Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Garrett Meadows on January 16, 2022 at 12:17pm

I'm surprised that Jackie Gleason didn't like to sign autographs. Kinda goes against his over-the-top gregarious screen persona. 

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Permalink Reply by JMS1223 on January 16, 2022 at 12:41pm

Me too. I thought he signed autographs at least in person. 

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Permalink Reply by JK on January 16, 2022 at 1:13pm

Years ago I wrote to "Honeymooners" cast-mate Joyce Randolph to ask what he was like.

She diplomatically said he could be "mercurial". He did not like to rehearse and would breeze in to do the live show. 

I also know that he negotiated a special contract for himself. He got some  ownership rights and ongoing residuals, unlike everyone else on TV who got paid for the first showing and one rerun. He was a couple decades ahead of his time on that.

I also heard that the early shows were just broadcast live with no filming done, so he brought in his own cameras and cameramen to film the shows, and he kept the rights to those.

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Permalink Reply by Garrett Meadows on January 17, 2022 at 12:20pm

Very interesting info about Gleason. I also heard that Dean Martin hated rehearsing and would do likewise---breeze in for the shoot, then leave for the golf-course.

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Permalink Reply by BC on January 3, 2022 at 7:18pm

Macaulay Culkin is pretty difficult to get, especially on anything Home Alone. Not sure if he doesn't like to sign or if he's just difficult to get in person.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Viola on January 4, 2022 at 5:53am

From my personal experience collecting, Brando, J Woodward, Dylan,  Andy Griffith.  Never was successful with those people.  Other who have been at this longer than me have told me  Gleason was terrible to autograph seekers.

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Permalink Reply by BK Collector on January 17, 2022 at 10:13am

Neil Armstrong - Famous for refusing autographs since he retired from NASA in the early 1970s - turning down nearly all comers and then became even worse when he realized his signatures were being sold online.  

I attended a couple events in 1999 for the 30th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing in Washington, DC and watched him turn down many people, even kids.  

However, I was fortunate to get one of the holy grails (in my opinion) the year before.  Mr. Armstrong was being awarded a lifetime acheivement award from an engineering organization at the Ritz Carlton in Arlington, VA.  In the old days, you could go to NASA Headquarters in DC and pick up cool (and free!) photos of the Moon, Mars, and a few of the most recent Space Shuttle crew photos - so I was always ready when a moonwalker would come to town (in the 1990's, it still happened fairly frequently - Aldrin was in town a lot testifying before Congress and happily signed all the time.   Anyway . . . 

A few collecting friends and I waited in the lobby, hoping we would be able to recognize him if we saw him.  We waited about a half hour and saw a man that looked like Armstrong walk into the hotel and to the front desk.  We were confident that it was him and we had to plan our strategy.  As he was checking in to the hotel, his next steps were likely to the elevator so he could go up to his room to dress for the dinner, scheduled to start in about an hour.  There were two openings to get to the elevators and we stood at the opposite end of where he would be coming in.  We were ready with our photos and Sharpies in hand for when he turned the corner.  Mr. Armstrong came around to the elevators and the look of disgust on his face was clear.  We all said at the same time, "Please Mr. Armstrong, if we could get one autograph each." or something like that, as we approached him.  He dropped his bags with a thud that echoed his disdain and signed one a piece for the four of us.  He said nothing to us as we thanked him one by one. We realized how lucky we were and figured since there were only four of us, there wasn't the threat of a long line of requests - like there probably had been at the dinner that night.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Peters on January 17, 2022 at 10:39am

William Anders of the Apollo 8 crew (he took the famous photograph "Earthrise") is extremely difficult to get.

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Permalink Reply by Garrett Meadows on January 17, 2022 at 12:24pm

I had read that Neil Armstrong was notoriously stingy and downright rude about not giving autographs. If the biographical info I've read about Armstrong is remotely close to the truth, he was odd and peculiar in his habits and personality.  Perhaps he saw signing autographs as beneath him and trivial, especially in light of his monumental accomplishment. Just a guess.

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on May 18, 2022 at 4:49pm

I don't know where you read that, but, as I explained here, it couldn't be farther from the truth.

For years, he'd sign TTM (1 each) willingly for anyone who'd ask, even going to the personal expense of hiring a secretary to handle those requests. He only quit after dealers lied to him & took advantage of his generosity.

Even after he quit signing, he continued (at personal expense) to maintain that same secretary to continuing sending personalized replies out to anyone who wrote him, rather than just RTSing everything or dumping all his mail in the bin.

Those aren't the actions of a "stingy" or "downright rude" individual, and they certainly aren't the actions of someone who saw signing autographs as "below him".

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Permalink Reply by Mike White on May 18, 2022 at 4:43pm

Neil Armstrong - Famous for refusing autographs since he retired from NASA in the early 1970s - turning down nearly all comers and then became even worse when he realized his signatures were being sold online.  

I'm sorry, but this is extremely incorrect.

Neil Armstrong was quite famous for signing very willingly from the time he retired from NASA until the mid-90s.

He even hired a secretary to ensure that everyone who asked got 1 pristine & personalized signed WSS photo.

That he was so famous for signing is what ended up being the problem that led to him putting down the pen for good.

As with the first half, your second half is also incorrect.

His issue wasn't that the signatures were being sold--it's how the people who were selling the signatures were acquiring them.

As I noted above, everyone who asked got 1 pristine, personalized WSS photo. All you had to do was ask.

But not everyone wanted a personalized pic, and, since they were readily available (1 each) to anyone who asked, there was no value to them for the resellers.

Then they discovered that there was an exception to his personalization rule.

When he'd get a letter from a teacher, rather than require the name of each kid in the class, he'd include 20-30 unpersonalized signed, pristine WSS photos for them to give to their students.

Now those had value to them.

And to get them, all the resellers had to do was claim to be teachers writing on behalf of their class. So they did. And they did.

When those started popping up for sale in quantities far beyond a person here or there selling theirs, he realized he was being lied to & taken advantage of, and quit signing all together.

For the 20 years prior, writing to Neil was a sure thing, provided you only wrote him once.

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Permalink Reply by JK on May 18, 2022 at 5:10pm

I wrote once in the early 90s, and got the unpersonalized version.   I always assumed he might have been away when my request arrived and maybe they had a supply on hand.  

I wrote again a year or so later and got a polite note indicating that I had already been sent a photo. 

At around that time i also wrote to the Johnson Space Center in Houston and got one of him and one of the Apollo 11 crew, all signed by autopens.

Later on, long after he stopped signing, I wrote to his office and asked for a couple (unsigned) business cards and they sent them.

My only complaint is that I did not start writing to him years earlier.

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