It all started at the Klock Theater in Neodesha, Kansas. Every Saturday in the late 1940s through the 1950s, I watched a double feature and a newsreel and a cartoon. It was all a magical montage of Cyd Charisse's legs, the antics of The Three Stooges, Rocky Allan Lane riding his horse like the wind, John Wayne in a black and white World War II, and a leather britches Annie Oakley transmogrifying into the luscious Betty Hutton… One time, the famous cowboy sidekick Smiley Burnette passed through town in his Airstream trailer. We watched one of his films and then he stood in front of the silver screen and talked about working in Hollywood. My friend Len Andrews gave him a beagle puppy. Such were the ways Hollywood put its hook into me.

Later, studying for a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at UCLA, I also took classes in stage lighting, scenery, sound and the history of film. It wasn't uncommon to have someone like Paul Newman or critic Pauline Kael come to class to discuss a film we were watching. I often had to leave a Spanish literature seminar early to pull the curtain for a play or act in a scene from a play or a movie for a friend's directing class.

I eventually left teaching and founded Insider Tours. I gave tours in my custom 13-seat van of Venice and Santa Monica and also the Marilyn Monroe tour. Although travel writers and many seasoned travelers loved our tours, the high cost of insurance plus the fact that hotels habitually called the large-fleet tour companies when guests requested city tours made it difficult to have a profitable business.

When I got out of the tour business and began teaching at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I decided to put the Marilyn tour, in ever more detail, onto a CD, so that I could update it every few months. Of course, in this way, I insured that my poking into all the fascinating corners of Hollywood would never end.