Whitney Blake? ("Hazel" actress)
Brad Ferguson
<mack...@dslextreme.com> wrote:
> Whoooa....somebody actually admits to having been in that turkey "The
> Betsy"? That was the film that demonstrated successfully that Olivier
> couldn't do an American accent.
It also demonstrated successfully the more interesting bits of actress
Kathleen Beller.
Brad Ferguson
<No...@Nospam.com> wrote:
> Speaking of Hazel cast that have died. I remember in the mid 1970's I heard
> a report about Bobby Buntrock's ( Harold Baxter the young son ) death at age
> 22. It said that he had hung himself on his backyard fence. I just now
> researched his death and came up with this interesting items ...
>
> http://www.voy.com/15282/2227.html
>
> This question was asked awhile ago. Here are 2 replies..."Buntrock was
> killed in a car accident in April of 1974. According to an entertainmnet
> journalist whom I contacted on Buntrock, his death was reported neither in
> the mainstream press, nor in the showbusiness trade papers. Furthermore,
> according to this journalist, the other cast members of "Hazel" were not
> even aware of his death until about two years after it took place. I thought
> it was a shame that he should be totally forgotten while so many other child
> stars of the past are so well-remembered"........."Most info said it was a
> car accident and one said it happened at the same spot his mother died a
> year earlier. So it was mentioned as a possible suicide (and one said it was
> actually a hanging and just released as a car accident"
>
> and
>
> http://www.voy.com/15282/
>
> Bobby Buntrock -- Gwynne, 09:48:15 07/30/02 Tue
> (pcp035286pcs.aberdn01.md.comcast.net/68.33.81.153)
> I just read that it was 10 years after he died when Whitney Blake who played
> Dorothy Baxter on Hazel found out that Bobby had died. She apparently said
> this on Tom Snyder's show. I just find it hard to believe that no one in the
> cast had any idea that this kid had died. You would think they would have
> heard something about him. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
I don't know why people think that TV people keep in touch with each
other after the work's over. As pointed out above, Buntrock's death
wasn't reported in the press. It's not impossible that Blake didn't
know anything about it.
I have no idea at all what's happened to the people I worked with
twenty years ago, and there's no real reason that I should. Why should
TV people be different?
TVC
The reason people think this way is that it tends to be true, for a few
reasons: First, working together on a TV series can breed an intense,
immediate familiarity with each other, that carries over into real life...
especially when the cast is portraying a family. Second, in doing TV work,
the number of hours spent together and the interaction is far more complex
and emotionally connecting than for people working together in most other
types of professions. And third, when the series ends, the people usually
remain in the same business, therefore, traveling in the same circles,
hearing about each other, and running into each other through the years.
The reason I know this? Almost 20 years of experience in publishing a TV
nostalgia magazine and interviewing dozens of actors of former series.
As for Bobby Buntrock's death, when we did a tribute to Shirley Booth upon
her death, we learned that when Bobby took his own life, the cause of his
death was kept from her because she had been very close to him during the
"Hazel" years, and friends did not think she would take the truth well.
I found that many former series' actors still, at the very least, were
sending Christmas cards to each other 30 years after their shows were over.
But I did find in my years as a journalist that the casts **did** tend to
lose track of the child actors on their shows (for what I'd think are
obvious common sense reasons), so it doesn't surprise me to read that none
of the cast knew of Bobby's death for years after it happened.
Brad Ferguson <thir...@frXOXed.net> wrote in message
news:031020021309421775%thir...@frXOXed.net...
> In article <fhRm9.22012$xI5.4995@sccrnsc02>, Fred Smith
> <No...@Nospam.com> wrote
>
>
Brad Ferguson
<tv...@concentric.net> wrote:
Thanks for the insight, TVC.