Celebs

At some point in the late 80s we were summoned to a meeting with Susan Turner, head of Universal 8 and Derek and I almost came face to face with the Phantom of the Opera when we were given a private tour of Universal City, that included a special visit to Alfred Hitchcocks’ private office and a look at Stage 28, which still contained the original theatre set from the 1925 Lon Chaney classic, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. I was thrilled to bits. Other than the few guests that we’ve engaged for the Blackpool convention, of which Ray Harryhausen and Caroline Munro were my personal favourites and a real pleasure to talk to and BFCC regulars Brian Murphy and Paul Daniels, that was about as near as we ever got to meeting a famous or great Hollywood ‘star’, however we did have the occasional rubbing of shoulders with the odd well known personality. Cult horror director Pete Walker became a good friend and would always spend time with Derek or myself, we handled half a dozen of his films on tape, and Derek loved to talk  to Peter about Petes’ father, Syd and his stage appearances at the Dudley Hippodrome. On one of the many long flights to the USA I had an enjoyable twenty minutes with Henry G Saperstein, best known as the producer of the Mr Magoo cartoons at UPA, but all I  wanted to talk about were the four Toho monster movies he’d been executive producer on, this had included ‘War of the Gargantuas’, ‘Invasion of Astro-Monster’ and ‘Terror of MechaGodzilla’!! British comedy legend Eric Sykes turned up in person for the signing of the contract for ‘The Plank’ and when Marketing Film of Germany were looking for distribution for their Paramount product, we’d met their New York agent Ed Goodgold, who was good enough to send me a signed copy of his excellent book ‘To Be Continued’ which looked at every sound serial ever produced. When Derann issued the film ‘Stunts’ on video, Derek and I had had a sandwich lunch with it’s star Robert Forster on one of our frequent visits to Universal City. And while in LA conducting business with Peter Rogers, one of our regular American agents, I discovered that his secretary was former actress Paula Raymond, star of Harryhausens’ ‘Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’ and a handful of other 50’s and 60’s horrors. She sent me a signed photo. And I can’t tell you the number of times we heard ‘If only you’d been here five minutes earlier, Peter Cushing was sitting in that chair’ I have seen many at the Manchester Festival of Fantastic Films and was delighted to share a lift with Forry Ackerman one year, while festival regular the late Norman J. Warren would often drift up our stand a Ealing and chat …. And then there was legendary porn star Annette Haven…but I think that’s enough for this week!