My childhood was jam-packed with classic television. My parents never had cable, even today, so my brothers and I were left to whatever my grandfather would tape for us. VHS tapes with Pop’s handwriting are still floating around all of our homes. My parents, no, let’s be real, my mom was always a stickler on Christian or educational viewing during the week and monitored television during the weekend.
Don’t feel bad for us though. My grandfather loved movies and would tape all the new movies, as well as his favorites, for us. He also taped every single episode of I Love Lucy, The Three Stooges, Chip and Dale, Batman, Darkwing Duck and The Marx Brothers’ movies.
This upbringing led to a love for classic films and a yearning for the days of black and white television where humor was made in places outside of sex, drugs and poor language.
I found myself in Hollywood, CA with mixed feelings. Before me were stars and footprints marked with the names of celebrities of my childhood, mixed together with a twenty-first century background.
The very first star I looked down on was Groucho Marx’s and I knew I needed to document that moment.
Hollywood is as happening as Times Square only with more people not looking where they are going. However, in this case it isn’t their heads in their cellphones, but rather their heads staring down at the trail of stars.
Hollywood & Highland mall grants an awesome view of the Hollywood sign, as well as, a trail of quotes from unnamed celebrities.
The footprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater were the most surreal part of Hollywood for me. Here I saw the place Lucy supposedly stole John Wayne’s footprints from in the I Love Lucy episode: “Lucy and John Wayne”.
It was a relief to see that they were still there.
There was something about the footprints and signatures of the actors of old Hollywood that made the slabs of cement dated 2015 seem just a little unworthy.*
*I’m looking at you, Dwayne Johnson, you hunk of muscles you.
Reading slab after slab of gratitude towards Sid Grauman gave me a nostalgic longing for the Hollywood of years long gone. It also, somehow, oddly sent me back to my childhood and Saturday nights squished on the couch with my brothers watching the classics.
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