Memories of “Rondo”

By Steve Vertlieb: With the excitement this week regarding the announcement of this year’s marvelous crop of deserving new winners of the prestigious annual Rondo Awards, I’m happily reminded of my own encounter with the announcement and subsequent award ceremony just four years ago. Here I am being presented with the Rondo Hall of Fame Award for a precious lifetime of journalism and achievement by David Colton, former editor of USA Today, on Saturday evening, June 4th, 2016, in Louisville, Kentucky.

David Colton and Steve Vertlieb

The proudest moment of my seventy four years…winning the coveted “Rondo Hall Of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award” for more than half a century of genre writing and publishing in a variety of books, magazines, journals, tabloids, and on the worldwide “web” (with apologies to Spiderman).

I’d like to humbly offer my sincere best wishes and congratulations to those worthy souls and winners of this year’s assortment of Rondo Award winners, as well as my eternal gratitude to the thousands of writers, directors, composers, actors, and special effects technicians whose work in film bathed my dreams, and my own meager accomplishments these past five plus decades in their creative shadow.

My work remains merely a pale reflection of the love and admiration that they so generously inspired in me, and in the millions of fans around the world who continue to love and respect the art of motion pictures, as well as those wondrous souls who inhabit them.

To all of you, I can only offer my profound and enduring gratitude for being permitted to share the love, inspiration, and joyous wonder of films and music.