The Legend Of Junior Hubbard

Ron Sloan

I met Ron Sloan in our high school English class. Years later he was an aspiring actor and my roommate. One day I was teasing him about how he would introduce himself as an actor to the women we’d meet in bars when he was at that time, professionally, actually a bartender. He’d defend himself by telling me he’d studied acting with Will Greer at his Botanical Theater and studied comedy improv with Harvey Lembeck but I’d point out that studying acting makes you a student, not an actor. This angered him and he’d tell me he’d get a real acting job then I’d be sorry. No I wouldn’t. I was only saying that to light a fire under him. I swear, it was barely one week later, certainly not even two weeks, that he got a role in an upcoming installment of the Friday The Thirteenth franchise. A very popular horror movie series we’d watch on our newfangled cable TV. “I bet you’re sorry now,” he said to me. No, I wasn’t. I was proud. Both in him and in myself for “inspiring” him. 

My wife and I were his guests at the movie premiere in Westwood where his date was a woman he’d just recently met. He looked like a movie star and his date looked up lovingly at him as she held his arm before the show. Then he came on the movie screen as Junior Hubbard, the stupid, dirty, hillbilly who lived with his ma in a cabin out in the woods. Junior and Ma were the comic relief, a first for the franchise that had four previous installments. This one, part five, was A New Beginning and had several aspects that broke with tradition such as comedy, full nudity and sex scenes and not the actual murderer, Jason Voorhees, but a copy-cat killer instead. The series eventually continued to include ten installments, getting weirder and weirder until Part Five became a fan favorite precisely because of what made it stand out when first released. Although Ron’s date was initially obviously thrilled to be the date of the star of a Hollywood movie, by the end of the picture she couldn’t even stand to look at him. We all went out to dinner afterward and she avoided him like the plague for the rest of the night. Which I found hilarious. 

In the years since its release in 1985, Friday The Thirteenth Part Five: A New Beginning has become so popular that its stars such as Ron Sloan who played Junior Hubbard and the late actress Carol Locatell who played Ma Hubbard became popular celebrities at Horror Movie fan conventions where they sign autographs and pose for photos with the fans. Since Junior Hubbard has become a legend The Tooners believe he deserves a theme song and so we proudly present a few different musical interpretations of The Legend Of Junior Hubbard. Enjoy.