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From Ghoulardi to Rollergirl

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Heather Graham as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights

She’s an attractive young star in the stable of go-to actresses around Burt Reynold’s porn studio in the 1970s and 1980s. Called Rollergirl because she never takes off her inline skates, even during sex, she helps to recruit Mark Wahlberg by seducing him in the nightclub where he works as a bus boy. She is an intriguing presence in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Boogie Nights (1997).

Decades before the film was made, the director’s father, Ernie Anderson, was a big star on WJW-TV, Channel 8 in Cleveland. He played a character named Ghoulardi who hosted horror films between 1963 and 1966. In between scenes of the films he showed, he made fun of Cleveland¹s Polish population with their polkas and white socks and flamingo lawn ornaments, and particularly when they lived in the southwestern suburb of “PAHR-ma?” His catch phrases were “turn blue” and “stay sick.”

If you were a teenager in Cleveland during the 1860s, you watched Ghoulardi and adopted his mannerisms the next Monday in the school cafeteria.

One final note: If you watched reruns of the Carol Burnett Show, you may recall that in the opening scene, when Carol comes out on stage to answer questions from the audience, she occasionally gave a call-our to Ernie Anderson, who was a frequent member of the studio audience. Ernie typically smiled and gave a little wave to acknowledge. That was Ghoulardi, who had come to Los Angeles and served a number of years as announcer for the show after Lyle Waggoner had left.

It’s a long way from horror films in Cleveland in the 1960s to his son’s explicit study of the emerging L.A. porn scene filmed in 1997.

What I Look Like with Long Hair

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Carol Burnett and Tim Conway as the Oldest Man

As usual, I have delayed in getting a haircut. So now I look like the Tim Conway character in the Carol Burnett Show when he’s acting the part of the Oldest Man. It’s appropriate, after all, since we’re both from the Cleveland area.

The only difference is that Tim Conway, whatever part he plays, is usually more fashionably dressed than I am.

Tim Conway and Me

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Carol Burnett with Tim Conway

Although I hail from Cleveland, Ohio, I am not a big fan of what I and many of my friends call “The Mistake on the Lake.” There I one Clevelander I have always admired. No, not Halle Berry, though I find her incredibly beautiful. And not Paul Newman, who I admit was a talented film actor.

My choice is Tim Conway, who, although born eleven years earlier than me, had a childhood that curiously paralleled my own. Just as I was born to a family that spoke only Hungarian in the home, Tim spoke only Romanian. (Funny, he doesn’t look Romanian—but he was born Toma Conway to an Irish father and a Romanian mother, Sophia, who bore the Romanian equivalent to my mother’s Hungarian name, Zsófi.)

Like my mother, Sophia was born in the United States but taken to be raised in Europe. Like my Slovak father Elek, Daniel Conway adopted his wife’s language in the family circle. Thus, when Tim first attended school, he spoke mostly Romanian, just as I spoke only Magyar.

The parallels stop there. Toma had his name changed to Tim when he started in show business, as there was already a well-known British actor named Tom Conway. Whether playing in McHale’s Navy or The Carol Burnett Show, Tim Conway was one of the funniest men on television. I still watch The Carol Burnett Show on MeTV up to six times a week. Great stuff!