Spotlighting Famous Visits to County
Writing about the woman who created a stir by being mistaken for Carrie Nation started me thinking about all the famous people who actually HAVE set foot in Hamilton County.
I’ve covered some of the most obvious ones — presidents, movie stars, etc. — but I’ve also run across several whose connections to Hamilton County have been mostly forgotten.
There are enough of them that I can even divide them into categories. This week’s column has a “Television” theme.
Back in the mid- 20th century when practically everybody smoked, the Philip Morris tobacco company had a “living trademark,” known popularly as Johnny Philip Morris, Jr.
For 40 years, the tiny (he was under four feet tall) former New York City bellhop, whose real name was Johnny Roventini, used his distinctive voice to page “Philip Morris” in radio and television ads.
According to the Nov. 11, 1948 Noblesville Daily Ledger, hundreds of people had shown up at Hutson’s Pharmacy the previous day for a chance to see Roventini.
He arrived in Noblesville in a specially built, “flashy painted” midget car with a state police escort, and stood on a table in the middle of the store for a half hour, signing autographs and performing his famous page, “Call for Philip Morris.”
In May of 1957, television’s “Wyatt Earp,” actor Hugh O’Brian, attended the 500 Mile Race festivities as the guest of Fred W. Sommer, the owner of Hoyt Machine’s race entry. Sommer’s daughter-in-law happened to be related to O’Brian though her mother, Mrs. Ray Pittman, who was O’Brian’s cousin.
The June 1, 1957 Ledger noted that Mrs. Pittman had known O’Brian as a youngster when he’d visited his relatives on a farm south of Noblesville. Mrs. Pittman (I never found her first name) described the future television and movie star as “a nice, average boy who enjoyed visiting the farm.”
When you think of the 1964 Indiana State Fair, you probably remember it as the year of the Beatles. (Ringo’s visit to State Trooper Jack Marks’ farm near Noblesville has been covered several times before, so I’m not even going to go there.)
What’s probably been forgotten is that Jerry Van Dyke, Dick Van Dyke’s brother and a talented comedian in his own right, opened a show at the Coliseum for Tennessee Ernie Ford that year.
A Ledger reporter caught up with Van Dyke as he, one of his daughters, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Loren “Cookie” Van Dyke, did a little sightseeing at the fair.
A good portion of the August 31, 1964 interview was actually devoted to Cookie because the older Van Dykes had been Indianapolis residents until moving to California 3 years earlier.
Upon learning the reporter was from Noblesville, Cookie told him that both Jerry and Dick had friends in Noblesville and that he himself used to play golf in Noblesville (presumably at the Forest Park course) “every Saturday and Sunday from 1956 to 1960.”
Jerry added that Wallace “Wally” Kern, Firestone’s Traffic Manager, had been one of his dad’s golf partners.
When the television program, “Peyton Place,” began its 1966 season, several Carmel residents were surprised to realize they knew the newest cast member, Leigh Taylor-Young.
Taylor-Young’s family had lived in Home Place from 1955 to 1956 and she attended 6th and 7th grade at the Carmel and Orchard Park schools before the family moved to Michigan. Her sister, Dey Young, also an actress, was born here.
Taylor-Young married her co-star, Ryan O’Neal, and left “Peyton Place” after a year, but went on to many other television and motion picture roles and even won an Emmy for a recurring part In “Picket Fences.”
I actually remembered the April 28, 1967 Ledger article that confirmed Taylor-Young’s time in Carmel, mainly because one of her teachers, Inez McClellan, was MY 6th grade teacher, too.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at [email protected]