Look for it late Wednesday or Thursday morning.
If you are a DC Comics fan from the 1970's,80's and early 90's-this is for you!!
Jason Christensen was the first of a few to send me word of a sad day as
actor Richard Hatch passed away at the age of 71 from pancreatic cancer.
Long before someone of that name was the first star of reality television,Richard Hatch was a star of late 1970's television from the ABC soap opera "All My Children",the replacement for Michael Douglas for ABC's "Streets of San Francisco and the ABC sci-fi cult attempt to take advantage of the Star Wars rage-"Battlestar Galactica" in the main role of "Apollo".
Hatch also was one of better participants in the various "Battle of the Network Stars" competitions as well,so during his time,Hatch was pretty visible..
I've talked about my childhood of watching soaps with my late Aunt Edna and remember the character that Hatch played,but he was gone from the soap by then,but I wasn't a Streets of San Francisco watcher and despite watching Battlestar Galactica,I wasn't a passionate fan as a child.
It wasn't terrible,but it wasn't all that memorable to me despite it being the first thing that I remember seeing Dirk Benedict in before "The A-Team" and the last thing that I remember seeing Lorne Greene in that I watched (Greene did a few more things that I passed on),though thankfully Greene didn't sing in Galactica (Although I wouldn't have minded a little "Ringo")....
So,why a post on Richard Hatch then?
Well,Richard Hatch was part of the introduction to something that I continue to be a fan of to this day.
In 1978,I was in 5th grade at rockin' Fountain Rock Elementary and with the days of the three networks on television,things like made for television movies were far more frequently televised than today.
This leads to one night that my mom watched a CBS Movie of the Week entitled "Deadman's Curve",which was the story of the 1960's music duo of Jan and Dean.
Richard Hatch would play Jan Berry with Bruce Davison of "Willard" fame (another late night viewing from the younger R.S) as Dean Torrence,but I had never heard of them.
Two hours later,I was asking my mom,if she had any of their albums,she had two and I wore them out!
To this day,those two albums are framed and hang in my hallway (along with another J&D album that Ryan found for me) with my fandom set forever.
To this day,I still have J&D CD's in my car to listen and I've never met a bigger fan of the pair than me.
I bought Deadman's Curve on VHS years ago and it didn't quite age as well as I remember,but it was solid enough for a movie that fudged a few facts (those weren't easy to find out in the non-internet age) and Hatch and Davison looked enough like Jan and Dean to get by and their lip-sync was pretty good for the film as well.
Without that film,I wouldn't have been introduced to the group,which I've been such a fan of since then-from albums to cassettes to homemade dubbed cassettes to cd's and now some youtube videos as well-Jan and Dean has been background music to much of my life.
I've always been a person that when I like something,I mean really like it,it stays forever.
One time,a person that I know told another person "I bet he (me) still listens to Jan and Dean'.
My response was upon being told this-'Yeah,I do,I like what I like" and it all traces back to that movie,the music and the performances of Richard Hatch and Bruce Davison to hook me and leave me wanting more...
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