kartooner.com

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.