Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDiego
Thank you, CityBoyDoug, for bringing Richard Lamparski - author of the "Whatever Became Of?" series of books and host of a long-running New York radio show of the same name - to the well-deserved attention of readers here at Noirish Los Angleles. Richard is a longtime friend and I agree that he is a Hollywood treasure, and a national treasure. He is in his 80's now and happily living in Santa Barbara.
(Before sharing some information on Richard, I'll mention that a few days ago I was logged in here at NLA and wrote a lengthy piece about him in reply to CityBoyDoug's request, but when I finished and clicked "submit reply," an instant message appeared saying that I was no longer logged in and BOOM, every word I'd written was instantly deleted. Pretty frustrating. I'm not aware if there is a word limit or a time limit on posting replies, but in the hope I don't get spontaneously logged out & deleted again, I'll write this piece in two or three segments).
What makes Richard a "last living link" to an almost-vanished world and the preeminent authority on "people who were once famous" is that he actually met, interviewed and often befriended the countless hundreds of "celebrities of yesteryear" profiled in his books and on his radio show. He interviewed more than 800 celebrities just on radio between 1965 and 1972. (I know I sound like his press agent but nearly all his books have been out of print for decades and scores of his radio transcripts can be listened to free at the Old Time Radio Archive & Pacifica Radio online).
He has an almost photographic memory and can recall the details of an afternoon 40 or 50 years ago spent with Gloria Swanson ("Sunset Boulevard"), Darla Hood ("The Little Rascals"), humorist & writer Dorothy Parker, or Mary Miles Minter, the silent-era actress involved in the 1922 William Desmond Taylor murder.
To be continued...
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Richard is from Detroit. He came to Los Angeles at age 19 in 1952, moved to New York on his birthday in 1960, then returned to Los Angeles in 1973, moving into a house on Carse Drive in the Hollywood Hills across the street from wisecracking movie comedienne Iris Adrian.
When he was 20, with the help of a well-connected aunt, he began meeting old-time movie stars and such people as Lady Sylvia Ashleigh, ex-wife of Clark Gable and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. He got the idea of interviewing "forgotten" celebrities in the mid 50's. One of his first informal interviews was with Evelyn Nesbit, "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" (huge scandal in the early 1900s), then living at a retirement home in Santa Monica. For years he received almost no encouragement to market his interviews. "Who cares about has-beens?" was the usual response from publishers.
By 1965, with a growing interest in "nostalgia" and classic films, he started broadcasting live interviews in New York and the popularity of his radio show and television appearances led to a book contract. In the late 1980's he was including British celebrities (Honor Blackman, Googie Withers, Peggy Cummins, Belita, a British star of Republic Pictures in Hollywood) but felt he'd covered the field.
About ten years ago Richard published two more books, "Hollywood Diary" and "Manhattan Diary," containing more personal and detailed stories that would not have been appropriate for the "Whatever Became Of?" series. Example: the grotesque last years of handsome TV Western actor John Smith ("Cimarron City," "Laramie"), living in a Crenshaw district bungalow with his former beauty queen girlfriend, both of them passed-out-in-the-dirt drunks who had knocked a big hole in the wall between a bedroom and the living room so they could yell out to each other if needing help.
He has a wealth of unpublished material on everything from an odd encounter with Charles Manson (who was supplying young men for sex to a wealthy older antiques dealer Richard knew), the bisexuality of Bette Davis' handsome third husband, William Grant Sherry - something never mentioned in any book about Davis, and the sensational murder of the founder of Panavision in Bel-Air in 1982, certain details of which were wiped from the Los Angeles Times archives, according to Richard's source at The Times.
Occasionally Richard's interviews were unpleasant. His least favorite people included Buffalo Bob Smith of "Howdy Doody" fame and old-time Western star Ken Maynard, a "hopeless drunk" living in a shabby trailer in the San Fernando Valley. He was treated rudely by "Tico Tico" organist Ethel Smith ("if one more person asks me the story behind "Tico Tico" I'll SCREAM"), glamorous black pianist Hazel Scott ("she hates white people, simple"), and fashion writer/actress Ilka Chase ("Now, Voyager"), whose odd behavior suggested the early stages of mental decline.
1930's actress Sally Eilers went on a drunken tirade in front of Richard at her Beverly Hills home, screaming epithets at some neighbors from a balcony.
To be continued...
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What the heck is Gloria doing with her right hand.....
) in the Southwestern Youth Music Festival. 
[boasting mode off] --which so terrified me that never again have I played or done any presentation whatsoever in front of a group of people. [shudder]
) and experienced the worst panic attack in the history 
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