Steve Guttenberg Getting Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Steve Guttenberg is to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for services to the childhoods of millions of 30-somethings. If you grew up in the 1980s and don’t remember at least three Guttenberg films, you are either lying or blind.

Guttenberg has starred in 52 films, with most all of his bigger hits coming in the ’80s. Police Academy (and its 8,000 sequels), Three Men and a Baby, Short Circuit – these will be childhood favorites for many people of a certain maturity, and they made Guttenberg famous.

Then there was Cocoon, and after that a string of straight-to-DVD flicks, but I don’t wish to make fun of Guttenberg – while there are obviously stronger actors, there’s always been something eminently likeable about the man, and I’m rather pleased he’s been given a star on Hollywood’s most famous street.

One Guttenberg memory that has really stuck in my head is 1983’s The Day After. Guttenberg was the star of this TV movie, which portrayed a full-blown nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union and tapped in to the widespread Cold War paranoia of the time.

Indeed, I recently read that (President of the day) Ronald Reagan watched the film before its screening, and admitted in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed.” In 1987, Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Reykjavik, and would later acknowledge The Day After‘s influence on this very decision in his memoirs.

So what I’m saying is: STEVE GUTTENBERG SAVED THE FRAKKIN’ WORLD. And if that ain’t worth a bit of Walk of Fame recognition, I don’t know what is. Steve’s star will be unveiled Monday.