Sensational Seniors – September 2018

This month’s “Sensational Seniors” subjects are well-known Jacksonville residents Terry and Paula Block Erdmann. While their monthly Jacksonville Review column “The Unfettered Critic” provides insight into their Hollywood days, it touches only the surface of this intriguing couple. My two-hour interview with them covered their wonderful journey through the backdoor of the movie industry. But before I get to that, let me start at the beginning of their lives as their early journeys are equally interesting.

Terry was born on August 8, 1943 in Casselton, North Dakota, a small town of 1,300 people 20 miles west of Fargo. For most of Terry’s young life his family lived in the town, although his father worked on a nearby large farm from age 17 until his death at 72. Terry remembers that “I was twelve-years-old before I experienced running water in a building that wasn’t a church or a schoolhouse. And I went through twelve years of school with the same 28 kids.” Terry’s father was a Benny Goodman fan who wanted his two sons to learn to play Big Band instruments, so at age eleven a clarinet was placed in Terry’s hands while his older brother got the more romantic saxophone. Regardless, it inspired a life-long love of music for Terry. “I was a skinny kid with glasses who had little interest in sports, but I loved all the music classes. I played in the band, sang in the choir, and listened to recorded and live music whenever I could.” At age fifteen, Terry and several high school friends secured tickets to a dance in Moorhead, Minnesota featuring Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper; however, on the morning of February 3, 1959 they learned that the plane carrying these famous rock ‘n’ roll musicians had crashed, killing all aboard. Still the show went on with other entertainers, and Terry and his buddies attended the emotional event. Then, as Terry remembers, “When we walked out of the concert, all of us had decided to become guitar players.”

For the rest of Terry’s high school days, he enjoyed playing bass guitar in a variety of bands, covering everything from rock ‘n’ roll, to country/western, to polkas. His main band, The Tornadoes, cut a record, “You’re Too Late,” that got a good deal of local radio play and led to them going on the road right after graduation. Members of the band would come and go as they continued a rotating tour of dates across forty states. While enjoying a gig in Sun Valley, Idaho, they were approached by an attorney from Los Angeles who said, “Come to L.A. I’ll put you up in one of my apartment buildings and get you a recording contract.” The attorney introduced them to a manager who also handled Steppenwolf and 3 Dog Night. “They put us into the studio—where we sucked,” Terry admits. “We couldn’t turn our stage stuff into record stuff. My friends headed back to the Midwest, but I knew that it was 15 below in Fargo and 80 above in LA, so I decided to stay.”

Leaving 26-year old Terry in sunny Los Angeles, it’s time to bring Paula into the story. Paula was born on February 14, 1952 in the heart of Chicago where her father was a jewelry salesman. A product of the Chicago school system, Paula remembers, “I was sick a lot when I was young, so I kept to myself, developed a love for reading and writing and learned how to use humor and intelligence to defuse bullying.” During the sixties, she began writing fan stories about the pop stars and television shows that fascinated her. “Writing was a way of expressing my thoughts, and a way to communicate.” Not sure what she wanted to do after graduation from high school in 1969, but thinking it needed to have something to do with writing, she enrolled in the Journalism School at Michigan State University (MSU). She quickly realized that journalism was not for her, so she looked elsewhere for a major and found her spot in the MSU Creative Writing program. This led to her getting both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in English.

One day, while at MSU, she glanced at the student newspaper and saw an ad for the start up of a Star Trek club. A “Trekkie” at heart, Paula joined the new club, started attending meetings and soon began writing fiction stories about the memorable Star Trek characters. She helped organize the first Star Trek convention at MSU, which drew 700 people.

After receiving her MA, she accepted a scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC) and enrolled in a doctoral program in English, but, after a year, she became disillusioned with the program and moved home to Chicago. She landed a twelve-week contract with the Chicago Sun-Times, writing a series of humorous articles about dieting. Ironically, after dropping out of the journalism program at MSU, Paula scored her first professional writing gig—as a newspaper columnist. Not long after, she was hired as an editorial assistant at the Midwestern news bureau of McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. She quickly learned that “Someone with a good knowledge of English and basic writing skills can write news stories as easily as a journalism major.” Her new job had her researching and writing Midwestern-themed stories for a number of McGraw-Hill trade magazines. Her stories, which often reflected her subtle humor, were transmitted to New York to be published. One particular article on “hair mousse” caught the eye of the editor of Chemical Week magazine, who asked her to relocate to the New York office.

I last left Terry sunning himself in LA where he decided, at age 26, to start college at UCLA. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1976. He then wandered over to the Warner Bros. movie studio, venturing into the only door open to the public, the personnel office. Once inside, he passed a typing test and was placed in a floating secretarial pool. Because of his years in a band, Terry was fluent in entertainment lingo, which proved an advantage. One day he was assigned to work in the office of Sherry Lansing, the production executive for a movie that was being made, Kramer vs. Kramer. When Lansing moved in 1980 to become president of Twentieth Century Fox pictures, she asked Terry to come along as her personal secretary. Terry relates, “I greeted—and served coffee to—nearly every famous person you can name, from Paul Newman and Robert Redford, to Jane Fonda and Mary Tyler Moore. It was a fascinating job but all my friends worked in the studio’s publicity department, and the more time I spent with them, the more I was drawn to being a publicist.” With the support of his boss, he transferred to the publicity department and was assigned to work on the publicity campaign for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The main function of a publicist is to get information about an upcoming movie out to the public before the film is released. This includes developing written materials, choosing film clips for specific television outlets, and setting up interviews with actors. “After my initial experience with Return of the Jedi, I was assigned to promote a host of Twentieth’s science-fiction movies, including Aliens, The Fly, Edward Scissorhands, and Cocoon. For Cocoon, I created a traveling publicity campaign that I took to colleges, science fiction conventions, and trade shows around America. One of my stops was at a Star Trek convention in Lansing, Michigan.” While attending a banquet at the convention he was seated next to a young woman who “loved Star Trek, had a professional job, and had stuff of substance to talk about.” This banquet, of course, brought Terry and Paula together for the first time. Coincidentally, the following week he was scheduled to be in New York City, where, you’ll recall, Paula was now working. Terry was there to help with a “press junket” for Cocoon that the studio was hosting in the famed Plaza Hotel, which included appearances by the actors and filmmakers. At the same time, a sci-fi convention was happening at a different New York hotel. Terry arranged for Cocoon’s director, Ron Howard, to accompany him from the Plaza to make an appearance at that convention as well. He invited Paula to join him for the fun. Today, she smiles, remembering, “On our first date I found myself riding in a limo with Terry and Ron Howard as we sped across Manhattan. I thought ‘Boy, does this guy know how to make an impression on a girl.’”

This New York “date” kicked off a seemingly unlikely long-term/ long-distance relationship for the couple. “Think of it,” laughs Terry. “Paula’s office was a mile from the Atlantic Ocean while mine was two miles from the Pacific. And we were a couple.” Hoping to cut down on the distance between them, Terry started booking more publicity events on the East Coast so Paula could join him. The result: Their first twenty dates were in twenty different cities. After two years of this, Paula realized that her monthly phone bill was approaching her monthly rent payment, so she announced that she was moving to Los Angeles. By this time, she was an international editor for McGraw-Hill, and her boss suggested that she could do her job on the West Coast as easily as the East if she got one of those “new things”—a home computer. She made the move to L.A. in 1988, but within a year her magazine was sold. Undaunted, she took on freelance writing and editing tasks for a variety of publications.

Meanwhile, Terry accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures to serve as the Unit Publicist for the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, where he would be on-set the entire time the movie was being shot, preparing the film’s initial publicity campaign.

Coincidentally, Paula heard that Paramount’s licensing division was looking for someone who had a background in publishing, and an in-depth knowledge of Star Trek. Paula was a natural fit. “This was the first job I had that I was fully qualified for,” she chuckles. She held the position as Paramount Pictures’ Director of Publishing for the next nineteen years.

During this time, Paula and Terry got married (on February 14, 1994) and, soon after, purchased their first home. Another career opportunity arose when Simon and Schuster Publishing asked the couple to write a “behind-the-scenes” book on the TV show, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was favorably received, and led to other entertainment-themed publications. To date they have co-authored seventeen books, have contributed to more than a dozen others, and have written three fiction novellas.

Eventually, the travel demands of being a Unit Publicist became tiring for Terry and he “retired.” The couple went on a long-delayed honeymoon up the Northern California coast and on to Southern Oregon where Paula’s nephew lived. They enjoyed several days in the Rogue Valley, and on the last day Paula’s nephew took them to La Fiesta in Jacksonville for lunch. After lunch, they came outside and looked down California Street, where they instantly were captivated by this scenic town. Returning to LA, they realized that they had been struck by “The Jacksonville Effect.” Within a few months, they had sold their home and dashed back to Jacksonville, purchasing a new home on Applegate Street. While still unpacking, Terry heard a bass drum sound and a scratchy guitar riff coming up the hill. He thought, “Oh no, we’ve moved next door to a garage band.” Then he heard a rich, beautiful voice, and said to Paula, “That woman is doing a great imitation of Bonnie Raitt.” That’s when the reality hit them. It actually was Bonnie Raitt. This was their introduction to the Britt Festival—which made their choice even better.

A month later Terry saw an announcement in the Jacksonville Review for a 2008 “Meet the Candidates” event sponsored by the Jacksonville Boosters Club. Curious about local politics, he attended the meeting and came back to announce to Paula, “Well, we are now members of the Boosters Club.” They have been members not just in name, but also in deed—ever since. Paula has been the Boosters photographer for a number of years. Terry served eight years on the Boosters Board of Directors, was the editor of the Boosters newsletter for seven years, and has been lead parade marshal for the Victorian Christmas and Chinese New Year’s parades since 2010. In addition to their active participation in the Boosters, they write a monthly column for the Jacksonville Review, covering a host of entertainment-related topics.

Terry and Paula Block Erdmann have led fascinating professional lives, and bring a spirit of energy and enthusiasm to our village that is hard to duplicate.