Happy Birthday to My Older "Brother"

This is a repost from two years ago.

I don’t have a brother.  I have two older sisters.  But today is the birthday of my unofficial brother, my cousin Terry.  I’m not sure why but when we were kids, Terry took me under his wing and made it a point of exposing me to all kinds of things regarding life and the movies. 

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On his bedroom walls he had a King Kong poster (see above) that used to scared me at night when the lights were off, a Humphrey Bogart poster from Casablanca, and a W.C. Fields poster (on the left) with the quote: “Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and we had to live on nothing but food and water for several days.”

When we visited his house, Terry used to grab me and sit me down and say things like, “You need to watch this movie.”  “You need to read this book.”  When he started acting in community theater, he took me along and I used to hang out doing minor things with the crew while they rehearsed.  He exposed me to sophistication and bawdy humor, to classic movies and European cool.  Terry single-handedly turned me on to:
Acquire (board game)
Around the World In 80 Days
Barry Lyndon
Beer
Casablanca
Clue (board game)
Community Theater
Cruising with the top down
Dashiell Hammett
Dr. Strangelove
Drive In Movies
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fantasticks
F Troop
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
Gene Kelly
Gilligan’s Island
Going to the Beach
Grand Prix racing
Hello, Dolly!
Herbie Goes Bananas
Hogan’s Heroes
Humphrey Bogart
I Love Lucy
Ian Fleming
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
James Bond
John Sturges
John Wayne
Jules Verne
King Kong
Laurel & Hardy
Masterpiece (board game)
Matchbox cars
Mille Bornes (card game)
Mouse Trap
Mr. President (board game)
My Fair Lady
Oliver!
Playboy
1776 (the movie, not the year)
Stanley Kubrick
Steve McQueen
Sunset Blvd (the street, not the movie)
The Addams Family
The Adventures of Superman
The Bozo Show
The Bride of Frankenstein
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Fantasticks
The Great Escape
The Guns of Navarone
The Maltese Falcon
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
The Marx Brothers
The Mickey Mouse Club
The Wild Wild West
Venice Beach
Vincent Price
W.C. Fields
War and Peace (the Russian movie)
World War II
You Bet Your Life

I am sure I am missing a few but you get the idea.

I remember seeing him play a perfect Charlie Brown in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.  He made a funny Barnaby in The Matchmaker.  He wrote the funniest spec screenplay I’ve ever read, Joseph the Carpenter. 

Because he wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a writer. 

I would definitely not be the man I am today if not for him.  And my life would be a lot sadder if I’d never been exposed to the things he shared.  So thank you, Terry.

And Happy Birthday, cousin!

PS. While out in California last December visiting my gravely ill father, Terry put me up at his apartment, shared lots of TV and conversation at impossibly late hours, and exposed me to yet another film I had not yet seen: THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY (1964) starring the late great James Garner & Julie Andrews and written by the brilliant Paddy Chayesfsky.  See?  He is still exposing me to new things.

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