only person who succeeded in persuading Iris Meredith to sit for a taped interview. She had lost part of her jaw and tongue in a cancer operation, and she spoke with difficulty. Therefore, she was a bit "mike shy." But something about me — my monomania, perhaps — convinced her to sit.

B-Western and serial people who guested at Nashville in the mid Seventies included Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele, Tex Ritter, Ray Corrigan, Max Terhune, Rex Allen, Eddie Dean, Lash LaRue, Russ Hayden, Sunset Carson, Reb Russell, Al Hoxie, I. Stanford Jolley, Terry Frost, Pierce Lyden, Billy Benedict, Junior Coghlan, Dave Sharpe, Oliver Drake, Peggy Stewart, Jennifer Holt, Iris Meredith, and more whose names I can't remember. Going to those shows was like spending time in Paradise for guys with our taste in movies. I saw some of these people many times and eventually became friends and correspondents with a few.

The Nashville group burned out in 1977. Packy and Houstoncon's Earl Blair teamed up to mount a show in Hollywood, reasoning that they would make some money by staging a con in the stars' back yard and thus saving on transportation costs. Inexplicably, the show flopped, and word got around that it was the only such convention to have more guest stars than attendees. The fiasco ended Packy's participation in cons for several years, and I think Earl dropped out too.

Film collectors Harry Thomas and Harold Smith organized two Western Film Fairs in St. Louis in 1978 and '79. These were among my favorite shows. Guests included Jimmy Ellison, Don "Red" Barry, Yakima Canutt, James Brown, Kay Aldridge, Victor Jory, Joan Woodbury, Bill Witney, Ollie Drake, and others whom I forget. It was at the '79 show that Kay broke in on a screening of Perils of Nyoka, wearing her old outfit and being chased down the screening-room aisle by a guy in gorilla suit. Don Barry saved the day by bursting into the screening room with six-guns blazing. (I can't imagine the hotel's management was happy with this little exhibition.)

I did taped interviews that weekend with Kay and Ollie. The latter obliged me by signing one of my most cherished B-Western collectibles: an original studio-mimeographed copy of his script for Riders of the Whistling Skull. But my real coup was engaging Yak in what I thought would be a five-minute conversation. It turned into a two-hour, one-lesson education in the making of B-Westerns and serials. Yak was another of those guests who would tell you anything and everything if you knew the right questions to ask. Apparently I did. He invited me to visit his home if and when I got to Southern California. I never did.

The more people I met, the easier it was for me to engage them in serious conversation. I beamed when some stars introduced me to others as "my old friend Ed." My friendships with some of these people — especially Junior and Jennifer — opened many doors for me. Most of what I have learned about serials and Westerns was learned during those years, first-hand from the people involved in their making.

There were other conventions, too many for me to reminisce about here. Every one of them had a memorable moment. Dick Foran showed up at a 1976 Western convention in Florida. He looked like death eating a cracker, and when he stood up to sing at the Saturday-night banquet, every man and woman in the audience winced. Anybody who looked as bad as he did couldn't possibly sing well. At least, that's what we thought. But when the music started, he belted out his theme song — "The Prairie Is My Home" — as though it was 1936 again.

When Harry Thomas decided to quit the St. Louis fair after the 1979 show, the members of Milo Holt's Old Time Western Film Club in Siler City, North Carolina agreed to bring the Western Film Fair in Charlotte. That show lasted many years, first in Charlotte and later in Raleigh. The new group secured many stars who hadn't appeared at earlier festivals, including Charles Starrett, my old friend Bob Allen (whom I'd known for several years thanks to Sam Sherman), Dorothy Gulliver, Marion Shilling, Verna Hillie, Beth Marion, and others.

I've neglected to point out how important these shows were to folks who just wanted to see the movies. The various collectors in these groups would pool their collections to decide what would be shown. Obviously, there was deference to the films featuring that show's guest stars, but variety was the byword. Packy's 1975 and '76 Nashville shows kept six screening rooms running simultaneously throughout the weekend: four rooms devoted to B Westerns, two to serials and TV episodes. Each room opened at 9 am and stayed open until 1 or 2 am the following morning, with minimal breaks between pictures. Like I said in an earlier post, we were very careful about choosing which films to see, because there was no guarantee we'd get another chance. If that meant propping your eyelids open with toothpicks to keep from falling asleep, that's what you did.

And it didn't stop there. Those of us who drove to these shows habitually brought 16mm projectors, mostly to check the quality of prints we might buy in the dealers room. So, occasionally, somebody would run a rare film in his hotel room, projecting it against the wall, in the wee hours — something he just bought, or perhaps something he was about to sell. If you wanted to see it bad enough, you stayed awake, even if it meant getting buckets of coffee or caffeinated drinks from the hotels' vending machines or 24-hour coffee shops.

The character of these conventions changed in the late Eighties and early Nineties as the old-time movie stars died off. Increasingly the guest lists of Western Film Fairs were filled out with actors from TV Westerns of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. I didn't care much for those shows back in the day and I wasn't interested in traveling halfway across the country to see their stars. And by that time the proliferation of bootleg VHS tapes had made it unnecessary to attend conventions just to see old movies. So I drifted away. While liquidating the massive collection of a deceased collector friend in the mid Nineties, I attended a few more conventions as a dealer. There were very few films on the schedule I hadn't seen or didn't own in one format or another. When I walked into a screening room to see a rare 1939 Jack Randall Monogram, I was shocked to see eight or ten people in the room. Twenty years earlier, that film would have drawn a hundred people or more.

So much for trying to keep this post short. I'm going to break it off here because I could go on forever. If anybody has specific questions, I'll try to answer them. Maybe we can also get some remembrances from some of our fellow Balconeers who attended these shows as I did.
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The Batman
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RR, where to start.

First, thank you, for posting these reminisces, highly enjoyable to read.

Second, thank you, because of people like you, these interviews, with their wealth of information, even exist. And guys like you let these actors, stunt men, writers and directors know that their work matters and is still appreciated today.

Finally, dammit, I am jealous of all the people you had the chance to meet.

(PS - your posts like this are never too long, please, continue)


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Pa Stark
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I also was at many of the conventions Riddle Rider mentioned. Houstoncon 73 wasn't just my first convention, it was also the first time I ever met other dyed in the wool serial fans like riddle Rider, Bob Malcomson, "Parky" Parkhurst, Joe Deluke, and others. The Black Tiger didn't make it to Houstoncon until 1975. Out of all those fans, Riddle Rider, Black Tiger, and I are about the only ones to post on the serial sites.

Riddle Rider has the guest list correct, but the five serials shown were, THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN, PERILS OF NYOKA, DICK TRACY RETURNS, DICK TRACY'S G-MEN, and of course with those guests, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL. Earl Blair also had a "serial sampler" where one chapter of about a dozen serials were shown. Up to that point I only saw maybe 20 serials, but every chapter shown was new to me. First up was a complete chapter one of THE LONE RANGER, followed by FLYING G-MEN, THE SHADOW, JUNGLE GIRL, DRUMS OF FU MANCHU, THE IRON CLAW, THE SECRET CODE, etc. Like RR said, some people brought their projectors with them, and there were screening in people's rooms. Someone had mint original prints of several serials I got to sit in, including THE LONE DEFENDER, THE DEVIL HORSE, and DEADWOOD DICK. A few years ago Joe Deluke and I were reminiscing about Houstoncon 73, and his comment was that he felt like he died and went to Heaven. For me, it was four of the most wonderful days of my life. On the first day I was talking to someone, and he casually pointed to a man, and said, "Oh, there is Dave Sharpe." I looked and just took the moment in.
Almost as memorable was Nashville 75, where they showed 21 serials and 160 westerns. They had six screening rooms going at once, plus the private showing in hotel rooms. I sat through 69 chapters in the first two days, and found myself burned out. Guests were Buster Crabbe, Crash Corrigan, Harry Lauter, Jim Bannon, Dorothy Fay Ritter, Jennifer Holt, Peggy Stewart, Reb Russell, Al Hoxie, Russell Hayden, and Ray Whitley. Corrigan handed out a lot of bs, but it was all in fun, and he was one of the most fun guests, so no one cared.He was available for interviews, pose for photos all day and night.

The 1976 Hollywood convention Ed mentioned, had so many stars appear, I can't name half of them, but most showed up for an hour or two and were gone. I missed Herman Brix and Iris Meredith, but got to meet Spencer Bennet. I walked in on a panel that included I. Stanford Jolley, but walked out for a bit, and when I returned, he had already left. The story I heard was after it was over, and the bill came due, they were way short and Crash Corrigan took out his checkbook and covered the difference. Mybe Riddle Rider would know about it.

Almost every guest was wonderful to meet, and were great guests. I heard at first William Witney didn't believe fans actually loved the serials he directed in his youth, and thought we were playing a joke of him. After a day or so he opened up and he was one of the most sincere and honest guests we met. No baloney or bullshitting, just the honest truth. He just finished directing I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND, and told us not to go see it, that it was a terrible film. He said that he had to direct the script given him, and when asked why he took the assignment, he replied that he has to eat like everyone else. Other wonderful guests were Yakima Canutt, Victor Jory, Tom Steele, and Jock Mahoney. It was my parents anniversary, so I phoned them, and put Jock on the line, and had a nice long conversation with them. Years later I met him again, and he remembered the phone call.

There were two guests who didn't leave such a good impression. I met Don "Red" Barry three times, and the first time was a disaster,he tried to convince us he did his own stunts, and tried to sell a photo of himself as Red Ryder for $25. The other two times I met him, he came across as being much nicer. At the Florida convention, Chill Wills was a guest, and he was drunk most of the time. During one panel, he comes out with, "My wife used to run a whorehouse in Albuquerque. Rod Cameron wasn't too happy to be up there with him.

Also there were the SerialFest conventions that were different than ones before. By then, very few serial people were still around, but we did get to meet Johnny Duncan and Adrian Booth. She was almost 90, but was a very warm and wonderful guest. We did get to see BRENDA STARR, REPORTER and DAREDEVILS OF THE WEST years before anyone else did. The appeal was the friendships and camaraderie of the guests. Black Tiger, and a couple of other friends and I used to stay in a mini-suite so we could host late night parties after the screenings. Several traditions came out, every year Ace Drummond would bring a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label, ($160 a bottle) first timers to the convention were required to listen to Ace tell them the "Duck joke" Don't ask for it, because it is a rule with us that only Ace is allowed to tell it. We started having a trivia contest, but after a couple of years we added that the three top finishers would go on to play "Serial Jeopardy." Yes, we had a computer program for it, complete with the music. Not only was no one called by their real name, only by their serial name, but we treated each other like we really were that person. During a lunch break, a couple of my friends actually went up to a policeman, and told him to arrest me. Imagine, someone thinking honest Pa Stark would ever do anything wrong?
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Frank Hale
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Great posts, guys, and thanks.

I feel less bad now about missing the NYC serial scene, since I was long gone by the early 70's.
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riddlerider
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I forgot to make the most important point — the one that ties these nostalgic posts together....

The conventions were great for films and stars. But perhaps most importantly, they brought together within four walls serial fans from all across the country. We all met people who are friends to this day — friends we would never have met otherwise, bound by our common interest. And since many of us were 16mm collectors, we eventually got a sense of which serials survived. Somebody might have a beat-up, splicy old rental-library print of a title nobody had ever come across. Somebody else might have one of the Canadian TV prints of a rare Columbia (that's how I saw The Shadow for the first time). The hobby's active players became known to each other as a result of the conventions.

Why is that important? Because when Beta and VHS finally came along, ambitious guys with access to film-transfer units contacted collectors who owned rare serials and persuaded them to loan prints for mastering on tape. To this day, most available VHS or DVD copies of Secret of Treasure Island (to take just one of many examples) derive from a scratchy, splicy old rental-library print transferred almost 25 years ago. Until recently all copies of The Spider's Web had come from various masters copied from 16mm dupe prints that Earl Blair used to sell (sub rosa, of course) in the early Seventies. Some transfers (like Rich Orsak's) were better than others, but they all had the same flaws, including black frames toward the end of Chapter One. That's because Earl's dupe negative had those mislights.

One of the many problems I had with Dr. Grood was his disdain for those of us who collected 16mm prints of serials — prints that eventually would have been trashed or stripped for their silver content had they not been diverted into private hands. Without first-generation serial fandom, many of today's favorites would be lost films by now. As a matter of fact, according to the standards used by film archivists and preservationists, most if not all of the Mascots are technically lost because their original 35mm negatives are beyond repair. And that was true 40 years ago. Most Mascots available to us from sources like VCI, Alpha, and Sinister Cinema were mastered from old TV prints struck in the early Fifties — prints that eventually got into private collections. Even then the nitrate negatives were crumbling, and Screen Gems (which distributed the Mascots to TV) was forced to dupe chunks of footage from other prints to replace pieces of negative that were missing or damaged.

The most active members of early serial fandom ensured that everybody who followed would have these serials to look at in some form. That wouldn't have happened had they not found and befriended each other at the conventions. Most of us were completists and there was a lot of trading to make sure everybody got to see the serials previously unavailable to them.
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The Batman
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riddlerider
Jun 4 2014, 02:35 PM
Without first-generation serial fandom, many of today's favorites would be lost films by now.

The most active members of early serial fandom ensured that everybody who followed would have these serials to look at in some form. That wouldn't have happened had they not found and befriended each other at the conventions.


As someone who discovered serials in the early 80's, with a bootleg of CAPTAIN AMERICA bought from a comic book store, followed quickly by Good Times VHS releases of BATMAN, BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE MASKED MARVEL and FLASH GORDON CONQUERORS THE UNIVERSE, I have but one thing to say to that first generation of serial fans:

Thank you


And thanks for another great post, RR.


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panzer the great & terrible
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RR, I'm a little unclear. Are you saying there is a decent print of Secret of Treasure Island somewhere?
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riddlerider
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panzer the great & terrible
Jun 4 2014, 05:13 PM
RR, I'm a little unclear. Are you saying there is a decent print of Secret of Treasure Island somewhere?

Well, I only use the word "print" to describe film, as in something reproduced from a negative via photochemical processing. But even if you mean "video transfer" instead of "print," the answer is yes. A friend of mine transferred a near-mint 16mm TV print of Secret that he borrowed from a fellow collector. Unfortunately, the lender strictly forbade him from running off copies for other friends. He ran some of it for me when I visited him a few years ago, and it's quite nice. At some point — probably not too distant — that print will change hands, and perhaps the new owner will be more generous about making another transfer and disseminating copies on DVD.
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panzer the great & terrible
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I hate these stories. Why are collectors such buttwipes?
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Bert Greene
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I still like going to the shows, even though the emphasis has veered away from the earlier vintage fare which I preferred. Mainly for just meeting and socializing with people who have similar interests. Last year I met an old gent in his 80s and had a nice conversation about Al Hoxie, with whom he was very well-versed. At another show, I encountered a younger fellow, twenty years my junior, who'd just seen for the first time some Andy Clyde comedies, and was just totally enthralled with them. I got a vicarious kick out of his enthusiasm and excitement over his 'new' discovery. Anyway, in my normal day-to-day life, it's getting to the point that I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't even know who Jimmy Stewart is, much less people familiar with Al Hoxie or Andy Clyde.

The guest celebs sometimes have interesting little anecdotes, although I'm missing the older-era film veterans. Always been more of a 'film' fan than a 'star' fan. But getting to see and meet some old-time actors, I learned, sometimes created a weird little connection, which made the past (and its film product) seem not so insanely distant. It might belie reality to a certain extent, but I found something quirkily comforting about it. Especially in retrospect.

Not sure how much sense that seems to make. But it was often surreally fascinating to encounter and meet some of the old-time film folks. I remember Dorothy Lee, the leading lady in so many Wheeler and Woolsey films, appearing at a Cinecon, and although having been out of the business for a whopping fifty years, was still so amazingly recognizable, with the same little looks and mannerisms she had in her film appearances. It was also amusing how wary and seemingly mystified she initially was by a group of people interested in her early film career and memories of it. That was quite a good show that year, with a lot of interesting guests, like Mae Clarke, Penny Singleton, Fay Wray, Lew Ayres, Muriel Evans, Cesar Romero, Linwood Dunn, Anna Lee, Andre de Toth, Lina Basquette, Gloria Stuart, Esther Ralston, Frances Drake, Virginia Vale, William Bakewell, Anita Garvin, and some others I can't recall off the top of my head. Then there was nutty Lawrence Tierney wobbling around in the hallways, with most of the (smart) people avoiding him like the plague. I wasn't so smart, and got mired in a bizarre chat with him, which in short order convinced me the dude was seriously mentally deranged. Anyway, I got to see and meet many more old-timers at a gala event Turner put on, where I got to work as a 'gofer.' Must have been over a hundred vintage screen vets there, and I was able to chat and schmooze with everyone from Marie Windsor to Signe Hasso to Maureen O'Sullivan.

So yeah, anyway I'm going to be heading over to the Memphis show next week. I tend to thrive on that whole nostalgia/americana vibe, even if it seems to be gradually fading from view, in certain aspects. I love the whole cultural and historical angle of the big saturday-matinee, b-film, radio-show, early-tv mix, moreso than the actual aesthetics of film and filmmaking, to be honest. Such fare always hit such a chord with me, even though it was primarily before my time.
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The Batman
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What a fantastic, nostalgic, melancholy post. Thanks, Bert.

(And along with RR and Pa, I add you to the list of those I am jealous of for having the chance to meet so many of the Golden Age actors and actresses).




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Barcroft
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RR,
There is a very decent print of Secrets of Treasure Island available. The late Frank Langley was a huge collector of serials and I bought a copy of this serial from him about 8 years ago and have yet to see a better copy. The only problem now is that after his death his collection was broken up and sold. He also had a large collection of b-westerns.
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riddlerider
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Bert Greene
Jun 5 2014, 10:46 AM
I remember Dorothy Lee, the leading lady in so many Wheeler and Woolsey films, appearing at a Cinecon, and although having been out of the business for a whopping fifty years, was still so amazingly recognizable, with the same little looks and mannerisms she had in her film appearances. It was also amusing how wary and seemingly mystified she initially was by a group of people interested in her early film career and memories of it. That was quite a good show that year, with a lot of interesting guests, like Mae Clarke, Penny Singleton, Fay Wray, Lew Ayres, Muriel Evans, Cesar Romero, Linwood Dunn, Anna Lee, Andre de Toth, Lina Basquette, Gloria Stuart, Esther Ralston, Frances Drake, Virginia Vale, William Bakewell, Anita Garvin, and some others I can't recall off the top of my head. Then there was nutty Lawrence Tierney wobbling around in the hallways, with most of the (smart) people avoiding him like the plague.
Cinecon moved to Hollywood permanently in 1990, and the first few shows were indeed star-studded. I was on the committee in '90 and '91 and chaired the convention in '92, when the principal guests were Alice Faye and Frances Dee. I invited Billy Bakewell back and got him to persuade Sally Blane to join us. My good-luck charms were Grace Bradley and Junior Coghlan, who were always glad to help. I thought Anna Lee first came to Cinecon for my show in '92, but she might have been there the previous year as well.

I don't remember Larry Tierney being there in '91, but he was sure there in '92. I remember vividly because he cornered me in the hotel lobby, clapped his bear-like arms on my shoulders, and asked me point-blank why I hadn't invited him to make a formal guest-star appearance. (We'd known each other since the '70s, when he still lived in New York, regularly got into bar fights, and for a time even roomed with one of my film-collector friends.) Believe it or not, he was on his best behavior that day at Cinecon. He had recently finished shooting Reservoir Dogs for Quentin Tarentino and had done a Seinfeld episode shortly before that.

Coincidentally, a couple weeks ago I came across a box of slides from those three conventions. I've been posting some of them on my Facebook page.
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Pa Stark
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Bert Greene
Jun 5 2014, 10:46 AM
. Anyway, in my normal day-to-day life, it's getting to the point that I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't even know who Jimmy Stewart is, much less people familiar with Al Hoxie or Andy Clyde.
I have a book on pre-1955 popular songs, and never heard of some of the biggest artists of the early 20th century likeGeorge Gaskin, Harry MacDonough, Billy Murray, or Arthur Collins, which gave me the frightening thought that 50 years from now people would not have heard of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, or Elvis Presley. My son Trigger Stark just graduated from college, and I was talking to a girl in the bookstore, and she never heard of Groucho Marx or the Marx Brothers. Trigger told me he mentioned Laurel & Hardy to a girl, and she was unfamiliar with them.
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