Hollywood Fun

3 min readSep 1, 2025

Last night the Retro channel’s Off Beat Cinema, 43–4 on OTA in NYC, ran Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962), screenplay by Jonathan Haze, star of the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960). It’s awful, rated 3.1 on a scale of ten at IMDb, but I’m glad I tuned in because it alerted me to a goombah I don’t recall having ever heard of — Frank Ray Perilli (1925–2018). He grew up in Capone-era Chicago, did standup in nightclubs, appeared in a number of films, and wrote material for the likes of Shecky Greene, Dean Martin, Don Rickles and others. He mentored and managed Lenny Bruce. There are 15 titles under his name at IMDb in the category of Actor, including two episodes each of Flight and Combat!, three as Producer and 15 as Writer. The only screenplay credit I recognized was The Doberman Gang (1972), co-written with Louis Garfinkle. A father of one, he was married to his beloved until her passing in 2010. His niece is actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, his wife’s maiden name. He succumbed to complications from the West Nile Virus in 2018 at 92. Well done, Sir. Photo from Google Images:

From 27 Behind-The-Scenes Photos From Classic Hollywood Movies That You’ve Probably Never Seen Before, msm.com:
Audrey Hepburn practicing Moon River with her guitar instructor behind the scenes of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961:

And Julie Andrews reading Variety to her daughter Emma on the set of The Sound of Music in 1965:

It was an unusual session of the Anti-Inflation Book Shop. A young man who’s not a reader gave me money and said to let people pick out whatever they wanted. Romanian-born bi-polar artist Andu took home a teddy bear for his long-suffering mom that a woman had donated, and a gentleman took a large paperback in Russian. Three more items will be given away tomorrow. My Constant Benefactress refused the offer, insisting on paying for The Wolves of Calla by Stephen King despite having donated four titles. As expected, a woman wheeled over a shopping cart filled with 19 volumes of Stephen King and thanked me as if I were the one doing a favor. My thanks to all. Somehow I fit everything into my two carts. I didn’t have to leave anything in the garden… Man, it feels like a Sunday.