Betty White 2005
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Betty White is one of the most recognizable friendly faces in all of televisiondom. As a star of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, she has won the hearts of millions. Those were great roles for her and great shows, but probably the most important role to me was her turn as Bob Newhart’s boss on the short-lived TV show Bob. I have never actually written to Betty White, but I did purchase the cheap signed photo of her seen at right from a dealer in 1998. Read the rest of this entry »
Dorothy Granger was one celebrity who I wish I had paid more mind to over the years. Although she didn’t pass away until 1995, the only opportunity that I ever had to meet her was during the 1980 Sons of the Desert convention in Hollywood. Dorothy only had a few small roles in the Laurel and Hardy shorts, most notably in Hog Wild where she actually plays two roles within the 20-minute film so I wasn’t too thrilled when I got the chance to meet her and have her sign my little blue autograph book on August 2.
Almost immediately following my California vacation with Bob in the Summer of 1997, I began the single largest autograph collecting drive in the history of Brad – no doubt inspired by my admiration for the Bob’s massive collection. It would go on for well over a year and nearly double my existing collection at that point. The philosophy behind the initiative was simple: to make some effort every single day to obtain a new autograph. I had tried something along these lines a couple of years prior, but in that case it was to send MAD Magazine a letter every day in hopes of getting one published. That lasted all of three days, but this one did not falter.
As one of the world’s biggest fans of Seinfeld, I was naturally interested in trying to meet Ian Abercrombie – the elderly gentleman who portrayed Elaine’s rich and spoiled boss Mr. Justin Pitt. He had performed in the reading of 
Armed with absolutely nothing, I decided to send Ellen Corby a request for an autographed photo. Although she was best known for her role as Grandma Esther Walton in the popular series The Waltons, the photo I was after was the same one that my friend Bob had received from her. Before her days as an actress, Ellen Hansen (as she was then known), was a script girl working at the Hal Roach Studios. In fact it was there that she met her future husband Francis Corby who was working as a cameraman for Roach.