Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for April 14, 2024

Considering Cary Grant died in 1986.. Just how old was Nancy supposed to be when she met him??

Forget Kristen Stewart. What if Nancy knows Patrick Stewart or Martha Stewart? ;)

Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart all have one thing that Ariana Grande never had and never will: class. If anything, Ariana Grande is basically a lite version of Miley Cyrus: blatantly overtly sexual to intentionally tarnish the previous squeaky clean image she once had at a time when little girls all over the world still looked up to her as a positive role model because she was Hannah Montana. It’s sad to think so many of these former Disney and Nickelodeon girls ended up going down such a route; I understand one such former Nick girl works in the p0rn industry now.

Anyway, some of the people I’ve met over the years of attending cons include: cast members from SESAME STREET, including Alan Muraoka, Roscoe Orman (Gordon), Emilio Delgado (Luis), Bob McGrath, and Caroll Spinney (Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch); Steve Whitmire (former Muppet Performer of Kermit the Frog and Ernie), Marty Grabstein (voice of Courage the Cowardly Dog); and Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H’s Klinger). I’m really looking forward to possibly meeting Kevin Clash (former Muppet Performer of Elmo), Bill Barretta (Muppet Performer of Pepe the Prawn, Bobo the Bear, Rowlf the Dog, and Dr. Teeth), Paul Williams (who practically wrote the 70s in song), and Jon Lovitz at this year’s con . . . assuming I can afford it this year.

Celebrities I’ve met (for more than a ‘Hi, how are you’". The “Fonz” Henry Winkler (nicest person on Earth), Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, Duke and Dream Team basketball player Christian Laettner, Mickey Mantle, Mr. Big bassist Billy Sheehan and 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant.

I met Barack Obama at a campaign stop in Charlotte, NC

Go watch some old movies girls. Haven’t they seen “It’s A Wonderful Life?” Or "The Philadelphia Story, that featured all three.

Could be worse. Could be Rod Stewart.

My daughter is 30 and she knows Gary Grant, Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn. Their movies are on TV all the time. The effort to make the kids these days sound ignorant is just painful.

Yo, it’s Bernice.

Stick around through next week, Bernie.

Bets and Tiffany are gonna “Guinea Pig” Luann, and you can make your trademark Snarky Remarks while they do.

And maybe if We’re very lucky, the BATUB Crew will shift to branding YOU.

And since you’ve been getting free room and board for the last five or so years at Casa DeGroot, you SHOULD have BATUB’s 500 buck fee on ya.

And as a bonus you can ask Tiff why you weren’t invited to her “Doll-O-Ween party last year. ;-)

PS: Stewart. Jimmy Stewart, Luann. Don’t tell you’ve NEVER seen “It’s a Wonderful Life!”

Sadly, that level of ignorance is rampant. I recently talked to someone in her late 20s who is a history teacher in an elementary school, and she said she had NO idea who John F. Kennedy was. And it has nothing to do with when you were born. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Queen Victoria and Bert Williams were all before my time, but I know who they are. And it’s not like Archie Leach, Kate Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart were obscure, either. Obviously we’ve still got our work cut out for us……

Ahhhh… The manifestation of ye olde Generation Gap!

Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart had two things that Ariana Grande, never did or will have class and dignity… Two sets of values for class.

Based on the age Nancy is supposed to currently be, they probably shouldn’t have used stars from Nancy’s grandparents’ day. They should have used stars who GenXers or the last of the boomers would have been excited to meet.

A word about James “Jimmy” Stewart: he was not only an Oscar winning actor, but also a decorated combat veteran in WW2. He retired from the USAF as a brigadier general in 1968. He even flew B-52’s.

I guess B is not as smart as she thinks she is…

Ariana Grande?

Never had a hankerin to meet any movie or TV stars. They don’t do nothin for me

Okay – that is actually funny! Please Please ditch Bets y.

I was curious to see if it would have been possible for Nancy — now in her mid-40s (?), so born around 1979 — to have met these older movie stars. Stewart died in 1997, Hepburn in 2003 and Grant in 1989. So it’s possible, but she would have been a child to have encountered Grant in his last years, a teen to meet Stewart and in her young 20s for Hepburn. Possible, but still off-seeming…I agree with the comment that Nancy would have been more likely to have met and been impressed by younger stars popular with her age group.

I haven’t the slightest desire to see Grande. Not even a glimpse.

My father was a plumber in southern California in the sixties (back when Hollywood was in Hollywood and not in Vancouver) so he got to work for movie stars all the time. The one he used to like to tell people about most was Jay Silverheels.

And, ALL of those that Nancy mentioned, would be thoroughly disgusted with the uninspired filth and trash that Hollywood turns out today to placate the brain-dead.

Last name Stewart? How about evil people like Rod Stewart and Martha Stewart?

“She’s probably just jealous that we saw Ariana and she didn’t!” I dunno about that, Luann. With Ariana’s preference for married men, I think Nancy’s more than fine NOT crossing paths with her. Either way, Frank is a high quality man that wouldn’t be swayed.

Also, it’s too bad to see Luann and Bernice come off like hardcore Ariana fans. Her fans defend Ariana singing a song about how proud she is about being a homewrecker and it’s so obnoxious. Imagine being the wife of the sleazebag guy (the mother to his child) and having this nasty two-faced woman sing about how cool she thinks she is after running off with your husband?

Sorry for the tangent, these two need to idolize better people than Ariana Grande.

I have two stories about meeting a famous actor and a singer. If I tell it to anyone under the age of around 70, all I get is a blank stare.

Vincent Price once came into the store where I worked, walked right up to me and asked me a question. Not expecting to see him, I did not recognise him. Too bad, as he was the very actor I wanted to meet. And looking to be recognised was exactly the thing he liked to do.

The other performer was Bill Kenny of the Inkspots, who became a personal friend.

I guess Luann forgot about the time Clay Aiken’s driver almost hit Puddles and he stopped to see if he was okay.

I’m on the opposite end of the generation gap with this pop culture reference. Who is Kristen Stewart?

I shook hands with Perry Como when I was a kid. Perry Como, you know, the singer? Don’t know? Oh well, I shook hands with him anyway.

I met Andre Crouch at a church function once, very nice man.

My job put me in contact with several well-known people through the years. Probably most famous would be Bill Clinton whom I met a couple of times (enough to spend several minute chatting with each time). Most enjoyable, probably was sitting next to John Lewis at a luncheon. He was absolutely delightful and made me feel as important as any of the big name folks.

She was on the set of Philadelphia Story, impressive.

I’ve met Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor. I even have a picture with him & Nicola Bryant, his co-star (Peri). He signed a picture of the event. The original was my eldest daughter’s Christmas present. I have now a scanned copy. I met more Doctor Who actors that weekend.

I met Bo Sox slugger David Ortiz once. A Spanish instructor at my community college whom I am good friends with grew up in the DR with him. My buddy Ruben ad Ortiz shared an apartment with several other Dominicans while my friend Ruben was acting as a translator for some of the DR players in the BoSox minor league camp in Fort Myers back in the ’90s while teaching Spanish as an adjunct at what was then Edison Community College (now Florida SouthWestern State College). I became friends with him a few years later when we both got tenure at our community college on the Suncoast. We went down to City of Palms Park for spring training in about 2007 for a game and Ruben got us on field passes and I had a cool meet and greet with his old friend David Ortiz. Got a couple of photographs and an autographed baseball from Big Papi. As a Rays fan I did not have any Red Sox gear for him to sign.

I also met Bobby Bowden while buying groceries with my sister in Tallahassee circa 1987, he was buying some Publix rotisserie chicken and some sides from the deli. He asked if we were FSU students, which we said we were and then asked our majors. Coach Bowden told us to enjoy our college days but study hard, He then wished us luck with our classes as he paid for his bird and went out to the parking lot. True fact: Bobby Bowden kept a listed number in the Southern Bell phone book from the ’70s until they quit publishing those things. He lived in a nice but not opulent neighborhood in Tallahassee, about a half mile from the Publix where I met him. A very humble but friendly man. The gentleman simply emitted a positive and friendly aura.

Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart were in the film “The Philadelphia Story” released in 1940.

My parents used to play cards with Dorothy Lamour when I was a child. She lived in a home built by my in-laws, a nice home, not an ostentatious mansion. I sat on Arthur Godfrey’s lap on his boat at Great Oaks Yacht Club. Both in Maryland and because my parents belonged to the Baltimore Yacht Club. Younger people look at me as if I’m speaking about Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

I once met Hedley Lamarr

They’d be more likely to know Jennifer Grant, Cary’s daughter

Harry Belafonte, Ricardo Montalban (wonderfully gracious gentleman), Joe DeSantis, Jimmy Westerfield, William Shatner, Henry Winkler, Walt Disney, Wally Boag (the Clown Prince of Disneyland). A dear friend of mine once had milk and cookies with Katharine Hepburn, what a story that was.

Who is Ariana Grande?

So, in about 2 generations, few, if anyone, will know who Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, etc. are.

Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart…now THOSE are REAL celebrities worth meeting!

Because of my job, I’ve met a lot of celebrities. Some are nice, some are dopes. Surprisingly, one of the nicest people I ever met was Joan Jett back in the late 70s I think. I hope she’s still the same.

I met Coolio. Well, actually I saw him in an airport once.

And here is a problem with comic strips. They have adult characters who due to a sliding time scale would have been in the Seventies or Eighties and yet they are being written by people born in the Forties and Fifties and acting as if it’s still the Nineties.

Ariana Grande? Isn’t she the doughnut licker that’s hates America?

It’s hard to impress someone with meeting a celebrity that they never heard of.

I saw Bing Crosby at a SF Giants baseball game when I was 6.

These two probably don’t even know what a rotary dial telephone is either.

Getting somebody’s autograph isn’t the same as meeting them, sorry

I once served the unknown comic his appetizer

This comic is based on fact. I was talking to a 30’s-something friend about how some men just get more and more better looking with age, and when I mentioned Cary Grant, she said “who is Cary Grant”? This was a stab in my 75-year-old heart.

I grew up in Denver, Colorado, so not many celebs, except for a visit in Los Angeles we saw Deforest Kelly. In college at UNC (Greeley, CO) I met Arthur C. Clark and Pat Paulsen. In sports I met Dave Hill (golf) and Karl Mecklenberg (football), and Irv Brown (Baseball coach, Basketball official, and Colordo sports legend). That is, I met, and had a conversation. My father and I also attended a golf tournament and I watched Doug Sanders & Chi Chi Rodriguez. Here’s an oddity. My wife and I were in Rochester, Minnesota, having visited the Mayo Clinic, and we stopped for lunch at a restaurant there. I happened to get in a conversation with some guy and I noticed his name was Irv Brown. I chatted with him for a minute and told him about his Colorado namesake. The next day I discovered that Colorado’s Irv Brown had died, about the same hour I mention him.

I was going to say something about kids today. Then decided I didn’t want to shoot fish in a barrel.

Don’t worry, girls, at some point in your life you’ll mention a well known celebrity from your time to a teenager or kid and they’ll respond with “Who?”

In the great old days you “knew all” the movies, the music, the shows on television, a lot of the actors and actresses, and the news was real and legitimate and you could trust people like Walter Cronkite. Not many reporters today would dare leave their comfy desk and go into a dangerous war zone.

considering that Luann was a toddler in 1986 I"d say that makes Nancy about the right age

So because they mention someone younger than many here know of, and don’t know of people mentioned that were famous decades ago and are ALL dead, they younger characters are idiots? The ageism seems to be working backwards today.

I met Jimmy Stewart, chatting with Alfred Hitchcock, in A Local pizza place when I was five. My mother had a bit of a crush on him. I lived in the right place for that.

I’m guessing that a number of people who are trashing Ariana by elevating the virtues of stars from a different era never read Scotty Bower’s book or saw his documentary. Mind you, I don’t think the old stars were doing anything wrong, just that the folks here might be surprised. A lot of secrets were kept in Hollywood in the old days.

About the only celebrity I met up close was Yogi Berra. He was doing autographs at a local sporting goods store.

Start watching the classic movie channels, girls!

I met and befriended Jackie Fox, Michael’s sister. She is so sweet, she sent my daughter a Christmas card. I still kick myself that I didn’t send one back and keep in touch. Being the sister of a celebrity has to make social connections extremely difficult. Sorry Jackie

How old are these parents supposed to be?!? Because people with a 19-year-old daughter and a 23-year-old son should not be old enough to brag about Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart; those are movie stars more suited to their parents.

Age and times make a difference!

I had lunch with Charles Lindbergh. It was at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Of course, he was dining up on the mezzanine and I was down on the main floor with 5000 other cadets. :)

Neither one cares about the others sightings.

This is a surprise. Either Nancy loved to participate in events where actors met the public or in the past she went to visit Hollywood, maybe looking for celebrities to get autographs. It would be interesting to know more. Luann and Bernice should look up about the past celebrities of the past that Nancy mentioned.

Bernice has watched old (slash) silent movies with Piro. She surely knows lots of old time actors.

Had a few soap actors, B-movie actors, performers, and sports celebs in my cab before. Some were real a$$hats, some were really nice. When the movie SHAG was being filmed in Myrtle Beach, there was a woman next door to me that was doing the wardrobe fittings. Phoebe Cates and Bridgette Fonda were there and I got to meet and chat with them, well, more like it was chat with Phoebe, Bridgette just looked bored (or maybe just really tired form shooting).

In my current employment, we have had a few stars come in and shop. KD Lang and David Ogden Stiers were two memorable ones. Very genuine people.

I hate to say it, but … Ariana who?

I met Trina Robbins, Kate Worley, Reed Waller, Michael Dorn and Johnathon Frakes all at the same convention, the very first Wonder-Con, when they were held in Oakland, CA. And others at other conventions. And my Mrs at The Edinburgh Fringe many years ago. R.I.P. Kate and Trina.

Our newspaper has a spot for birthdays, mainly celebrities. I usually recognize the ones over 50, the ones under, not so much.

Yea, a break from the branding drivel.

For maybe 5 seconds, I met Jimmy Stewart in 1982 — it was at fleet landing in Naples, Italy, he was headed out to the USS Eisenhower and I was coming ashore at that moment. If Nancy was 10 that year, she would have been born in 1972, making her 52 today. That’s doable. And, of course, everyone knew who Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn were, even if they were born too late to see any of their movies in the theater. We had this device called television… that showed innumerable old movies late at night and on weekends. More to the point, that was the era of the MOVIE STAR. Today, we have actors, but their stature isn’t generally all that great — probably because they all get on social media to give us their far too often ill-formed opinions. Back then, you had stars built up by the studio system and relentless public relations machines — they had managers whose jobs it was to shield the public from the actor’s true personalities, so their reputations held on for a long, long time.

Impressive thing I just found out was that Jimmy Stewart was a Brigadier General (1 star) in what is now the USAF.

You’re not that old are you Nancy?

Never met any 4-star celebrities, but when I think “England”, I think David Niven. Personification of America would be John Wayne. Brigitte Bardot for coffee in France.

Sorry, but there is no way that at least Bernice, if not both of them, wouldn’t know these names. Maybe they couldn’t identify them by sight, but surely they have seen some of their old movies. There is no possible way that they didn’t see It’s a Wonderful Life at christmas time.

Nancy is shining them on. It’s funny how each generation has no idea who the others’ “celebrities” are! In the first panel it’s obvious from her expression and body language Nancy has no idea who Ariana Grande is! And the girls seem to have no clue who Jimmy Stewart is either—-at least they aren’t impressed by the mention of his name.

…or Jimmy Cagney?

i interviewed Gerald Ford and Bob Graham for the Florida Jaycees…but the Jaycees are forgotten nowadays

Ah, the transitory nature of fame…….

Now I feel so old.

Yeah, because younger people have never seen “It’s a wonderful life” with their families. Stoopid!

There will always be a generation gap.

My mom saw Tyrone Power at the train station she used to work at back in the day; also the crown prince of India, but I do not know what his name was. It was one of her favorite memories! This was back in the 50s.

1. I once saw Richard Gere… in Ulan Baatar, Mongolia. I asked him for an autograph for my daughter and he refused.

2. My friend was in line at the Starbucks where his daughter worked in La Jolla, CA. Then he noticed that the guy in front of him in line was Robin Williams. My friend gasped, then muttered, “No way!” Robin turned around and said, totally dead pan, “Way.”

Big deal. I’ve talked to Robert Plant, Ringo Starr, Gene Simmons, Neil Peart, Dave Matthews, Sheryl Crowe, Allison Krauss and John Fogarty, just to name a few!

So…we’re “Fact Checking” Comics instead of just enjoying them? Really?

Sad…

“Celebrities” who earned that title don’t necessarily feel entitled to it or even enjoy it. Truth is they are people like everyone else, or at least the ones who do something (hopefully good) well. Met a couple, one on a plane who wanted to pet my kid’s head cause he wa so cute and the flight crew excused his behavior because of his “status”. Not a bad guy, just a bit “entitled”. My favorite was a famous actor who was also an incredibly good race car driver. On the track, including at the beer party after the racing day was over, he and his equalify famous wife were simply part of the racing familly. And just rally nice people!

I think almost everybody forgot that the comic strip was supposed to get a point across to its readers. Comic strip years are different than human years or otherwise Garfield the cat would be in the Guinness Book of World Records. But speaking of “old”, are people now an expert on Clara Bow all of a sudden?

Close enough for her purposes.

This strip has become mirthless.

Today’s omitted title panel: A newsboy, I’m assuming he’s shouting “EXTRA,” although the word doesn’t appear, is holding a newspaper with the “screamer” headline, “LUANN!” with Greg Evans’ byline on the “story”. The paper’s title, by the way, is “The Paper, On Paper!”.

Cary Grant IS a made-up name.

If they don’t know Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, or Jimmy Stewart, that’s just poor parenting. I knew who all those people were when I was in high school even though they were deceased. As an aside – I am super jealous that Nancy got to meet Cary Grant!

Oh, come on. A lot of kids their age know something about celebrities from before their generation.

At the VERY least they’d know Jimmy Stewart.

Badly done. Assuming Luann’s folks are in their 50s (but probably younger), all these stars were in their 70s/80s – or dead – when they were Luann’s age. Also, these people belong to entertainment’s history, so it’s more likekly for Luann and Bernie to know them than – let’s say – Richard Gere, Robert Redford or Debra Winger, who were top for my generation (I am in my 50s) . And it’s quite unlikely for someone my age to have never heard of Ariana Grande, especially if you have chldren.

Do you know somebody bought James Stewart’s house AS A TEAR DOWN???

What idiot wouldn’t want to live in Jimmy Stewart’s old house??