More From My Mis-spent Youth

      Just in case you missed the first of this series of posts, while going to school in California in the 1960's, I found employment (without real work involved) as a movie and TV screen extra and occasional stunt man. People who know me now don't recognize me then.

It's the hat! It's the HAT!

     Believe it or not, television and movie stars were far more accessible then than they are now. One of my favorites was Duncan Renaldo, star of film, televison, and comic books as THE CISCO KID. I bought a Guide To Hollywood Star's Homes, and knocked on his door. He answered dressed in old jeans and a work shirt (He had been planting a bush in his back yard.) He invited me in, we had tea, and when I told him I was a big fan, he excused himself, went into his bedroom, and when he came back the following picture was taken. One of my favorites.

 

     I also worked in televison for a number of years, and - at the time - at least one station in every market ran monster movies on Friday nights with a live host, so here I am in 14 pounds of torn bedsheet spoofing one of the famous Boris Karloff Mummy movies ... (A decade of years later I had the extreme pleasure in interviewing the great horror master. I told him about my experience as a "mummy." He asked if the costume had itched me. I answered that it had. He chuckled, commenting that some things never change.)                           

   

     And here is my favorite surviving picture from that time period. This is the middle of three pictures; the first picture shows me approaching the camera. The next picture - this one - shows me turning to the camera with absolutely no clue that the horse is in the process of bucking. The third picture shows me laying on my back in the grass while the horse is easily clearing the fence in the background.

    The first picture is around here somewhere. I have long ago torn up and thrown away the third picture.