Southern Con

You may be looking for Southern Media Con, a series of cons that began in 1993.

Convention
Name:	Southern Con
Dates:	July 4-6, 1980
Frequency:	once
Location:	Nashville, Tennessee
Type:	media fancon, celebrity guests
Focus:	Media Fandom
Organization:
Founder:	Janice Sidwell
Founding Date:
URL:
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Southern Con was a media con, fan-run with celebrity guests of honor.

first page of a flyer

second page of a flyer

Guests of Honor and Programming

The guests of honor were Dave Prowse (Star Wars), Anthony Daniels (Star Wars), and Peter Mayhew (Star Wars). Frank Thomas (Space Cadet) was advertised, but it is unknown if he was present.

Starlog presented a slideshow called "Reaching for the Stars."

Con Reports

July, 1980: Southern Con in Nashville, our very first group trip, fiasco in many ways, but somehow that made it all the more enjoyable. My thrill was being in the right place at the right time and meeting Anthony Daniels that Sunday morning. I was too tongue-tied to say mch, but Jeanie boldly told him: "Somebody as good-looking as you is wasting his tine under that robot suit."

It was unfortunate that my first con took place just when the "Empire Strikes Back" craze was reaching its peak. Consequently there was very little to offer Star Trek fans. I attended with nine other members of the Memphis-based club ALLIES FOR STAR TREK, and we were rather, well, pissed off at the woman running the con. I will tell you her name --Janice Sidwell -- so that none of you, will make the mistake of dealing with her. She continued to advertise Mark Lenard and George Takei even after she knew that neither would be there (due to certain disagreements). One of our members had done a beautiful Sarek painting which she had intended to present to Mark, so she was understandably upset. The Radisson Plaza Hotel is outrageously expensive, and the six of us females were crammed into a tiny room rather than the suite we paid for.

The dealers' room was not much; only half the tables were in use. There weren't many films running, and I did see a version of the blooper reel I'd not seen before, plus a "Quark" episode and a hilarious spoof "Hardware Wars" The art show was unimpressive. What disgusted me about the con was its lack of organization. No program or schedule. We had to run downstairs every hour to see what they'd written on the chalkboard. Now the brighter side: the Star Wars guests were very friendly, willing to talk or sign autographs for hours. They were Dave Prowse, the British muscleman who plays Darth Vader; Peter Mayhew, who is Chewbacca, and at 7'3" looks the part; and Tony Daniels, "C-3PO", who was the highlight of the con for me. Underneath that gold suit is one of the handsomest men I've ever seen. He has real stage presence, and the audience loved him.

Saturday night made our trip worthwhile, because the costume contest was enormous fun. Only a couple of ST-related characters were present, but there were such personalities as Miss Piggy, an infant Wookie (who jumped into Peter Mayhew's lap screaming "Daddy!) and a very authentic Yoda played by a 4-year-old. I entered as a Starfleet lieutenant (new uniform), and told the crowd "I'm one of the very few people who supports "STAR TREK: TMP. My loyal crew is sitting out there," I indicated the rest of my group, who also wore uniforms. We made every effort to publicize ST. After the contest,we threw a big party, squeezing 52 people into that hotel room. It lasted till 3 am. A lot of folks told us it was the best thing about the con. We enjoyed ourselves because we created our own fun, but we could have stayed home. Take my advice: steer clear of Southern Con.

No, Southern Con did NOT come off as planned and many felt defrauded...

[...]

We have very mixed emotions about our experiences in Baltimore. Our MLIFCers joined together and we had some good times bantering with Mark. But the group putting on the convention, the Randallstown Association of Star Trek (RAST), did not quite comprehend the complexities of running such an event, and tempers flared. Manners were forgotten. Fans and dealers were perturbed with the disorganization. Even a few of the guest stars were ired. We felt as if we had crashed a private party, when in fact, we had paid $30 each-like the others in attendance. But let us digress...

[...]

A lot of people looked forward to attending Southern Con in Nashville, Tennessee, July 4-6, 1981) and to seeing Mark. Lenard and George Takei, and it's no wonder that disappointment ran rampant those three days when neither Mark nor George were there. Rumors abounded, and both men received completely undeserved criticism for their non-attendance. !

Barb and Gail feel it is our obligation to give you the true story of the Southern Con fiasco.

On July 4th, Gail received a phone call from Jean Ann Dodge, a member of the Memphis-based "Allies for Star Trek" club who — with a number of folks from her club -- was attending Southern Con. They had been told that Mark —- and George — would be there ...they were ASSURED...they had been asked to serve as his escorts...and they had been sorely duped. Now, hurt, but still on Mark's side, Jean Ann asked what had happened. Barb and Gail had talked to Mark shortly before the Con — and to his agent's secretary. Yes, he had been asked to attend Southern Con, and yes, he had agreed to go. But, like other Trek cast members who had been badly burned by other cons, his agent had requested payment and Mark's airline ticket in advance. Although the con's organizer, Janice Sidwell, had promised to send both, the agency had received neither. Naturally, this put Hark in a precarious position — since he had made the commitment to the fans, he did not feel he could accept any other offer for work that might come along, although he would have been completely in the right to ignore the commitment; on the other hand, if the con committee didn't come through, he would be out of a job. It was rapidly becoming obvious that Ms. Sidwell and the Southern Con committee were not living up to their obligations.

Gail relayed the gist of that phone conversation to Jean Ann and she —- though still disappointed that she, her friends, and a number of others they had talked into going to the con on the pretext of seeing Mark, were not going to get to see either Mark or George — was pleased that her faith in Mark’s integrity was not groundless.

[...]

While Ms. Sidwell was well aware that Mark was NOT coming, she pretended to the con-goers that he was "on his way," and, later, when it was obvious that he wasn't "on his way," she branded him a "no show." When questioned about his absence by Jean Ann and her friends, Ms. Sidwell said that "she did not know where he was, that she had gone to meet his plane and he wasn’t on it." According to Jean Ann (in her letter to us of July 10th) "The (Ms. Sidwell) would not give us a definite or precise answer on anything, would not look us in the eye, and proceeded to avoid us for the rest of the convention." Ms. Sidwell’s deception was the start of a number of rumors about Mark’s absence, notably: Mark was sick, Mark had backed out, Mark was stranded between L.A. and Nashville, Mark had been stranded at the L.A. airport because the airline had refused to okay the convention's check, Mark was just a no-show, no one knew WHERE Mark was.

George Takei fared even worse in the rumor department, being labelled a trouble-maker who was cancelled by Ms. Sidwell because he was "nasty and uncooperative." Can a man be labelled "nasty and uncooperative" because he declines to work for three days without being paid, when a fee was agreed upon in advance? Or because he was asked to pay his own transportation costs? (This is what happened, according to Mae Sanchez, George's fan club president, who Barb and Gail called to find out what his problem with Southern Con had been.)

Several weeks later, Barb and Gail had the opportunity to talk with Mark in person about Southern Con and relayed to him all the information he had received from Allies and others who had attended the misbegotten convention. Mark's most notable comment was "They're crooks!" Barb suggested that MLIFC print a report and set the record straight so that neither he nor George would have any ill feelings harbored against them. Mark agreed wholeheartedly, and was extremely sorry that so many fans had been hurt and disappointed. It is obvous that both actors -- and the fans -- were victims of some unscruplous behavior.

[...] While most people who sponsor conventions do so with the best intentions, we want to caution everyone that the unethical DO exist. Jean Ann offered two suggestions in her letters that we deemed worthy of passing on to you:

1) "Do not give your sup­port to something which you are not absolutely sure about. (Check with fan clubs, agents, Welcommittee or someone else 'in the know,' if possible.) 2) Do not place your enjoyment of a convention upon the shoulders of the organizers, for you may be in for a great disappointment."

(Keep in mind also that nothing on a flyer is likely to be a definite promise and even a commitment can be broken in the event of an emergency.)

We hope this brief report has clarified the situation for you. We'd like to thank Jean Ann Hodge, Jeannie Peeples, Annette Taylor and all the other folks in Memphis' Allies for Star Trek, for providing us with detailed information and copies of correspondence with Janice Sidwell to use as a basis for our investigation into this matter. We sincerely hope that this report will -- in some small way -- help pre­vent future "rip-off" conventions,

AND THEY'RE DOING IT AGAIN! The award for chutzpah of the century surely must go to the Southern Con group who have decided to do it again... yup, Southern Con II is in the works. The time, the guest star - read "victim" - is supposed to be Dirk Benedict (Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica. We have gotten wind that the infamous Janice Sidwell is behind this one, too, but that is unconfirmed. All we can do is say "caveat emptor" -- or in this case, "let the fans beware.