Big Wednesday in Chicago

When this movie came out I was working as a radio account executive. One of my accounts was Warner Bros. whose office in Chicago was run by the legendary Frank Casey. Casey had worked with every major movie star since the late forties and was universally loved by all. An eccentric character who was also best friends with Ronald Reagan and his wife Casey had a wild sense of humor and could do things well beyond his job description at WB. Knowing that I was a life long surfer he gave me my own screening of this movie at the Esquire Theater in Chicago. I invited everyone I knew and we sat in the dark and whooped and yelled at the waves and lost ourselves in the lost world of Southern California surfing circa 1964.

A week or so after the screening I was told coming back from lunch that a huge package had arrived for me and it was too big to put in the freight elevator. I went down to the building's loading dock and there lay a long sarcophagus looking wooden box, the top screwed on with flush mounted Phillips screws. With great effort the janitor and I pried it off. There in all of its glory was a Big Bear surfboard from the movie. A Frank Casey gift. I surfed it for a few years until the continuous wide eyed questions from little surfers at Ditch Plains asking if I was the Bear...or did I know the Bear made me realize that this board was bigger
deal than just another 9'6" cruiser. It sits in the basement now, and when I look at it I think of Casey, the screening, and the magic of Hollywood.