March-April 2004 Volume 37, Number 2 NOTE: This is an old issue of the Brushwood Gulch Gazette, which has been archived for reference purposes. Although some links have been updated, the text of this archived newsletter remains unchanged. Please keep in mind that these articles have NOT been updated to reflect changes that may have occurred since they were originally printed. Return to the index of archived issues.

Contents:

Next Meeting April 13th Charley Chase's Daughter Passes Away January 2004 Meeting Notes

The Culver Hotel on Television Birthdays

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5 L&H Films Plus Free Ice Cream For All at April 13th Mae Busch Tribute

The April 13, 2004 Way Out West Tent meeting will feature five classic Laurel & Hardy shorts which feature the eternally "ever-popular" Mae Busch. Every meeting we pay tribute to Mae with a toast, but at our next meeting we will see some of her best work with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. In addition to a printed program on Mae Busch, everyone in attendance will receive free ice cream during one of the breaks between films.

The program will start off with Mae trying to skip town in a hurry, along with Stan and Ollie, in Going Bye-Bye! We'll then see Mae as a murderous widow looking for revenge against men named Oliver in Oliver the Eighth. In Come Clean, the boys go out for ice cream and stop a distraught Mae from ending it all. The evening will end with a screening of Them Thar Hills and its sequel Tit for Tat, featuring Mae Busch as the wife of Laurel & Hardy's nemesis, Charlie Hall. The later film was nominated for an Academy Award.

The meeting will take place at the Mayflower Club, located at 11110 Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting will begin promptly at 7:15 p.m. "Fisher Franks" hot dogs will be on sale from the kitchen and drinks will be available from the Mayflower Bar.

Click here for a map to the Mayflower Club...

Charley Chase's Daughter Passes Away

June Chase Hargis, daughter of Charley Chase, died on December 24, 2003. She had been reluctant to discuss her famous father for many years, at the insistence of her husband. But after her husband's death, June agreed to join us for a meeting in 1997. She was made an honorary member at that time. Way Out West Tent members enjoyed her recollections of her father, which had never before been publicly shared. At our 1998 banquet, June sang one of her father's songs for us (in the style of Charley Chase). The following year, June joined us for a banquet at the Culver Hotel, where her father had filmed Limousine Love in 1928. She was well liked by our members and will be sadly missed.

January 2004 Meeting Notes

In January, we welcomed Tommy "Butch" Bond to our first meeting of the new year. Butch shared his memories working with Laurel & Hardy, "Alfalfa" Switzer, Gordon Douglas, Robert McGowan, Charley Chase, and T. Marvin Hatley. "Stan developed the scene right on the spot," recalled Butch, from his time on the set of Block-Heads. Seeing the Boys driving around the Roach Studios in their Model-T is one of the things that stuck in his mind that made the Roach Studios the "Lot of Fun." Butch also spoke of his work as Jimmy Olsen in the Superman serials, his work with Eddie Cantor, and his providing voices for Warner Brothers cartoons.

Also in attendance were Our Gang's Margaret Kerry, L&H costumer Jay Dare, Mark Kennedy (Edgar's grandson), and Sons founding member Chuck McCann. The film program was Glove Taps, You're Darn Tootin', Helpmates, and Block-Heads. Of course, the evening would not have been complete without a pair of birthday cakes, in honor of Oliver Hardy and Hal Roach.

The Culver Hotel on Television

The Culver Hotel has once again become a popular filming location. The Roach Studios frequently used the Culver Hotel because of its close proximity to their studios. This appears to be the same rational used today, over three-quarters of a century later.

Fox's television series Arrested Development (Sundays, 9:30 on Fox) is shot at the Culver Studios, located near the Culver Hotel. These are the former Selznick Studios, often mistaken for the Hal Roach Studios (Roach was located about a half-mile down the same street). Arrested Development has used the hotel as a bar, a restaurant, and a bank, while Laurel and Hardy used it as a dentist's office (Leave 'em Laughing) and an office building (Putting Pants on Philip). Scenes from the television series have also been shot inside the lobby, location of two Way Out West Tent banquets. In one episode, the television series also briefly used the front of the original Culver City City Hall in what was almost an identical shot from Going Bye-Bye! and County Hospital.

The exterior of the Culver Hotel can also currently be seen in a nationally televised commercial for Verizon Wireless. The commercial prominently shows the southeast side of the building, which was seen in We Faw Down, and the southwest facade (the shortest side of the wedged shaped building), which was seen in the distance in Putting Pants on Philip.

Birthdays