Oliver Hardy – Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

A few years back, I wrote a blog about those terrible Halloween costumes we used to wear as kids. You know, the one with the plastic masks with the holes in them? The masks with that cheap rubber band that always broke? Remember those? Here is a link to that blog as a refresher for you:

Halloween Dress Up

There was a Trunk or Treat close to our house recently and I could see all the kids dressed up in their Halloween costumes. I tried to remember what I had dressed up as for Halloween as a kid and I really cannot remember. So I pulled out a hard drive which contains a bunch of photo scans from my dad. I figured if my folks had taken any pictures of us in costumes, they’d be on that drive.

What I found was that there were next to none on this drive. There were a couple, which I will share, but nothing from when we were really young. I guess my parents must have thought those costumes with the cheap masks and slits for eyes were not photo worthy. The only ones they took pictures of were when we did something out of the ordinary.

One year my brother and I wanted to be vampires or something. So my dad bought the make up and such and the result was … less than steller.

We don’t even have capes! I dunno, this get up stumps me. My dad tried to make me look like Sir Graves Ghastly, who was a local horror movie host on TV. I think that he did a good job, but without the rest of the vampire ensemble, people had to wonder who they heck we were!

Sir Graves Ghastly. We met him once at a mall appearance. He was very cool and everyone asked him to do his “laugh.”

Another year I went out as Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy.

I’m sure this also made no sense to people answering the door because my brother dressed up as a woman. Perhaps Mr. Hardy had a date? I suppose I could have been mistaken for Charlie Chaplin, but my body shape was more Hardy than Chaplin!

The only other Halloween picture I have is from my Sophomore year of high school. The band had a Halloween party at some barn as I recall and we all went to it. I didn’t know what to go as, and decided on going as a clown. I threw on a pair of pajama pants over my jeans, one of my dad’s old shirts, an awful sport coat, clown wig, hat and tie, and added a huge horn. It was ridiculous!

This is just a guess, but that year at the annual Band Banquet, I won the Mock Elections for “Band Clown.” I am sure that this outfit played a part in that win. It was cool to win that award every year I was in band.

While this wasn’t necessarily Halloween, one of the other photos of my “in costume” that came up was one that I used when I worked at 94.5 The Moose. I used to take song lyrics and read them behind some classical music and called it a “Dramatic Reading.” It was a silly chance to “overact.”

The first reading I did was Gretchen Wilson’s Redneck Woman. Imagine classical music playing with me dramatically saying, “Victoria Secret. There’s stuff’s real nice. But I can buy the same damn thing on a Walmart shelf – half price!” It was utter stupidity. To promote it on the website, they took this picture:

HA! I’m such an idiot!

I suppose it is probably better that there are no pictures of me in those cheap costumes. I remember I was always overweight and the pants always seemed to rip before we were done Trick or Treating. And half the time, the thing that held the mask on broke after three or four blocks and wound up in the bottom of the Trick or Treat bag or pillowcase anyway.

As silly as these are, they are fun to look back at!

Tonight on ABC, one of the greatest Halloween specials of all time aired again – It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It is in this special that poor Charlie Brown utters those sad words, “I got a rock.”

In that scene, Lucy is wearing a witch mask. It got me to thinking about Halloweens of my past. I remember the streets would be packed with kids when I went out trick or treating! I remember standing in lines at the doors of my neighbors, waiting for my turn to yell “trick or treat!” By the time I took my boys out on Halloween, I was sad to see that the streets were not very busy at all. I remember being out late and rushing from house to house – hoping to get them all before they turned the porch light out (telling you that “we’re out of candy”)!

As I sat here pondering this blog, I tired to think of some of my past Halloween costumes. I can remember some of the ones from when I was older: a vampire, Oliver Hardy, and a Robot. The robot was a couple cardboard boxes my dad taped together and spray painted silver. We put cassette tapes, a vacuum hose, and other things on it and it was actually very cool. My brother used the same costume for a play he did in elementary school.

Other than those mentioned above, I didn’t remember any specific costumes off the top of my head. This is probably because most of the costumes I grew up wearing sucked. They were so bad, Jerry Seinfeld did a bit about them in his comedy act. I did a Google search for Halloween Costumes of the 1970’s and it all came back to me! Halloween costumes back when I was a kid were hardly original. Today, if you go to an elementary school and watch a Costume Parade, you will see some really good costumes! Many of them will even be homemade. This was not the case when I was a kid!

You usually bought your costumes at K-Mart, or Kresge, or the local drug store. The costumes of the 70’s consisted of primarily a mask. The mask had two big eye holes (which you really couldn’t see out of!), two small nose holes (which you couldn’t breathe out of!), and a slit by the mouth. It was a cheap piece of plastic and it sometimes cracked. The mask had a cheap rubber string that was stapled to each side. This rubber string was what kept the mask on your head. If the string broke, you either re-stapled in, or you took it off and didn’t wear it.

The costume also included a cheap one piece outfit. They were like “onesie” pajamas. You first put your feet and legs in it and then your arms. There was a tie that you tied behind your neck to keep it on. On the outfit it usually has the character’s name in bold letters on it. This must have been so if the mask fell off, people knew who you were supposed to be. 97% of all kids wore these dumb costumes when I was a kid!

While I Googled, I came across two of those stupid costumes I sort of remember having. The first was The Six Million Dollar Man:

I also remember having C-3PO:

I think I may have had an Underdog costume, too!

The outfits were so cheap that by the end of trick or treating, there were rips in the crotch or legs. Sometimes they were ripped up before you even got to go out trick or treating! We’d wear our costumes to school that day and they would rip in the classroom! They were paper thin, too, so you either had to buy it three times too big, so you could wear something underneath it, or you covered it with your coat and no one saw what you were anyway!

Here are some of the funnier costumes I found while searching:

From TV – Welcome Back, Kotter:

Mr, Kotter (above) and Barbarino (below)

Mork from Mork and Mindy

The Fonz from Happy Days

There were plenty of super heroes, including Batman!

And, despite how sexy she looked on TV, the Wonder Woman costume was actually quite scary …

I mean – look at Lynda Carter! She’s beautiful!! That costume is just freaky!!!!

One of the most ridiculous costumes was this one based on the movie Jaws!

Finally, for the gals who thought Donny Osmond was cute … this costume should make them think twice.

Come on! That looks like a weird Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner!!!

For whatever it is worth, I am going to guess that these costumes are probably worth money today. I have a lot of friends on Facebook who have extensive toy collectibles, and they probably have some. Mine are long gone, more than likely because they were ripped up and destroyed the same year we bought it.

It was fun to just spend time searching up the old costumes and looking at them. Do you remember wearing these? What were some of your favorite costumes? What are some of your favorite Halloween memories?

Tag: Oliver Hardy

Ghosts of Halloween Past

Halloween Dress Up