Two Birthday Celebrations June 11 at the Mayflower ClubTwo Birthday Celebrations June 11 at the Mayflower Club
For our June 11 meeting we will do something that we've never done before. We will celebrate two celebrity birthdays in one evening! After we Toast and Sing, we will screen Putting Pants on Philip to open a celebration for Stan Laurel's upcoming 129th birthday. Then our special guest for the evening will be Margaret Kerry. As most of you know, Margaret is a longtime celebrity member of our tent, who appeared in several Our Gang shorts and was the model for Tinker Bell in Walt Disney's Peter Pan. Former WOW Grand Sheik Bob Satterfield will interview Margaret and we will screen some of her work. Then we will continue the Stan Laurel celebration with a selection of terrific Laurel & Hardy shorts.
In Putting Pants on Philip (1927), a silent short film, Stan & Ollie are not their usual "Laurel & Hardy" characters. Instead, Stan plays Philip--a Scotsman and "girl chaser" who wears kilts--on what looks like his first visit to America. Ollie, on the other hand, plays Stan's American uncle, Piedmont, who spends the whole film chasing Philip. Though the Boys don't play their normal "Laurel & Hardy" characters, the film is very funny.
Dirty Work (1933) is a short that has the Boys working as chimney sweeps. In what might be Stan & Ollie's first day cleaning chimneys, they meet an old scientist (Lucien Littlefield) and his butler (Sam Adams). Soon the Boys make a mess of the cleaning job and realize that the old scientist and his butler are both very crazy. That's when the fun begins. You won't believe the surprise ending!
In their three reeler Blotto (1930), Stan tells his wife (Anita Garvin) that he and Ollie both have to go out for the evening to an "important" business meeting. When Ollie telephones Stan to find out if Stan's wife buys the story, Stan's wife listens in on the Boys' telephone conversation. She quickly realizes that they're really just going out to a prohibition-era nightclub to drink and party. Stan's wife then decides to teach both of them a lesson. She empties their bottle of booze that they plan to take to the nightclub and refills the bottle with cold tea, pepper, and mustard. Does lying to your wife ever work out well?
The Mayflower Club is located at 11110 Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Our meeting starts at 7:15 p.m. " Fisher Franks" (100% beef hot dogs) with your choice of chips will be sold at The Mayflower Club Kitchen. Refreshments will be sold at The Mayflower Club Bar. Free cake will be served at our second break. See you at The Mayflower Club on Tuesday, June 11th. Again, we're having TWO birthday parties in one evening! How can you miss that?
Click here for a map to the Mayflower Club...Notes From Our March Meeting
Our films for our March meeting were Busy Bodies, Tit For Tat, County Hospital, and Way Out West. I thought that screening those films, especially with the tie-in of County Hospital and Way Out West to the new Stan & Ollie film, would get us a big crowd. But then, our March 26th meeting started to get pretty weird.
When my son Jimmy and I arrived to put up chairs, the street that we turn on (Victory Boulevard) was closed off with police tape. We were forced to turn around and drive to the other end of Victory Boulevard to see if we could find someone that could tell us what was going on. When we found a policemen, he told us that there had been a terrible incident where a car had killed a woman pedestrian! He didn't know when the tape would be taken down, but told us we could get to the The Mayflower through the Target parking lot.
When we finally entered The Mayflower Club, there stood one of our most faithful members, Eddie Pratt! Eddie comes very early to all our meetings, and I think he missed the accident. In our absence, Eddie had put up all the chairs for the meeting. So there we were, just Jimmy and me, Eddie, and a nice young man who lives close enough to walk to The Mayflower Club. For awhile, I thought that just a handful of members would come to the meeting, because of all the confusion. Then little by little, members showed up. A lot of members parked outside the police tape area and walked a good distance to our meeting. Eventually the police did take down the tape and things gradually turned back to normal. Thanks to everyone who made "that special effort" to get to the meeting. We had a great turnout!
Because of the delay in starting our March meeting, to save time, Bob Duncan gave all of our toasts. As always, Bob and I led the Song. Considering the rough start for the evening, our March meeting turned out swell.
Special Thanks
Thanks to Roger Gillette and his fellow members of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Block-Heads Tent for their very generous donation to our Way Out West Flower Fund. Also thanks to our long-time member, Jayne Barnhart, who does a lot of hard work making sure that the flowers go to the right places and on time. Thanks to Laura Reuther for her smooth and quick way of checking-in our members at the front desk especially at our March Meeting. Finally, thanks to Jimmy 3 for his almost one-man handling of the whole The Mayflower Club Kitchen at our March Meeting!
2020 Sons Of The Desert Convention
Registration Forms for the 2020 International Sons of the Desert Convention will again be available at our next meeting. Convention number 22 for the Sons will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rhode Island. A one day Pre-Convention will be held on Tuesday, June 9th, 2020. The main Convention will open on Wednesday, June 10th and close on Sunday, June 14th. The main Convention cost is $375 (paid in full by January 31, 2020) or $425 (paid AFTER January 31. 2020).
Last Remaining Seats
On Sunday, June 22, the Los Angeles Conservancy will screen Sons of the Desert and the newly restored Battle of the Century in Downtown Los Angeles at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $22. Visit the L.A. Conservancy's website for more information.
