Funding fell through 1971

1971, I got a better-paying job as managing editor of a new newspaper called The Houston Convention News.

I interviewed Robert Altman in town filming Brewster McCloud.

I hired a reporter and we put together the first issue when my boss called to say the funding had fallen through and I had lost my job.

But as it turned out eight years later, in 1979, Bob Altman gave me a job in Florida.

WVPO News Director.

February 1971, just out of the U.S. Navy, I no sooner returned to the Pocono Mountains to live in Dee and Dale's house on Knox Avenue than I got a call from The Voice of the Poconos.

I was immediately hired as News Director for WVPO Radio in Stroudsburg, PA, a large college town fifteen miles south of Mount Pocono.

The boss said he hired me because I had worked at KTRH, an important news station in Houston that had given Dan Rather his first job.

Born for Olive Oyl in Popeye

Actor Paul Dooley, with whom I worked on 1979's Health, filmed by Robert Altman, was sharp and creative. 

He gave me a script one day and said, "Read this. Tell me what you think."

Jules Feiffer had written a script, called Popeye. 

"'Bob wants to film it in Malta. He wants Robin Williams for Popeye." 

I'd met Shelley Duval in Houston in 1971 when she had her first acting role in Brewster McCloud.

I said to Paul. "He should get Shelley for Olive Oyl. She was born to play her." 

Sadly, Shelley died at 75 in July 2024.

Shelley Duval in Houston

 

I'd met Shelley Duval in Houston in 1971 when she had her first acting role in Brewster McCloud, a film by Robert Altman.

Jules Feiffer had written a script, called Popeye. 

Paul Dooley said. "Bob wants Robin Williams for Popeye. He should get Shelley for Olive Oyl."

"She was born to play her." She was.

Name change in 1971

 I was born on August 27,1946, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Dorothy Ray Amstutz, without a dad. 

(He already had a wife and two kids) 

My grandmother (Nonnie) got a typewriter and forged my last name to Camfield. 

I was Larry Camfield until 1971 when I legally changed my name to Lary Crews to match my stepfather, Dale Crews.