Here's a few things we know about Don Stroud. He was born and raised in Hawaii and by the age of 17 was an accomplished surfer. At the age of 18 he was hired as Troy Donahue's stunt double for the TV series Hawaiian Eye. And within just a few years of these auspicious beginnings we were seeing Don's extremely well-proportioned figure not just on a surfboard but in movies with Doris Day, Mary Tyler Moore, Simone Signoret, and Diane Varsi, to name just a few of the numerous legends with whom he's shared the big screen.

Here's something else we know about this fine actor whose career in movies and television spans more than three decades -- he's just as interesting off screen as he is on. We're qualified to report this because recently we were lucky enough to meet not only Mr. Stroud but also the lovely Mrs. Stroud as well, and we found them both to be charming people, very friendly and very appreciative of Don's fans. Considering all the bad cats Don Stroud has played over the years, frankly we were a little surprised to find him so easy-going and accessible.

Actually, most of the celebrities we've ever encountered turned out to be just nice people who were nothing at all like their screen roles. It's easy to have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand you might want performers to be exactly like the characters they've portrayed on screen, since those characters are a large part of what attracted you in the first place. On the other hand, it's always such a relief to discover that these performers are just regular folks after all, not so different from the people you see every day. There is probably an important philosophical lesson about "reality" in all of this, but here at the Meeker Museum we don't dwell a whole lot on "reality." Like Blanche DuBois and some of the other great philosophers of the 20th Century, we prefer magic.