I was returning from a business meeting last year and stopped to get gas on the Cross County Parkway in NY, and who was there buying a soda, but Chevy Chase. This was my latest one.

Tell us about yours...

 

Driving home one Friday afternoon in LA rush hour traffic, there was a white Rolls with dark windows next to me on the freeway. There's so many of them, you learn not to even pay attention. Then I noticed the rear window going down. Liz Taylor tossed a cigarette butt out, saw me gawking, and winked at me before the window went back up.

 

I used to hang with Lou Christie as a kid. I've got tickets to see him in two weeks. So far he hasn't answer my email...... but then I doubt he ever see the ones that come to his web site.

As for race car driver's - I've met most of the who's who of road racing from the 60s - P. Hill, G. Hill, Gurney, Moss, etc.

 

Trying to think of my most recent... Quite a few in the past. One I remember was Dan Rather on the street in DC. Chatted with him for a minute. He had written a book I liked.

 

Do the late Robert Goulet and the ever so lovely Shirley Jones count?

 

Martha!

I've got nothing to report....

A few celebrities have been known to frequent the waterfront areas not far from our home. Christopher Reeve used to sail out of a local marina. David Duchovy and Tea Leoni have family a couple towns over, and I'm sad to say I never got to see/meet Geraldo Rivera while he was married to a girl from the next town.

 

Boy oh boy Lainey, that's a stretch......

Eleanor Roosevelt once went swimming in Brown's Lake (9/9/35). I've been on a boat ride on the same lake.

 

I told you I had nothing.

 

I've seen some peeps in airports over the years - Mickey Rooney and Monty Hall of Door #1, 2, or 3 fame at Heathrow (different times). JFK came to visit Paris when I was living there, so saw him. Ummm...who else? I've seen Queen Elizabeth a few times in London and at the races at Ascot - along with Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, Diana, the Queen Mother, Prince Andrew and Fergie.

 

Oh God, where to begin? My first celebrity encounter was at the New York Film Critics' Circle Awards banquet. I was an impoverished graduate student at the time, and when the awards ceremony was finished, I was the first in the general rush to the bar. I got my gin and tonic, and as I turned away with it, somebody jostled me and my drink was upended over the head of a short man next to me. It was Francois Truffaut. I fear that I did not make a good impression.

Lots of others, too numerous to list all. I stood between Cary Grant and Liv Ullman in a buffet line in a reception as they carried on a conversation over my shoulder, and I pretended that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. I was introduced to Myrna Loy and Al Pacino at a party (this was early in his career, and I mistook Pacino, who is very short and was wearing an ill-fitting white dinner jacket, for a busboy). I was seated near the centre of the front rown of the balcony at Carnegie Hall when Leonard Bernstein was conducting a tribute to Aaron Copeland. Midway through the concert, Bernstein announced that Copeland was in attendance, and a spotlight shone down on an elderly man seated next to me as he struggled to his feet. It was Copland himself. At different times, I shook Duke Ellington's and Jack Dempsey's hands -- Dempsey had quite a grip. I lived seven blocks away from The Dakota and used to sometimes see John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the street, saw Jerry Lewis and Peter Boyle in Zabar's, met and talked extensively with a number of directors, including Frank Capra, Rouben Mamoulian, Raoul Walsh, Richard Fleischer, etc. Had a nice chat with Lilian Gish, who autographed a photo for me. While I was a student at Columbia, I took courses with Fred Friendly (Edward R. Murrow's producer) and Samson Raphaelson (who wrote the Jazz Singer, and did scripts for Lubitsch and Hitchcock, among others). I saw Abba Eban on campus frequently, and while peering at Alexander Soljenitsen (sp?) in the stacks in the library, had him come over to me to shake hands and chat for a bit. Also met Pierre Eliott Trudeau and glimpsed Gorbachev and the Queen when they were visiting Ottawa. Had lunch with James Cameron when we gave him an honourary degree and diner with Elihu Olmert (who was then Jerusalem's mayor) when I curated a program at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Paul Bartel paid for the advertising for another show that I curated, although I had never met him. A week before the opening, I saw him coming into the Museum of Modern Art, and went up to thank him. I said "Are you Paul Bartel?" and he gave me a scornful look, said "No!" and walked away, leaving me feeling like an idiot. Ah, golden moments. The list goes on and on.....

None of this impresses my sixteen year old kid, but she is wowed by the fact that I saw Joplin and the Ramones at different times in concert.