Posts about family history, film studies, and miscellaneous posts that do not fit neatly into a category.
Finding the first wrestling card that Vicky and I attended did not prove that difficult. Finding the last card, we attended proved more of a challenge. I thought it was around 1985 or 1986. It turned out to be in June 1984. Within two and a half years, Pat O’Connor, Bob Geigel, and Verne Gagne decimated a forty-year-old promotion they […]
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Recently, I went through St. Louis Wrestling Club cards from 1981 trying to find the first card I attended with my sister Vicky. My big sister taking me to the wrestling matches in St. Louis every three weeks led to my interest in professional wrestling history. When my mom married my stepdad, Ernest C. Diaz, I got five bonus sisters. […]
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On Monday, November 13, 2023, I achieved a major goal when I hiked the entire length of Chubb Trail, an out-and-back 13.6 mile trail in West St. Louis County. The hike took me seven hours and thirty minutes to complete. When my oldest son “Trey” was completing the requirements for the Gold Medal of Achievement in Royal Rangers, equivalent […]
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I recently discovered this film on YouTube. It is one of the rare Abbott and Costello films that I had not seen before. Besides Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, professional wrestlers “Wee Willie” Davis, Sammy Menacker, and Tor Johnson played parts in the film. The film opens with Abbott playing Bud Jones, a wrestling promoter, going over “the script” […]
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) released Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) in November 1941. One of the later Thin Man films (affiliate link), the film contains interesting vignettes for wrestling fans. Nick Charles, played by William Powell, is pulled into a state investigation of a local gambling ring. Two local wrestling promoters run the gambling ring, which is art imitating life if […]
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My great grandfather Parker L. Zimmerman married three times. After a couple of months marriage to Victoria Harris during 1897 in Franklin County, Missouri, Parker moved to Bollinger County, Missouri to be closer to his family. His parents, Samuel and Sarah Zimmerman, lived in Dongola, Bollinger, Missouri. On March 31, 1902, 27-year-old Parker married his second wife, 22-year-old Mellie Bollinger. […]
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On October 14, 1932, RKO Pictures released The Phantom of Crestwood (1932), the film end to a radio play of the same year. The film concerns the murder of Jenny Wren or more properly “Who Killed Jenny Wren?” Wren, played by Karen Morley, blackmails several prominent men, who carried on affairs with her in the past. One of the men […]
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On January 10, 1927, Universum Film (UFA) released Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The German film company produced a science fiction class, which still holds up today. On the Internet Movie Database website (IMDB), users rate it 8.3 out of 10 stars. It is #104 on the Top 250. In a theme society has wrestled with since the beginning of the […]
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After Theodore Roosevelt won reelection in his own right during November 1904, TR impetuously announced he would not run for another term. His inner circle, particularly his wife Edith, would think the decision a mistake. However, once Theodore Roosevelt made a pronouncement, he intended to keep his word. Roosevelt picked his Secretary of War and former Governor of the Phillipines […]
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On November 13, 1930, Roland V. West released The Bat Whispers (1930), the talkie version of his silent classic, The Bat (1926). The film follows faithfully the script of the original. However, West is able to experiment with film techniques like tracking shots, still a novelty in early sound cinema. Editing still dominated as the continuity and story moving technique. […]
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