bl@hplabsb.UUCP (10/09/85)
I grew up in Cleveland and during the early 60's there was a show on TV that was amazing. In those days when a station wanted to buy a good movie for prime time viewing, the studio would bundle it with other movies and sell the whole thing as a single package. Thus, after a couple of years the station would end up with all those extra movies that they really did not want. Those movies, of course, were the totally bad ones that the studios normally couldn't give away (the practice of bundling is now illegal). One of the Cleveland stations decided to do something with their movies. So, they scheduled the Friday night slot at 11:30 and hired a guy by the name of Ernie Anderson to play a the host character called Ghoulardy. Ghoulardy made no pretense about the quality of the movies. His opening line would be something like the following: "Hay group, have we got a dog of a movie for you tonight. This movie is so old, it's in black and yellow. It stars the world's worst actor, Marshall Thompson.", etc. (I wonder if Marshall is related to Kelvin) During the movie, Ghoulardy would come on and make remarks about how bad it was or some blooper that passed through. I remember one movie staring Mort Sahl (SP?) where there was a scene in which he was holding a newspaper. Ghoulardy's voice came on and said "Watch the newspaper". Sure enough, the next shot of the same scene taken from a different angle showed his hands empty. For two years, his show was rated number one in the Cleveland area. It did wonders for keeping the kids off the streets on Friday nights. A few months ago I saw a story on Evening Magazine about Ernie Anderson. He is now living in LA and is quite successful acting and making commercials. However, no mention was made of Ghoulardy. Ghoulardy's spirit lives on. For those of you who live in the LA area, you can enjoy watching Elvira and her totally bad movies. Of course watching Elvira in any context is enjoyable!