RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

My Movie Career

My “Movie Career”

By Leo Racicot

I was foundering in Las Vegas, couldn’t find suitable work to save myself. One afternoon, I was idling in the lobby of The Riviera Hotel when I spied a vending table manned by an attractive gal. Her name tag read: Frankie. Frankie was recruiting people to work as movie extras (in those days referred to as background talent). Throughout the 1990s, Las Vegas was a popular venue for movie productions, much less cheaper to film there than in other locales, and – it offered ready-made sets: casinos, mountain vistas, lots of neon and wide boulevards. I don’t know where I found the courage but I marched over to Frankie and said I was interested. Much to my surprise, she signed me up on-the-spot.

Our first assignment as extras was for a movie called Top of the World with Dennis Hopper, Tia Carrere and Peter Weller (Robocop). Extras were asked to report to Hoover Dam, at sunup. Aunt Helen, who’d always been starstruck and confessed to me and Cookie that her dream when she was a girl was to be a Radio City Rockette, got more excited than I did and told all her friends, “My nephew, Leo’s going to be in the movies!”  She kindly let me borrow Marie’s Buick Skylark so I could get to the movie sets.  Waking up for an early morning call wasn’t my idea of fun but working on a movie set was exciting, seeing the cameramen, the lights, the director, the actors assembling for the day’s work was something new, something intrinsically thrilling, helped, I know, at a much-needed time to invigorate my flagging reactions to living in difficult Las Vegas, made me see the city and my presence there in a new light. When I saw the faces of familiar actors walking around not three feet away from me, seeing how a scene is filmed, watching how even the greatest of actors (Dennis Hopper) are told over and over to “do it again, Dennis!”, I came to life. One day, I spied Hopper standing by himself nearby. I sidled over, extended my hand and told him how much I liked his work, the anthemic Easy Rider and especially Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley, one of my all-time favorite movies. I maybe gushed a little bit too much because Hopper looked me over, head-to-foot and said, “Fuck off, buddy!”    Oh….kay….

But Tia Carrere was fun to be around, just ‘one of the gang’, talked and joked with us all, as did Peter Weller, just regular-seeming folks. I didn’t much care for the long waits between scene set-ups, the director’s ordering of one take after another. Oy!  I remember shooting a scene repeatedly in the 117 degree Vegas sun — the Hoover Dam interior doubled for a prison yard — the crew racing over to each of us handing out endless bottles of water; one fellow passed out from all the walking we were asked to do. I found it tiring but so interesting. Not interesting was the next day’s shoot when we were asked to drive out to Pahrump, Nevada, to shoot a car-chase scene not outside but inside Terrible’s Roadside Casino. Dressed as cops, we were made to run after a red Miata at least 30 times before the director finally yelled “Cut’. When I got home that night, I had a hard time getting my pants off; my left leg was the size of The Hindenburg, and a deep purple. I was so swollen and sore, I had to miss the next week’s shooting schedule and didn’t mind; Who in their right mind wants to chase a tiny red automobile buzzing like a mosquito for hours?!!  This show biz nonsense sucks, I thought to myself.     But I persevered with my burgeoning “movie career” and had unforgettable fun times. I got to see and kibitz with major stars: Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Darryl Hannah, Kathleen Turner, Joe Mantegna (I almost died when Mantegna sat down next to me one day at the lunch canteen and was talking with me as naturally as you please until out-of-nowhere, he bellowed, “This pizza tastes like fucking cardboard, sent a slice sailing into the air like a frisbee and stormed off.)  We all on the set were agog the day JFK Jr. visited his girlfriend, Darryl Hannah, on the set. I’d never seen such a handsome man. I’m afraid I stared at him a little too long and got a dirty look back. This was outside The Jockey Club on The Strip where The Last Don was being filmed. I also, thanks to the extras work, got to meet and chat with guys who’d been working the extras circuit for many years, got to hear their stories about all the actors they’d worked with. I remember chewing the fat with Yul Yazquez, stuntmen Hal Needham and Buddy Hart (who liked to reminisce about his days playing Beaver Cleaver’s pal on Leave It To Beaver), and John Bowman who knew entertainer, Barbara McNair and took us all to meet her for a late night meal at The Sahara. McNair was beautiful, had a great throaty laugh and even laughed at all our jokes.

Thanks to my “movie career”, I got to see local places I’d never have the chance to see: Hoover Dam, Pahrump, Nevada, the interior of the exclusive Jockey Club. I, who had always thought I’d like a career in entertainment, sure learned my let go of that starry-eyed goal; the long hours on sets, rowdy foul-mouthed sets (where I heard words and expressions I’d never heard, saw things I’d never seen before or since), the disappointments (if you blink, you miss completely my three seconds of fame as “Officer Manly” chasing a buzzy Miata — it looks like the thing is chasing me!) — all contributed to killing my Hollywood ambitions (better stick to writing kid).  I remember though, most fondly, a fellow extra, Chase Kennedy, who’d quit his job as a Michigan high school coach, to come West to pursue his life long dream of stardom. He was, in truth, a very good actor; he brought me to watch him perform in a drama/comedy at The University of Nevada’s Black Box Theater where Chase really impressed.  For some reason, he took a shine to me, even developing a film project and script about the life of Tiny Tim and wanted me to play the lead.  That was when Marie’s Buick decided to buy the farm at Rainbow Cinemas and I wasn’t able to make it to future project conferences at Chase’s Henderson, Nevada home.  I heard he moved back to his native Michigan, back to his football coaching, his movie career dream left behind on the flypaper-strewn streets of Sin City. It was good fun seeing firsthand the workings on a movie set: the people, the cameras, the lights but I don’t think chasing a car around for hours in a dark casino ever leads to international superstardom.

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Barbara McNair

Chase Kennedy

Darryl Hannah and JFK Jr in Las Vegas

Franie of Frankies Casting

Joe Mantegna on set of The Last Don

Red Miata

Terribles Roadside Casino Parhump

Tia Carrere and Peter Weller on set

Top of the World poster

Seen & Heard: Vol. 18

Eternal Flame sculpture by Jay Hungate at Lowell Cemetery

Public Art: Eternal Flame sculpture – On Saturday, May 2, 2026, Lowell Cemetery dedicated a new public art piece by Lowell artist Jay Hungate. The cemetery commissioned the sculpture, hand carved from blue and pink granite, to anchor the newly created West Meadow section which will add more than 900 new burial places to the cemetery. A second sculpture, also by Jay, will be installed later this year at the opposite end of this section. At the formal dedication ceremony, guests heard remarks from Cemetery Superintendent Seth Durno, Cemetery Trustees Chair Lew Karabatsos, Lowell Mayor Erik Gitschier, and from the artist. In his remarks, Jay said that most people who come to a cemetery for the first time do so in sad circumstances, usually the death of a loved one. He hopes that his sculpture reminds visitors of the internal spark that glows within each person, a spark that is not extinguished with that person’s death but continues on in the memories of those who remain. To see the sculpture, enter the cemetery at the Knapp Avenue gate and follow that road to its end at a t-shaped intersection. The new section and the sculpture will be visible to your front. 

Article: “Moment of Truth: Sam Altman may control our future. Can he be trusted?” by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz. This lengthy article – 15,000 words – appeared in the April 13, 2026, edition of the New Yorker. Both authors are staff writers specializing in investigative reporting. They conducted hundreds of interviews for this article including many with Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the world. Although artificial intelligence has been in the works for more than a decade, it burst on the scene in November 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, which was a stunning revelation of the capabilities of AI to those who used the application. Altman gained more fame – or infamy – in 2023 when the OpenAI board of directors suddenly fired Altman over his alleged lying. However, in the resulting fallout, several board members were ousted, and Altman was rehired and remains CEO today. Altman is in the news now because of an ongoing civil trial brought by Elon Musk which alleges that OpenAI, originally formed as a nonprofit to “protect the world from the potential harms of AI”  engaged in a nefarious bait and switch maneuver by switching to a for profit company as soon as billions of dollars in funding were received. In the New Yorker piece, a surprising number of people who have dealt with Altman identify two traits that define his character: He will say anything, regardless of its truth, to get what he wants; and he has no regard for any of the consequences of his chronic lying. Of course, as bad as Altman may be, Musk is considerably worse so there’s no way he can be deemed the “white hat” in this dispute. It reminds me of the Iran v. Iraq War back in the early 1980s. I didn’t care who won, I only hoped that both sides so damaged each other that it reduced the potential harm they could do to the rest of us.

Article: “Historians Contemplate a Birthday” by Jennifer Schuessler in New York Times, April 22, 2026 – This was a report from the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians that was held in Philadelphia earlier in April. The big theme was how historians were responding to the President’s decrees and executive orders that are white-washing American history by eliminating accounts of slavery, racism, sexism, and, as we have specifically seen at Lowell National Historical Park, the achievements of organized labor. Some said in today’s political climate, simply giving a factual account of some event from the past makes the storyteller seem partisan. For that reason, it’s important that historians highlight the sources of their conclusions. (For example, if you were to assert that the reason the southern states rebelled was to preserve slavery, you might quote the speech by  the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in  which he stated, “The reason we’re rebelling is to preserve slavery.”) Another issue historians discussed was who gets to be a historian. A panel said the historical profession “needed to grapple with the explosion of ordinary people doing history on social media sites like Tik Tok – often very well.” 

Op-Ed: “Older Americans Are Hoarding the Nation’s Potential” by Samuel Moyn in New York Times, April 26, 2026. While acknowledging the harms of “ageism” – the mistreatment of older people for no reason other than being old – the author contends the unfairness of ageism coexists with another form of unfairness: “a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.” The transformation over the past 90 years has been amazing. When Social Security was launched in the 1930s, the elderly were among the poorest in the country, but that situation has reversed itself. People should be provided with excellent care as they age, certainly better long term care than is available for most today, but that comes with a corresponding responsibility to downsize housing and retire from jobs to increase opportunities in home ownership and employment advancement for following generations which are currently being blocked from achieving the American Dream by their elders. 

Op-Ed: “Platner Has a Simple Message for Democrats” by Ben Rhodes in New York Times, April 26, 2026 – This opinion piece about the Democratic primary race for the US Senate seat in Maine is written by a former Obama era national security staffer. Rhodes spent a day with Platner while he campaigned in Maine. Platner is 30 points ahead in the (primary election) polls, Rhodes believes, because he sounds “radically honest” in the context of American politics, particularly when it comes to opposing the “forever wars” of the 21st Century. Both Rhodes and Platner believe that the Democratic establishment just doesn’t get it. They are petrified of being seen as weak on foreign policy, and they fear attack from outrageous sums of money spent by special interest groups like defense contractors, fossil fuel companies, and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Platner must be doing something right: just this week, Maine Governor Janet Mills, his opponent in the primary who was personally recruited to run by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, dropped out of the race. She was so far behind in the polls that donations to her campaign dried up and she ran out of money.

Wheels for Lowellians

Wheels for Lowellians – (PIP #105)

By Louise Peloquin

Carpools, public transportation, and bicycle paths somewhat relieve today’s urban congestion. In 1926, the term “carbon footprint” had not yet been coined. Car ownership was desirable and gradually, more accessible. The increasing number of private vehicles forced cities to modify infrastructure in order to adapt to the transformations brought about by heavier traffic. Public safety was also a priority. Examples of these issues were posted on May 6, June 3 and June 17, 2025. (1)

     At a time when skyrocketing gas prices make commuting more and more costly and cruising more and more unreasonable, this throwback gives us a peek at Lowell’s wheels a hundred years ago.

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L’Etoile – October 28, 1924

1925 LICENSE PLATES

     Automobile and motorcycle license plate distribution for 1925 will begin on November 10. Requests to obtain plates will not be received before this date.

     Application forms for 1925 are the same as last year’s. They are available at registration office branches, police stations, garages, automobile dealers, banks and automobile clubs.

     The lower numbers have already been retained and will reach 10,000. The five-digit plates between 10,000 and 100,000 have been reserved for applications sent by post to Boston. They will be distributed according to the order of reception. Send yours beginning on November 10.

     Six-digit plates will be available for the general public at registration office branches.

     Mr. Goodwin warns that no one should wait to place their license plate request because, last year, 300,000 motor vehicles were registered for January 1, 1924. This year, 400,000 people will probably want to take their automobiles out on New Year’s Day. Vehicle owners who read this notification are invited to be among the 400,000 who will not wait until the last week of December to ask for their license plate.

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L’Etoile – January 2, 1926

Automobile Registration in This City

__________

More than 6,500 autos registered at the local office at this date. – A considerable increase in the number of automobiles in the State of Massachusetts is predicted this year.

__________

      Ralph J. Karch, Lowell Automobile Registration Office chief, announced this morning that more than 6,500 automobiles have been registered for 1926. Almost half were registered Thursday. The crowd was so dense that applicants had to wait longer than an hour to obtain their plates.

     This figure does not represent the totality of the vehicles registered because many Lowellians got their plates in Boston. Residents of neighboring villages are also registered at the local automobile office.

     Mr. Karch says that the number of automobiles in Massachusetts will rise considerably this year. Consequently, revenue coming from this source will be higher than it usually is. The State uses this money to enlarge bridges and to repair main roads.

     A local company which owns many trucks paid more than $1,000 to register its autos.

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L’Etoile – January 4, 1926

APPREHENDED FOR AUTOMOBILE THEFT

__________

Two young men arrested for the theft of an automobile belonging to Eudoviste Barrette of Aiken Street. – The auto was stolen Thursday night on Middle Street.

__________

     An automobile belonging to Eudoviste Barrette of 493 Aiken Street, Dracut, was stolen Thursday night on Middle Street while Mr. Barrette attended the Club des Citoyens-Américains (American Citizens’ Club) New Year’s party. It was found Saturday, intact, on Common Street.

     After a police investigation, Angus J. McInnis and David R. Foster were apprehended by Police Officers Patrick B. Clark and Louis Turner and were accused of the theft of Mr. Barrette’s automobile. They were summoned to appear in District Court this morning.

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L’Etoile – January 7, 1926

OUR SHOPKEEPERS AT WORK

__________

They are actively preparing the expo to be held from January 25 to 30 at Memorial Auditorium Hall.

__________

     Lowell’s next annual automobile expo will open on January 25 at Auditorium hall and end on January 30.

     Local business owners are presently getting ready for this grand event expected to be an unprecedented success. Sales figures during the Lowell automobile expo are always considerable and, undoubtedly, the same will occur this year.

     The entrance fee has been set at 25 cents.

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L’Etoile – January 9, 1926

THE PURCHASING AGENT WANTS TO SAVE ON GASOLINE

__________

He would like to purchase all of the gasoline for the city service departments for 1926

__________

     Yesterday, in a communiqué addressed to all department chiefs, purchasing agent J. Donnelly made known that he intended to save money in 1926 by buying all of the gasoline for city service automobiles. He wanted to know how much gasoline each department needed in order to obtain the best price by making a one-time purchase.

     In his communiqué, the purchasing agent said that he had studied this possibility because many other cities were buying their gasoline this way.

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L’Etoile – January 14, 1926

1926 AUTOMOBILES WILL LAST LONG

__________

Experts predict that they will last longer than previous models.

__________

     New York, 14 – One of the best improvements in 1926 automobiles is its extended lifespan. Experts arrived at this conclusion after examining the models presented at the annual exhibition at Grand Central Palace.

     They stated that the 1926 models will last much longer than previous ones but that this will only be obvious after a year.

     Experts believe that only after 10,000 to 20,000 miles on the road will new models require valve repairs, ball bearing adjustments and engine ring replacements.

     Among other improvements is simplified chassis lubrification. In certain cases, the spring bolts are replaced by rubber links.

     Lavish polish gives colors an impeccable finish. Durability, attractive appearance and easy application make these finishes popular.

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L’Etoile – January 7, 1926

DAN O’DEA                                                           STEPHANE ROCHETTE   

Here are the New Prices!

                                            Old Price                              New Price

Tourist Auto . . . .           $875                                      $795

Roadster. . . .                   $855                                      $795                               

Type-B Sedan. . . .          $ 1045.                                 $895

Coupe. . . . . . .                   $960                                     $845

Truck with panel box.  $960                                     $885

Truck with metal box.  $885.                                    $810

Chassis. . . . . .                   $730                                     $655

     These new prices apply to autos and trucks superior to what Dodge Brothers had produced previously. These prices are made possible by the implementation of the $10,000,000 expansion program which practically doubles production capacity and consequently, significantly reduces manufacturing costs.

LOWELL MOTOR MART, INC.

AUTOMOBILE DEALERS

Moody – Tilden – Colburn Streets (2)

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1. PIP #68 – “Housing, Parking and Roadwork” https://richardhowe.com/2025/05/06/housing-parking-and-roadwork-in-1924-lowell/

PIP #72 – “The Bridge Street Bridge”

https://richardhowe.com/2025/06/03/the-bridge-street-bridge/

PIP #73 – “Street Wide”                                                                                                          https://richardhowe.com/2025/06/17/street-wide/

2) Translations by Louise Peloquin.

What’s in a name? Does it reveal our character or destiny? by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

The Names by Florence Knapp offers a rich exploration of identity beginning with our names – how much of our name defines how we see ourselves, how our name influences others’ perceptions of who we are – and expanding her characters’ lifelong searches for their authentic selves.

The structure of this interesting debut novel is not unlike the timeline organization of The Sisters, which I reviewed  December 18^th. Knapp follows three characters in individual chapters identified by their names, within the framework of specific slices of time over 35 years, all woven together by a shared family narrative. In the case of The Names, the characters – Bear, Julian and Gordon – are all the same person, their personal odysseys taking different paths based on the significance of their names. Here are life stories of what-ifs.

Cora, mother of Bear/Julian/Gordon, is Irish, married to Gordon, a highly respected British  physician and pillar of their London community. Accompanied by their 9-year-old daughter, Maia, Cora goes to the London registry to record the birth of her second child, under strict instructions from her husband to name the baby Gordon, carrying on a multi-generational family tradition. Husband Gordon, however, is a domestic abuser, and Cora imagines the burden the baby would bear going through the life named to carry through life “ties to generations of domineering men.”

She considers registering the child as Julian, meaning youthful or sun father.  A name meaning sky father signals the child would rise above his father. Daughter Maia wants to name the baby Bear, as someone who is strong but soft and cuddly, the antithesis of the father. Cora records the name Bear and is exuberant about doing so, but at home husband Gordon goes into a rage.

Each of the time-specific tranches of the book follows the life of Cora’s son as it would have played out if he had borne each of the three names. It starts in 1987 and picks up the stories of the three in 1994, rolling out succeeding tranches every seven years.

This intricate structure, while reminiscent of The Sisters,   proceeds in a silken way, making it effortless for the reader to be absorbed in the three versions of one person’s life.  All three of the paths are, whether consciously or subconsciously, shaped by the impact of having lived with a father’s rage, his pathological need to control the mother, a shocking murder, and the children’s lifelong efforts to reconcile their past, find themselves, build normal lives and find fulfillment.

Once an aspiring ballerina, abuse victim Cora herself labors repeatedly to express her own identity, but escaping her oppression is overridden by her concern is to protect Maia’s and Bear’s/Julian’s/Gordon’s emotional well-being from her husband’s toxic and abusive personality.

There is a purity to the story telling, and a reader can savor the author’s skill, the clarity and beauty of the writing. While it is a tense novel about searing family angst and dysfunction, it is also a book about resilience, finding one’s own individuality, and freeing oneself from past trauma to build a meaningful life. In the end, it is a hopeful book, intelligently conceived and well executed.