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Sunday, December 10, 2017

The Writer's Life 12/10 - More Stalwarts

Last night the Svengoolie program on MeTV, channel 33 on Cablevision in NYC, ran the very forgettable The Mummy's Curse (1944), the third entry in the series. All but two of the cast were unfamiliar to me, despite extensive appearances on the big and small screen. Addison Richards has 405 titles listed under his name, not including multiple appearances on popular TV shows. Here's a pic of this Hollywood stalwart, who passed away at 61 in 1964. How many credits would he have amassed had he lived another decade?:



The director, Leslie Goodwins, also was unknown to me, despite a career that spanned 1924-'67. He began as a writer (60 credits) and actor (10 credits), mostly in shorts, then helmed many B movies, and finally segued into TV in the early '50's. He has 164 titles listed under his name as a director, a figure that does not include multiple stints behind the camera for shows such as My Favorite Martian (19 episodes), The Cisco Kid (14) and Sugarfoot (12). He passed away at 69 in '69. Here's a great pic of him between the stars of The Mummy's Curse, Lon Chaney Jr. in costume and Virginia Christine, who eventually became the spokeswoman, Mrs. Olsen, in Folger's coffee commercials:


Gaze on the middle of the batting order and despair, fellow Yankees-haters: Judge, Sanchez, Stanton. Ten years of agita ahead.

My thanks to the gentleman who bought Five Cents. Having read Killing, he said we appear to be in tune. Thanks also to the young man who selected Dean Koontz's The Good Guy, and to the middle age one who purchased a Solomon Burke vinyl LP. Several people had taken a close look at it the past two weeks. I was unable to place the name to a song, so I scanned his extensive bio at Wiki. Here's most of the first paragraph, edited by yours truly: "Born in 1940, he was an American preacher and singer who shaped the sound of rhythm and blues as one of the founding fathers of soul music in the 1960's, a key transitional figure. He had a string of hits including Cry to Me, If You Need Me, Got to Get You Off My Mind, Down in the Valley and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love. He was referred to as 'King Solomon,' the 'King of Rock 'n' Soul,' 'Bishop of Soul' and the 'Muhammad Ali of Soul.' Due to his minimal chart success in comparison to other soul music greats, he has been described as the genre's 'most unfairly overlooked singer' of its golden age." I listened to snippets of several songs, and none was familiar. Here's the album the gentleman bought:


And here's a live clip of him doing a song Ray Charles made famous:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nagSXCKcJf0
Vic's Sixth novel: http://tinyurl.com/zpuhucj 
Vic's Short Works: http://tinyurl.com/jy55pzc

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