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| With Barbara Steele. |
On Saturday, June 7, I attended the Hollywood Show in Burbank. Overall, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the one in January. It was still a pretty fun time, but the January edition was one for the history books.
The first guest I met was horror-movie icon Barbara Steele. As a connoisseur of the various Mill Creek 50-movie box sets, I've become rather familiar with a number of her films. I can't say I'm the hugest fan of hers, but I do admire her work, and her movies are quite often pretty entertaining.
Funnily enough, I met her 15 years ago (!) at the same event. (Time sure does fly.) Ms. Steele was polite but a bit guarded, which I suppose is to be expected given her age.
The most notable interaction I could share about our encounter was that I originally picked out a Nightmare Castle (1965) photo for her to sign. Given all the black spaces on the image, I asked her to sign in silver, which she did. The silver pen, however, must have been running out of ink, because the autograph was barely visible.
Not wanting to make waves, I was prepared to accept it and move on, but she and her assistant offered a free replacement and let me keep the other autograph. Well, that was an easy decision on my part! I happily accepted their proposal and selected a She Beast (1966) photo, which had plenty of space appropriate for an autograph written in black ink. That signature looked fantastic, so I ended up with two for the price of one. Not too shabby!
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| With Hal Linden. |
The next guest I met was Hal Linden. Most people will know Mr. Linden from his work on the TV series Barney Miller (1975-82), but, if you're a Godzilla fan, then you're more likely to him as the voice of Akira Takarada in the Titra/Titan dub of Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966), as well as the voice of Akira Kubo in the Titra/Titan dub of Destroy All Monsters (1968).
When I approached Mr. Linden, I told him that I was a fan of his dubbing work and that I had interviewed many of his voice-acting colleagues, such as
Paulette Rubinstein. He replied that dubbing kept him alive during the early part of his acting career.
Mr. Linden asked me if I knew when he dubbed the films. Thinking he was talking about the Godzilla flicks, I said it was around 1968 or '69. He said it went much further back than that, adding that he dubbed many other movies than just the Godzilla ones and went on to list several other flicks that I wasn't familiar with that he had also dubbed.
In the end, he signed my Media Blasters Blu-ray of Destroy All Monsters, which is a cool addition to my collection.
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| With Martha Smith. |
The last guest I met was Martha Smith, who played Babs Jansen in Animal House (1978). I asked her about working with director John Landis, to which she replied I was the first one to ask her about him, as everyone else wanted to know about John Belushi. While he didn't do it to her, she said that Landis would whack actors on the head with the script and shout, "Be funny!"
Animal House, of course, is a classic, and it's a great showcase for the talents of John Landis as a director. Naturally, Martha Smith is great in it, as well. After we took our obligatory photos, I said to her, "And, remember, be funny!" That got a chuckle out of her, so I guess it was a nice way to put a bow on the whole experience.
After that, I went on to other appointments. As I wrote above, I definitely had more fun at the January show than this one, but it was still a pleasant experience. I look forward to adding the next one!
