Dispatch #289: Fort Wayne's Horror Hosts

 

WPTA's Shock Theater in the 1950s (left), the 1970s (center), and WFFT's Nightmare Theater (right) in the 1980s

I've covered some of this material previously at this blog, but it's just a little over a week until Halloween, so what the heck...

Today's Dispatch spotlights Fort Wayne's horror hosts—that trio of spooky gentlemen who fronted broadcasts of horror movies on local TV over the years.

The first was WPTA's Dr. Meridian, who hosted their weekly airings of classic Universal Horror movies from their Shock Theater syndication package in the late 1950s. As the good doctor was before my time, I have no idea what he looked like or if his hosting style was campy or sinister.

Actor Jeff Gibson's Asmodius was the frontman for WPTA's Shock Theater airings in the 1970s that I watched religiously as a kid. Gibson's tone changed gradually during his tenure, going from mostly serious to fairly campy. Years later, I got to meet my childhood horror host when we worked together briefly at a Fort Wayne bookstore.

Finally, Summit City residents in the 1980s thrilled to weekly visits from The Shroud, a black-clad figure portrayed by Don Paris on WFFT's Nightmare Theater. In sepulchral tones, the deadly serious Shroud dispensed fascinating bits of trivia about the classic monster flicks he showed each week.  

In the early 1980s, I got to meet Paris in his Shroud persona when he did an autograph signing at Dick Stoner's legendary magic/gag shop in downtown Fort Wayne.

Sadly, the era of Fort Wayne horror hosts came to an end when Nightmare Theater ended its run on WFFT. These days, Summit City residents have to get their Saturday night fright-flick fix with out-of-town horror hosts such as Svengoolie or Lord Blood-Rah.

My childhood experiences watching Jeff Gibson's Asmodius led me to create the fictional horror-host Count Mortius, frontman for the Shock Theater broadcasts beloved by 12-year-old Samantha "Lizzie" Stanton in my e-book, Samantha Stanton and the Mysterious Library.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

 ©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #259: The Hoosier Plagiarist

     On most mornings, I usually enjoy reading the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, but that routine is occasionally soured for me by an unhinged rant from some right-wing crackpot on the letters page or the appearance of an editorial by Tim Goeglein.

     You'd think the Journal would know better than to publish someone who in 2008 was found to have plagiarized material in at least 20 pieces he wrote for their former rival newspaper, the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. 

     Nancy Nall Derringer was the first to uncover Timmy's poaching back then. You can read all about it here. 

     So far, no one's come forth with evidence that Goeglein's been up to his old tricks in his latest material, but shame on the JG for giving him a platform in the first place given his past actions. 

     Journalistic integrity aside, the JG would be better to remember that old proverb, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."

     There's more to come in the next dispatch.

     ©2023 SummitCityScribe

249: Misguided Monument

 

Fort Wayne's Civil War Monument in Lawton Park.

 Allen County has had a monument to its Civil War dead since October 1894, when the one pictured above was dedicated in what is now Fort Wayne's Lawton Park. A plaque on that monument identifies it as a "Tribute for the patriotic citizens of Allen County who fell in defense of the Union 1861-1865". You can read more about the memorial here and here.

Of the over 4,000 soldiers Allen County sent into battle to defend the Union, 489 were lost. Two members of my own family served in Indiana's 85th Infantry Regiment (Company C) and lived to return home. A third Midwestern ancestor was not so lucky—captured by the Confederates, he died in their notorious Andersonville prison.

Because of that family connection, I was angered by the recent unveiling of a brand-new memorial at the Veterans National Memorial Shrine and Museum on O'Day Road in Fort Wayne.

The new "War Between the States" memorial

Rather than simply honor those who from Indiana who served in defense of the Union, this new monument stands for all veterans in The War Between the States—a term, by the way, which originated in the American South. 

An online article over at fwbusiness.com even states the monument was designed "to honor soldiers who fought and died in that conflict on both sides". In addition, the slab displays a map highlighting both the Union States and the Confederate States as well as blue and grey soldier's caps.

To me, this smacks of the very fine people on both sides comment made about Charlottesville back in 2017. The U.S. Civil War was a conflict between the States loyal to President Abraham Lincoln and the Union versus the rebel Confederate States who seceded from the Union and took up arms against it. Those Confederates—traitors who fought against the U.S. Army—were responsible for the deaths of over 300,000 Union soldiers (including my Midwest ancestor who died in Andersonville). 

The idea that there is now a memorial honoring Confederate soldiers in my hometown of Fort Wayne, in the historically Union-supporting state of Indiana, is outrageous to me. Any Civil War memorial in Indiana should only honor the brave soldiers who left their Hoosier homes to defend the Union, not the Confederate traitors who killed nearly 500 of those same men. 

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #239: The Big Move

 

Question: Hey, where did all the posts go?

Answer: I've moved all material connected to my e-book, Samantha Stanton and the Mysterious Library, to a brand-new online home. 

All content from Dispatches from Aldeburgh concerning my young adult fantasy series, The Samantha Stanton Adventures, can be found there, and everyone on this blog's mailing list should have already received a link to the new location.

Out of the 200-plus Dispatches I wrote here since I began this blog in October of 2020, I'll be leaving two of the most popular up here for now: a memory of seeing the first Indiana Jones movie in 1981 and also a tribute to my late mother from 2021. All other content regarding my e-book (including the full text of the first Samantha Stanton Adventure) can be found over at the new site.

I'll be posting about other stuff here in the future, so stay tuned.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.    

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #200: Indiana Jones and the Dial-In of Destiny

 

This summer moviegoers will see the fifth (and reportedly final) Indiana Jones film starring Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. All the press surrounding this latest big screen adventure got me thinking about the time I got to see an advance screening of the very first Indy film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in the summer of 1981.

Back in the pre-internet era, information on upcoming films was pretty scarce. I didn't have access to industry trades like Variety or The Hollywood Reporter when I was younger, so often the first time I found out about a new film was when I saw the coming attractions trailer for it at my local movie theater.

 This all changed with my discovery of Starlog Magazine in 1977. After its debut, I finally had a place to learn about the latest science-fiction/horror/fantasy films & TV shows in development. 

An early mention of Raiders in Starlog #32 (1980)

A few years later, in early 1980, I began to read brief news items in Starlog about the thrilling possibility that two genre film titans—George Lucas & Steven Spielberg—were about to embark on a new film project together.

A Raiders update from Starlog #33 (1980)

 As with most properties involving either filmmaker, secrecy was extremely tight around the Raiders project, so for many months all I saw were notices in Starlog about casting, filming locations, and one about John Williams' hiring as the film's composer (welcome news but not a huge surprise). By the time the movie was "in the can" as they say, I still knew nothing at all about the plot.

The Nazi Flying Wing, from Starlog #48

 In fact, secrecy was so tight, it was less than two weeks prior to Raiders' release before I saw any still photographs from the film—in the pages of Starlog #48. The issue has a cover date of July 1981, but I remember buying it the first week of June at my local comic book store (the Broadway Comic Book and Baseball Card Shop at the corner of Broadway and Scott Avenue in Fort Wayne—which, sadly, is now the parking lot for the Philmore theater).

Indiana Jones at the Well of Souls, from Starlog #48

The three pics in the magazine—which accompanied an interview with star Harrison Ford—included the first one I ever saw of him as Indy in his battered fedora, a shot of a Nazi flying wing in the desert, and a third still of Indy lowering himself into a snake filled Well of Souls. A brief plot synopsis was included before the interview moved on to other subjects, namely Ford's work on future projects Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi.

The Raiders plot synopsis from Starlog #48

The synopsis really wasn't very much to go on, and I remember being slightly disappointed—because of the presence of Nazis, it sounded more like a straight-ahead WWII adventure to me (I was thinking Guns of Navarone) than the rollicking special-effects epic I expected from Lucas and Spielberg. Little did I know!

Then, one Friday afternoon in early June 1981, a local radio station announced that in just a few minutes, a few lucky callers would have a chance to win tickets to an advance screening of the latest Steven Spielberg movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Boy, talk about a Dial of Destiny (or maybe I should say a Dial-In of Destiny)! 

I already had the station's request line memorized, so I grabbed the phone, called in, and was thrilled when the DJ picked up and informed me that I'd just won two tickets to the Raiders screening at the Georgetown Theaters on East State Boulevard in Fort Wayne. He also told me the special screening would take place that very evening—in about two hours. Now all I needed was someone to accompany me.

Of the first two people I immediately thought of asking, one wasn't at home when I called (this was the pre-cell phone era) and the other had to work that night. What followed was a mad telephone scramble to connect with any of my other friends who I thought might want to go. 

Frustratingly, almost none of them were home (to be fair, it was a late Friday afternoon in June)—that is until I finally got through to my old elementary school friend, Danny (who's currently an elementary school teacher/coach over in Kosciusko County, Indiana, and now prefers to be called Daniel). 

Danny seemed vaguely interested but wanted to know more about the film. I told him that all I really knew was that it involved Harrison Ford (in my excitement, I might have actually said Han Solo) fighting Nazis. 

My friend sounded uncertain, "I don't know...that theater is all the way across town...", so I reminded him that it was a free movie and that I would drive him to and then home from the screening—all he had to do was buy his own soda and popcorn. 

That did the trick, and seconds after I hung up the phone, I sprinted out the door to my '72 Chevy Impala in the driveway. Fortunately, I didn't get a speeding ticket during the whirlwind trip to pick up my friend and make it across town to the theater on time.

Danny still seemed a bit wary as we sat down inside the Mallers/Spirou-operated theater less than an hour later, "I sure hope this doesn't suck," he said before taking a sip of his Pepsi as the house lights went down.

Personally, I was hooked from the moment the Paramount logo dissolved into a South American mountain peak, but I could tell Danny wasn't on board until the tense sequence inside the Peruvian temple with Indy and his traitorous sidekick, Satipo (Alfred Molina). 

By the time that gigantic boulder rolled down toward Indy, everyone in that theater knew they were in for one heckuva ride. Indeed, most of the film was a straight-ahead action-adventure flick, but the supernatural fireworks in the finale did deliver the state-of-the-art special effects I'd expected in a joint project from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. 

As we walked out of the theater into the warm June night afterward, Danny gushed that it was one of the best movies he'd ever seen—and in that moment, who was I to argue?

There were many elements that made Raiders a success, but for me a big part of why I enjoyed the film was how little I knew about it beforehand—leaving me constantly surprised and amazed by the rollercoaster ride of action and thrills onscreen. These days it's hard to experience a big-budget summer blockbuster the way I saw Raiders—not with the plethora of spoilers, leaked script pages, and early footage available online. 

For that reason alone, I can't remember when I've had a better time at the movies since that free screening back in 1981. It was a blast.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #163: Mysterious Library Book Trailer

 

Here's a little project I recently had some fun with—embedded directly below is a video trailer for my two-part e-book, Samantha Stanton and the Mysterious Library. 

For those curious about the music heard in the trailer, it's by one of my favorite film composers: Emmy & Oscar-winner Jerry Goldsmith—and was written for an episode of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.

BTW, if you're interested in reading my e-book, you can contact me here. Any feedback on this blog can also be sent to the same address.

There's more to come in the next dispatch.

©2023 SummitCityScribe

Dispatch #27: Thanks, Mom

     After 87 years on this Earth, my mother has passed. At the moment, my thoughts are a jumble of sadness and random happy memories, so I thought I'd post a few of the latter here in tribute.

     My mother was a good person: kind and loving. When I was a child, she encouraged me to be kind to others and to consider their feelings and not just my own. I can still remember the time she sat me down and played Joe South's 1970 song Walk a Mile in My Shoes to teach me about empathy. She also couldn't abide bigotry and racism and made sure I felt the same way. These were the most important lessons I ever learned from her.

    My mother loved to read. She loved nothing more than to curl up with a good book. I saw her reading novels for pleasure regularly while I was growing up, and that influenced my love of reading. Like a lot of moms, she also read People magazine and the occasional drugstore tabloid, but I remember her having a subscription to Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, too, which I thought was pretty cool.

    My mother loved movies. When I was younger, we would watch them together on the living room couch. She especially loved a good thriller. Later, when my parents divorced, I would spend weekends with her. When she picked me up on Saturday, we would usually have lunch and then see a movie. There are 52 weeks in a year, so yeah, we saw a lot of 'em. More often than not, it would be something that she wanted to see, so I ended up watching more R-rated fare than my classmates at school. The first time I ever saw The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now, or Alien was in a movie theater with my mom.

     My mother loved music. She had a special affection for Rhythm and Blues. When I was younger, I remember her playing B.B. King, Aretha Franklin and Al Green around the house, and she practically wore out her 45 of Booker T. and the MGs Green Onions. I still remember visiting her one weekend and finding the Isley Brothers blistering hit, Fight the Power, part 1 & 2, on her turntable. I was impressed, thinking it was a pretty hip tune for a (then) 42-year-old white lady.

     My mother was a proud union member. For many years she worked in a hot, noisy factory, testing motors for General Electric (a company that once employed 10,000 people in Fort Wayne). 

    My mother was all of these things I've listed here and much more. Besides being a great Mom, she was a good, decent human being who cared about the people she shared this planet with. I can trace all of the good qualities that (I hope) I possess straight back to her.

      Thanks, Mom, for everything. I love you.

     There's more to come in the next dispatch.

     ©2021 SummitCityScribe