Tiger Joe Marsh is the bald guy in the video shown above. Click to enlarge and go to Youtube to view full screen. As you can see from this video from Lost in Space Tiger Joe was a big tough guy. Not someone you would want to argue with.
Click on the pictures above to enlarge. Both of the pictures are of Tiger Joe Marsh. Here is more information about him from International Movie Database.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0550675/
Tiger Joe was a wrestling champion and then he had a movie career. In July of 1969 my friend Jeff Barr was living in Tiger Joe's house in Hollywood,California.
I had been hired to drive an art show to LA by Walter Hopps who was Director of the Washington Gallery Of Modern Art at that time. I and another fellow took a train to Chattanooga,Tenn. to pick up the art show at the art museum there and then rented a truck to drive it across country to LA and return it to the artist.
It was called Junk Art. It had been made from the remains of the junk from the Watts riots.
Here is a good article about this art and the artist Noah Purifoy. If you read through this you will find he mentions that the show returned to LA in 1969 in a truck.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IezzI4AFRtAC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=junk+art+watts+riots&source=bl&ots=0hfZ52Gz_-&sig=Sm6FHFmzAh5O59XjNTf3ZfA20ws&hl=en&ei=O-iUTJvtHYSKlweTy9ioCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=junk%20art%20watts%20riots&f=false
In another article on Noah Purifoy I read that this Junk Art finally went back to the junk yard. The Junk Art returned to just junk.
http://museumca.org/global/reso_articles_noah_purifoy.html
The link below is to an obituary for Noah Purifoy. It contains excellent bio information on Noah Purifoy.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/mar/09/local/me-noah9
The story of our cross country trip is another story so I will skip that and go right to LA where after we returned the art to the artist(we had spent the night before that in Pasadena,Ca. at a house Walter Hopps owned. See below for more on that and who was living in Walter's house at that time) we headed to look for my friend Jeff Barr. Jeff and I had roomed together in college.
We found the address in Hollywood but no one was home. It was early in the afternoon. So we waited.
When Tiger Joe got home he wanted to know who we were.
My partner said "We are friends of Jeff Barr and we are going to stay here tonight".
Tiger Joe said, "No, you are not".
Tiger Joe was not going to let two strangers sleep in his house.
Tiger Joe's dining room table was piled high with signed 8" by 10" glossies of Hollywood stars. Right on top of the pile was an 8" by 10" glossy photograph of Marilyn Monroe signed, "To Tiger Joe, Marilyn Monroe".
That was on July 8th 1969. We ended up sleeping in the back of the 12 foot U Haul truck. At least we had some of those blankets that U-Haul provides to wrap furniture in.
The next morning I woke up in the back of the truck. It was July 9th 1969. It was my birthday. I was 29 years old.
P.S. I should mention that on the night of July 7th 1969 we had stayed in Pasadena,California at the home Walter Hopps owned there. He had told me we could stay there. That was the first place we went when we got to LA.
Living in Walter Hopps' home at that time was the artist Bruce Nauman. So I got to meet Bruce Nauman. I even showed him our truck with the junk art in it. He didn't seem impressed.
Bruce Nauman was already famous by 1969 but a few years later he became a super famous and criticially acclaimed artist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nauman
