 When Hollywood discovered George Raborn (the Worlds Greatest Movie Fan), they were amazed that he had once seen as many as seven movies in one day. National columnist James Bacon, in reviewing Raborns 1955 book, How Hollywood Rates, observed that Raborn had seen more movies than the head usher at Radio City Music Hall in NYC.
Since 1932, reportedly, Raborn saw more than 5,508 movies (Actually, he claimed to have seen 10,000 movies, but they didnt count, officially, because he didnt keep individual records on all of them).
 When I worked with Raborn at the Waco Tribune-Herald, while attending Baylor University, we often skipped out on our dinner break after putting the early street edition to bed, and hastily walked down to the Waco Theater on Austin Avenue to catch a flick, time permitting, before returning to the paper to meet the deadlines for the bulldog midnight edition.
 Going to a movie with Raborn was a fun experience for me, and a cherished ritual for him. In those days, movies usually played at a theater for only a couple of days, or at the most a week, (at the Waco Theater), unless it was a special presentation like Gone with the Wind. (And, that was a movie Raborn coaxed me into watching with him every blessed night of its extended run).
Ive forgotten how many times that was, but it must have been at least three weeks (or 21 days). Raborn, of course, would have not only known how many times we saw the movie had you asked him, he probably could have told you how many minutes we saw each night that we attended.
Our movie-going experience together in Waco was sometimes limited and complicated, depending upon the deadlines at the newspaper. I was amazed that it didnt bother Raborn a bit to walk into the theater in the middle of a movie like Gone with the Wind, instead of timing everything so we saw it from the beginning. It drove me crazy, but Raborn never seemed to mind.
Truthfully, he knew most of the dialogue by heart, and it was not unusual for him to sit there in the dark and prompt stars like Clark Gable or to deliver the punch line with the star at the appropriate time. It annoyed me at first, but I grew to enjoy the experience after awhile. Im not sure other movie fans in the theater enjoyed it, but Raborn didnt seem to care.
 Sometimes, when he thought it was necessary, or appropriate, Raborn even rose from his seat and delivered the lines of the movie dialogue, often gesturing wildly with his arms, holding a box of popcorn in one hand and his flashlight in the other. More than once his dramatic gestures knocked a hat off some ladys head in the row in front of us, but Raborn would only laugh. (It was one of his pet peeves to view a movie sitting behind a fat lady wearing a big hat).
Another thing he hated was movie fans who brought crying babies to the theater with them. Once, he complained to a big theater management chain about crying babies interrupting his movie pleasure, and when the Granada Theater was built in Dallas, the company installed a special cry room at the rear of the main floor (with a large glass viewing window) so that mothers with their babies wouldnt disturb other patrons. (Teenagers used to sit in the cry room on Saturday matinees and try to make out in the dark).
Come to think of it, Raborn probably had more influence on movie exhibitors that anyone over the years. He helped them design their national movie newspaper advertisements as well as the one sheets displayed in the glass windows on the front of the theaters. He made regular suggestions to them about items to eliminate or to add to their lobby concessions and drew architectural sketches for re-doing their seating arrangements so patrons had a better sight-line view.
 It used to really bug Raborn to sit in a seat full of used popcorn boxes. He didnt mind sitting in a seat full of candy wrappers, because he often folded candy wrappers delicately and put them inside his shoe, in case he needed something to take notes on while viewing a movie. It was the chewing gum on the floor in front of the seat, that really bothered Raborn, or maybe discarded cold drink cups, half-full of Coke, that had been kicked over in the dark and left an awful sticky substance on the floor.
On the way out of the theater, Raborn often found the manager and complained about the negligence in keeping his theater clean. (Though he became a well-know celebrity VIP, and was always welcome at the Waco theaters, managers sometimes shuddered when they spotted him and immediately made sure their clean-up crew inspected the floor and seats in the area he usually occupied).
As a general rule, Raborn liked to sit down close to the front in a movie theater. (He didnt wear glasses, so he never had to contend with being near-sighted or far-sighted like other folks). There was one movie theater in Waco, in the older portion of the downtown area, like none other I had ever seen before. Unlike most conventional movie theaters, the regular movie
screen was just inside the entrance to the theater. Patrons had to continue walking down the aisle toward the back of the movie theater until they found a row with empty seats.
 Raborn delighted in making his grand entrance into this funky little theater. He often let loose loudly with his two favorite sayings - Spooky and Zensky - or maybe a Hook em Horns yell as we made our way past the rows of seats.
That was the uncanny irony of Raborn, the movie fan. He didnt like for other movie fans to talk and make noise while he was watching a movie, but he enjoyed the experience of having fun himself when he went to a movie theater. And, that often included singing the theme song from the movie. It was all a part of his festive movie-going experience.
Raborn normally liked to sit in the middle of a row of seats, instead of on the aisle like most critics do. That way, he reasoned, he not only had a better view of the screen, but he usually didnt have to contend with movie fans stepping on his toes and walking in front of him on the way to the concession stand or to the bathroom.
It irritated Raborn when he sat near a young couple courting or kissing in front of him. He thought nothing of reaching over and grabbing a young mans arm with his big hand, and lifting it off the shoulder of the guys date or the back of her seat. Its a wonder some dude didnt take a swing at Raborn, but it never happened. Once, it almost did, but the girl took her dates hand and held it politely and passionately, no doubt, while Raborn looked at me and grinned.
 Raborn also detested the inconvenience of patrons being forced to stand in line outside the theater, waiting for the next movie feature to start, especially, if he was trying to squeeze in two movies into our nightly spree. In those days, Waco only had four downtown hard-top theaters, all within walking distance, so, if we were lucky, we could slip out of one theater and jog down the street to one of the other locations.
(Raborn, of course, despite his hefty physique - he normally carried 195-220 pounds on his 6-foot frame - remained in good shape since he often worked out with members of the Baylor track team when he could manage it in his busy schedule). I sometimes had a tough time keeping up with him on the movie jogs, particularly if we managed to make a pit stop at an Orange Julius on the way to our first movie screening.
 I remember one time we went to the Waco Theater for a John Wayne picture. The exhibitors had set up a western display in front of the theater, including a saddle attached to an artificial horse prop. It was a slow night at the paper, so we were in no particular hurry to get back to put out the late edition. Raborn decided to mount the horse, and sat in the saddle drinking his Orange Julius and waving at Waco movie fans standing in line outside waiting to enter the theater.
Jogging down Austin Avenue in Waco from movie theater to movie theater during our supper break at the newspaper was one thing, and going with Raborn on a weekend out-of-town movie spree was another. Sometimes, Raborn would combine out of town movie junkets with his regular sports coverage beat in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth and little towns we drove through on the highway like Waxahachie and Hillsboro.
Raborn never worried much about driving the speed limit when we were trying to get to a movie theater before covering a basketball or a football game. He loved to turn the radio up full blast, roll down the windows, (in those days, we didnt have air-conditioned cars), and drive like a contestant in the Daytona 500, waving wildly to other bewildered motorists when we passed them going over 120 mph.
Once we had a flat, and it was a wonder we didnt have a wreck. Raborn simply left the car stranded on the side of the highway, while we waved our thumbs in the air and hitch-hiked to the movie theater in the next town. (Dont worry, he told me, Ill call AAA when we get to the theater, and they can fix it while we watch the movie).
Some of the out-of-town movie facilities, particularly the ones in Dallas, often had double-features in their theaters. Unless we were on a tight schedule because of an athletic contest, we had the luxury of watching the entire movie for a change, from start to finish, instead of the helter-skelter way we usually saw films at the Waco theaters on our dinner break.
 If we happened to be on one of our road show treks on a day that Raborn was scheduled to have dinner, we often even managed to sandwich in a snack between a movie in one town and another one 45-50 miles down the highway. We also hit the midnight flicks when we stayed overnight in a hotel. Often, we slept late, checking out of the hotel just in time to catch an early 1pm matinee ,(or at least part of it), on our way out of town and back to Waco, where, if we were lucky, our timing would allow us to arrive in time to catch part of the last feature at the Waco theater on Austin Ave.
Unless, of course, Raborn happened to see one of those old drive-in movie theaters in a field, somewhere, located off the main highway. Raborn liked to go to drive-in movie theaters. It was a habit he acquired as a youngster in Orange, Texas. Then, families would take their children to a drive-in theater because it was cheaper than going to the regular hard-top indoor movie theaters.
Besides, many smaller towns didnt have a regular indoor movie theater located on the town square. The drive-in gave the family a chance to have a picnic or to set up an ice cream freezer and take turns cranking it during the movie.
 Now-a-days, drive-in movie theaters in Texas are almost a thing of the past. Theyre about as rare as miniature golf courses or bowling alleys. A small town with a drive-in movie theater near it on a highway was a big deal for Raborn, particularly if the theater was located in a county where beer could be purchased at the drive-ins concession stand.
If Raborn couldnt find a drive-in theater located in a dry community area in Texas, he would search for a nearby wet community, where he would stock up on his favorite brew, ice it down in his beer bucket, which he kept in the trunk of his car with the spare tire, his raincoat and umbrella. I remember the time he journeyed to Snyder, a wet community in West Texas, and fortified himself with enough beer for a return trip to a drive-in theater showing a John Wayne double-feature in Sweetwater.
 I first was introduced to Raborns famous beer bucket, which he originally used to cart home a few extra cans of brew from Schultzs Beer Garden in Austin, during his collegiate days at the University of Texas, when we lived in the same rooming house,! (now the landmark Madison Cooper mansion), at 1829 Austin Ave. Many a night I would be cramming for a test in my little closet-size room, when I would hear Raborn climbing up the stairs singing The Eyes of Texas.
The rooming house had a small bathroom with tub, wash basin and toilet, (shared by those of us who camped out occasionally in the three upstairs rooms), but had no refrigerator for storing cold cuts and beverages like soft drinks, milk, orange juice or beer. So, Raborn resorted to his old Austin booze bucket routine and made his ritual beer run before heading home.
In those days it was sometimes hard to purchase beer in Waco. Sometimes, Raborn would have to make a run to a bar on the old Dallas highway to satisfy his beer binge.
 Raborn usually worked on his movie rating sheets throughout the night, sipping can after can of beer and singing old college fraternity songs and harmonizing on the country tunes playing on the radio in his room. Sometimes, we had breakfast together at the deli at the H.E.B. food store on the corner, (if it was Raborns day to eat). Sometimes, he would order, only to recall when his French Toast or English bagel was delivered, that, alas, it was not his day to eat. (On those days, I usually enjoyed a free breakfast).
Raborn often gave me a ride to downtown Waco, dropping me off in front of the Post Office, on his way to the Tribune-Herald. In those days, Baylor students could hitch a ride, easily, from a fellow student or a Waco citizen from the Post Office to the Baylor campus.
When I showed up at the paper after classes at Baylor, Raborn could usually be found sitting in his customary chair by the window in the sports department, sipping on a beer and quickly tossing the empty can out the window on top of the flat roof of a business next door. Back then, the legendary Jinx Tucker was sports editor of the Tribune-Herald.
  After he died, a young man named Dave Campbell succeeded him, (the same Dave Campbell who would later successfully launch Texas Football magazine with a small, but enormously talented staff, including Al Ward, who later became PR director of the professional Americal Football League, Earl Golding, the Tribune-Heralds Field and Stream columnist, Raborn and two young Baylor students who wrote high school sports, Hollis Biddle and Tom Hulce).
Those of us who knew about Raborns empty beer can tossing habit on the neighboring office rooftop, took bets about how many cans of beer Raborn consumed regularly during the course of a year, and how many empties were piled up out there on the buildings roof. No one could come up with an accurate figure, but every time we looked out the window, the pile on top of the roof got bigger and bigger.
It was only a matter of time before the weight of all the beer cans, along with collected puddles of rain water, took its toll on the roof. We all had a big laugh when it collapsed one day, and Raborn laughed the loudest.
During the time I knew him, Raborn often delighted his friends as a raconteur. A bachelor until the day he died, Raborn never dated much, primarily because he was more interested in covering a sports event or going to the movies. And, if the truth be known, his reputation as a Don Juan was a bit scandalous, since his days as a wild man on campus at Texas.
Raborn had a habit of doing bizarre things on dates that often drove his lady friends crazy. It wasnt that he was flippant or didnt respect women, (he did), it was just his idiotic way of entertaining his companions. Once while walking through a park with a lady friend in the moonlight, he suddenly decided it would be fun to broad jump over a fish pond.
He was known to strip to his shorts at a moments notice (in front of his embarrassed date) and do something silly like dive into a water tank or race 50 yards through a plush garden area sprinkling system. But the night he decided to do the broad jump routine, he did it fully clothed in his best Sunday suit and tie.
After assuring his companion not to worry, it would be a piece of cake, Raborn took off quickly, like a sprinter leaving the blocks, took a gigantic leap at the lip of the fish pond, let out a loud yell and landed shoulder-deep right in the middle of the pond. On the way home, walking his date to her residence, soaked to the bone, he assured her he could have made it if he had taken off his shoes.
It wouldnt have been so bad, except Raborns broad jump routine was during a horrible Waco winter. Its a wonder he didnt get pneumonia.
Through his college days at Texas and as an adult, Raborn didnt own a television. The movies he saw and rated in his book during all that time he was setting records, were all seen in movie theaters. Raborn attended movies in 36 different states and five foreign countries. He once saw as many as 402 movies in one year. In one month, when his newspaper duties were not so hectic, he saw 77.
 George not only saw all the movies he could cram into every day of the year that Hollywood made good and bad he rated them all scientifically in a little spiral notebook. Raborn used Scripto mechanical pencils, for all his note-taking and list-making and replaced the pencil lead when need be.
It was convenient for him to carry the different colored pencils in his pocket because of a clip. (Each color was used on a designated day of the week, although Red was Georges favorite Scripto pencil color). The colored pencils helped him keep track of the days of the week, when he went on one of his zany eating binges, and then just as abruptly quit and went on a crash diet. He would sometimes go for days without eating.
Most of the time, he skipped one or two days between meals. As fanatical as he was about keeping batting style averages of his movie ratings in his notebook, Raborn never wrote down the days he gorged himself and the days he fasted. He just looked at the color of his Scripto pencils, and somehow, it made sense to him.
That was probably why he used the Red, Green and Blue Scripto pencils. Red was for Monday, Wednesday, Friday; Green was for Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Blue was for Sunday.
Another reason Raborn was partial to the Scripto pencils as opposed to the conventional yellow wooden ones, was because he liked the erasers on the Scripto pencils. In addition to the extra little boxes of Scripto pencil lead, Raborn also purchased a little box of erasers, and when one wore out, he would replace it, which was usually pretty often because Raborn used the erasers frequently.
 Before Raborn stopped smoking, because doctors were concerned about his health, he often bought more Scripto pencils and Scripto erasers than he did cigarettes. He often changed his mind about movie choices in different categories, or some times, he even mis-figured his math, (he never used a calculator when adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing), and had to change stats and movie stars names frequently.
Raborn rated each star in each picture he had seen basing his charts on face, physique and talent. These ratings are done scientifically, he once remarked. And, I dont know myself who has won until Ive checked, double-checked and triple-checked the final averages. Personal preferences dont matter in these ratings because some of my own favorites are ranked very low.
  Some of Raborns ratings included: All-time Male Superstar Clark Gable; All-time Female Superstar Lana Turner; Most Handsome Rock Hudson; Best Actor Frederic March; Best Actress Bette Davis; All-time Most Beautiful Lana Turner; All-time Best Actress Ruth Roman; All-time Most Sex Appeal Marilyn Monroe; Best Comedian Groucho Marx; Best Comedienne Judy Holiday; Best Movie A Place in the Sun (1951) and Worst All-time Movie White Pongo (1945).
Raborn was truly a movie fanatic. He remembered stuff he had seen in movies months ago, and some times he would jot down notes in the back of the book, in case he forgot facts, figures, dates and faces. He seldom did.
  Raborn had categories for everything, such as Best Movie Fights; Best All-time Movie Kisses; Worst All-time Movie Kisses; Best All-time Movie Love Scenes, Best Movie Cinematography; Best Movie Blondes; Best Movie Gunfights; Best Movie Horseback Riders; Best Movie Directors; Best Silent Movies; Best Black and White Movies; Best Cinemascope Movies; Best Movie Scores of All-Time; Best Movie Costumes and Best Supporting Actors and Actresses.
Raborn rated everything imaginable except best Movie Critics and Best Movie Popcorn. (If you asked him, Im sure he would have an answer). Raborn didnt think of himself as a movie critic, although he was an excellent observer and critic. He considered himself a movie fan.
  Going to a movie was a thrilling experience for him. It was never a chore. But, Raborn was always prepared. (Even when he covered the Olympics as a sportswriter, and jogged from village to village with the great Czech distance runner Emil Zatapek, in search of a movie theater, he carried a piece of paper, usually a gum wrapper, in his jogging shoe, so, if necessary, he could make a note or two).
George wrote me November 15, 1956 enroute to the Olympics in Australia. By the time you get this letter, Ill be winging over the Pacific Ocean enroute to Australia. (Raborn left from San Francisco on a Sunday morning. He stopped off for a few hours in Honolulu in the Fiji Islands before arriving in Melbourne the day before the Olympics officially began. He also stopped in Honolulu for three days on his way back to the States, arriving in Texas December 9).
At the time, my ex-wife, then my fianc, was corresponding, frantically, with George giving him all the details of our Dallas wedding, since I had selected him to be one of the groomsmen. In fact, between getting a leave of absence from the Air Force and coordinating Raborns itinerary, it was a bit challenging,
We took a deep breath and finally scheduled the wedding for December 28. Raborn made it back from Australia just fine, but we had a hard time getting him pinned down for rehearsals because of his hectic movie-viewing schedule. (He was behind schedule, because he didnt have the opportunity to keep up his frantic pace during the Olympic festivities).
Both of us half-expected George to show up for the wedding wearing his old Texas letter jacket, (he wasnt much for high fashion), and were pleasantly surprised when he arrived clad very natty in a black tuxedo and bow tie.
If George had owned one of those portable DVD players in those days, he might have watched a movie and listened to the sound on earphones during the wedding, he was that much of a fanatical movie fan. But I doubt it. Somehow, I cant see Raborn enjoying a love scene or a sword fight or a dramatic scene with Charles Laughton and Tyrone Power on one of those itty-bitty screens. It wouldnt have rated very high in his grade book. No way.
 As excited as he was about covering the Olympics, I remember he was complaining about having to miss so many good movies. You are fortunate to be able to see so many good movies, he said." I would love to see The Third Man again. Of course, War and Peace is the best movie since 1951 and will rank in the Top 10 in any all-time movie list. So does Rebecca, for that matter, as you can see in my book.
George Washington Raborn, was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on July 19, 1923, the son of George and Ann (Campbell) Raborn.
After graduating from Orange High School, in Texas, he attended the University of Texas, where he was Southwest Conference shot-put champion in 1946, AAU shot-put record holder for six years, and sports editor for the Daily Texan. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1947.
Raborn's early sports-writing career included writing for the Orange Leader, the San Antonio Express (as a correspondent for UPI and AP), the Waco Tribune-Herald (as a columnist), and for newspapers in Beaumont and Temple, Texas.
Raborn moved to Los Angeles, California, in the late 1950s and in 1959 joined the Glendale News-Press as a sportswriter and film reviewer. He resigned in 1968 to free-lance.
He and I corresponded from time to time over the years, after he settled on the west coast. Somehow, with my Air Force duty in Arizona and returning, eventually, to Dallas, we lost track of each other. I heard, through the grapevine, that Raborn had attended a Billy Graham Crusade with some friends, and been converted.
It was only a matter of time before he changed his wild and zany lifestyle and became a devout Christian. Friends told me that he had taken to tucking a Bible under his arm and doing sidewalk preaching frequently on street corners.
 Despite the fact that he was a sportswriter during most of his journalistic and newspaper career, Raborn gained national recognition as a movie critic and was described in a 1955 Look magazine article as "probably the most devoted movie fan in history." (When Look came to Waco to do the picture story on Raborn, they shot pictures of him in my little "closet-size room at the old Madison Cooper mansion, looking at the movie star pictures I had plastered on my wall).
Young college journalists often contacted Raborn and asked his advice regarding the critique of movies. One aspiring young movie critic protg was an SMU Campus journalist named Harry Haun. Raborn corresponded with Haun and tutored him. Haun eventually became an internationally known movie critic and author in New York City.
 Raborn was a president of the Southern California Track Writers Association and a founder of the Max Steiner Music Society at Los Angeles. He was the only Texas sportswriter to cover the Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952 and thereafter attended every Olympics, except Rome in 1960, until his death at Austin, Texas on June 24, 1974. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin.
I never watch the Olympics or an old movie on TV without thinking about George Raborn. I miss him, the rouge and gentleman that he was. I think I still have a few of his old Red, Green and Blue Scripto pencils in a coffee mug on my desk. The last time I checked, a few of them still had erasers.
Well, that s show biz, baby.
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