Where Did You Go? Part…4?

I think I am going to keep up with my inquiry into obscure actors and actresses that mean a lot to me. It’s fun to poke around the internet and find out that the co-star of a long lost great sitcom now owns a chain of TCBY’s around Delaware. Then again the same search can reveal the actor died from an asphyxiation fetish while jerking off in a Motel 6 off International Blv. in Orlando. Regardless it makes for interesting reading.

Tom Atkins has always been the symbol of masculinity for mid range budget 70’s and 80’s horror movies like The Fog, The Creepshow, Night Of The Creeps and of course the cinematic equivalent to a dump in a jar, Halloween III. He wears a tough exterior as the hero who is never far from the vices that bind him. I don’t think i have seen him in a movie without a drink in one hand and a cowboy killer in the other. If there is ever a reason to drop everything I have worked for in life, grow a mustache, move to Hollywood and pursue a career in acting it’s because of Tom Atkins. It’s Miller time!

Tom is still pretty busy these days. He has a list of movies that are still in post and pre production and has made quite a few TV appearances to include Walker Texas Ranger, The Fall Guy and Xena: Warrior Princess. He still resides in his home state of Pennsylvania and I really hope he’ll make an appearance at Screamfest 2008 in Florida because the chance of meeting him is the only real reason I am going.

This has always puzzled me. What did Jennifer ever see in Cousin Larry? She was way out of his league, don’t you think? Well, regardless the actress who played Jennifer is Melanie Wilson and she cranked my tractor, even when I was only eight. She had a long ride with the show “Perfect Strangers” and was also in a couple of other great shows from the eighties like “Simon And Simon”, “The A-Team” and the spin off “Family Matters”. I think she has been behind the scenes in a few other Hollywood projects but nothing after 2001. Little known fact, she is the daughter of the late “Mr. Whipple” from the old Charmin toilet paper commercials. Sorry for your recent loss, Melanie. Mr. Wilson was one of the greats.

Alice Drummond will always have a place close to my heart from that fateful scene in the beginning of Ghostbusters when she was the New York librarian who encountered that full torso, free floating, non vaporous apparition that made me shit my pants as a child. I still love her interview with Bill Murray which gave us the famous line, “Back off man. I’m a scientist.” She has been in many films and TV shows in her career and is still cranking them out today. It’s kind of funny that she is of grandmother age and shot an episode of “Boston Legal” called Ass Fat Jungle. Oh to be on set when the grip tells her, “scene 4, Boston Legal, Ass Fat Jungle take 2…..action!”

I feel a little bad about this, but until recently I have always known Alex Karras as Webster’s father, George Papadopolis and the dumb guy that punched out a horse in Blazing Saddles. It turns out he was also an All American college football great, an NFL legend for the Detroit Lions, a Monday Night NFL commentator and a professional wrestle. Hrm, who knew? I bet over half the population of America knows Karras as the NFL great and not George. That’s why I write this stuff!

On another point, don’t you find the character names strange in the show “Webster”? George Papadopolis, Katherine Calder-Young Papadopolis, Webster Long, and poor Heather O’Rourke didn’t even have a last name. Just Melanie. I am curious how those names came to be.

This was a pretty lame post, but I couldn’t leave the site on such a sad sack note.