Children's stories are filled with scary characters, awful villains that terrify. One of the scariest of all is The Child Catcher from the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". The character of the Child Catcher is an evil man employed by an equally evil Baron and Baroness Bomburst in thier kingdom of Vulgaria. The character does not appear in the book by Ian Fleming but was created for the movie by Roald Dahl.
Creating the character on screen was the Australian dancer Robert Helpmann. Helpmann was a very well respected dancer and choreographer. When the movie was made into a stage musical in London the charater of the Child Catcher was created by Richard O'Brien who is most famous for his film portrayal of Riff Raff.
Barbara Stuart had a great career appearing in dozens of films, TV dramas and sitcoms. Stuart will most likely be best remembered for her role of the 1960's sitcom Gomer Pyle USMC. She was Miss Bunny Sargent Vince Carter's long time girl friend Bunny or as Gomer always called her Miss Bunny.
Stuart started her career in New York where she studied with Stella Adler and working as a model. She got her first TV job in 1955 and continued working on Westerns and courtroom dramas as well as sitcom roles. She was fairly busy character actress when the role of Bunny came up. She played the role for the entire run of the series. After the cancellation on Gomer Pyle USMC Stuart worked on other comedies and dramas playing she was on almost every dram and sitcom in the 1970's. Stuart also played McLean Stevenson's wife on his short live sitcom. Stuart worked until the 2000's until her death in 2011. She was married for a time to comic actor Dick Gautier.
Did you ever want to live in a castle? Did you ever want to live in a castle with an evil reputation? Well there is one on the market available to anyone with 80 million dollars. The castle in Bran Castle in Romania and it is the castle that Bram Stoker set his Gothic novel "Dracula" in. In reality it is just a plan old Romanian Castle set in the hills or Transylvania owned by an Archduke.
It was built in 1377 on the top of Mount Izvorul Calimanului in what is now Romania. It was once the favorite castle of Queen Marie of Romania and was used as a hospital during World War II.
When the communists took over the family who stilled owned it was turned out. Once the communists were out of power the was a small legal struggle over the retrocession of the property but in the end it was decided that it belonged to Archduke Dominic. Archduke Dominic has been running it as a museum displaying old family furniture. He now wants to sell the place. He would like to sell it to some one who is into the history of the castle and wants to keep it intact.
So if you love castles and have the dough give the Archduke a call.
One of the last surviving actors from the silent movie era Carla Laemmle has died in Los Angeles at the age of 104. Ms Laemmle was the niece of Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle. Her uncle convinced his brother and family to move to Los Angeles in 1921. They settled into a home near the studio in what is now Universal City. Ms Laemmle went into the family business working as a dancer and an actress. She was cast in the Silent Classic "Phantom of the Opera" as well as "Dracula" where she had the first spoken line of the now classic Universal horror movie. She worked steadily through out the 1930's. She then made her living as a night club dancer. She did make a return to the screen in 2010 in the film "Pool Party" and is in a film slted to come out later this year.
Picture it; Last call has come and gone and you are drunk in Providence, Rhode Island. The only thing you can think of is food. Where do you go? Well you head over to the central square of the city Kennedy Plaza and there parked in front of the city hall is a diner on wheels. Haven Brothers diner has been pulling up in front of Providence City Hall since 1888. Quick do the math. It's 128 years.
This is not elegant dining by anyone's standards. It is although fun and a Providence staple. Almost anyone you talk to in Providence (in all of Rhode Island for that matter) has a Haven Brothers story. Celebrities and street people sit side by side in the cramped aluminum clad interior chowing down on burgers or baked beans with hot dogs maybe a cup of coffee. Haven brothers is only open at night when it is pulled into the plaza and plugged into its own special electrical outlet attached to a pole near the grand stair case to City Hall. There is often a line especially around last call at the nearby bars and nightclubs.
Haven Brothers is one of the original diners created in Rhode Island and the oldest one in the country.Originally the cart was pulled into the plaza by horses. The horses were long ago replaced by a truck that pulls the diner to work now and home to its parking lot to rest during the day. The current diner is the third version the new diner is a 1949 Fred W. Morse dining car. The original was bought by widow Anne Philomena Haven with the insurance money she received upon her husband's death. The brothers of Haven were her two sons. Oddly it was her daughter and her husband that took over the diner keeping it in the family until 1953. Ownership has changed a few times over the years but the experience is still the same.
Haven Brothers has had its time in the lime light too. Once it was brought to New York to be on the Today Show when RI native Meredith Vieira and RI alum Matt Lauer requested their favorite diner for a segment. There is also a documentary film about the joint as well as a segment on "Man vs. Food Nation" on the "Travel Channel".The rules are the same as they have always been. Order you food, eat and don't be a pain in the ass.
The first Friday in June is Donut Day! Will you be celebrating? Donut Day started June 7, 1938 by the Salvation Army. Get up early and enjoy a donut or two.
