I do not have many regrets in life….because as you know regret is behind you and not in front of you.  But…..I do have one regret that pops into the Cogerson brain on a regular basis.  But like all stories a little background information is needed.  So boys and girls, have a seat and let Uncle Cogerson tell you how it was to grow up without the internet…as our story begins in the glorious decade of the early 1980s.

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s things were not so easy for an avid teenage movie fan.  Home entertainment was basically looking at family vacations on a 8 mm projector.  I won’t mention the type of 8 mm movies my entire neighborhood watched in my friends garage when his dad was at work.  VHS, DVD and streaming were still years away.  Heck…we did not even get cable until 1981 or 1982. I tell ya kids….things were rough!

We basically had three ways to watch movies in those not so glory days.  (1) Going to the theater and seeing the latest movies.  (2) Watching older movies on our one UHF channel…this is how I watched many Abbott and Costello movies in my youth. (3) Network television on Sunday night.  At 7 PM Disney would show one of their older movies on network television….and that would be followed by a movie of the week.  These movies would be making their “network debuts” even though they could be years old.

When it came to finding out information on movies….things were even more limited.  Basically I had Sneak Previews with Siskel and Ebert on PBS and my local newspaper, The Daily Press.  Sneak Previews was shown every Saturday in my market.  All these years later and I can still remember the television schedule when I was doing sleepovers at my grandmother’s house.  Sneak Previews, The Lawrence Welk Show (hey I had to let grandma get her way sometimes) Hee Haw (did not like the show…but nothing else was on) Love Boat (where lots of classic stars ended their careers) and then Fantasy Island (Mr. Rourke was the bomb!)

Our local newspaper, The Daily Press, was also the place of employment for my father.  The entertainment editor and main writer for the paper was Henry G. Edgar Jr.   Henry and my dad worked together for years and during that time they became very good friends.  During the week, Henry, would sneak some movie stuff in the paper…..but Friday and Saturday is when he produced the most movie articles.  Typically Friday’s paper would run an interview or a story on the star of that weekend’s big movie.  Saturday would feature Henry’s reviews on the latest movies.  When my dad would come home from work on those two days, I would run to his car to get the newspaper….and quickly devour the latest Henry movie article.

As the years passed….I developed a relationship with Henry….even though I never got the chance to actually meet him.  Through my dad we exchanged information.  Henry would tell my dad which star he had just interviewed in New York during a press junket and which article he was currently working on.  My dad would then tell me what Henry was working on…which pretty much gave me a preview of the upcoming weekend articles.  Meanwhile, I would tell my dad my reviews of Henry’s reviews.  For instance he gave Rocky III a pretty average review.   I was outraged that Henry had not thought that the movie was the new Citizen Kane.  My dad would tell him….”Your number one fan thinks you are crazy for not understanding the greatness of Stallone in Rocky III.”

Back then I was a huge fan of Judd Nelson (hey….he had a good couple of years of success).  Henry had gone to New York and had written a huge story on Nelson and his new movie at the time…From The Hip (1987).  The article was awesome (heck…I still have it) but his review of From The Hip did not appear in the Saturday paper.  Then it was not in the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday paper.  When Friday’s paper came out…..Sly Stallone’s Over The Top was now getting all of Henry’s attention.  I kept pestering my dad to talk to Henry about the missing From The Hip review.  Two weeks after From The Hip had opened…and still no Henry review….what was going on?

Turns out Henry was fighting for his Daily Press life.  In 1986…the Chicago Tribune bought The Daily Press.   Slowly but surely….the Tribune was replacing local writers with national writers.  Why pay Henry Edgar to review movies when they are already paying Roger Ebert to review movies?  So by the end of 1987 Henry Edgar was no longer part of the Daily Press team.  Local reviews were replaced by reviews by critics like Siskel and Ebert.  My inside knowledge of movie news had been severed!

So the years passed.  I graduated high school.  Started going to college.  Got married.  Had a kid.  While working my way through college I accepted a position at Arbitron Ratings (now owned by Nielsen).  They were the people that figured out what people are watching on television and listening to on the radio.  After about a year of working there (the most stressful job I have ever had) I figured it was time to move on…so I gave my two week notice.  So with about 7 days of work to go…..I was talking to another associate during break.  Somehow…and I know this will seem strange….I started talking about movies.  At one point the person I was talking to pointed at another guy in the office and said…..”You should talk to Henry….he loves movies too…..and he even wrote about them in newspapers for years”.

The light bulb in my head exploded!  (1) The guy loves movies (2) The guy wrote about movies for years and (3) The guy’s name is Henry.  I immediately walked over to the guy and said…..”Are you Henry Edgar from the Daily Press?”  He responded…”Yes I am”.  I quickly told him who I was and who my dad was….and he said….”You are Bob’s boy?…what a small world.”  Break was over…..and we had to go back to work.  That night I told my dad that I was working with Henry at Arbitron Ratings.  My dad told me to tell Henry a few things the next time I saw him….and I realized I had become the middleman.

The next day at work and for the rest of my tenure at Arbitron Ratings I was glued to Henry whenever we got a break or had lunch.  The man was an encyclopedia of movie knowledge and movie stories.  The man had met and interviewed almost every major star from the 1950s to the late 1980s.  He had stories on Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, James Stewart, John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich and of course the legend…Mr. Judd Nelson.

Henry was a huge community theater person.  He would audition actors when he was in New York or Hollywood for press junkets and bring them back to our area for performances in his shows.  Henry was one of the first people to give Bruce Willis a chance.   Henry hired Willis for a role in his production of Picnic.  Henry was probably one of the few movie people that knew Willis as a struggling actor and as a mega superstar.  Listening to Henry talk about the rapid rise and personality change in Willis was one of the highlights of my conversations with Henry.  Granted “our conversations” were me quietly sitting and just listening to Henry.

So what is my regret? Well I will tell you.  I worked with Henry for almost 13 months.  Other than a polite hello….I never gave the man a second thought.  I probably got about 10 to 15 conversations with Henry.  IF ONLY… I would have befriended him sooner….maybe my conversations with him would have been in the 100s or even 1000s.  Maybe he would have talked “out of school” on some of the subjects.  This great source of information….was just yards away from me 5 days a week….and for 12 and half months I failed to take advantage of it. I truly regret I did not see the light sooner….but I do appreciate the short time I did get with Henry.

After I left Arbitron Ratings I never had another conversation with Henry.  Henry passed away in 2009.  My dad passed away in 2011….so I am the last man standing from that triumvirate…but both of these men live on in my memory.