Original publish date: May 9, 2017
Last week, it happened. Hal Fryar died. Hal, better known to generations of Hoosiers as Harlow Hickenlooper, made it to his 90th birthday on June 8th but died peacefully in his sleep a couple weeks later on June 25th. I would like to thank all of you who sent birthday cards to Hal down in Florida. His son Gary informs me that they were the highlight of the party and Hal appreciated each and every one of them. WISH-TV Channel 8 reporter Dick Wolfsie contacted me about filming a tribute to Hal for his July 1st show and I was honored to do it for Hal.
Wolfsie had a long history with Hal and his interview segment filmed back in 2008 remains a classic. Hal’s alter ego Harlow was known as an affable schlemiel whose just compensation was always a pie in the face. Not only did Dick share space with Hal in the TV broadcasting fraternity, Mr. Wolfsie also shares membership with Hal in the pie-in-the-face fraternity. (Okay, there is no such thing but there should be.) Dick Wolfsie was once “pie’d in the face” by non other then the king of the genre, Soupy Sales himself back in 1998.
Dick felt a proper way to honor his pal Hal was to take a pie in the face himself. That show, which you can find on the WISH-TV website under the Dick Wolfsie / Hal Fryar segment name, went off without a hitch and was a suitable tribute to Hal Fryar. I had the honor of “Pie-ing” Dick in the face just as Hal Fryar himself had showed me at the Irving Theatre so many years ago. As for Mr. Wolfsie, he was such a trooper that he actually took TWO pies in the face. Now that is dedication.
As fate would have it, a few days before appearing on Dick Wolfsie’s segments I attended an antique show and ran across a photo of Hal and his co-stars Curley Myers and Cap’n Star (Jerry Vance, a.k.a. Larry Vincent). These photos, which were actually giveaways from WFBM TV Channel 6 back in the early 1960s, brought back memories. Having grown up in Indy around that time, I clearly remember getting things like this whenever and wherever the TV stars would show up for promos. Store, bank and restaurant openings, live shows and taped segments; the stars would hand these out to their young fans as souvenirs. I found the timing of the card’s discovery ironic because they came into my world just after Hal’s 90th birthday and the day before I had found out he had passed. Life is funny that way.
I realized that I had written several article on Hal Fryar but had never touched on the lives of his cohorts. By now, you know that Hal rose to prominence as Harlow Hickenlooper, the host of The Three Stooges Show on Channel 6 in Indianapolis from 1960 to 1972. Together, Hal, Curley and Cap’n Star sang songs and performed skits for a live studio audience of children. Fryar also hosted several other children’s shows over 43 years in local television. In 1965, Fryar was cast in the Three Stooges movie, The Outlaws Is Coming, playing the part of Johnny Ringo. On October 2, 2008, Fryar was inducted into the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame. But what became of his costars?
Gerald L. “Curley” Myers, known by fans as “your ole buckaroo buddy”, was born April 1, 1920 twelve miles east of Lebanon, Indiana. Curley grew up on a farm in Clinton County and attended grade school in Forest and Frankfort, Indiana. From the age of eight he was in love with music and played his bass violin in the school orchestra, at church and fiddled at neighborhood hoedowns on the weekends. He graduated from Frankfort High School in 1938. Somewhere along the way, Curley took up the banjo and guitar, which opened the door to a successful career in show business.
Curley’s list of bands reads like a page out of country music history: Woodside Harmonica Band (19334-36), The Hoosier Ramblers (1936-38)s, the Semi Solid Ramblers (1938-39), Cap’n Stubby and the Buccaneers (1939-45) and the Shady Acres Ranch Cowboys (1949-57). Curley’s Cap’n Stubby years were spent at WLW in Cincinnati performing on the same slate as Doris Day, The Williams Brothers with Andy Williams, Merle Travis, The Girls of the Golden West, Lulu Belle and Scotty, Bradley Kincaid and the Delmore Brothers to name a few.
Early in 1955 WFBM channel 6 began airing the Indiana Hoedown, starring entertainers who had been on WLW in Cincinnati. In addition to working the Hoedown, Curley had Curley’s Cowboy Theater for seven or eight years, then did a Saturday morning kids show with Cap’n Star and Harlow Hickenlooper. Altogether, Curley spent over 15 years there as the “Saturday Morning Cowboy”. In May, 1972 the TV station was sold and the new owners planned a change of programming formats and personalities.
This led to a kind of semi-retirement from the music business for Curley Myers. He went to work for the Culligan Water Conditioning company but continued entertaining on nights and weekends at state fairs, parties and a long standing gig performing Wednesday through Saturday nights at the Best Western. Curley spent well over 60 years pickin’, singin’ and grinnin’ all ovr the midwest. Curley and Hal remained close until Curley’s death on May 19, 2013 at a Retirement home in Mulberry, Indiana.
Larry Vincent (aka Larry Vance) was born Larry Francis Fitzgerald Vincent on June 14, 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. Not much is known about Vincent’s early life. He first surfaces in the 1940s as an understudy to Kirk Douglas in the Broadway play “Alice in Arms.” The play ran for only 5 performances at the National Theatre in New York City, but is notable for being Kirk Douglas’ Broadway debut. Vincent teamed up with Don McArt to form a stand-up comedy act that performed in nightclubs all over New York City. Anderson Indiana native Donald Craig McArt had previously appeared in the Walt Disney films “Son of Flubber” and the “Absent Minded Professor.”
Vincent landed in the Circle City in the early 1960s where he created his “Cap’n Star” character for WFBM in Indianapolis. Cap’n Star appeared alongside Harlow and Curley for children’s programming which showcased old Three Stooges shorts. Along with his pet monkey “Davy Jones”, Cap’n Star sang songs and performed skits on the show. Vincent lived in a house at 41st and Graham Avenue on the east side. Local children remember Vincent as a kind neighbor who always had time for kids, often letting them wear his sailor’s cap from the show and play with the show’s mascot monkey Davy Jones.
In 1968 he left Indianapolis to become staff director for KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. From 1969 to 1974 Vincent was the host for a Sammy Terry style Friday night horror show program known as “Fright Night” on KHJ-TV and later Seymour’s Monster Rally on KTLA TV. Vincent’s Seymour horror host presented—and heckled—low-budget horror and science fiction movies on both local Los Angeles stations. He is remembered for his style of criticizing the movies he presented in an offbeat and funny manner, usually appearing in a small window which would pop up in the corner, tossing a quip, then vanishing again. Sometimes he would, using blue-screen, appear in the middle of the movie, apparently interacting with the characters in the movie.
Along with appearing in several episodes of The New Three Stooges during his Indianapolis years, Vincent also had small roles on Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, The Flying Nun, and I Dream of Jeannie. Larry Vincent served as Knott’s Berry Farm’s inaugural “Ghost Host,” in 1973 at Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween Haunt. Vincent aka Seymour’s last show came in 1974. Traditionally, Seymour ended the show by saying, “I’d like to thank you… I’d like to, but it’s not my style! Bad Evening!” But on his final telecast, Seymour eschewed his familiar goodbye and said nothing. He merely waved as the stagehands disassembled the set behind him. Mr. Vincent quickly succumbed to stomach cancer and died less than a year later on March 9, 1975. Several years later, Elvira took over Larry’s place as horror-film hostess on Fright Night, which later morphed into her own series, “Elvira’s Movie Macabre.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
Although these men and their genre has left the local TV scene, their legacy is recalled fondly by baby-boomers all over the country. They don’t make men like Harlow, Curley and Cap’n Star anymore. Like Janie Hodge and Bob Glaze (Cowboy Bob) these people were integral parts of Indianapolis schoolkids. They entertained and informed us all by filling the hours after school until our parents came home. Corny, yes, old fashioned, sure but they were our TV friends, We could always count on them to make us feel like they were all talking directly to us, Hal Fryar was really the first of his kind and his reach was a long one. He will be missed.
Original publish date: July 27, 2017
On June 16th I found myself in Marshalltown examining the items. I obtained my bidder number, which happened to be bidder # 1, and retreated to my hotel room to await the next day’s auction. There’s not a lot to do in Marshalltown, Iowa so I decided to take a drive to the nearby community of LeClaire, Iowa to mark time.
Among the items I brought home were a pair of contemporaneous framed leaflets. Both are displayed starkly in black wood and glass frames, one is a copy of Lincoln’s farewell address to the citizens of Springfield and the other a copy of Lincoln’s favorite poem. The farewell address is important to me because Lincoln’s first stop after the delivery of this poignant edict was Indianapolis. The next item was a classic looking photo of Lincoln ascending to heaven wrapped in the open arms of George Washington. The careworn oval metal frame fits snugly in the palm and bears the wear and patina of an item held repeatedly in the loving hands of a legion of Lincoln admirers.
The next item is the haunting life mask of Abraham Lincoln that once hung on the wall of the museum. The lifesized mask is attached to a larger handcrafted oval wooden plaque with a smaller brass nameplate attached to the front. The lifemask, made by artist Leonard Volk in 1860 before Lincoln grew his signature beard, is an accurate representation of what it would have been like to look at the face of a young and vibrant Lincoln. This item was surely a highlight of the museum and, judging by the loss of paint and subsequent repair of the nose, was a good luck talisman for all visitors. Rubbing Lincoln’s nose is still a popular tradition at the Lincoln tomb in Springfield.
owned. The Bible was obtained by Oldroyd after Mr. Lincoln was killed and presumably following the death of Mary and Tad Lincoln. The phone book sized Bible shows signs of heavy wear and transport in compliance with the somewhat vagabond lifestyle led by Mary and Tad after vacating the White House in 1865. Mary died in 1882. Tad preceded her in 1871. The Bible includes a couple pages of contemporary Carte de Visite photographs of the Lincoln family along with a few other disparate images from the Civil War and immediate post period. The inclusion of CDVs depicting Union Civil War Generals Grant, Sheridan, Burnside and Sherman alongside images of the US Capitol Dome under construction and George and Martha Washington could easily be construed as Tad’s version of collecting baseball cards.
The last three items of acquisition were perhaps the most important to me. I am a native Hoosier. I cherish the idea that Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood in the southern region of my home state. These three items offered a direct connection to Lincoln and Indiana. The first two items are innocuous in their relevance to Lincoln the Hoosier; the Lincoln family coffee grinder and Abraham Lincoln’s ice skate. 
The next Indiana Lincoln item is an ice skate. The thick wooden shoe stand is shaped like an hourglass. The heavy iron blade is curled at each end like an ancient Crakow shoe. While no official reference exists of Lincoln the ice skater, the skate presents a romantic image of boyhood Lincoln at play on a frozen southern Indiana pond. Simply holding it in your hands brings a smile to your face.
with me, at all costs. It is an ancient looking Colonial Era metal candle maker. During colonial times up to the Antebellum Era, candles were the main source of light during the long, dark, nighttime hours. Candles on the western frontier were made from beeswax and tallow (animal fat). The wicks were lain loosely inside the tube as the wax was poured in around them to harden.
Included with the candle maker is a framed certificate written and signed by Osborn Oldroyd reading: “This candle maker is from the Lincoln and Sparrow Cabin on Pigeon Creek Indiana (1818-1835) O.H. Oldroyd Washington April 9, 1901”. The certificate has a small brass diecut tab attached with the seal of the state of Indiana inset. It would be hard to find a more romantic artifact to illustrate Lincoln’s time spent in the Hoosier state. Young Abraham may well have learned to read by the light of a candle made in this, the Lincoln family candle mold. Stories abound of Young Abe the railsplitter reading by candle and fire light into the wee hours of the morning after a long day’s work in the fields.
Lastly, my wife treated me to a birthday trip to Springfield, Illinois in July. I traveled to the Lincoln home on an early Saturday morning to reflect while seated in front of the Lincoln home. Based on trips past, I’ve learned that the early morning hours are best. No school buses, tourists or fitness walkers / bikers to mar the scene. I have been coming to Springfield for many years. Of course, Abraham Lincoln is the reason for my visit. However, I never forget that Osborn Oldroyd lived in the house and operated his museum here for nearly a decade (1884-93). I’d asked several people, ranging from officials at the Lincoln museum to parks department employees, about Oldroyd in the past but always got a cool reception to my querie.
Alan E. Hunter 