Tag: Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Filmmaking on the Frontlines

And screenwriting in a Greensboro bar

By Billy Ingram

“I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.” — Alfred Hitchcock

Hunched slightly over in the darkened outer reaches of Corner Bar on Spring Garden, writer, producer and director Phil Blattenberger is pecking away at finessing his latest screenplay. Forbes anointed him as “Cinema’s Every Man” and says he “is reshaping the industry in his working-class image.” Launched from Greensboro, this young filmmaker managed to wrap two acclaimed feature films in the last two years alone. His 2024 release, Laws of Man, stars Jacob Keohane (Halloween Kills), Jackson Rathbone (Twilight), Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding), Keith Carradine (Nashville) and Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs).

“I was in grad school at UNCG” recalls Blattenberger. A baby step back in 2017 is what prompted this improbable journey. “As a fun little side project, I wrote a Vietnam War movie. I’m going to shoot this thing in the woods of North Carolina with my buddies to get investors involved.” As it turns out, he raised enough money behind it to ship production overseas to Cambodia. The result was Point Man, an unflinching deep dive into racial tensions during the Vietnam War, racking up nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Director at the Sydney Indie Film Festival, ultimately winning Best Film among other accolades. Sony secured DVD-distribution rights for the 2018 wartime drama.

His second feature, Condor’s Nest, came out a full five years later, and was more ambitious. A WWII adventure about a downed American B-17 bomber crew thwarting Nazis, it stars a platoon of familiar pros including Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy), Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers), Academy Award-nominee Bruce Davison (X-Men, 1923) and Jorge Garcia (Lost). While some scenes were filmed in South America (doubling for Germany), most of the production was shot in North Carolina, including right here in town, even a day lensing at the former Cellar Anton’s site, underneath what is now Havana Phil’s. I’m told it looked exactly as it did when the last meal was served there some four decades earlier. (I wrote about that project in my March 2023 column: ohenrymag.com/wandering-billy-76.)

Blattenberger set sights even higher for his follow up, the aforementioned Laws of Man. “Next step up is a bigger budget, bigger names,” he says about an explosive period piece pitting a suited duo of 1960s-era U.S. Marshalls manhunting a fleeing fugitive. “If we’re going to justify that expense, we’ve got to have the soft money. So we set up shop in New Mexico.” That decision was made primarily due to the state’s generous financial incentives for filmmakers, i.e. soft money. “All of the Condor’s Nest financiers came in so we got Keith Carradine — the first time I’ve worked with an Academy Award winner.” Laws of Man scored Best Film at the Tangier Film Festival in 2024.

“Jacob Keohane, who starred in my first two movies, plays the lead in Laws of Man, just a phenomenal guy.” Blattenberger met the actor while working as a bartender prior to filming Point Man. “His audition came across, I watched the tape and I was like, ‘Where the hell do I know that guy?’ I realized he was DJ Jake the Snake at Club Fifth Season, my first bartending gig in its final days, circa 2009.”

Blattenberger’s fourth feature, Ascendant, is likely to lift off as you’re reading this, but the financing landscape in 2025 is a great deal more fraught than it was even just a couple of years ago.

He characterizes current conditions as the biggest crisis the motion picture industry has faced since the advent of television. “Distributors have chopped their minimum guarantees because they overspent, basically.” Recall that onslaught of intriguing new TV series and big budget pictures bombarding us on streaming platforms beginning around five years ago (thanks to COVID)? Notice how that practice has cooled considerably? Turns out there was some illogic behind that. Amazon, Hulu and Netflix leveraged — and blew through — billions of dollars developing jaw-dropping content with maximum star power, believing that newbies like Peacock and Paramount+ would wither away in their wake, leaving just a few players dominating digital media.

“It just didn’t happen,” says Blattenberger. Posting billions in losses, streamers reversed course, eschewing new acquisitions. “They stopped buying the indie films that hit Cannes and then Toronto. Nobody is getting post-theatrical deals.” The (new) old paradigm was that a movie would have an initial run, get picked up by a top-tier streamer for three months, followed by a Hulu run, then a Tubi exclusive and a cable deal. “That used to be the waterfall.”

I find that comforting, in a perverse way, knowing the movie business hasn’t changed significantly since I walked away 30 years ago. The bobbleheads tucked into top floors are still running things with reckless fecklessness.

As preeminent entertainment essayist and film historian Peter Biskind once wrote, “ . . . the independents who are really passionate always find a way to make their films.” Embracing this unprecedented distribution dynamic, for his next production, Blattenberger set aside an elaborate concept, which was already in the works, in favor of a more scaled-down approach.

“Because B-budget action thrillers require huge names, you’ve got to make your money back on a $1.5 million budget,” argues the auteur. “The exception has always been horror — I hate the word ‘horror,’ so I’m going to call it a psychological thriller — that lets you bring in a genre star who costs you pennies on the dollar compared to your A-listers. Horror turns out a hundred times at the box office what you could possibly expect with low-budget action.”

In pre-production when we spoke, Ascendant is centered around a doomsday cult no doubt up to devilish dealings while on a retreat in Eastern North Carolina. “You’ve got to make your location interesting if you’re going to hold an audience hostage for 90 minutes in what’s effectively a single location. You’ve got to go for broke on the design.” What will be a creepy encampment situated inside what is effectively a 3-acre crop circle is being constructed from the ground up in Rocky Mount. Blattenberger is no Cecil B. DeMille on an elevated perch barking orders through a megaphone. “I’m out there with dirty hands, picking splinters out of my fingers, building sets,” he says of his activity earlier in the week.

“Film it and they will come” may not sound like a solid marketing strategy to a banker or lawyer, but it’s business as usual for indies and major releases alike. When a long shot does hit the mark — take Blair Witch Project, for instance — the money spigot sprays in all directions. “I’m in a weird position where I’m over halfway financed, but, in my experience, once you attach a name, that’s when people really start throwing cash in.” As luck would have it, he’s just signed Rob Zombie collaborator Richard Brake (The Munsters), who also appeared in Laws of Man.

“As producer, all of my pre-production work can be done from a laptop.” As such, Phil Blattenberger has discovered what other local creatives have: You can go Hollywood without living the nightmare. “I sit here in this exact chair at this exact corner at Corner Bar and do half my work. This is effectively my office at this point. I can shoot in Cambodia or New Mexico or Rocky Mount, but, until I need to be on set actually building or directing, I can center myself in a place like Greensboro, North Carolina.”

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

The Patriots Are Coming

Pursed lips and drum licks put the Greene in Greensboro

By Billy Ingram

“I have to prosecute a war with almost insurmountable difficulties. I cannot contemplate my own situation without the greatest degree of anxiety.” — Nathanael Greene before the Battle of Guilford Courthouse

One hundred and thirty-eight years ago, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park was consecrated on 50 untended acres purchased for $700 by Judge David Schenck. It has since expanded into what is now a 250-acre homage to those resolute Patriots who fought and died on March 15, 1781, in a pivotal exchange of cannonballs, lead balls and bayonets, reassuring America’s forthcoming victory in the Revolutionary War.

Ever hear that phrase, “We lost the battle but won the war?” The Battle of Guilford Courthouse is a perfect example. While the British effectively defeated General Nathanael Greene’s Continental Army, in doing so, the Red Coats were left so depleted that Greene’s dogged nemesis, British General Charles Cornwallis, had no choice but to, after another ill-fated fracas, surrender to George Washington at Yorktown.

To commemorate that crucial turning point in our nation’s founding, the Guilford Courthouse Fife & Drum Corps was formed 28 years ago by park ranger Stephen Ware, in part to provide a historical soundtrack for increasingly popular Revolutionary War reenactments. While Ware retired in 2019 and Mike Nelson now leads the group, I met up with Chip Cook, a member since 2021, wondering what inspired his and others’ participation in such an anachronistic undertaking.

“If you travel in the northeast — in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts — every little town has a fife and drum corps,” which Cook likens to the lure of joining a community band and the Boy Scouts at the same time. “So there are adults and kids involved in it.” There are currently about 10 active members of GCFDC but new recruits are encouraged. “We have members as young as 15, folks from all walks of life. A couple of members from the 82nd Airborne [Division] Band recently joined and they love to perform with us occasionally.”

A drum and fife corps was strategically imperative in times of war before radio messaging. “The commanders depended upon the music not for comfort, although that was helpful, too, but for communication,” Cook explains. When the call went out to, for instance, assemble the unit, or begin marching, reposition a column, prepare to fire or even retreat, the drum and fife corps transmitted those orders by way of melodic themes, known as duty calls, that troops were trained to recognize. On a clear day, they could be heard up to a mile away.

“There was a gentleman’s agreement that you didn’t shoot the musicians. They were considered noncombatants on the field,” Cook explains, noting that the corps might be leading the procession early on but well before the muskets plumed and bullets flew, drummers and fifers, made up mostly of old men and young boys, were repositioned to the rear of the fray. (After a musician reached the age of 17 they were expected to join in the fighting.)

To quickly identify and assemble instrumentalists when their service was required, “they traditionally wore opposite colors from their infantry regiment, so we wear a red coat with blue trim,” Cook says.

On the 244th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse this last March a reenactment took place at Country Park, kicked off with members of the Tryon Palace Fife and Drum Corps as well as Cook’s ensemble. Set against a backdrop of soldiers and horses echoing an impending clashing of combatants, it was an impressive performance, considering the vast repertoire of duty calls memorized and executed in unison with crystal clarity.

“A lot of folks think this is run by the National Park Service. It’s not,” Cook tells me about these annual time tunnelings back to 1781. “It’s an arrangement with the City of Greensboro and the different groups that have participated in these reenactments for many, many years.” A surreal sight, tented encampments erected alongside the lake where, tucked into the woods above, reenactors on both sides would bivouac overnight. “They have a little market in the middle, which is kind of funny because you go through there and everyone’s dressed [for the period] and you pull out your debit card to pay, very much an anachronism there.”

Last summer, the Guilford Courthouse Fife & Drum Corps opened for a performance of Horn in the West, the decades-long running Revolutionary War outdoor drama centered around the exploits of Daniel Boone, on a night when one of the Frontiersman’s descendants was sitting in the audience. In January, they spent a weekend demonstrating their specialized skills at Cowpens National Battlefield in South Carolina. This month, our fluted troupe is bound for Colonial Williamsburg’s Drummer’s Call, a celebration of 18th-century military music also featuring an assemblage of groups from Yorktown, Northern Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “We’re all volunteers, so we’re spending our own money to do this,” Cook notes. The Corp also participates in grave-marking ceremonies with the Sons of the American Revolution, “and we’ll be in High Point for their Memorial Day event this year.”

Chip Cook himself is a descendant of a Revolutionary War light infantry soldier, Jacob Idol, who resided in Davidson County when he enlisted in 1781. Captured by Tories and remanded to the British at Guilford Courthouse, he escaped following that conflagration, then took part in routing the so-called loyalist Tories at Raft Swamp in Robeson County, the last battle of the war fought in the state of North Carolina.

A century later, no one in 1887 Greensborough had any definitive recollection as to exactly where that decisive Revolutionary War conflict happened when Judge David Schenck began mapping and snapping up the first 50 acres of forest and untamed underbrush. He relied on hand-scrawled maps and written recollections to pinpoint the precise location where warfare waged 106 years earlier. The nonprofit Guilford Battleground Company Schenck founded to oversee the project, one that continues fostering his vision today, gifted the by-then cultivated park to the federal government in 1917. The organization then continued over the decades to purchase and donate adjoining properties as they became available, greatly expanding this verdant sanctuary that pumps millions of dollars into our economy.

In hindsight, Schenck should have acquired a lot more land than he did. Although it’s possible that Cornwallis’ attempt to smother democracy in its cradle potentially spilled over into Country Park’s footprint, just in the last few years historians have discovered that major skirmishes took place where the Brassfield Shopping Center parking lot sits. Alas, you won’t get that tract for $10 or $20 an acre like you could in 1887.

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Playing the Market

For over 30 years, Ron C. Curlee II has stretched his artistic limits

By Billy Ingram

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” — Ronald Reagan

In 1994, Ron C. Curlee II was the first intriguingly talented individual I met in our fair city after relocating mere days before from Los Angeles. I’d wandered into Babylon, an infamous rave club located on South Elm in the long-dead heart of downtown Greensboro. Babylon was notorious for shoveling underaged kids through its doors. For all I knew, Ron may have fallen into that category.

As it happens, that den of iniquity was sponsoring an art opening of Ron’s Crimes Against Nature series — enormous canvases featuring, for the era, bold, lurid and graphic imagery of exactly what the work’s title suggests. We instantly hit it off and, since then, it has always been a pleasure in those too rare instances when our divergent paths cross; laughter is always sure to follow, sparked by his gregarious personality, somehow both serious and fun.

I marvel that today Ron remains on the cutting edge, a key component of his career being his three decades participating in the High Point Market as a painter of extraordinarily original abstracts, as well as a designer and merchandiser.

Accomplished in both art and design, his career has had an internal reach. In addition to dozens of local shows and commissions, his artwork has been featured in most of the well-known furniture showrooms, including Highland House, Harden, Francesco Molon, Excelsior, Century, Hickory Hill and Drexel Heritage.

This area has grown significantly since the mid-1990s, when the impact that Market made all across the Triad was seismic. Families back then were renting out their homes to attendees for $1,500 a week, due to lack of available hotel rooms. Venturing out to dinner, even in Greensboro, became a challenge during those two-week periods, the nicer restaurants being predictably overbooked. On those occasions when I would dine out with my parents during April and October Market, generally at some out-of-the-way steakhouse such as Jordan’s on Church Street, we’d amuse ourselves by observing nearby tables where sales reps were expense accounting the night away with obvious ladies of the evening who flocked from near and far to service this influx of out-of-towners.

Ron grew up in Lenoir and attended the University of Georgia’s studies abroad program, where he studied painting in Italy. But it was actually the lure of the Market that brought him to Greensboro in the 1990s. I recently caught up with him in his richly appointed, downtown Greensboro home-studio duplex (thestudioandgallery.square.site) to look back on some of his more colorful experiences at High Point Market.

Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Paul Burrell, her former butler and one-time footman for Queen Elizabeth II, began licensing his name for various upscale goods that included furniture. “I was director of visual merchandising for an upholstery company that paid to use Burrell’s name,” Ron tells me. “So we made up all the stories behind his collection that was [supposedly] based on his travels with Princess Diana.”

This was following the “uppity” butler’s trial for stealing various personal items from the beloved Princess and after Prince Harry publicly accused him of “milking” his mother’s death in Burrell’s scandalous book, A Royal Duty. “I traveled around England with him,” Ron recalls. “People either loved him because they wanted to know about Princess Diana or they despised him because he had risen above his station. So it was very awkward.” At gallery openings and tea parties, Burrell would regale audiences with stories about how Diana’s boys would sit on chairs like the one on display or the way Princess Diana would relax on a sofa resembling that model. “And we wrote all of that for him.”

On one occasion, while imbibing a bit heavily on a rather empty stomach, Ron recalls, “I may have told [Burrell] that he was just the front man who didn’t know anything, that I was doing everything while he was getting all the credit.” The next morning, he says, “They told me Paul didn’t have anything to say and just up and left.” Not long after, Ron got wind that Burrell was talking with a friend in New York who was getting him drunk and secretly recording their conversation about the Queen and Princess Margaret, then selling it to a tabloid for a million dollars. “And I was like, why didn’t I think of that?!?”

Ron has also rubbed elbows with Hollywood royalty and recalls a furniture collection introduced at Market that he thought was immediately fabulous and very successful. “The Humphrey Bogart Collection from Thomasville,” he replies. “I have pieces from that line in my living room. It was like Old Hollywood, a little deco with lots of unique woods, veneers and different applications. A mixture of skins and veneers like shagreen shark skin, tiger-eye maple, zebra wood.” Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s son, Stephen, had input into the designs and made an appearance in 2002 at the presentation party.

Was there a ruinous collection he was saddled with showcasing that was an absolute disaster? “At Fine Furniture Design, they’re no longer in the United States,” Ron says with a laugh. “They were high end and introduced a collection that was entirely covered in mirrors. They had a mirrored poster bed, entertainment cabinet, occasional end tables, cocktail tables and a dining table that sat 12.” Ron was flabbergasted. “I was just like, what the hell is this? It was so ostentatious, so over the top and it didn’t sell.” Upon reflection, the manufacturer blamed Ron for the line’s failure. “I was told that I didn’t paint the rooms the right color, I didn’t do the right presentation. I was thinking, my accessories should have been razor blades and straws!”

Collections are generally only offered for a year or so and then quietly disappear. “They can last longer but Market is fashion driven,” Ron points out. “Everybody wants something new. So you may add a few pieces and continue a collection for a couple seasons, maybe a year and a half or two years. But you want to be fashion forward.” To that end, designers tend to lean into Pantone’s Color of the Year — in 2025, it’s Mocha Mouse. “So buyers are looking at mocha fabrics; yarns will be dyed that, too. Last year it was Peach Fuzz.”

Both during and outside of Market, folks generally approach Ron when they’re looking for artwork to complete a room. “I’m known for large abstracts, so I can build up to 10 feet by 10 feet,” he says. “At Market, they’re not going to offer something custom. It’s going to be what’s on the wall and buyers will order 10 of them or whatever. But all of my creations are going to be original and custom.”

For the next few weeks, it’s once more into the breach for Ron C. Curlee II: “So I’ll merchandise several showrooms and then, when they’re completed, I head to the Suites at Market Square and put my own showroom together to sell my artwork.” He’s been showing at Market Square for about four years now. “Sometimes I have other artists or product designers in my space but I’m not going to sell a container full of merchandise. A lot of my clients are designers, so they’ll come to market, see what I have and what I’ve done and then commission artwork in specific sizes, specific colors. Seeing me at Market is a reminder that I’m still here.”

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Drawn to The Gate City

Comics come to life in unexpected places

By Billy Ingram

“I don’t have inspiration. I only have ideas. Ideas and deadlines.” — Stan Lee

Buried inside an otherwise ordinary office plaza on Cornwallis Drive, tucked twixt dental practices, LLCs and LLPs, sits the Fungeon, a collab for writers and illustrators, several of whom have long associations with many of Marvel Comics’ best-selling titles.

An assault on the senses, this fancave is where pop-culture ephemera from the last seven decades bedazzles every square inch. A tidal wave of childhood memorabilia washes over you — an impossible number of Batman and other superhero figurines, an autographed photo of Dy-no-mite Jimmie “JJ” Walker, breakfast food mascot dolls, a Pee-wee Herman marionette, Star Wars collectables, VHS tapes, movie posters, a full-sized early-80s Galaxian arcade game, even a bright red Wham-O Monster Magnet with “life-time magnet” fists. I half expected the Kool-Aid Man to come bursting through the wall.

I’m there to meet with Chris Giarrusso, a former New Yorker and comic book creator who was drawn to the incandescent glow and nearly imperceptible excitement of The Gate City in 2017. Now, he shares a fantasy factory with four other creatives. There’s Jody Merriman, known as “Ol Grumpy” on social media. Giarrusso describes him as “a real burly, tough guy who you wouldn’t expect to be drawing pictures.”Randy Green is an acclaimed comic artist, best known for Tomb Raider and Emma Frost. His family owned Green’s Supper Club locally. Illustrator Marshall Lakes has his own comic line. And lastly, former Marvel and DC editor Brian “Smitty” Smith is co-creator of the New York Times-bestselling graphic novel The Stuff of Legend as well as writer/artist of the adorable Pea, Bee, & Jay children’s book series from HarperCollins.

Giarrusso is one of those lucky, talented individuals who has managed to forge a career in the comics. “When I was in college,” the Syracuse native told me, “I read about the internship program at Marvel in Wizard magazine.” He applied in 1997 and was accepted. “So for a summer, I was an intern there. That’s really the big game-changer, just getting the foot in the door and people getting to feel comfortable around you, that you’re not some crazy person. I guess they’re always afraid that the intern’s going to be some whack-job type.”

In 1998, Giarrusso was hired by Marvel’s production department, scanning artwork for Photoshop tweaking. “But I also liked to draw,” he says. “So I would show people my cartoons every chance I got. I was cartoon riffing on what was happening in the office or whatever.” Shades of Marvel’s superhero satirist extraordinaire Marie Severin. Eventually, the editor of “Bullpen Bulletins,” a feature in every Marvel publication, gave Giarrusso space for a monthly comic strip. “The editor said, ‘Yeah, OK, less work for me to fill up a page.’”

Almost by necessity, he created a line-up of cuddly, kid-sized Marvel heroes characterized by big heads and bulbous boots, whose comical interactions were drawn-up in standard newspaper strip format. “Because the panels were so small, it’s easier to draw little kids,” he says about the origin, if you will, of Mini Marvels. “You can actually squeeze them in better into the panels. And just the idea of them being kids was kind of already a built-in gimmick.” A devotee of Charles Schulz, Giarrusso quips, “I wanted to do Peanuts but with little Marvel characters.”

The little strip that could caught on. After about a year, “I pitched the idea for a longer story to Smitty before he went up the ladder. He was an assistant editor when I got hired as a production guy. I put a proposal together, handed it to him and then he pushed it through.” The result? The emergence of, quite possibly, the freshest, most original talent the genre has seen this century, effortlessly capturing the rhythmic essence that makes for great comics.

Undoubtedly, that’s why Marvel continually repackages Giarrusso’s back catalog. Mini Marvels: Hulk Smash was released in December and one reviewer raved that this book “will remind you why comics are fun, and if given to a new fan, this could be their gateway into comics.” Mini Marvels: Spidey-Sense unfolds with a genuinely funny tale about paperboy Spidey’s fractious battles against a peevish Green Goblin while innocently attempting to deliver the Daily Bugle to his arch enemy’s house. Giarrusso rendered the pint-sized Spider-Man with an exuberance and fluidity reminiscent of co-creator Steve Ditko’s earliest web-slinger sagas.

Beginning in 2009, Giarrusso’s own original high flying tyke-in-tights, G-Man, flew into view in three graphic novels published by Image Comics, followed by The G-Man Super Journal: Awesome Origins, an illustrated-prose hardcover from Andrews McMeel, who also publish definitive collections of Peanuts dailies (and Calvin & Hobbes, another influence, I suspect). A series crying out to be animated, G-Man’s universe is populated by a multifarious cast of characters rivaling that of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, fused with the innocence of early-1960s Legion of Superheroes. Nominated for a Harvey Award in 2014, G-Man: Coming Home was selected as Favorite Adventure Graphic Novel by Kids’ Comics Revolution.

“Fifteen years ago or so, when Mini Marvels was having a moment, Acme Comics invited me for a signing,” Giarrusso explains about his initial sojourns South, previous to his relocation to Greensboro eight years ago. “It became kind of routine to come for every Free Comic Book Day. I got to know the area and the community and the people here.” Graphic artists and writers can easily work remotely and are often required to. In that regard, our fair city makes for a comfortable launching pad. “At one point, Smitty came down and he set up the [Fungeon] studio. A couple years later, I followed and just inserted myself into the framework that he created here.”

Giarrusso has been particularly productive of late. While working on Pea, Bee, & Jay, Smith sold HarperCollins on a series for middle graders that Giarrusso illustrates, Officer Clawson: Lobster Cop, which features the undersea adventures of a mystery-solving crustacean. A new Mini Marvels story appeared in October 2024, then Giarrusso created four visually arresting variant covers for the 2025 X-Men/Uncanny X-Men crossover event. Alongside February’s incendiary image fronting his Eddie Brock Carnage #1 variant, these edgier renderings reveal an artist whose style is evolving, assuming a more dynamic, unflinching underpinning without sacrificing any inherent adolescent charm.

Ironic? In the bowels of a nondescript office complex, cleaved from a patch of woods where as a 9-year-old I happily retreated reading DCs with Go-Go Checks purchased from a drug store around the corner, there exists a grotto where creative individuals are weaving dreams into four-color fantasies and captivating children’s lit that is destined to ignite imaginations for generations to come.

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

The Belle of the Wrecking Ball

The corner of Bellemeade and Elm faces demolition again

By Billy Ingram

“To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.” — Fran Lebowitz

Could it be that, twice in one lifetime, I’ll be there to witness the destruction of a massive structure on the southwest corner of North Elm and Bellemeade? The city plans to soon demolish the seven-story parking deck erected there in 1989. It’s worth noting that 70 years before that date, on this very spot in 1919, one of the most distinguished establishments in the Southeast debuted to tremendous fanfare: the O.Henry Hotel, which, for decades, exemplified Greensboro’s exacting sense of luxury and refinement, distinguished by its cosmopolitan vision for the future.

Greensboro has a long history of hospitality going back to stagecoach days when, 200 years ago, George Albright kept an inn on East Market Street with plenty of hay in the barn for the horses. Nor was the hair those nags shed wasted since it was stuffed right into the inn’s mattresses.

The city’s first upscale hotel was the Benbow House, originally located where the Woolworth’s/International Civil Rights Center & Museum is today. In May of 1871, it was declared to be the finest in North Carolina by its first lodger, Governor Zebulon B. Vance. Demand led to other rooms for rent on South Elm: McAdoo House, Hotel Huffine, Guilford Hotel and the Hotel Clegg, all richly appointed and refined architecturally in full view of the train station with a tendency towards inopportune tinderboxing.

The landscape changed dramatically in 1919 with the debut of the thoroughly modern, eight-story O.Henry Hotel, the largest in the state. Its construction and completion was funded through community stock subscriptions. Designed to be a full-service facility that rivaled any in New York City, it featured 200 luxurious rooms with private baths (another 100 were added later), plus a pharmacy, newsstand, gift shop, ballroom, beauty salon, Merle Norman Studio, and formal dining room, all encircling a striking two-story lobby with a cascade of a dozen or more columns adorned in dark oak paneling with marble footings rising upward then rounding at the ceiling in dramatic fashion. Under foot, an enormous expanse of mosaic tile flooring was accented with sumptuous carpeting, everything warmly lit from above by sleek, minimalistic, blown-glass chandeliers.

Homages to the hotel’s namesake abounded, including a library devoted to O.Henry and illustrations from his stories decorating hallways where guests could leave their shoes outside the door for shining or clothing for overnight dry cleaning. Valet parking was available and, because liquor was illegal to purchase in Greensboro until 1952, a bellhop named “Snag” was happy to procure someone’s preferred libations.

The immediate success of the stately O.Henry led to the 1927 construction of a much taller, world-class hotel a few blocks away. Standing statuesquely on the corner of Davie and East Market streets, the 13-story King Cotton Hotel was the height of Art Deco splendor. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt whistle-stopped there in 1942 and it’s where movie star Joan Crawford glammed up in 1957 before christening a local Pepsi bottling plant.

The O.Henry lost no luster, remaining the preferred place to play and stay during the 1930s and ’40s for celebrities such as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as Big Band stars Guy Lombardo and Benny Goodman. Local radio legends Bob Poole and Willie began broadcasting their WBIG morning show in the mid-1950s from a studio tucked under the hotel’s main floor, which was part of a mall with a barber shop, cigarette stand and coffee shop. The sub-floor was also home to the Merchants and Manufacturers (M&M) Club, basically a glorified pool hall, card room and day-drinking barroom for local businessmen.

I was a frequent visitor to the O.Henry on Saturday mornings in the late-1960s, searching for the latest comic books from its newsstand, positioned to the left of the Elm Street entrance. Selecting a four-color DC from the comic rack, I’d march over to the front desk to pay. Even under diminished circumstances, I could appreciate the hotel’s impressive atmosphere, a grande dame retaining an air of sophistication rapidly vanishing from the world outside her doors.

By the late-1960s, winos and degenerates were populating the nearby King Cotton Hotel, drunkenly tossing their empties out of windows, glass shattering on the sidewalk below or atop unsuspecting pedestrians. In 1971, I was among the throng of thousands who gathered on an unseasonably warm October Sunday morning to witness the King Cotton’s erasure from the skyline by way of a newly refined controlled demolition method that is now commonplace — dethroned by a series of carefully choreographed explosions that, in mere moments, leveled the building into its own footprint.

Around that same time, the O.Henry was purchased and was being operated (unsuccessfully) by a hotel chain out of Tulsa, Okla., who, in the spring of 1975, shut it down. But, a few months later, the chain allowed it to be converted into a residential complex populated by recently divorced men and, in the absence of any such institutions, a sort of assisted living facility, without any staffing to support even a small influx of displaced senior citizens.

Inevitable, perhaps, that one of those elderly residents would doze off with a lit cigarette, igniting an early morning blaze on January 15, 1976, sending thick, black smoke bellowing down the fifth floor hallway, creating zero visibility conditions for disoriented tenants needing to be rescued by firefighters. One hysterical man clinging to a minute window ledge outside his room was yanked to safety via ladder truck. All 56 occupants were displaced after the Fire Department declared the building unsafe.

Repairs were made, but the O.Henry Hotel never fully recovered; a nearly deserted downtown Greensboro was no longer a desirable destination.

Photos taken while awaiting the executioner in 1979 highlight the stripped, bare lobby and a dining room with plaster peeling away and draperies hanging resolutely crisp and neat alongside windows gleaming in the sunlight. The lobby’s geometrically playful tile flooring remained as vivid as when it welcomed the first guests eight decades hence with the marble front counter and elaborate light fixtures still intact. It was the sinking of a Titanic.

With so little going on in the area during that time, a parking lot of that size in that spot was totally unnecessary. But eventually it became essential, especially after the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts appeared across the street. Was it theater-goers’ extra wear and tear that wore and tore this concrete structure to such an extent that it will now cost millions to remove and replace? That sound you hear is your taxes going up.

Expecting an O.Henry ending? If you insist. On Tuesday afternoons I work — more like hang out — in a comic shop. Affixed to one wall is the O.Henry Hotel’s actual comic book rack, likely installed in the 1940s, featuring a header illustrated with cowboys and funny animal characters, and lettering proclaiming, “DELL comics are GOOD comics.” The very metal frame I pulled 12-centers from as a preteen more than half a century ago.

With a nod to the late Paul Harvey, “And now you know . . . the rest of the story.” And how old I am.

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Tales of a true Hill Billy

By Billy Ingram

I rang up my sister to wish her a happy birthday the other day and found her on the other end excitedly basking in a sentimental glow. It so happened she was visiting a friend who lives in the house where we grew up on Hill Street. When she told me this was a possibility at lunch earlier in the week, I suggested she ask if I could join them, reasoning I could cobble together a column for O.Henry out of what is a highly unusual experience. But when she brought up to her friend the possibility of my tagging along, the response was a resounding no. “We’ve read what your brother has written about our house.” Well . . . I never!

Or maybe I did, you decide.

I have nothing but fond memories of roaming the two blocks of Hill Street north of Wendover in Latham Park (Irving Park adjacent, in modern parlance) as a carefree youngster. I’d tromp along searching for adventure (existing solely in our imaginations) with my brother, sister and the neighborhood youths who all seemed to move away after a short two or three years. In a Mayberry-like cliche, it wasn’t until I was a teenager and we had moved into Irving Park proper that my father had a key made for the front door on Hill — just to pass on to its new owner. We’d never had one before, the place remaining unlocked even when we were away on two-week vacations.

Our Mema, as we called my father’s mother, resided on the corner of Hill and Northwood in a charming Tudor-inspired cottage. Almost daily, she would stroll from her place to ours, cradling a wicker basket filled with cakes, pies or silver dollar country ham biscuits, a gingham cloth covering those baked goods. The stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings.

I wondered, how could I have offended my sister’s friend with my quaint remembrances shared in an article written nine years ago? Surely not when I told readers about what was referred to as “The Snake Pit” located at the end of our driveway. Folks loved my gregarious parents who, until I was born and torpedoed the party, actually drove around in a school bus they had retrofitted into a rolling nightclub. On Hill Street, around sundown on warm nights, about a dozen young adults, many of whom I suspect should have been home with their babies, would congregate, guzzling Old Grand Dad or downing beers, laughing hysterically at heaven knows what, while upstairs we were attempting to sleep. Witnessing this spectacle, one Irving Park socialite remarked, “I don’t know who wrote Tobacco Road, but I know where he was standing when he thought it up!” Pull tabs yanked and discarded from Miller High Life cans littered the driveway each morning, so many I once made a chain mail vest out of them.

Was my faux pas revealing that our 70-year-old next-door neighbor was fond of sunbathing in the nude? Daphne Lewis left this realm ages ago, so that shouldn’t be a thorny issue today. Then again . . . maybe it is. Mrs. Lewis harangued her husband so loudly at night, we heard every word clearly inside our home. One imagines his death was a welcome reprieve when it mercifully came. When Mrs. Lewis passed away a few years later, I helped her sister clear out the house while, the entire time, random objects fell off of shelves in rooms we weren’t in. For all I know, Daphne’s restless spirit may still be tossing tchotchkes to the floor in that residence.

Was it the story of brazen Mrs. Bunn, living directly across the street, that was so distasteful? Forty-something and attractive, I spent hours sitting on her front steps while Mrs. Bunn chain smoked, bitching about married life. Like Bette Davis in The Letter, from her porch perched above, Mrs. Bunn emptied a .22 snubnose into her husband one steamy September evening around dusk. He fell dead in the middle of the road between our homes. My first instinct was to rush across the street to see if she was okay, which my dad and I did after waiting a respectable few minutes. Wish I could find the Polaroids I took of my siblings posing inside the chalk outline of the body that police left sketched on the pavement — relatively tasteful pics, I’m certain. After exercising her Second Amendment right to a speedy divorce, Mrs. Bunn moved to the Sunshine State with her son and a boyfriend who had appeared on the scene before the proverbial gun smoke cleared.

Further up the block, a businessman shot and killed a perceived peeping Tom perched outside the couple’s bedroom window. We were told he was an unfortunate teenager who managed to stagger back toward his nearby home before expiring.

As kids, we wandered in and out of everyone’s backyards without any consideration for boundaries or property lines. Almost every house had two-story garages that served as our clubhouses, whether homeowners were aware of it or not. The side yard removed from 1102 Hill Street when Wendover was widened in the mid-1960s was a jungle-like wooded area we dubbed “Tarzanland” for the interwoven vines we swung from, descending from ivy-covered trees. You can still see the weathered remnants today. Across the street was a backyard shrine with an ornate bird bath, crowned with a statue of Christ, that we called “Jesusland,” where we’d linger a bit and pray. For Pixie Stix and Wacky Packages, no doubt.

Northwood, traversing downward from Grayland Street, past Hill, then Briarcliff Road leading into Latham Park, was one the city’s greatest sledding spots whenever the city experienced its numerous major snow and ice events. Back then, that was just about every winter. On those corners, teenagers, all but obscured under unrelenting, swirling, nighttime whiteouts, stood around metal trash cans — every home was required to have one — serving as bonfire bins, swigging potables possibly purloined from Pop’s liquor cabinet. The city didn’t bother plowing neighborhood streets then, creating a children’s paradise whenever a few inches of snowfall shut down the town. There was so much frozen precipitation when I was younger, my father would equip one of the cars with snow tires from November until March.

Heartstring-tugging tales, all of them. I’m astonished anyone presently living on Hill Street would be offended. Even with sidestepping the occasional corpse, this was a wonderful neighborhood to grow up in, inhabited with kind and loving neighbors, family and folks who became lifelong friends. An idyllic place to live to this day, one imagines.

Heck, I’m not the sentimental type. I was mostly curious if that deep hole I dug tunneling to China was still behind the garage and whether any misshapen mole creatures ever crawled out of it. As I’m writing this, I related some of these childhood stories to a good friend, who quipped dismissively, “No wonder you go around in life acting like the rules don’t apply to you.”With much trepidation, Billy Ingram wishes everyone a very happy new year. To paraphrase the aforementioned Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!”

2025 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Circling Back to the Psychic on the Corner

By Billy Ingram

“I used to be psychic, but I drank my way out of it.” — Mark E. Smith

For nearly a quarter-century, there’s been a psychic living on or next door to the corner of Cornwallis and Lawndale Drive, a modest sign in the window advertising her supernatural services. Her name is Dorine and it’s been exactly four years since I impulsively dropped in for a crystal reading and then wrote all about it in “Wandering Billy.” I decided a return visit was in order.

I consider myself a skeptic but with an inclination to believe that it’s possible for someone to possess psychic powers. An interest was sparked when Mrs. Jean Newman, an English teacher at Page High School in the 1970s (she’d previously taught at Grimsley and later at Smith), decided to forgo her planned Shakespeare lesson, and instead regaled us with stories about transcribing clairvoyant sessions conducted by Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), known as “The Sleeping Prophet.” In subsequent research, I could find no record of her involvement, but it may be telling that Cayce’s lifelong transcriber and unmarried collaborator’s last name was Davis, Mrs. Newman’s maiden name.

My own personal interactions with psychics are limited but not totally lacking. In Los Angeles in the early-1980s, I worked on a two-week long TV pilot for a daily Entertainment Tonight-style program centered around unexplained phenomenon. One of my assignments was to ferry “psychic” Sylvia Browne — that flatulent phony Montel Williams foisted on his audience of shut-ins in the 1990s — to and from the studio. Afternoon television’s Aunt Hagatha, her future forecasting and accuracy when it came to pinpointing missing persons was about as precise as that of a toddler straddling a toilet. I was the only person that would have anything to do with that arrogant gasbag, while everyone else on set avoided her like the plague she became. Whether they were previously acquainted with Sylvia Browne or that was just a visceral reaction, either way, it was perfectly understandable.

During those two weeks, I relished this rarefied opportunity to delve daily into every one of the Whitman’s Sampler of astrologers, tarot card slappers, clairvoyants, palm readers, fortune-tellers and prognosticators serving as the production’s on-site consultants. Shades of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network, the program even had a soothsayer predicting next week’s headlines. Truthfully, most of those freelancers I conversed with on that project came across as very credible, genuinely gifted in their particular mastery of the mystic arts.

I’ve had more than a few profound occurrences in my lifetime that can only be explained by some form of sixth sense at play. So I entered into my Friday afternoon session with Dorine, our psychic on the corner, with an open — but cautious — mindset. Asked what medium (so to speak) she excelled in, Dorine insisted that she doesn’t communicate with the spirit world; hers, she says, is an intuitive gift.

Being a somewhat spiritual and self-aware individual, just about everything she told me about myself was spot on, corresponding precisely with her reading four years ago. I am, after all, the same person, so a radically different assessment would have been troubling.

Could she have recognized that I had written about her years ago? She only had my cell number and the name “William.” That was also the case last time. Practically the first thing she asked was, “Have you ever thought about being a writer?” But then she went on — just five minutes after meeting me — to detail traits about myself that I’m convinced no-one could possibly detect or infer from anything I’ve ever written. Maybe I do walk around with my heart on my sleeve at times, but I went sleeveless that day.

As much as I was leaning into the experience, I was determined to remain impartial, stubbornly so. When Dorine asked what my question was to her, I straight-up expressed a desire to understand whether or not she actually possessed psychic abilities. “I feel like I’m under a microscope,” she said at one point. “You are — I apologize!” was my response, attempting to quell any resulting negativity that I might be inadvertently harboring. What she expressed to me, and I agree wholeheartedly, is that, if a person is not receptive, she can’t possibly do what she does. The reluctant subject throws a block in the pathway, so to speak. Therein lies the conundrum underlying any psychic reading.

In our first meeting four years earlier, Dorine informed me I would be entering into a relationship in the next year, likely with a physician, that would involve extensive traveling. No such luck. This time it was predicted that traveling to New York is in my near future — not outside the realm of possibility. She indicated money was not a problem for me and, I suppose when you don’t have any, it isn’t much of a bother. Suggesting that I had been a healer in a previous lifetime, she wondered if that had manifested itself in this existence? Possibly so, but if she had intuited instead that I was once a corny 1930s’ nightclub lounge act, that would have resonated more clearly.

It was more hit than miss, however. “So what are you doing with art?” Dorine asked. I was preparing a canvas that day to do a painting, only the second time I’ve done so in the last 20 years. I do feel she accurately described the painting I completed a few months ago, which is difficult, given that it’s an abstract. That genuinely impressed me. And when it came to identifying who I am at the core of my being, she was amazingly dead on.

What should one expect from a psychic reading? The Oracle of Delphi or a modern day Edgar Cayce connecting to God’s messengers on the other side? Is keen insightfulness, which this lady clearly possesses loads of, proof of clairvoyance? What impressed me most was that, when told she was wrong, she didn’t equivocate or try to say, “Maybe that’s true of someone close to you.” She simply said, “Well, that’s what I’m picking up.”

If you’ve never sat for a psychic reading and you’re psy-curious, or, even if you have, Dorine seems like the real deal? She definitely doesn’t come across as a con artist or huckster. And I’d know because I had a glancing dance with one of those shady characters decades ago, not to mention witnessing Sylvia Browne’s naked fakery on display. Dorine’s advice to me was exactly what I needed to hear, what I had been telling myself, in fact. Of course, take this with a grain of for-entertainment-purposes-only salt.

Now that I think about it, more than two decades ago, right about the time Dorine began her paranormal practice on the corner of Cornwallis and Lawndale, that parcel of land had been rumored to be the site of a Walgreens or some other big box store that would complement Lawndale Shopping Center, deeply upsetting the residents of that genteel Kirkwood acreage perimeter. Given how quickly the dominoes fell under Friendly Center’s encroachment into its surrounding neighborhoods, could there be an otherworldly explanation for the vanishing of that retail expansion project?

Or maybe, just maybe, I’ve been watching too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Finding Otto

How stalwarts of justice became stewards of style

By Billy Ingram

For 30 years, beginning in 1950, Otto Zenke was one of the nation’s most respected interior designers. Based in Greensboro with offices in Palm Beach and London, he created spectacular environments for the finest homes along the East Coast including the mansion of the late Julian Price in Irving Park and Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. A year from now, however, a major portion of Zenke’s legacy will be erased forever when his former home and showroom is demolished for a parking lot.

Bridging the lifestyle gap between the old and new South, Zenke lent his 18th-century-influenced stateliness to residences surrounding golf courses in Pinehurst; country manors in Virginia and South Carolina; seaside abodes in Palm Beach; estates in Newport and Los Angeles; and homes appearing on covers and in photo spreads for House Beautiful and Architectural Digest. “Elegance and beauty were his trademark,” declared Connoisseur magazine.

Georgian fireplaces, cut-glass chandeliers hung from high ceilings, gabled archways and boldly carved pilasters were just a few of Zenke’s signature touches. For select clients, lavishly illustrated, hand-painted murals of pastoral splendor or sprawling foxhunting scenes and delicately rendered chinoiserie panels adorned dining and living room walls. It’s doubtful most of those murals survive today but I’d heard rumors that one was extant, oddly enough, in the Guilford County Sheriff’s office.

In 1968, Zenke constructed a 3,000-square-foot home and showroom on the corner of Washington and Eugene Streets after the city had appropriated — by eminent domain — his extraordinarily beautiful residence and workspace across Eugene for use as the Governmental Center. The L-shaped English Regency-style complex he developed in ’68 was joined to, and fronted by, a two-story, New Orleans-inspired dwelling built in the late-1800s, one of the oldest houses still standing in downtown Greensboro.

After Zenke’s death in 1984, the county purchased the property and, today, within those hallowed walls, Guilford County Sheriff Danny H. Rogers presides over one of the largest sheriff’s offices in the state with 557 employees split between operations and detention bureaus.

Elected in 2018, Rogers is Guilford County’s first Black sheriff. Growing up in High Point in the 1960s, the few African American law enforcement officers that existed locally were an inspiration to the very young Rogers, who learned by observing them — both how to interact with people and to “be who I am.”

In 1985 Sheriff Jim Proffitt allowed Rogers to work as a non-sworn detention officer. “The county had frozen the positions for sworn officers. Well, on my first day as a non-sworn detention officer, there were two of my white counterparts and they were sworn. I asked, ‘How long have you guys been here?’ Turns out their hire dates were the same as mine. I questioned it. I worked with the sheriff’s office for a little over a year and a half, then I went to the High Point Police Department, where they gave me an opportunity to be sworn and paid me to go to school. I was there for a little over three and a half years before coming back to the sheriff’s office.” After another three years or so, he was released from the department; it wasn’t until roughly 25 years later that he ran for and became sheriff for Guilford County.

During his time away from the sheriff’s office, Rogers earned a master’s degree in criminal justice and a theology degree. An open Bible sits on a shelf behind his desk. “I had a chance to understand the community from a different perspective,” Rogers says about his well-spent time away. “Getting out there, meeting the people and walking the streets was key when I first started.”

Whenever a new administrator takes over an organization, pushback inevitably follows. “There’s always a lot of behind the scenes conversation,” Rogers says about the transition after becoming sheriff. Those who want to stay will stay. Those who want to leave will leave.

“A positive change began within myself,” Rogers says. “But the real positive change began in the mindset of the men and women who work here, so they can go out in the community and help bring about that positive change. And it’s working. It’s not working like a grand slam or the perfect engine, but it’s working at the pace that it needs to.”

Naturally, I was curious to have a look around Zenke’s former showroom, imaging what you might see on modern TV police dramas, when detectives paste photos of hapless victims on the walls with a cat’s cradle of string tying them to some unknown serial killer. I could not have been more mistaken.

Rogers’ office, once the designer’s living room, is enshrined in 130-year old wood paneling embedded with 15-foot high, built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases framed in intricately carved crown molding. The bathroom is equipped with an unused sunken marble tub.

Zenke’s stylistic fingerprints are everywhere throughout this palatial domain: entranceways topped with half-moon transom windows; individually painted tiles in the kitchen; a restroom swathed in emboldened Asian-flavored floral wallpaper — all in pristine condition after more than half a century. Touring these offices a few years ago, one former North Carolina chief executive remarked that it was nicer than the governor’s mansion.

Surrounding the largest open space, to my delight and surprise, unscathed and perfectly preserved, was a panoramic hand-painted mural replicating the verdant patio of an Italian villa opening to the unspoiled countryside with realistically rendered black urns perched on either side. Nearly hidden in one corner, a peasant boy is relieving himself in the bushes, a naughty detail Zenke no doubt delighted clients with privately.

Atop another room’s mahogany bookcase is a marble inlay centered by a nobleman’s face. It has an unintended design element — a pronounced bullet hole piercing an interior glass door, shattered three years ago after gunfire erupted across the street. Soon after, all exterior windows were made bulletproof.

After visiting Zenke’s former digs, photographer Lynn Donovan and I were chatting as she packed cameras into the trunk of her car. A female detention center deputy stopped to question what a couple of suspicious-looking customers like us were doing meandering in the parking lot. “Oh, we’re here to shoot the sheriff,” I replied. That wasn’t a smile crossing the deputy’s lips as one hand inched closer to her baton. Donovan explained that we just wrapped up a photoshoot with the county’s top lawman. While we had, in fact, shot the sheriff, after the jailer moved on Donovan noted, “we did not shoot the deputy.”

After completion of the new Guilford County Sheriff’s Law Enforcement Administration Building in 2025, Otto Zenke’s former home/showroom next door will be demolished for a parking lot — naughty peasant boy and all.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

How I learned to always give credit where credit is contractually obligated

By Billy Ingram

For reasons I’ll never understand, from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, I found myself working as an artist for Seiniger Advertising in Beverly Hills, a movie poster design team that became known as “The New York Yankees of Motion Picture Advertising.” During the last century, when movies were enjoying the industry’s most lucrative period, a lean, mean design team of about 30 of us found ourselves creating one-sheets — the movie posters you see in theaters — and trailers for the biggest blockbusters ever.

We cranked out hundreds of posters for movies such as Pretty Woman, Hook, Ghost, and Field of Dreams, and worked on films that became franchises, including James Bond, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Indiana Jones, Beverly Hills Cop, Star Trek and Rocky. And that’s not even mentioning every Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner and John Hughes release. They all came out of the Seiniger studio. Here are a few meaningless yet entertaining anecdotes from a time when I was Hollywood swingin’…

The Prince of Tides: Barbra Streisand was/is famous for micromanaging her projects, all the way down to creative control over all advertising and publicity, including movie posters. For a couple of weeks after shooting wrapped, Streisand would send over suggestions for the Prince of Tides poster and I would work them up — usually consisting of a photo for the background, another for the foreground. They would arrive, about half a dozen at a time, promptly at 6 p.m. and she needed to see completed comps by 9 a.m. If at first glance I thought her choices odd, inevitably they turned out to be very attractive and astute. However, there was one particular on-set photo she liked a lot of her and co-star Nick Nolte in bed, Barbra in a nurturing position. Trouble was, she kept wanting to see her head larger, which naturally meant Nolte’s noggin got bigger. Eventually, the context was lost. That became obvious when someone passed by my desk, saw this mockup and remarked, “That looks like Barbra Streisand with her pet head!”

Boomerang: We were toiling away on a typical campaign for a romantic comedy starring Paramount Picture’s biggest star until one afternoon, when we were instructed to stop and switch directions. Seems the star decided he wanted to be the next James Bond. And, as it happened, that franchise was in limbo after License to Kill bombed at the box office. From that point on, every poster design for that Paramount romcom had to make the star look as “007” as possible. Bond being another studio’s property, what could have been an unusual casting choice (to say the least) was ultimately nixed — but, if Ian Fleming’s creation had belonged to Paramount, there’s no doubt the next entry in that franchise would have starred . . . Eddie Murphy as James Bond.

Moonstruck: The image of Cher on the Moonstruck poster (from a location shoot in Central Park by Annie Leibovitz) is one that almost everyone remembers. In fact, it won what is now the Academy Award for Best Movie Poster that year, another home run for the Tony Seiniger shop. That image is actually composed from three different photos — the head, the torso and arms, and the skirt with legs all came from separate frames.

This also-ran for Moonstruck (shown) has some of the same elements as the final poster, but . . . why is Cher up in the night sky lashing out at the logo? What’s even more puzzling is why is the moon moving so dangerously close to the Earth? File this one away for Cher’s sci-fi sequel: Moonstruck the Earth!

Star Trek VI: This particular comp, I had very little — if anything — to do with, but, whenever I drifted into a new project, I would pull the actors’ publicity contracts that we kept on file just in case. While this design by Bob Peak, a highly-acclaimed artist who rendered the illustration for the first Star Trek motion picture one-sheet, is striking and effective, I warned the art director that it would never fly. William Shatner’s contract stipulated that only Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and Shatner himself could appear on the movie poster, so this was a nonstarter.

Bugsy: One day, I noticed an older gentleman meandering around our bullpen, observing with interest how we were manipulating images, so I struck up a conversation. He was none other than George Hurrell, the photographic genius who captured indelible portraits of 1930s/1940s Tinsel Town immortals such as Garland, Harlow, Crawford, Bogart, Gable and Garbo. I was fascinated as he explained his technique of touching up those picture-perfect images directly on 8-by-10-inch negatives. This was 1991; he still had his studio, but confessed he felt his work had been forgotten in the business, and was grateful Warren Beatty had requested a photo shoot with him for the Bugsy poster. Hurrell passed away the next year.

With all the different directions and rush-order variations requested over several months, primarily by Warren Beatty, the one-sheet for Bugsy somehow became the most expensive of all time (a record I doubt will ever be broken) — around one million dollars just for the movie poster alone. And yet, as gorgeous as George Hurrell’s stark depiction of Beatty was on the final design that both star and studio agreed on (shown fronted by Annette Bening, photographed by Bruce Weber), Bugsy’s director, Barry Levinson, was so miffed at having been left out of the process, he rejected it and demanded input. As a result, the final poster was merely a generic tango pose of the two stars lensed by a more au currant Hollywood photographer, Herb Ritts. They could have photographed it at Glamour shots in the mall.

Before working at Seiniger Advertising (a company so exclusive the phone number was unlisted), I never gave one thought to how movie posters came into being. I just fell into it. During this almost 10-year period, I actually provided the illustration for The Hunt For Red October poster and generated graphics for award-winning trailers and main titles including The Fugitive and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Glamorous? Hardly. Almost every night, we had no clue when we might be able to go home; relentless deadlines resulting in 14-, 16-, even 26-hour days were expected. Working under the most stressful conditions one can imagine for long periods of time, we formed familial bonds that extend to this day, friendships and harsh relationships that I look back fondly on — and paydays I wouldn’t mind becoming reacquainted with.

2024 Department Wandering Billy

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

Down to a Fine Art

How Sam Fribush, Calvin Napper and Charlie Hunter came together to create new grooves with familiar sounds

By Billy Ingram

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was covering a shift in a comic book store one sunny Saturday when musician-songwriter Sam Fribush strolled over from his nearby home to discuss the latest steps he’s taken on his remarkable mellifluous journey. He, together with Grammy-winners guitarist-bassist Charley Hunter and drummer Calvin Napper, formed the Sam Fribush Organ Trio to create an album released in March of this year. People Please is a swingingly soulful suture of melodies reminiscent of a time, many decades ago, when rhythmic instrumental riffs ruled the Billboard Hot 100.

Raised in Sunset Hills, Fribush reflects on his musical undertones. “My parents are both self-taught, old-time folk musicians, so I grew up with music in the house. Folk Appalachian music is maybe the first line in my DNA.” While attending Weaver Academy from 2009 to 2013, Fribush began seriously focusing on piano under the instruction of Mark Freundt. “They had a block schedule, so I just sat at the keyboard for an hour-and-a-half every day and practiced. That was a big part of getting my technical facility together.”

From there, he studied music as an undergrad at the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston, simultaneously picking up local gigs. “That’s when I started playing the Hammond organ, in a Black Baptist church in the south part of Massachusetts,” Fribush says. “A really tough learning environment, got my ass kicked in all the best ways.”

A move to New Orleans led to the musician pounding keys in dimly lit clubs on Bourbon and Frenchmen Streets. “The school of hard knocks,” is how Fribush describes that experience. “Without rehearsed material, having to know tons and tons of songs, just using my ears, that’s when I really got my ass kicked!”

After the pandemic hit, like a surprising number of other talented individuals (a blessing in disguise it turns out), he returned to Greensboro. “I love being back here,” Fribush says. “It’s a great home base of operation. I moved to College Hill and joined the band Hiss Golden Messenger from Durham.” Relocating proved fortuitous. “I also met Charlie Hunter, who randomly moved to Greensboro when I did. We happened to be into the same type of music and started playing together.”

When Fribush and I spoke that afternoon, he had just returned from laying down tracks for his next album in Richmond. “I’m on a little bit of marathon recording new stuff right now,” he explains. “I’ve been really going down a deep rabbit hole of writing. It’s been rewarding, having all these demos.” In the Richmond recording studio, he connected with some of the guys from Butcher Brown, a jazz quintet from the area. “We were just pulling songs off my demo list. It was really fun to have these original sparks, and then see what they turn into.” The week following our convo, he was jetting off to Denver to record with producer and drummer Adam Deitch from the funktastic ensemble Lettuce.

Currently, Fribush is especially looking forward to jamming once again with his People Please collaborators at the N.C. Folk Festival. When he was first approached about performing, he says, “I was like, well, I would really like to get those guys in on it, too.” The only other live performance this trio has played as a unit was an album release party at Flat Iron, but, he notes, “Whenever the three of us get together, it’s always awesome.”

Taking a break from touring with TMF (The Music Forever), formerly of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly Winston-Salem resident Calvin Napper is renowned for beating out percussive blasts for gospel greats Kirk Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and CeCe Winans, to name a few. He was awarded a Grammy for his contribution to Donnie McClurkin’s Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs. “Calvin Napper is a natural born drummer,” Smooth Jazz Daily opines. “Although addicted to gospel music, he pursues his musical destination in smooth jazz or, more precisely, funk.”

Cruising into Latin and Caribbean inspired grooves on recordings with D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, Mos Def, and John Mayer, world-renowned Jazz and R&B guitarist-bassist Charlie Hunter’s signature Novax seven- and eight-string instruments allow him to play both bass and guitar simultaneously. “I’ve been a fan of Charlie Hunter for a really long time,” John Mayer once said about after having the chance to record “In Repair” with him. “One of the values that he’s kind of instilled in me, just from my being a fan of his, is his willingness to want to get into other musical situations than what he’s familiar with.”

On The Charlie Hunter Quartet’s highly-acclaimed 2001 Blue Note album Songs of the Analog Playground, it was Hunter’s transcendent interpretations of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” and Nick Drake’s hauntingly sensual “Day Is Done,” both featuring then unknown vocalist, Norah Jones, that introduced the future nine-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter to the world. A year later, Jones’ debut album became one of the best-selling platters of all time. Intertwined on People Please, these three virtuosos have created an extraordinary sonic playground reminiscent of those ubiquitous, highly infectious instrumentals of old. Think “Soul Bossa Nova” (the theme from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery) by Quincy Jones; Oscar Peterson’s jaunty, unparalleled ivory-tinkling wizardry across musical genres; Memphis ’60s Southern grooves typified by “Green Onions” from Booker T. & the MG’s; in addition to that sweet Philly soul sound of the ’70s. “Philly is where most of the Hammond players were from,” Fribush notes about the keyboard that funked up the 1970s before soulless synthesizers desensitized our ears. “Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, yeah, that’s the sound. Those are my idols.”

People Please may be Sam Fribush’s first assemblage of all original material, but even the cover tunes on his two previous records are, for the most part, practically undetectable as such, owing to his singularly preternatural approach. “That was the point,” Fribush says. “Finding deep cuts then arranging them in interesting ways.”

This musical artist has somehow managed to make that instantly recognizable Hammond B-3 Tonewheel’s harmonic resonance fresh again. One reason that sound is relatively uncommon today? The manufacturer stopped making them a half-century ago. “Most of my Hammonds are from late-’50s, early-’60s,” which means that, out of necessity, Fribush has to repair and refurbish those organs and antiquated amps himself. “They are 100 percent analog, no chipboard. It’s all tubes, pretty straightforward. In the jazz and funk organ idiom, it’s a hard sound to replicate because of the warmth of the Hammond.”

Are the Sam Fribush Organ Trio’s electronic earworms burrowing us back to a post-synth future, 21st-century beachmusic style? They may be the closest thing to a so-called “supergroup” the Folk Fest proffers this year.

Fun Fact: in order for a band that he once managed to get paid, Billy Ingram was forced to confront Eddie Nash, one of LA’s most notorious mass murderers (Wonderland), who was crying poor behind a wall of at least $200,000 in bundled bills. Best believe band got paid!

2024 Department Wandering Billy