CINEMA SEEN - "Memorial Daze"
By William Margold

     The rich and wonderful way that my page has twisted and turned since I started creating it for THE HOLLYWOOD PRESS (way back in the late summer of 1972), that quite often I have been tempted to re-title my column "Splices of Life."
     Faithful readers who have followed my work into THE LAXPRESS would be hard pressed to deny the fact(s) that in many cases, what I have always been doing is---with an ego substantiated by the fact(s) that I have led a remarkably fascinating and complex life---not-so-subtly styling my movie reviews as my auto-amazing-and- arousing-biography.
     Therefore...this Memorial Day issue based page shouldn’t really come as a surprise, as it is filled with the memories of four recently deceased individuals (presented in the order that they made their impact on me), who each, in his own very unique way, contributed to making my own life even more memorable.
     Indeed...they were very special "Splices of Life."
     
     FESS PARKER---I first spotted him as a guitar-strumming (and humming) recruit in 1954’s "Battle Cry"---the soulfully savage saga of the United States Marines activities during the Pacific campaign in World War II. (Leon Uris’ book---much more than the movie---would become my very sincere inspiration for wanting to be a Marine. But I was denied enlistment when I turned 17 because of my record of "incorrigibility" and my time spent in Los Angeles’ Central Juvenile Hall in 1956.) However...it was as Davy Crockett in late 1955 on TV’s Walt Disney series, that Fess made his indelible impact on me, when his heroic yet humble character proceeded to go down swinging Old Betsy at The Alamo. I was a pretty naïve 12 year old, enduring the harrowing image in a grainy black-and-white while sitting on the floor of the dormitory-styled house of a fancy prep school in Harrison, New York, and it was my first experience with dealing with the death of a person (character) that I had come to idolize. And while I didn’t don a coonskin cap and style a buckskin outfit, I sang along with his theme song (most likely to the ear-torturing horror of every dog in the neighborhood), and I was completely shattered by his demise.
     
     SAM MENNING---A remarkable gentleman who befriended me in 1973, when I began managing Reb: Sunset International, a Nude Theatrical Modeling Agency located at 6912 Hollywood Blvd. Sam was an adult entertainment industry photographer whose career, after he was discharged from the Merchant Marines, dated back to the early Fifties. By the time I began modeling for him in countless adult shoots of varying sexual explicitness, Sam had developed the incredible ability to chain smoke, drink inordinate amounts of beer, load, focus, shoot and unload and then reload a couple of still cameras, while carrying on a reasonably coherent conversation...all at the same time! Leaving the adult industry in the late Eighties, Sam capitalized on being able to "look even older than he was" and appeared in many mainstream movies including "Twins," "Road House, " and "Life Stinks, and such TV series as "Married With Children," "Malcolm in the Middle," and was a regular on "My Name is Earl." Plus...he was cast in numerous commercials. And whenever I spotted him, I was thrilled to point him out and to be able to exclaim that he was my friend.
     
     JAMIE GILLIS---The legendary X-rated ("The Opening of Misty Beethoven," "Through The Looking Glass," "Lust at First Bite") actor was my idol. He had already made quite a name for himself in New York when I met him in early 1974. He was Sam Menning’s favorite male model. In the article about his passing for my "Those Were The Lays" series for SWANK, I called him "The Darkest Knight" and led off the painfully etched piece with "If you were to put pubic hair around a light socket, Jamie Gillis would immediately stick his dick in it." And I’m not at all hesitant to admit that if I really knew what to do with my own dick, I would have been honored to play with Jamie’s. But my legend of being exceptionally clumsy as well as brutally inept, precluded the opportunity to eat what I’m sure would have been considerably more than just my words.
     
     PETER GRAVES---Although I had caddied for the friendly fellow during the early 1960’s at The Riviera Country Club, it was almost two decades later than he secured his place in my memory banks. He was very pleasant, and he always paid me more than I expected. Even better...he graciously saw to it that I was well taken care of (to the extent of two hot dogs slathered with mustard, relish, and onions plus a large grape soda, after the eighth hole, and again (if he sensed my stomach could handle it), the thirteenth hole. But it was as the straight-faced but hardly strait-laced pilot in 1980’s "Airplane" that he caused me to laugh so hard that I genuinely feared my bladder would betray me during a press screening at Paramount Studios. And that would have been a memory that I would still be living down to this day.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, May 27, 2010 issue.

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