I have some other sites besides the VintageMeld, one of them being the Warren William fan site I set up in late 2007. I must admit, I disappeared from that site for quite awhile (September 2008 til now), but I'm going to try and rejuvenate now for a few reasons:
- There's enough interest that the site has a greater number of comments than the total number of posts I've created for it;
- With the VintageMeld going strong I'm writing as much now as I did back when I tried freelancing (the bug is back!);
- By pure chance I subscribed this week to NewspaperArchive.com and am loving it! Of course after I researched what I went there for I performed a search for Warren William and, whalah, lots of new material;
- Jenny the Nipper over at CinemaOCD published a post about Skyscraper Souls which made me sit back and say, wait, I used to write about that guy!
That's William, Not Williams!
So this weekend, just to get the ball rolling again, I went through my collection of Warren William collectibles and found a pair of stills from a pair of movies featuring him which led to a pair of blog posts headed From My Collection - One features The Mouthpiece and the other Lady for a Day. I'm not going to blog about new Warren William posts over here on the Meld everytime I create one, but I wanted to announce these since they were the first in a long while and point you to the feed I've added at the bottom left of the VintageMeld home page which will automatically update with new Warren William blog posts.
By the way, I mentioned my Warren William collection up above, and yes, I actually do have one. What are you collecting right now? As a full-time dealer I have very little that I actually think of as part of my collection, but those few niche items are untouchables when it comes to resale--otherwise I'll offer up anything around here that's not nailed down. So what do I collect right now? Warren William, Green Arrow comics, Film Books (including research materials for my sites), DVDs (Classics, of course, plus Horror with a focus having developed onto Euro-Sleaze type titles), and recently a tiny but growing collection of Doctor Who Magazines. Quite the nerd am I, and loving it!
Green Arrow
The Warren William collection is by far the most diverse as I've been buying any period piece I can find of him when I have the money to spend. Financial constraints keep the collection small, but so too does the available material. Besides movies, including many long out of print or never in print titles on DVD-R, there are trading and tobacco cards, magazine articles, promotional and still photos such as those highlighted in the recent blog posts above, autographs, lobby cards and movie posters, though I'm least active in that least grouping.
What do I hope to gain from my collection? It's tough to put a finger on it exactly. I appreciate the actor and I suppose my curiosity was initially piqued by the dearth of available information. There are no Warren William biographies and he's usually only mentioned in passing in more general film books. He had no children, and thus no one to carry the torch in promoting him or telling family stories, etc.
Mr & Mrs Warren William and Wirehair Terriers
As an individual I find this further lack of information about his personal life all the more curious, as each nugget I do discover is like finding treasure. He was an interesting man, happily married in Hollywood, avoiding much of the party scene, but a bit of an eccentric tinkerer and inventor. Who knows, maybe one day I write the book, though in the meantime I'd be more than happy to settle as being a reader of somebody else's work.
So why collect him? Curiosity, interest, admiration, possibly the ability to assemble pieces that nobody has put together before, and by this I mean both tangible items such as the collectibles as well as pure information.
What do you collect and why do you collect it?
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