kartooner

For the big name celebri­ties in Hol­ly­wood who will even­tu­ally retire some­day there will be a man­sion or pri­vate get­away wait­ing for them. How­ever, what hap­pens to the lesser known celebri­ties, musi­cians and writ­ers when they retire?

The answer is the Motion Pic­ture and Tele­vi­sion Fund Coun­try House, a retire­ment com­mu­nity that houses char­ac­ter actors, reoc­cur­ring extras and other celebri­ties. Every res­i­dent has more than a hand­ful of sto­ries to tell, tales that describe min­gling with celebri­ties like Elvis Pres­ley, Grace Kelly and Jack Lem­mon and mem­o­ries full of love, laugh­ter and most impor­tantly years of effort.

83-year-old char­ac­ter actor William “Hal” Rid­dle is a res­i­dent of the com­mu­nity and his story reads like a child­hood dream.

Grow­ing up in Ken­tucky, Rid­dle had dreams of mak­ing it big in Hol­ly­wood. More often than not he would skip school to attend show­ings at the local the­atre, bask­ing in the glow of Hollywood’s magic. At 11 years old, Hal fell in love with a young silent film star by the name of Bil­lie Dove, a crush that would last for the next 60 years. Mus­ter­ing up enough courage Hal wrote a let­ter to Dove and received an auto­graphed photo with the mes­sage “Greet­ings! Bil­lie Dove”.

Through­out the years Hal has col­lected sev­eral celebrity (and Hol­ly­wood) para­pher­na­lia. When he retired in 1995, and moved into the Motion Pic­ture and Tele­vi­sion retire­ment com­mu­nity, he dusted off his pic­tures and hung them on the wall, admir­ing most of all the auto­graphed pic­ture from Bil­lie Dove.

Over the next sev­eral months Hal rem­i­nisced of his past expe­ri­ences, includ­ing; a vari­ety of bit parts in movies, doing three pic­tures with Elvis, test­ing the pilot Beat the Clock with James Dean and of his room­mate Jack Lem­mon. All of these expe­ri­ences never quite lev­eled with that of his admi­ra­tion and love for Bil­lie Dove, some­thing that he endured for the greater part of his life.

One day he received a call from an employee at the Motion Pic­ture Retire­ment home. She told Rid­dle that she had heard from var­i­ous mem­bers of the com­mu­nity of his infat­u­a­tion with Bil­lie Dove, and much to his sur­prise she men­tioned that Bil­lie Dove was a res­i­dent of the Motion Pic­ture & Tele­vi­sion Fund hos­pi­tal, less than a 5-mile walk from Riddle’s cottage.

The very next day Rid­dle walked to the hos­pi­tal to visit his child­hood crush and despite her ill-health and con­sid­er­able aging (she was 96 years old) through his eyes he saw the same woman in the pic­ture, youth­ful and extremely beau­ti­ful. As Hal described, “..I could see the essence of her beauty still. I was shak­ing like a leaf.”

Rid­dle con­fessed every­thing to her, includ­ing his boy­hood crush, his fre­quent days play­ing hooky and watch­ing Dove in Ado­ra­tion and how much the pic­ture still meant to him after so many years. Towards the end of the visit Dove requested to see Rid­dle ask­ing him if he would like to visit her again.

Over the next few days Hal Rid­dle and Bil­lie Dove formed a friend­ship and much more than that in fact. Accord­ing to the hos­pi­tal staff, Dove would ask for her hair and lip­stick to be done by the nurses prior to Hal’s visit. Bil­lie Dove would sit silently in her wheel­chair as Hal would wheel her around the the home care­fully lis­ten­ing to her many sto­ries of Hol­ly­wood life.

Over time, Hal could tell her health was get­ting worse and shortly before he was to leave for Alaska she made him promise that he would return to her, afraid that he was going to leave her. When Hal returned it was on New Years Day (a year since they had met) and when he went to visit her the nurse informed him that she had passed away.

How­ever, despite the sad­ness, Hal real­izes that he was blessed with the com­fort of his res­o­lu­tion; to finally meet his child­hood crush. In Hal’s words;

When you stop and think about it, it seems ironic. I guess the world has a long tail. You never know when an 11-year-old boy in Ken­tucky is going to write a fan let­ter to a star and years and years later get to be her friend. It’s a mag­i­cal wonder.