Julie Montgomery: The Girl Next Door

All American Beauty Julie Montgomery

Growing up, my favorite adventures were always to visit cousin Frank in Livingston, New Jersey.  We used to run around at night and ring doorbells, or climb on the roof of the school and throw firecrackers, sometimes with other nerds on the block.

As we 'came of age,' lo and behold but the girl literally next door to Frankie-boy, Julie Montgomery, got work as a regular on One Life To Live in the popular and long-running role of Samantha  Vernon (see video 0:10 - 0:30).

Long-running enough, that is, that she ultimately played Samantha Vernon Buchanon, later still becoming Vernon Buchanon Garretson

Julie moved west to try her hand at films and made a bunch of interesting entry-level projects - Senior Trip ('xploiter), Girls Night Out (slasher), eventually progressing to Stewardess School ('xploiter), and so forth . . . Until the big break in 1984: Revenge of the Nerds (0:49:00) as Betty Childs.

Some recall that Julie bared it all for the screen in this classic.  I certainly do.

It's Tom. My Aunt Next Door Needs A Cup of Sugar

Julie later starred in Revenge III and IV.  But II ? Well, legend - on the always reliable Internet - has it that :

"Julia Montgomery refused to reprise her role as Betty because in the original script Betty is caught cheating on Lewis. Montgomery felt it betrayed the change in her character from the first film. Joe Roth offered to have the scene re-written but Montgomery still refused. She eventually returned for the following sequels. Lewis is shown packing a picture of Betty in the beginning of the film implying they are still together. Ironically, this means that Lewis cheated on Betty with Sunnie."

Fascinating, don't you think?!

What Nerds We Were

The ground was fertile on Rock Hill Drive, and Julie's older sister Suzanne was an even more beautiful brunette, although she didn't go into acting as far as I know.

Still, reaction-inciting Hill-Topper classmates up the block at the local public school included the eventually notorious funnyman Jay Greenspan (a.k.a. Jason Alexander), attitude snot Chelsea Handler, and Governor/future President Chris Christie.  Must have been something in that Livingston water.

The great news is, after nearly 20 years off the screen, Julie is coming back in 2012 in a flick called "Altered Reality."  More to come on this.  Until then,

Have I but One Life To Live - after this one, that is - surely let it be with Julie Montgomery...

My Cousin the Hero: Jerry Della Salla

My cousin Jerry is an actor and writer, former Diamond Gloves boxer, and all around GREAT KID who was living in Brooklyn ten years ago.  Following September 11, he joined the National Guard, vowing to defend NYC in the event of any future attack.  As way leads on to way, he was eventually called up for the full tour of duty in Iraq.

Jerry reads it and weeps at send-off

PAPI and crew... VINDICATORS!

My brothers and I traveled to NYC in Red Sox caps just following the 2004 baseball season, to meet Jerry the Yankees fan for a send-off lunch before he reported to Fort Dix for training.

The next thing we knew in early 2005, he'd been shipped out with security forces to Abu Ghraib to keep peace following the prison scandal.

Shortly that spring, Jerry was present to defend the prison during a 4+ hour seige involving an internal uprising and multiple coordinated simultaneous external attacks and diversions.  He was shot but the U.S. forces held the line and Jerry later received The Combat Action Badge and is under review for the Purple Heart.  Among Jerry's other medals and citations are the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, The Generals Coin for Excellence, The Iraqi Campaign Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Medal.  He's a great soldier and the real deal.

Months later, I broke down in tears, the day the news came that Jerry had returned safely home from the war after serving his full 13 month tour.  He'd made it home.

Subsequently, Jerry participated in a virtual-reality-assisted PTSD therapy session presented by PBS on FRONTLINE.  Watch this - it is riveting.

Jerry continues his career as an actor.  In 2008, Matt Damon cast Jerry, and other "real vets" in the Paul Greengrass film "Green Zone."  As Sgt. Wilkins, Jerry has several great scenes and interesting lines, including one made notorious in which he tells Matt, "We're here to do a job and get home safe, that's all - the reasons don't matter!"

Jerry - as Army Squad Sgt. Jerry Wilkins

On 9/11/01, our cousin Doug Pedalino was reporting to work in New Jersey for the last time; his company was to relocate him the following Monday, 9/17, to the 99th floor of tower #2. If the attack had been carried out a week later - and it might have - we could have lost Dougie.

Give thanks today for your freedom, and count your blessings.

Jerry, you are my hero and I salute you, Cousin!

In Orbit with John Glenn

Fleeting or harrowing? Take your pick:

In 1966, my father arrived home breathless one evening for dinner, to share the story that he'd just met a spaceman!  Evidently, on entering the stately front door of the Lord Jeffery Amherst Inn (then "A Treadway Resort") on the town common in Amherst that day, whom did he meet exiting the lobby with suitcase in hand?  American hero John Glenn.  The meet-up at the Lord Jeff was a fleeting moment, made smooth by my father speaking up "Hello, Mr. Glenn! May I get that door for you?" as he welcomed the spaceman.  "Thank you," said our visiting astronaut.

Flash forward to 2004:

Back to the Beach: In Orbit Again

Semper Fi Spaceman

In intervening years, this Marine had served the state of Ohio as an able Senator (1974-1999), considered running for President (1980, 1984; his slogan was "Soar to New Heights"), been punched in the face by a lunatic (1989), and returned to orbit (1998).

Now, in the summer of 2004, I was handling a music project for Discovery Channel in the new Silver Spring, MD Global HQ, and Senator Glenn made a VIP appearance for an after-hours event connected with a Discovery programming stunt on Astronomy ("Quark Week"?).  From 5:30 to 7:00 one weekday evening, we milled around the ground floor lobby with drinks before filing into the auditorium to hear Founder and Chairman John Hendricks, son of a Huntsville, AL space program engineer himself, introduce John and promote the new extravaganza.

I'd met Buzz Aldrin (he narrated my "Beyond Planet Earth" CD-ROM project and did a number of other TV projects for Discovery), and found him to be a bit of a self-promoter; I always thought he'd carried a chip on his shoulder about letting Neil get his boot down first.  Since Glenn seemed to have more of the Right Stuff, I took the opportunity to shake his hand.  I mentioned my father's 1966 adventure and made an ersatz "orbital/rotational gesture" with my arm as I said something about "coming full circle," and added something about it being a "small world."  Glenn politely picked up on these (through gritted teeth, I suspect) - he  didn't recall the kindness at the Lord Jeff, but smiled genuinely and said "I'm sure I appreciated that!" and he laughed when I told him that my mother had always admonished my brothers and me when bathing, to "Be careful - you know John Glenn slipped and hurt his head in the bathtub!"

Two mornings later before dawn - less than 48 hours after the soiree - with nobody present - a large pane of window glass fell ten stories down through the atrium into the Discovery Channel lobby, exploding like a galaxy of stars as it shattered in a zillion pieces.  Had this happened two evenings before, it could have been a disaster.

Living dangerously in orbit, in the bathtub, in Discovery Channel HQ:
God Speed, John Glenn!

Glenn/Porter '84

"Good Luck, Mr. Aldrin"

Neil Armstrong

My Roman Holiday with Elizabeth Taylor

I did promise Liz that, if she was up to it, we'd hit DePaolo's in Turners Falls tonight...

Steppin' out tonight!
The way we were: Academy Awards, 1970

And then popcorn and Champagne in bed, while we watch the 83rd Academy Awards.  All for love, Liz!  :-)

Playdates with Tama Janowitz

Tama Janowitz + Thomas A. Porter = Tom A. Janowitz

After I became a nursery school student, I had to deal with extroversions of every imaginable shape and size.  So she was an obstreperous child - are you surprised?  80's lit. brat-pack & NYC art/scene darling Tama Janowitz spent pre-school days in the classroom with yours truly, wreaking general havoc (her family was also at my home the weekend of JFK's funeral)

During the 60's, Tama's mum Phyllis was a grad student in my dad's U. Mass. English Department, and her dad Julian a psychiatrist - about the only one in town, in those days (now Amherst requires dozens of professionals to keep people from the tipping point).

My prime memory of Tama is from a July 4, 1964 cookout.  Julian had dug a huge pit in the driveway to roast a gigantic pig.  It should have been the center of attention.  But the performing daughter entertained one and all, peaked on the attention, collapsed in a tantrum and was carried off.

Twenty-two years later, as Slaves of New York hit big and Tama became toast of New York with her Warhol, Sid Vicious and Indochine credentials, my mother reminded me that we'd been 'mates and played at each other's houses.  "You must look up Tama Janowitz, next time you're in New York!" she urged. While it certainly seemed like the thing to do, I've never crossed paths with Tama in adult life... but Julian's still in the area, and going strong.

Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 3: Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and JFK Slept Here

Happy Thanksgiving!

We in college-town Amherst and our friends in artsy Northampton, MA are put asunder by a four-mile stretch of commercial and farming land known as the Town of Hadley.  Incorporated in 1659 and largely Polish-settled in the 1800's, Hadley is small-town America at its finest.

DREAM SEQUENCE ALERT:

INTERIOR. Hadley American Legion Hall.  Evening.  Autumn, 1965.

Two aging Hadley-ites on barstools - who could be named Waskiewicz and Matuszko, or Gronastalski and Wanczyk, or Zagrahdnik and Perczak, but who in our tableaux are named Sienkiewicz and Gralinski - knocking back a couple of Miller High Lifes.

Sienkiewicz farms "Hadley Grass" (asparagus), also operating a vegetable stand (Stan's) on the property where it abuts the main road.

SIENKIEWICZ:

(groans)

Tractor needs fixin'

GRALINSKI:

Yep. Be a good harvest if the frost holds off.

Gralinski grows tobacco in his fields across Route 9, and half a mile up the street he leases a corner of his land, close to the Coolidge Bridge, to Barsellotti, who operates a red-checked-tablecloth and candle-in-the-chianti-bottle joint called the Aqua Vitae.

SIENKIEWICZ:

My daughter JANEY's passed her driver's test this week. Y'remember she served a burger to PRESIDENT KENNEDY, a month before he was killed.

GRALINSKI:

(sniffs, but not disrespectfully)

Yeah that's nothin' - I had LIZ and DICK in the restaurant last week, boozin' it up.

No words for a half minute.

SIENKIEWICZ:

"Think we'll get that frost?

Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The In Crowd" plays over the jukebox. Sienkiewicz picks at the label of his Miller.

Stan's, 2010

Aqua Vitae, 2010

 GRALINSKI:

Don't know.

But either way, ... y'better git that tractor fixed!

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot,

For one brief, shining moment

That was known as Camelot.

 See Also: Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 1: John F. Kennedy

               Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 2: Liz & Dick Booze Cruise

Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 2: Liz and Dick Booze Cruise

(attenuation, as in Act 1... )

My Welsh fellow-countryman Richard Burton would be 85 years old today.  Of course, when in Rome, Elizabeth Taylor and I love to celebrate our birthdays every year on February 27.  And when in Hadley, MA we can't get enough of the Aqua Vitae restaurant.

"What a Dump!" - Elizabeth Taylor, as Martha, impersonating Bette Davis' performance from Beyond the Forest (1941)

Segments of the 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were filmed during autumn 1965 on and around the Smith College campus in Northampton, MA. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor portrayed George and Martha, in the intense screen adaptation of Edward Albee's literary 1962 Broadway production.  When not filming, Burton & Taylor frequented Northampton's Academy of Music, where they sat in the balcony to watch movies.  I imagine they must have watched Heston & Harrison in The Agony & The Ecstasy "back at the Academy."

Mano a mano, Tete - a - tete

Mike Nichols' masterpiece is a bourbon-fueled psychological opus of taunting marital tirades and disemboweling professorial jousting - not that there's anything wrong with that.  The stage play took place entirely in George and Martha's house, but the film sets a segment in a roadside bar, where drunken Martha dances suggestively with Nick until George flips his wig and yanks the jukebox power cord from its outlet.  Local legend has it that the small production crew trucked over the Coolidge Bridge to shoot this scene in the Aqua Vitae Restaurant at the Hadley end of the vaunted span.

In the early 60's the Aqua Vitae was the only local place that served spaghetti, and my (Naples born) mama taught me early that the label "Italian-American" (contra facto "Italian") means trouble.  Our family ate a first and last meal at AV in 1965.

I never forgot the place.  Thank heaven that I had the chance to take my own family there for a meal before Christmas in 2004 (it wasn't any better, although the owner had dropped "-American" from the menu and sign).  But the decrepit atmosphere was magical.

Magical most of all for having been occupied by Liz and Dick, in their hard-drinking, insult-trading, hair-pulling, b**ch-slapping glory.

Get Ready...

Aqua Vitae is gone.  Richard Burton is gone.  and...

[DREAM SEQUENCE ALERT:]

 Liz Taylor and I will celebrate our birthdays next February... together - at a nice, out-of-the-way Italian restaurant, and with a couple of large, bottomless glasses of whisk(e)y on the rocks!


See also: Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 1: John F. Kennedy
                Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 3: ... Slept Here

Goth Heat Before Elvira? Carolyn Jones

Morticia attends sweetly to the manic, leering Gomez

Do you remember some of the bizarre things that people brought to school for "Show & Tell"?

My fourth grade classmates showed up with snakes, geodes, SSP Racers, Creepy Crawlers, and a cat skeleton. But the coolest thing I ever was "shown & told" was when my classmate Terry Moriarty produced her aunt, Carolyn Jones - famous as Morticia Addams in the TV series The Addams Family.  Auntie graciously entertained us, even camping it up a bit as she led us in some vampy finger-snapping (though not in costume)!

When we "met," Carolyn was between marriages (she'd been Aaron Spelling's first wife, divorcing in 1964). She advised us all that, if we liked The Addams Family and were ready for something more "literary," we try Dark Shadows. I never saw the appeal.

As a 10 year old boy, I was only beginning to understand what the excitement was all about - but had already sorted the 1960's brunettes into a mental toybox: Julie Newmar, Yvonne Craig, Peggy Fleming, Claudine Longet, Barbara Feldon, Diana Rigg, Karen Carpenter, Stefanie Powers and, shortly ... Susan Saint James.  By the time years later that Elvira emerged... I was altogether primed.

Happy Hallowe'en !!!

Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 1: John F. Kennedy

This is one of those "tenuous" posts, wherein the connection between me and the person in question is a bit ... stretched.  Thank you for granting me the license to make this attenuation:

Ready for the 100-yard drive uphill to speak at AC Cage

On this day in October 1963, President John F. Kennedy came to our town, to speak at the groundbreaking for the new Robert Frost Library, to be built at the head of the beautiful Amherst College quadrangle.  The "young and gallant" Kennedy was repaying a favor to Frost, the President's favorite American poet, who'd recited his poem The Gift Outright at Kennedy's inauguration in January, 1961.

Frost passed away two years later, and on this day was to be honored with the commemoration, after his decades teaching at Amherst College.

My parents were invited to attend the event, within walking distance of our home.  With an out of town commitment that weekend, they blithely decided, "We'll catch the President another time."  Were my brother and I, at ages 4 & 3 and in care of a weekend babysitter, in position as the President's helicopter touched down on the baseball field and the presidential Lincoln whisked him to the quad for his appearance? Our beloved sitter Kate McGrath insists yes! The event is so mythic as to be apocryphal, and my memory is not clear.

JFK's words delivered that day are enshrined on the Kennedy Center's River Terrace in Washington DC:

I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH WILL REWARD ACHIEVEMENT IN THE ARTS AS WE REWARD ACHIEVEMENT IN BUSINESS OR STATECRAFT. I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH WILL STEADILY RAISE THE STANDARDS OF ARTISTIC ACCOMPLISHMENT AND WHICH WILL STEADILY ENLARGE CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL OF OUR CITIZENS. AND I LOOK FORWARD TO AN AMERICA WHICH COMMANDS RESPECT THROUGHOUT THE WORLD NOT ONLY FOR ITS STRENGTH BUT FOR ITS CIVILIZATION AS WELL.

Local folklore has it that, on the way out of town, Kennedy's entourage stopped at Stan's Drive-In Market in Hadley and the President left with a short-order burger in a sack. Always, I have been fascinated by what may have transpired in those quick minutes by the roadside. Twenty seven days later, he was gone forever.

All summer long in 1977 I worked many days at the serene Frost Library, proofreading and fact-checking a book on Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I never - not once, ever, that summer, nor ever since - entered this building without feeling awe at the power and might of the intellects conjoined on that October day.

* Daria D'Arienzo, supreme Amherst College archivist, documents the 10/26/63 on-campus proceedings here, although she does not confirm details on the hamburger...

See also: Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 2: Liz and Dick Booze Cruise
                Camelot on the Connecticut, Act 3: ... Slept Here