Chamblee54

PG wondered what happened to Lurch, the harpsichord playing butler on The Addams Family. A bit of web searching turned up a festive facility called Findadeath. It turns out Ted Cassidy passed away in 1979, Maybe that scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hurt more than we thought.
Findadeath, or FAD, turned out to be a delightful dungeon of digital death. The directory page has an alphabetic list, from Don Adams to Robert Young. Both men had active lives, full of danger and disappointment. Mr. Adams was a Marine at Guadalcanal. Mr. Young was an alcoholic with alzheimers, and was not invited to James Brolin’s wedding to Barbra Streisand. (Mr. Brolin was his co star on Marcus Welby M.D.) Both men lived to an old age, and died of “natural causes”.
Some TV shows have a group page. Ted Cassidy is with The Addams Family. Carolyn Jones survived marriage to Aaron Spelling, to play Morticia. Colon cancer claimed her. One time child actor Jackie Coogan played Uncle Fester, and had heart issues. ( Charles Addams says that the Uncle Fester character was modeled on himself.) Ted Cassidy was Thing, in addition to Lurch. After his death from heart failure, his children buried the urn, with his ashes, in the back yard, and then moved. No one knows what became of the urn.
Another dysfunctional TV family was the Clampets. Nancy Kulp ( whose middle name was Jane) played Jane Hathaway, and was out of the closet years before Ellen. According to FAD, this was not acting. Jerry Springer put a Clampet reunion together once, and the merriment was intense. “He (Max Baer, Jethro) spoke of Nancy Kulp’s dykedom, and the fact that Donna Douglas slathers on makeup with a trowel. He did tell one story about how he and Reenie (Irene Ryan, Granny) were doing a scene together once, and for some reason unbeknownst to him, she kicked him with one of those army boots she wore. He asked her (not so politely) why? She pointed upwards, “You were in my key light.”
In one episode of The Hillbillies, Bea Benederet played Jethro’s mother. Ms. Benederat was given a role on Petticoat Junction . Bea Benederet was the original voice of Betty Rubble. She was also the first choice to play Ethel Mertz, but had already committed to play the neighbor of George and Gracie.
It is tough to imagine a room big enough for Milton Berle and Groucho Marx. Apparently, it did happen once. “Groucho Marx had many stories about Berle. “You’re not funny,” he once told Berle. Berle’s reply, “Everything I know, I stole from you, Grouch.” Groucho, unplacated, shot back, “Then you didn’t listen.”
Looking down the list, (sponsored by stardoll , the world’s largest online fashion and dress up games community for girls! ), PG noted the name of Margaret Mitchell. FAD thinks the Museum on Peachtree Street is the real residence of Peggy Marsh. PG sent the following email to FAD.
I am a native of Atlanta GA, and have written about Maragaret Mitchell . I hate to be nit picky, but there are a couple of mistakes in your story.
The Margaret Mitchell House has little in common with “the dump” except the location. The really tacky apartment where Mr. and Mrs. Marsh lived was on Cresent Avenue, behind where the present house is. (I have never been to the museum.) The apartment building burned to the ground, with little left. The house that is there now was built from scratch, and bears little external resemblance to the apartments.
After she left Cresent Avenue, Mrs. Marsh ( She was married to John Marsh, an executive for Georgia Power Company. Her friends called her Peggy.) moved to an apartment at 4 17th Street. They lived there until they moved to Piedmont Avenue and South Prado. It was across from the Piedmont Driving Club, which made it convenient for Mrs. Marsh to get a drink.
“Genius and Heroin” reports that Peggy enjoyed a long cocktail hour at the Women’s club, where her husband joined her. They went across Peachtree (it is a straightaway, which is rare in Atlanta) into eternity. The book that I based my blog post on said she had been feeling unwell, and spent the afternoon in her apartment. Her and the husband parked on the other side of Peachtree, and tried to cross the street to the theater. Who knows what really happened?
The Theater survived until a few years ago, when it was torn down to make way for a high rise. It had a yellow glow in the lobby, and permanently smelled of popcorn.
PG has been to Peachtree and Tenth Street before.
People of a certain age will remember this area as the strip. The tenth street district was a neighborhood shopping area, up until the mid sixties. At some point, the old businesses started to move out and the hippies moved in. For a while, it was a festive party. Soon enough reality returned, and the area went into a crime filled decline.
The 999 complex is the neighborhood story in a nutshell. Before 1985, it was a block of small businesses. There was a hardware store, with the peace symbol set in tiles in the sidewalk. On Juniper Street stood the Langdon Court Apartments. They were named for PG’s great uncle Langdon Quin. Ru Paul used to stay there. He would sit out on a balcony, and wave to the traffic going by.
Across the street was a chinese restaurant, the House of Eng. A staircase on the side led to the Suzy Wong Lounge. Behind the building was an apartment building. It was one of the residences of Margaret Mitchell, while she wrote “Gone With The Wind”. She called it “the dump”, which was fairly accurate.
PG went to the House of Eng for lunch, one day in 1985. He noticed that he was the only customer in the house, at 12:30 pm on a weekday. After finishing his lunch, PG knew why.
At some point, it was decided to build a high rise there. Heery was one of the equity partners, along with a law firm and an ad agency. The building was designed by Heery (duh).The ad agency folded before the building opened, followed within a couple of years by the law firm. Heery was sold to a British company. PG does not know who owns the building now.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.