Tuesday, January 28, 2014
By MICHAEL WALSH
It all started, as so many things do, with Johnny Depp. We were discussing his avian headgear in the recent The Lone Ranger feature, when she asked "whatever happened to Klinton Spilsbury?"
Spilsbury, whose single screen credit is the title role in 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger, is the subject of a Wikipedia biography, an entry that includes a fascinating Canadian connection. "He has intermittently coached acting workshops at the Herpolscheimer Academy in Vancouver."
Say what? I though I knew a fair amount about the B.C. film business, but this was a new one for me. A Google search took us to a page that raised more questions than it answered.
An introductory paragraph tells us that the Sylvia Herpolscheimer Academy of Performing Arts (SHAPA)"is unique in offering 6 month long intensive stud [sic] sessions which include in depth teaching all areas of performance." Unless the institution is tailoring its curriculum to include the Ranger's great horse Silver, SHAPA's webmaster could use a proofreader.
The site consists of eight linked pages: About Sylvia (a biographical note straight out of a 19th-century Penny Dreadful); Resume; Herpolscheimer Academy; Famous Graduates (Megan Follows!?!); Gallery; Members; Guestbook; and Contact Me. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to create this whacked-out off-ramp along the information superhighway.
Then again, it could be for real. Not only is it mentioned in Spilsbury's Wikipedia entry, it's there in his International Movie Database (IMDb) biography as well. And who are we to doubt the word of a Masked Man?
[#11]