🏖2️⃣"An Evening with John Wilkes Booth": My Brother & "The Brady Bunch" Producer

How the guy who used to beat me up when we were kids wrote and portrayed the unlikely role of his lifetime....and, how I was never more proud. PART 2️⃣ OF THE "SUMMER HOT-SOME ARE CHILL" PAID SERIES!

From LincolnConnection.org: “This poster announces a performance of the play ‘An Evening with John Wilkes Booth’ starring Clinton Case and directed by Lloyd J. Schwartz. The poster features a large illustration of John Wilkes Booth with a lighter illustration of President Abraham Lincoln placed above Booth's left eyebrow. Scenes from the play are placed around the Booth illustration. The title is printed at the top of the poster. Part of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum.”

The Man Who Would Be Booth

Clint’s Bellaire High School (Houston) senior yearbook photo, 1972 (that year, I was a junior). Actor Dennis Quaid was in his graduating class; in fact, Clint and Dennis took the same Bellaire acting classes together. While he’d get more into acting a little later, in 1973, at age 19, Clint became the youngest commodities broker in the country. Affording it, he went out and bought a red Corvette, and proceeded to total it one evening. He, thankfully, walked away without a scratch!

Pre-Production Notes

Clint was born May 1, 1954…with a full head of dark brown hair, Mom used to recall fondly. Bald as the proverbial cue ball (which would soon enough turn into fuzzy and blond), I was born some 46 weeks later! Mom used to say she “found out what caused it and stopped”!

All of which means that, every year, Clint and I were the same age….for six weeks! On March 18, I’d have my birthday, and six weeks later, on May 1, Clint would then jump up a digit! It was wild….in those six weeks, if someone asked our ages, we’d of course, say the same number and try to convince whomever that we, indeed, were twins…and, of course, we looked nothing alike! We wouldn’t have even passed for fraternal twins!

Because we were so close in age, neither one of us could settle into our “typical roles” as “little brother” and “big brother.” We would have needed a couple more years’ separation for him to feel protective and the other things big bros are supposed to be; and, those years would’ve helped me feel, too, like he was someone I could turn to when, say, bullies would threaten. Instead, “the bully was inside the house.”

Stories about baby Clint biting me in the back as we sat in our shared crib were oft-recounted family stories during many Holiday seasons. Thankfully, we each had our separate rooms (with locks on the doors) in our suburban southwest Houston home. My locked-door room played a huge part in my music enjoyment for many years, as I could listen, in peace, to all the promo albums my radio-employed Dad brought home just for me from the mid-’60s through early-’70s!

If Clint had been as interested in music as I (and he wasn’t), those records would’ve been just one more thing over which we’d invariably fight! (“Nuh uh! YOU got the last Beatles album! This one’s mine!” ad infinitum). Mercifully, all that was avoided by his being far more involved in sports than I.

This recounting of Clint’s creation of a gripping production of a 19th-century scoundrel and his heinous deed is the story of what I think was the highlight of his professional life. And, this is the letter to him I’ve probably been meaning to write for decades.

Clint passed away unexpectedly in February 2018.

But, First…..Stand-Up

After his ‘72 high school graduation (and a brief foray into commodities brokerage), Clint became interested in either a stand-up comedy or acting career, or both, if the stars so aligned. He even took dance and movement lessons at the Swayze School of Dance from Patsy Swayze, fellow Houstonian, Patrick Swayze’s mom (shown below, both with son, Patrick):

Clint also managed to get some gigs at local clubs for occasional stand-up dates. He and I collaborated on his material, while longtime entertainment booking agent Mom, helped him get some club dates, as well!

While I was Music Director (with a daily 3-6pm soft-rock shift) at the University of Houston’s FM radio station KUHF in 1975, Clint secured a weekly, taped interview show that I was more than happy to produce. Radio-seasoned Dad did the voice-over intro to the show, over intro music I selected. He kept most, if not all the reels of his shows.

Memory can pull out some of the names we interviewed…some were by phone, but the vast majority were celebs who were appearing in Houston for shows and what-not, and they’d drop by the station for an hour for the interview. It took some work to find their “people” to secure their appearances, but without the internet, we managed:

Boxer George Foreman (long before his Grill!), Ed McMahon (by phone), comedian Robert Klein, Gunilla Knutson (the Noxzema “Take it off” girl from TV commercials), band singer Anita O’Day, Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini, and many others:

Top row (l-r): Foreman, McMahon, Klein. Bottom row (l-r): Knutson, O'Day, Pastorini