Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Earliest consciousness of film stars

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Earliest consciousness of film stars

    One morning at breakfast when I was small my mum complained that we were out of milk. My dad said not to worry, as we were pretty much done. "Yes, but what if Paul Newman or Robert Redford come by for coffee?" she wanted to know. Who the hell were they? I'd never heard of them. If anyone came by for coffee it was usually Mrs Lancaster, the butcher's wife. For a number of years, I was half-expecting at least one of misters Newman or Redford to pop by for refreshments at some point between 10 and 11am.

    We used to get the Radio Times. I just looked up the copy in question - December 1971, when I was six, with Brigitte Bardot on the cover. My sister, 10, pointed at it and said, "Dad's girlfriend's on the cover of the Radio Times." What the fuck? He's got a girlfriend? (As it happened, he had several, but that's another story). He had two, according to my sister - there was another one called Raquel Welch. I was quite impressed that someone we knew was famous enough to make the RT cover.

    At some point, I must have seen or heard the names in other contexts. Hang on, isn't that bloke in this film the one who's supposed to be coming for coffee sometime? Wait, how come the other kids in the playground are talking about my Dad's girlfriend's cleavage? I didn't say anything, though. I had an instinctive feeling, born of experience, that everyone would start larfin' at me.

    #2
    My mom's version was always "What if the Queen of England shows up?"

    I don't recall learning that the people on the screen weren't real. I didn't understand that Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street were made on a set. I didn't know what a set was. I assumed that was his real house and that was a real street, but I knew they were puppets. I didn't know that the people on Sesame Street were actors playing characters. I thought they were just people who worked on the show and got on camera. Until recently, I assumed that their names on the show were their real names. But the people on Electric Company were actors because they were doing schtick.

    I generally didn't understand how labor worked. Like when my parents explained where the food in the grocery store came from, I pictured the people working at the registers going out and getting it out of the fields and oceans.


    I think the first person I was aware of as a movie "star" was Harrison Ford, because he'd been in Star Wars and then he was in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was the first person I saw in two different movies that I recognized as such.

    Comment


      #3
      When I was a kid watching The Commander Tom Show out of Buffalo, I assumed he was a real astronaut who'd gotten a TV gig ... with a collection of puppet friends. The first time I saw him on the 12:00 news as the 'weather guy', my heart sank.

      The first 'movie stars' I was really aware of was through The Flintstones. Stoney Curtis....Tuesday Wednesday....Gina Lollobrigida...Ann Margrock...I got the joke, but I really had no idea who they were.

      Comment


        #4
        Charlie Chaplin. Which, if it hadn't happened already, would really date me here. I think it was at a chapel Christmas party. There was a portable screen and a few Chaplin single reel movies. Someone whispered his name and it was never forgotten, naturally.

        Comment


          #5
          Probably when they were mentioned by comedians on TV, such as Morecambe and Wise referring to Raquel Welch, whose actual appearance was unknown to me (my crushes were Dana and Marie Osmond, then a little later Sarah Jane from Dr. Who).

          Comment


            #6
            First memory of a film star probably Julie Andrews

            Comment


              #7
              James Drury. My old man always told me he was a "proper actor".

              I've never seen anything with James Drury in it.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                Charlie Chaplin. Which, if it hadn't happened already, would really date me here. I think it was at a chapel Christmas party. There was a portable screen and a few Chaplin single reel movies. Someone whispered his name and it was never forgotten, naturally.
                Chaplin as a cultural figure for me, too. I remember watching Laurel & Hardy as a kid, so I think they were the first actors I was conscious of in terms of their thespian endeavours.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Speaking of "proper actors"- my folks would always point out if someone on screen was "a shakespearean actor". Not that they watched or liked Shakey plays but it obviously felt like value for money when one cropped up in Shoestring

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Bloody hell, Eddie Shoestring. Was it him who had some kind of technology phobia? Every time he saw telegraph wires the camera would shake and there'd be this ominous music and someone saying, "Everything okay, Eddie?". I appreciate that it made a change from having an alcoholic past (see Jim Bergerac et al), but it was conspicuously unconvincing. He'd have a hard time of it nowadays. "Don't take your cell phone out in front of Eddie, he'll freak out. Oh no, he's coming, pack up the computers!"

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by treibeis View Post
                      James Drury. My old man always told me he was a "proper actor".

                      I've never seen anything with James Drury in it.
                      What else was he in other than The Virginian?

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I think I was also aware of Robert Redford at an early age, as he was pretty much considered the most handsome man around, in the 1970s.

                        As mentioned, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy were difficult to avoid.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by imp View Post
                          Bloody hell, Eddie Shoestring. Was it him who had some kind of technology phobia? Every time he saw telegraph wires the camera would shake and there'd be this ominous music and someone saying, "Everything okay, Eddie?". I appreciate that it made a change from having an alcoholic past (see Jim Bergerac et al), but it was conspicuously unconvincing. He'd have a hard time of it nowadays. "Don't take your cell phone out in front of Eddie, he'll freak out. Oh no, he's coming, pack up the computers!"
                          AFAIR, Shoestring was a computer programmer ( he probably wore a white coat and worked in a room full of wardrobe sized computers with tape reels) until he had what was called then a " nervous breakdown " and took an axe to them.

                          I loved Shoestring, I even bought a couple of the novels.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Great theme tune

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                              What else was he in other than The Virginian?
                              No idea.

                              My old man loved The Virginian, though. I had to go to the pictures with him in 1975 - I was eight; my old man didn't like taking his children anywhere - to see The Land That Time Forgot, "because Trampas is in it."

                              Comment


                                #16
                                I remember seeing that on one of my first ‘dates’.

                                Doug McClure, indeed, and a bunch of rubber dinosaurs.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Chuck Connors through his adverts. Tony Curtis and Roger Moore via The Persuaders. Rock Hudson: McMillan and Wife (Susan Saint James was an early crush). Nancy Walker in that, 'Mary Tyler Moore Show' and its superior spinoff, 'Rhoda'.
                                  Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 24-06-2022, 13:07.

                                  Comment


                                    #18


                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View Post
                                      I think I was also aware of Robert Redford at an early age, as he was pretty much considered the most handsome man around, in the 1970s.
                                      About five years ago, one of my punters - early 20s, female, could string a sentence together - said to me, "You look exactly - exactly - like Robert Redford in that film."

                                      "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid", I thought. "The Way We Were", I thought.

                                      Like fucking bollocks. "All Is Lost".

                                      Robert Redford was 77 years old when he was in that, and had had copious cosmetic work done. I am 31 years younger than Robert Redford.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Redford was only two years younger than Wilford Brimley when they made The Natural. About 47 and 49. In the film, Redford Plays a 17-year-old version of Roy Hobbs and then Hobbs in his early-to-mid 30s. Brimley’s character, Pop, is supposed o be approaching retirement. He looks 70.

                                        Comment

                                        Working...
                                        X