For fifteen minutes, every Friday night, US soldiers fighting in World War II were comforted by the songs and stories of “Phyllis Jeanne, your Canteen Girl.” Broadcast on the NBC network from 1942 until the end of the war, Phyllis Creore was a friendly voice for homesick troops. She used the name “Phyllis Jeanne” because …
Here’s another Inktober 2016 bonus… “Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch!” – Henry Northrup’s parting words to his shrewish, overbearing wife Wilma in “Creepshow” (1982) Here’s an account of my encounter with the aforementioned “Billie.”
Inktober rages on! Here is my entry for week number two. It’s Dr. Anton Phibes, as portrayed by the inimitable Vincent Price in the 1971 camp horror classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, released the following year.
I was a fan of Pat Benatar and I bought Crimes of Passion when it was released in 1980. Spawning three best-selling singles and several AOR station favorites, Crimes of Passion was the biggest selling album of Benatar’s career. By the time Seven the Hard Way, her seventh album, came out, my musical tastes had moved on …
Tinka-tinka-tee!
Betsy Palmer had a long and illustrious career in films, television and on the stage. She was featured in the original teleplay of Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty in 1953, two years before its big screen adaptation. She originated the role of “Alma” in Tennessee Williams’ The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. She was Williams’ personal choice for the role. In …
I’m driving right up to you, babe I guess that you couldn’t see, yeah yeah But you were under my wheels honey Why don’t you let me be? Only Alice Cooper could sing a love song about running over his girlfriend with his car. That’s what makes Alice “Alice.”
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 …
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 …
