Robert’s mother looks on proudly from the sidelines.
That’s Iron Man (and Iron Man 2) director Jon Favreau
just behind her.

Phase one is complete, as Robert’s messy hands prove.

The Grauman’s people coach Robert as he carefully writes his name—
having flopped his necktie over his shoulder.

The final stage: standing for several minutes in wet cement!

And here is the finished product.

Robert and his wife Susan pose for pictures.

There is an extended Disney family that includes veteran animators and artists, Imagineers, contemporary filmmakers, fans, and enthusiasts. Many of them were on hand for the gala opening of the Walt Disney Family Museum on September 29, and I snapped as many as I could. (Photography is not allowed inside the Museum galleries.)

Diane Disney Miller shares a moment with Disney songwriter Richard M. Sherman; Imagineer Tony Baxter can be seen in the background. When Richard and his brother Robert wrote their autobiography they purposefully named it Walt’s Time. Their publisher, the late Bruce Gordon, had an enormous influence on this museum, bringing his skills as an Imagineer to the conceptualization of exhibit space—and it shows.

Two generations of Iwerks: Don and his daughter Leslie, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Don Iwerks grew up in and around the Disney studio, working with his famous father Ub, who was Walt’s first partner in Kansas City. Don donated the studio’s one-time optical printing machine to the Museum, and Dick Van Dyke agreed to participate in a demonstration film to explain how it worked.

Pixar guru John Lasseter and his wife Nancy talk with Walter Elias Disney Miller, Diane and Ron’s son who serves as President of the Walt Disney Family Foundation. The Foundation sponsored the current theatrical release Walt & El Grupo and has other film and book projects in the works. John Lasseter, who trained at Cal Arts and participated in the Disney studio’s animation training program the beginning of his career, serves on the Museum’s advisory board.

Floyd Norman spent many years on the animation staff at Disney, and has vivid memories of working on Sleeping Beauty when he was just starting out. In recent years he has done storyboard work on such films as Mulan, Toy Story 2, The Tigger Movie, and Monsters Inc.

Mouseketeers Bobby Burgess and Sharon Baird examine some of the goodies in the Museum’s gift shop. They were happy to see themselves represented on-screen as part of the Museum’s television display. With them that night was Beverly Washburn, another former child performer who costarred in Old Yeller.

Ron Miller poses with his son Walter. Ron married Diane Disney and
wound up working for his father-in-law, directing some of his introductory sequences for the weekly Disney television show and eventually running
the entire studio. Walter has devoted himself in recent years to supervising
the many activities of the Walt Disney Family Foundation.

In the green room before the event, Catherine Kramer and her mother Karen (daughter and wife of High Noon’s producer Stanley Kramer) chat with
Maria Cooper Janis’ friend, Nancy Sinatra, another notable “second-generation” Hollywood figure.

John Gray, Executive Director of the Autry National Center, poses
in the green room with veteran Paramount producer and ambassador-at-large,
A.C. Lyles. A.C. regaled the crowd with a story of how he called on
Gary Cooper to sign a note encouraging Adolph Zukor to hire him
when he was ten years old.

After the ceremony, actor Tab Hunter (who worked with Cooper in They Came to Cordura in 1959) greets Maria Cooper Janis. Many other friends and colleagues joined stamp collectors in the audience at the public ceremony. I just hope I have time to use these 44-cent stamps before postage rates go up again!

Restaurateur and fresh-food guru Alice Waters (owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse) is a longtime Telluride attendee, as is documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Waters inspired the festival staff to make this year’s brunch as fresh and organic
as possible... and true to a promise made last year, the event “went green.”
No water was sold this year; instead, each festivalgoer was given a refillable
plastic bottle and coolers placed around town, and every theater offered
free filtered mountain spring water.

On Saturday, just before noon, the festival takes a “class photo” of all invited guests outside the historic Sheridan Opera House. No one hurries off, so it’s a great opportunity to chat—and take candid photos, like this one of festival director Tom Luddy with director Taylor Hackford and his wife, Helen Mirren.

Or this one, of Ken Burns (right) chatting with two of the stars of Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime, Michael Lerner and Rich Pecci. Like most other people who
come to the Festival for the first time, they got caught up in the excitement
of the programs and attended many programs, aside from answering questions
after screenings of the Solondz picture.

It turns out that Danish director Lone Scherfig is a camera buff, and I asked her to show off her two current favorites. One is vintage and the other is digital. Scherfig’s comedy Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself first endeared her to me, and I’m sure her newest, An Education, will have the same effect on an even larger audience.

Jason Reitman first presented Juno as an unannounced sneak preview at Telluride two years ago and saw it go on to great success. He’s hoping lightning will strike twice with Up in the Air, which he told me is his most personal film to date.

On Labor Day, the festival takes over the town park for a gigantic picnic. Hanging on the fence at the entryway are posters from previous year’s events, including this one drawn by Chuck Jones for the 1987 Festival, which my wife and I attended. Chuck and his wife Marian were loyal supporters of the Telluride Film Festival, which is why one of the theaters created for the event every year is named (and decorated) in his honor.

LIFELONG MEMORIES

The August 11th ceremony to launch the U.S. Postal Service’s “TV’s Earliest Memories” stamps was well-attended by Hollywood veterans and fans alike. (see my Journal entry above) I confess, I lose all journalistic professionalism when I see someone like David Nelson. After all, my generation grew up with his entire family. In fact, Ozzie and Harriet’s names have become synonymous with the period in which they flourished. It also seems to me that as the years go on he looks more and more like his late father Ozzie. He’s posing here with two of his brother Ricky’s children, Tracy and Sam. It’s nice to see them all participating in a program like this that perpetuates the memory of their real-life family.

Carl Reiner and Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honcho
John Schaffner present a blowup of the new postage stamps
commemorating twenty unforgettable TV shows.

One of the highlights of the day for me was meeting Lucinda Smith, whose father Bernie Smith was the primary writer of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life (although he was always credited as director, to deflect any suspicion that Groucho wasn’t ad-libbing all of his dialogue). Lucinda brought along the original duck that bore the famous Secret Word every week. His name, incidentally, is Julius...just like Groucho.

Jayne Meadows Allen fractured her hip ten days before the event, but no power on earth was going to keep her from participating in the morning activities. Her son Bill wheeled her onstage at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, where she spoke about her beloved husband Steve Allen (whose original Tonight Show is honored on the pane of 20 stamps). Here she poses with the delightful Barbara Hale and Tim Talman, the son of William Talman, representing Perry Mason—which has been mentioned in the news recently because the show inspired new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Representing You Bet Your Life were Groucho Marx’s son Arthur
and daughter Melinda. Melinda’s daughter Jade is standing at her side,
and her grandson Julius is in front.

I always enjoy seeing Leonard Stern, veteran comedy writer, director, and producer—not to mention co-founder of the publishing firm Price-Stern-Sloan (the folks who brought us Mad Libs, just for starters). Leonard’s credits date back to the Abbott and Costello radio show in the 1940s and extend to 2008 when he made a cameo appearance in Get Smart, to acknowledge the fact that he was executive producer of the original Don Adams TV series. He also served as a writer on The Honeymooners, which is featured on one of the new postage stamps.

My friend Dawn Moore has been lobbying for a Lone Ranger stamp for many years, to honor her late father Clayton, who played—and embodied—the indelible character. She finally got her wish, and poses here with a blowup of the stamp.

Dawn invited a handful of friends to join her at the ceremony, including a good friend of hers (and her dad’s), wonderful Ann Rutherford. The woman who will always be remembered as Scarlett O’Hara’s sister Careen in
Gone With The Wind is as vibrant and active as ever.
God bless her!

Here’s the way the Niles Studio looked when Bronco Billy constructed it in 1912;
it was only a working studio until 1916, but a lot of history was made during
those years, especially when Charlie Chaplin arrived on the scene.
The building structure is gone but the perimeter is easily defined as you walk around; in fact, a new fire house has been built on one corner. Other surrounding landmarks remain remarkably intact after more than ninety years.

This hillside marker has been replaced several times over the years, but it proudly proclaims Niles as a community all its own, even though its mailing address is the larger city of Fremont. Niles is nestled between two railroad lines—one now run as a hobby by train enthusiasts, with a Sunday run to Sunol and back—so it never could expand beyond a certain point.

Unlike most nickelodeon theaters, the one on Niles Boulevard had a long entryway lobby, which now welcomes visitors to the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and offers a generous sampling of books, DVDs, and memorabilia for sale.

Here is the theater itself, where silent films, including locally-produced Essanay reels, are screened every Sunday, usually in 35mm prints with live piano accompaniment. Oscar-winning sound artist Ben Burtt recently performed live sound effects accompaniment for a showing of Wings, while Frederick Hodges performed the score.

A three-sheet poster of Essanay’s co-founder Bronco Billy Anderson looks down at today’s attendees from the theater wall.

A handful of original seats from the Nickelodeon are used for display purposes and feature props that remind visitors of the famous people who once worked in Niles.

Here is the projection booth, equipped with modern machinery but surrounded by history.

And here is a vintage projector that still works. Niles historian David Kiehn told me he’s actually hand-cranked films for his audiences from time to time. Talk about authenticity!

Here is some of the housing that Bronco Billy Anderson constructed for his workers and actors. This entire block dates back to that period when Essanay set down roots in Niles.

This small but charming house, just steps away from the museum, was where Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady Edna Purviance lived when she worked at Niles in 1915. Just imagine!

It isn’t crystal clear, but that’s Edna and Charlie in a group of Essanay folks standing in front of that very house in Niles Boulevard.

And here’s the pièce de resistance: a short drive into Niles Canyon brings you to this historic spot where Charlie Chaplin shuffled away from the camera for the poignant finale of his Essanay two-reeler The Tramp in 1915. The road is paved now, and cars whiz by, but it’s readily identifiable—and incalculably exciting to behold for any Chaplin fan. This, to me, is hallowed ground.

Here’s a great group of Western film veterans, gathered in the mid-1980s for a documentary that never saw the light of day: Iron Eyes Cody, Pat Buttram, Harry Carey, Jr., and Yakima Canutt. Of the four, only Carey—the best storyteller and historian of them all—is still with us. I asked Mr. Canutt if it was true that he could turn over a stagecoach and have it land on an exact camera mark and he said yes in such an authoritative way that I had no reason to doubt him.

Another Western foursome poses for a picture a decade later, at the 1996 Golden Boot Awards dinner, always a great place for photo opportunities: George Montgomery, who usually presented one of his bronze sculptures during the ceremony, Clayton Moore, who brought the crowd to its feet by reciting the Lone Ranger creed, Lloyd Bridges, the High Noon costar who received a Boot that year, and his son Jeff, who also presented an award to his Wild Bill director Walter Hill.

One more annual event I miss is the Jivin’ Jacks and Jills, which started as a reunion of jitterbug dancers who worked in Universal Pictures’ B-movie musicals in the 1940s. Every year Peggy Ryan brought her troupe of businesswomen from Las Vegas who became show dancers under her expert tutelage. Here in 1996, she poses with her frequent dance partner Donald O’Connor, who’s holding an 8x10 still of the two of them taken more than fifty years earlier. They were both so vital, well into their 70s, that it’s hard to believe they’re gone now.

TIME TRAVELING

I spent much of the first weekend of May in a time warp, enjoying live performances of vintage radio shows—but the most amazing moment came not during a comedy or drama but in the recreation of a commercial. At this year’s convention. SPERDVAC (The Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama Variety And Comedy) staged a reenactment of Lux Radio Theater’s adaptation of Casablanca, originally broadcast in January of 1944. Darryl Hickman played Rick, Terry Moore played Ilsa, Tommy Cook was Victor Laszlo, and some very good character actors filled in the supporting roles. Then the show’s original announcer read a commercial with the actress who’d extolled the virtues of Lux Soap on her skin when the show first aired sixty-five years ago. Eddy King is now 97 years old, but he and character actress Doris Singleton (right) nailed that commercial reading and brought smiles to the entire room full of radio fans and professionals.

It was one of three recreations I saw that night: first, a 1952 episode of Dragnet was brought to life by one of Jack Webb’s longtime cohorts, Herb Ellis, with a cast including Kenneth Mars, Gene Reynolds, Gloria McMillan, and Barbara Fuller (plus announcer John Harlan). The evening capped off with a hilarious performance of a Baby Snooks show written by Jess Oppenheimer (directed by his son Gregg). Singer Marilyn King was a last-minute fill-in in the role of Snooks and she did a terrific job in the role made famous by Fanny Brice, while Daddy (originally played by Hanley Stafford) was brought to vivid life by veteran actor Harold Gould. He achieved what few actors can: he didn’t seem to be reading lines at all: He inhabited the character of Daddy—and he was hilarious.

Eddy King, age 97, still commands the microphone as he did for many years
on Lux Radio Theater

Herb Ellis and Kenneth Mars recreate an episode of Dragnet

Child actor turned producer-director-writer Gene Reynolds tries his hand at acting again in a supporting role in the SPERDVAC recreation of Dragnet.
Behind him, radio, TV and film veteran Barbara Fuller waits for her cue.

Darryl Hickman and Terry Moore star
in the Lux radio adaptation of Casablanca