Ben Vereen, who to the best of my knowledge has never made disparaging remarks about clowns, outside the Alley in the Venice Arena surrounded by Master Clown Glen "Frosty" Little and several others including current Ringling Gold Unit ringmaster Jon Weiss smack dab in the center.
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The other clowns are Kenny Ahern, Patty Wendt, and Kevin Brown.
I just saw Ben Vereen at the opening of COMPANY. He still uses a cane, because of a car accident, but he was looking sharp, dressed all in black, including a black coat and a top hat (!), with a long orange scarf for flair. He ALWAYS has flair.
Oh my God! My photo has finally appeared on Mr. Cashin's Blog. Well, sort of. If you enlarge this Publicity photo of Ben Vereen & co., look closely at the "First of May" photo board in the background- I'm pretty sure Tammy Parish put that board together to Welcome all us F.O.M.'s. I'm on the top row second to left. First photo is half cropped (might be Doug Boyd), then me, Brad Bodary & Casey O'Brien
2nd row; First photo cropped (Unidentifiable), Patti Wendt, Brenda Rader-Graham, & Huong Phoung ("Downtown Danang- Louie Wang") Hoang- the Comedic Pride of SouthEast Asia.
Missing from photo board; #1 Master Clown- Greg DeSanto, and one of the finest examples of female clowning- Miss Marge Talavera.
~ John Darragh- Clown College Grad 1985
RBBB&C Blue Unit "Clown Alley" 1986, Red Unit "Clown Alley" 1987
Whoops! I almost forgot to mention
my other fellow CC "85" Grad and Blue show Alley Mate-
Ted "the Grim Reaper" Snyder.
Just prior to the taking of this photo, we filmed the opening sequence for that years's CBS special. My part of the sequence was to jump off a 7' high wardrobe box and land on my arse at the feet of Ben Vereen. I did this 15 times. I could barely walk up the train's vestibule steps for a week. It was worth the pain to meet Mr. Vereen.
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