Sunday, December 11, 2022

Hoot


As I am sure you think about all the time, my friend Megan and I have read 60 or 70 or 80 books about celebrities together and we show no signs of stopping until one of us (I) drops dead. Well, we ordered Brian Cox's diary (ha ha! I don't know why that's funny) from the time he played King Lear, and mine came, but Megan's still hasn't yet, are you taking notes? Because we each have a copy of the new oral history of Hollywood edited by Jeanine Basinger and some dude. So we decided to read that while Megan waits for Brian Cox's diary (ha ha!) to show up. Anyhow, and now we are getting to the really good stuff, we start in the silent era, of course, a section including reflections from Hoot Gibson (pictured, above), a very famous silent-era cowboy star as I am very sure you know. Before he was a cowboy star, Hoot worked as a delivery boy at the Owl Drug Company, which is how he got his nickname! People called him "Hoot Owl," which was shortened to "Hoot," because in those days, people were too tired to say the whole thing.