I have fond memories of Frank Sinatra’s music and how it spanned several generations. My mom loved Frank Sinatra beginning in his early days as a big band singer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, when he appealed to the bobbysoxers… and my mom was a bobbysoxer. When I was a teenager in the 70s, Frank …
After three attempts, Ron Hughes finally passed the California Bar exam. He had never tried a case when he met with Charles Manson in December 1969, just after warrants had been issued and arrests had been made for the August 8 murders of five people at the home of actress Sharon Tate and the murders …
A 1940 newspaper article called Sheila Ryan “an actress whose alluring curves alone might have disqualified them from screen careers not so long ago.” The petite, dark-haired beauty made 60 films during her thirty-year career. She innocently auditioned for a small role in a locally-produced show for LA station KCBS. She got the role immediately. Sheila went on …
Debbie Stone’s celebrity status is of an unfortunate nature. The 18 year-old Santa Ana High School graduate holds the distinction of being the first Disneyland cast member killed while working in the theme park. At the end of the summer of 1973, The Carousel of Progress, Disney’s innovative and entertaining chronology of technological advancement was packed up …
First was Kevin, then came Lucy, third in line was me.
Pete Duel landed a role in the touring company of the play Take Her, She’s Mine. Hoping to use the part as a springboard for film roles, Pete’s mother drove him across the country to Hollywood, sometimes sleeping in a tent along the way. The good-looking 25 year-old found work in bit parts on episodic television in …
I met Patty Duke in 2011. I was at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Cockeysville, Maryland, seventeen miles north of Baltimore. (That’s right… Cockeysville!) She was sitting behind a table filled with glossy black and white and color photographs that chronicled her long and illustrious career. I waited patiently as she engaged each and every …
Totie Fields was just naturally funny. While still in high school, she sang and told jokes in clubs in the Boston area, not far from her native Hartford, Connecticut. Her talent and unique routines brought her to larger venues, including New York’s famed Copacabana. It was here that Ed Sullivan caught her act. Intrigued by her …
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” — Socrates Smart guy, that Socrates. More people should listen to him.
Native New Yorker Andrea Feldman latched onto the crowd at Andy Warhol‘s Factory. She was featured in three of Warhol’s avant garde films, Imitation of Christ, Trash and Heat. Still a teenager, Andrea performed, what she called, the “Showtime,” a table-top striptease that was wildly popular among the regulars in the back room at Max’s …
