Since World War II, kooky TV car...
Since World War II, kooky TV car dealers from Madman Muntz and Ralph (“Hi Friends”) Williams to Cal Worthington have become show biz celebrities of a sort. But they were amateur actors, at least in the eyes of the Screen Actors Guild.
Now, a local dealership is looking for professionals. Drama-Logue, a weekly casting publication, recently carried an ad with the headline: “Glamorous Ladies Needed to Sell Glamorous Cars.”
The firm LA Cars informed out-of-work actresses that it “needs your talent to sell classic and exotic cars at our prime Sunset location.”
And you needn’t worry about getting that big, unexpected call from your agent on the morning that you’re supposed to go out and pound some fenders.
LA Cars promised “flexible hours to accommodate your audition schedule.”
It was a typical movie premiere, except that spectators were advised to bring their own chairs. And the screen was set up on Manhattan Beach.
The film, “Just Another California Day,” covered the 1978 Manhattan Open, which is considered the Wimbledon of Volleyball. Many of the 2,000 people who attended the free showing strained to see themselves in the crowd scenes.
“I wanted to show it on the location where it was filmed,” producer Terry Spragg said. “And I think it made Manhattan Beach feel good about itself. It was a happening.”
The movie, which was compared to surfing’s “Endless Summer” by Volleyball Monthly, sat on the shelf for years. But Spragg, who is looking for a distributor, feels that interest in beach volleyball is at its highest now that ESPN covers it and that a fictional film on the sport (“Sideout”) was just released.
Spragg isn’t sitting still, though. He’s planning a second project that may prove to be even more difficult than dealing with Hollywood: He wants to tow an iceberg from the Antarctic to Southern California. He says he has the backing.
And might he also film the event?
“Definitely,” he said.
For that premiere, maybe he could put the screen on a barge.
Nancy Strech heard it at a park in Long Beach: A little girl on a swing was trying to persuade her father to push her. Finally, she pleaded: “Please, Daddy--with sugar on top?” Then, apparently realizing she had said something terrible, she quickly added: “No, no. I mean: No sugar, no salt.”
Soon after hiring on as a copy boy at an L.A. newspaper, Herb Krauch saw the managing editor and a reporter punch it out in the city room. “He decided then that newspaper work would be an exciting way of life,” says his son, Bob, who also became a reporter.
That was 78 years ago.
Krauch, 93, rose to the editorship of the Herald Express and, later, the Herald Examiner. He’ll be honored Wednesday night at the L.A. Press Club’s headquarters at the Burbank Equestrian Center.
As boss, Krauch maintained his cool during the bedlam that characterized the old Herald papers: The city room wedding of a reporter whose nickname was “On the Juice;” the party that featured a band, comedian Red Skelton and city officials to honor the renovation of the newspaper’s bathrooms, and outbursts like that of Aggie Underwood, who tried (unsuccessfully) to skull an editor with a large fish when she thought she was getting lousy assignments.
A pretty exciting way of life it was.
MiscelLAny:
The blinking red light that tops the stylus-shaped Capitol Records Tower spells out “HOLLYWOOD” in Morse Code. So far no one has altered that message.
