I have always been a fan of the old black-and-white movies from the 30’s 40’s and 50’s. My favorite actress was Bonita Granville because she was the Nancy Drew of the 1930’s Warner Bros. pictures.

Bonita Granville was probably my first crush because she was so stunning in the outfits that they put her in, in those 1930’s Nancy Drew pictures. I always wished that I could meet her and tell her what a great influence she had an old my life with those wonderful pictures and the character of Nancy Drew who she made her very own. No other actresses come close to portraying Nancy Drew in the manner in which she did. She gave the young female sleuth a brain but yet a comical clumsiness of a young teenage girl. Unfortunately Bonita Granville died in 1988 and I never got to meet her but I did meet the young man that played her sidekick in the Warner Bros. movies.

They called him Ted Nickerson but in the books that the movies were based on he was called Ned Nickerson. The only reason given for this change in names was that Ted sounded friendlier than Ned. The Nancy Drew series from Warner Bros. consisted of only four movies starting with the first one which was the only movie based directly off of one of the original Nancy Drew books, “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase”. The other three movies were original screenplays based on the character of Nancy Drew. The second in the series was “Nancy Drew Troubleshooter”, then came “Nancy Drew Detective” and “Nancy Drew Reporter”.

My favorite in the series was the very first, it seemed to have a bit of the old-fashioned dark house mystery about it, which I guess is why it was so popular with younger viewers and readers of the Nancy Drew series. Nancy Drew was played by Bonita Granville, Ted Nickerson was played by Frankie Thomas, Carson Drew, Nancy's father was played by John Litel, the Drew housekeeper Effie Schneider was played by Renie Riano, Capt. Tweedy was played by Frank Orth and many other actors and actresses that did such a wonderful job bringing the character of Nancy Drew to life.

Unfortunately at the time that I met Frankie Thomas it was only just a few short years before he passed away.

He did his best to remember a few small stories of what transpired back in the days he was shooting on the set of the Nancy Drew movies. He was an extremely gracious man. I have at least four or five autographs from him. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have met someone from the Nancy Drew series of movies. He also played Tom Corbett Space Cadet in the 1950’s TV sci-fi drama series. I think that most people were there to talk to him about Tom Corbett since he was at the show for the Solar Guard, which is a group of actors and actresses that played astronauts and so were explorers in the early days of TV.

The first show that I went to there were just a few of the Solar Guard there, maybe 4 or 5 people. By the time I had gone to the last show there was only one member of the Solar Guard left. Frankie seemed somewhat happy that someone was asking him a question about something other than the solar guard and I could see he was struggling to try and remember something of the Nancy Drew series. That first year that I saw him he had only one or two photographs from the Nancy Drew series, the next year he had five or six photographs from the Nancy Drew series and I had him autograph a picture with me and him together. Even though it was just a brief encounter I am so very thankful that I had the chance to meet him and speak with him. Frankie Thomas passed away in 2006.

I also met the young lady that was Bonita Granville's maid of honor at her wedding. The young lady that I met had played Mickey Rooney's girlfriend in the series of Andy Hardy movies and also had a major role in “Gone with the Wind”. Ann Rutherford was a wonderful young lady. She told me that she was Bonita Granville's maid of honor at her wedding and that she and Bonita had remained friends from their early days at Warner Bros. until Bonita's death in 1988 and, unfortunately, we also lost Ann Rutherford in 2012.

I also met another actor from the Nancy Drew series, Dickie Jones, who had also played in many Westerns from the early 1930’s all the way up into 1965. He remembered a little more about shooting with Bonita Granville in those early Nancy Drew movies and we talked about them and he was extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak about a movie that he enjoyed doing. Dickie Jones died in 2014.

The Nancy Drew series from Warner Bros. will probably never be noted as a great series, but it was important and it was a good set of movies that a young boy watched for the first time on the WREC Channel 3 in Memphis, Tennessee’s Early Movies that came on around three o'clock every weekday afternoon. That's where I gained the love of these old black-and-white movies that didn't have any special effects, let alone any computer special effects. They relied heavily on story and acting ability of the actor’s interpretations of the characters. There were so many of these B-movie actors and actresses that never won any awards, that never got any accolades and I think that's one of the reasons that you could find them at these autograph shows signing autographs and reliving their glory days in Hollywood.

I have only mentioned the Nancy Drew series, but there were so many more such as Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan and so many more that I truly loved to sit as a child and watch. I was captivated with William Powell and Myrna Loy as they portrayed Nick and Nora Charles in the “Thin Man” series. I laughed at the antics of Tony Curtis in Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat. I loved and still do love good movies.

 I even love one of the so-called worst movies ever made, “The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow”. The movie is, by all means, not a great movie as far as the script is concerned, but what transpires within this movie is a sad piece of movie history and it is why I love this movie so very much.

The storyline is that a group of kids that have a hot rod car club need a clubhouse and one of the girls father's clients is a close friend of the family and she is willing to donate her house at Glen Canyon Hollow better known to the kids as Dragstrip Hollow, but they have to understand that the place is haunted.

The haunting is done by a special effects artist that was discarded by Hollywood when no one was going to see the horror movies that he was making creatures for anymore. The special effects artist was haunting the house in one of his costume creations that you might recognize as the She Creature with the bosoms removed so that it looked more like a male creature. One of my great thrills when I saw this movie for the very first time was that the creature removes the mask to reveal who the special effects artist was and it was Paul Blaisdell who himself was discarded by Hollywood when American International Pictures went to the beach party movies. American International Pictures for the last time did the schlock old dark house style teenage exploitation movie and started making the beach party movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and the gang. Even though I love those beach party movies, you kind of feel sad at the end of this picture, I was watching the end of the magical era in movie history.

I, with the help of my wife, tried to collect autographs from everyone that ever made me feel happy, scared or made me think while watching one of their movies. I have some TV actor’s autographs as well. One of my prized possessions is a collection of autographs from the Mickey Mouse club serial Annette, starring Annette Funicello. Walt Disney, in his wisdom, picked a group of kids to do the Mickey Mouse club and work on the serials that would also accompany the Mickey Mouse Club. The serials were a great part of what made the Mickey Mouse Club successful, especially with the Adventures of Spin and Marty, the Adventures of the Hardy Boys and the Annette serial. It was amazing what they could do on TV in those days. You may like your reality TV shows but I have to tell you I would take Spin and Marty over every single one of them. You may think that the Kardashian women are beautiful, but give me Annette Funicello any day over the lot of them.

You know I have almost 300 channels now and I can flip through channels for hours on end and never find a single thing to watch that I enjoy. In the early days of television we had three, maybe four channels at any given time to choose from and I can remember all of my family fighting to see what we were going to watch that night because all three networks had extremely good programs on at the same time. There was a lot to be said for the old black and white TV, but I don't really miss not having color television. I remember going over to a friend of mine. His name was Ray and he invited us over to see Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and I took him up on it.

I was blown away with the fact that television was broadcasting in living color, it was fantastic. There was no turning back now, television was going to improve in spite of those that said it would burn your eyes out to sit and watch color television all day.

It's not that I long for black and white TV and I don't agree with those that say it's wrong to colorize black and white movies or TV shows, because so often when you colorize these programs they look so much better. Someone once said that Frankenstein would not be as scary in color. I think they are nuts. If you have ever seen Boris Karloff in the Frankenstein makeup in color you would agree with me. It was horrifying. A lot of people say that it takes the mystery out of the film or movies and I disagree. It's not that the color is missing,

it’s that they were filmed darker with less light. I have always been a proponent of the widescreen TV’s so that we would no longer have to pan and scan to see our favorite widescreen movies because it does hurt the storyline to re-edit what the viewer actually sees of the complete picture, but what I say to those that are against colorization is that there's a lot lost in the actors emotion without color because you cannot see as much of the facial structure and emotion in black and white. I also think that there's a lot lost in the beauty of a young face on the screen when the definition is so bad that you can't see the freckles or the dimples and someone like Shirley Temple's beautiful face. High definition brings out every single flaw in an actor’s face and I know a lot of the actresses are thinking that they will not be as beautiful to us if we can see their flaws. I believe it's the imperfections in our faces and in our being that makes us beautiful. When I see a red headed young lady that has packed the makeup on to hide the freckles.

I want to stop her and tell her that it’s the freckles that make her attractive and beautiful.

I don't really care if you colorize something or not. I don't really care if you pan and scan something or not. What I care about is that we are still making good movies. Someone once said that the job of the movie is to enlighten, to stir the emotions and to create change. I personally think whoever said that is full of themself, because movies are meant to do two things. They are meant to entertain us and make money.

 I was appalled last year when the Butler was snubbed for Oscar nominations. In my opinion it was one of the best movies of 2013. Forest Whitaker had one of the best roles of his life and he did it right. This is not the only movie that I have had an argument with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences about the fact that they seem to care more about artistic value than they do about what people really like.

It's about time that the box office also had a say in the Oscars. No one can win a gold record unless they sell enough recordings of a particular song or album. So why is it that someone wins an Oscar for a movie that no one's ever seen? Yes, I know that it's about actors honoring actors, but aren't we all actors at heart. Actors are selling themselves as someone else on the screen and when the salesman tries to sell you a vacuum cleaner, he is also selling himself and both the actor and the salesman are trying to do their best to earn your money. So why is it that when they learn of that money, it doesn't affect what happens at the Oscars?