When Peter Bogdanovich finished his new movie with Boris Karloff "Targets", a few of the inner circle got a preview at the Nosseck Screening Room on Sunset Blvd. Not only was the movie a mind-blower, but Bogdanovich and his writer/wife Polly were just fab. Of course after Peter met Cybill Shepherd during "The Last Picture Show", he dropped Polly like a hot potato.
If you look close, you'll find Forry and Wendy, Bill and Beverly Warren, Curtis Harrington, Robert Bloch, Eric Hoffman, Lucky & Terri Pinckard and Mr. & Mrs. Sam Russell.
Time marches on and things kept getting better. Nobody gave it a thought at the time, how could they? But the society was approaching the pinnacle of its success. Oh, there was a couple more good years but right now, things were much too fun to notice a downward plunge.
<Presenting Horror Scholar Frank Cunningham with Ann Radcliffe Award (1968)
WorldCon 26
Somebody thought it was a good idea to combine Westercon and Worldcon for a big mash-up in Berkeley. I was hardly one to argue as this was just my third convention. . . AND my first plane ride. I probably made more out of this convention than it warranted as before the con was over for it appeared I had my ear pierced, but I was 21, successfully dodged the draft, off on a spree without a care in the world. What better place to be than the hotbed of everything your parents warned you about!
I'll bet, if the walls of the Claremont Hotel could talk, they'd be screaming, but I may have been in OZ for all the grandeur and mystery of the old place. Nestled on a hill overlooking the college community below and soon to be subject of exploration and discovery. I could tell I was no longer in Long Beach. . . when the first people to approach me were tub thumpers for the local Satanic Worship Group.
That's me and Joe Viskocil on Claremont Hotel roof
View from the Roof of SCA Shenanigans
Harlan Double-Fisting a Pair of Hugo Awards
Lin Carter
Gene Roddenberry
Robert Bloch and Walt Daugherty
Oddly, I remember little of the convention. Much of the time I spenton the main drag visiting a slew of comic shops, head shops, sat in the park with some strangers, listened to some guy play his guitar and smoked some dope. I couldn't imagine being farther away from home.
Hugo Award Docking Station
The Bunch from LA. Ricky Schwartz, Paula Christ, Joe Viskocil
Joe Viskocil heard about a comic convention at the college going on at the same time, so we trekked down the hill to check it out. "The smog in this town is appalling" I said to Joe, with coughing, wheezing and watering eyes as we made our way across campus. Following the signs, we at last found a door with "COMIX - Knock Loud!" and thus we did. A guy opened the door pushing wet towels from the bottom of the doorway and offered us cups of water. Seems there wasn't a smog problem, but the remains of tear gas from an anti-war rally earlier in the day.
Forry Ordained into Order of St. Fantany
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig
Even after the best of times, you return to the routine. Fortunately, things were never that routine. Members of the Long Beach Filmonster Society had gone their separate ways, the Crummy Loogie Bomb had blown itself out, and the Second Long Beach Science Fantasy Convention was history.
Presenting an award during a Dracula Society Banquet>
Invite can be seen .
BUT, there was always somewhere to go and something to do. Scarce was the night there wasn't a movie premiere, party or someone to visit. On several occasions we visited Bud Abbott, living quietly in the Valley. He and wife Betty were just celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary! Bud was still full of humor and had a marvelous memory for his vaudeville year, teaming up with Lou Costello, his bouts with the IRS and beyond. Things only went downhill from there. He later broke his hip and later died of cancer in 1974.
Bud giving me a copy of the classic ""
Bud's Memory Room
Bud had a copy of every screen appearance
Count Dracula Society Publications
There were the monthly invitation of course and the programs for various award ceremonies, but the society actually spawned a few of its own publications. Thanks to Gordon R. Guy for the sterling "Count Dracula Society Quarterly; a 24 page, photo-packed digest of Society goings-on. There was also "The Tana-Leaflet created by Kris Vosburg goin' retro on the mimeograph. Both were short lived.
J. Eddie Feld published a 12 page memory book of photographs in 1970.
Age of Aquarius
The Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Blvd., long a bastion of hoity toity decadence finally gasped it's last in the mid 60s. One of the standout features of the club was the cement blocks on the front of the building on which the movers and shakers of Hollywood had inscribed their names. The Wall of Fame had been removed and now resided in the bowels of the theater and the folks at Movieworld had sent me to check out these blocks for addition to their own museum. I was taken into the dank recesses of the theatre to find the blocks, piled haphazardly here an there around this dank basement. I could not begin to lift one of them. These things were bigger and heavier than anyone could have imagined and we passed on the acquisition.
But I was not through with the now renamed Aquarius Theater with their new Marijke mural (that included Spiderman, by the way), for the new presentation was HAIR: The Musical. It couldn't have happened at a perfect time. Maybe if you lived in Iowa this was a load of crap, but living in Hollywood in search of any way of escaping reality, it was hitting home. But yes, I saw HAIR there several time during its 15 month run, plus when it returned a year later. Also playing at the Aquarius were bands like The Doors, Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and even The Rocky Horror Show. The Aquarius then mutated into the final insult: The Longhorn.
I probably made more out of this convention than it warranted as before the con was over for it appeared I had my ear pierced, but I was 21, successfully dodged the draft, off on a spree without a care in the world. What better place to be than the hotbed of everything your parents warned you about! 
