It's still a small world, after all

Celebrities and other folks I have barely missed meeting

My penchant for seeing celebrities from a distance—but failing to close the deal, sometimes even scaring them away—began in the spring of 1971, when I was a senior at Chapel Hill. I was in New York to see my beloved Tar Heels play in the National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden; my college girlfriend and I were staying with her cousin out in Brooklyn Heights, in a third-floor walkup.

Back then, of course, the basketball NIT was still a very big deal—before the NCAA tournament expanded, extraordinary teams were routinely knocked out of post-season consideration by upsets in their conference tournaments. The highly-touted Heels lost that spring to South Carolina by one point in the ACC tournament finals; Coach Dean Smith and the team then accepted the still-respectable NIT bid.

Except for the subway strike that weekend, we had little trouble getting around in nice weather—New York is a famous city for walking, during the day, at least, though getting home at night to Brooklyn entailed jumping into a Manhattan cab before you told the driver which other borough you were going to. Once inside, you were golden …

Carolyn’s cousin, as it turned out, lived on the same third floor as a famous street neighbor—acclaimed author Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead)—but in an adjacent building, which Mailer owned at the time and later turned into co-ops. His parties were legendary for their A-list guests and rowdy behavior. In 1971, he was estranged from his fourth wife and living with his soon-to-be fifth wife; but during that tumultuous period, their neighbors recalled being “treated” to angry, loud quarrels, occasionally involving people sitting on a ledge. Small wonder we visitors kept looking out the window, hoping for a Mailer sighting, but no such luck. (Perhaps he was vacationing that weekend … or partying elsewhere?)

Norman Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone, shown in 2018. Photo by Rich Caplan of Core/Town & Country Magazine.

Norman Mailer at work in home studio, ca. 1970. Photo courtesy Wikipedia

We even found time between games to take in my first Broadway play, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, by Paul Zindel. It featured veteran actresses Julie Harris and Estelle Parsons, who was nominated for a Tony for her role. The play ran for only about three months, and I remember nothing of the plot. What I do remember, however, was catching glimpses of famous faces in the audience—particularly one of my favorite actors, Rod Steiger, the Oscar-winner (for In the Heat of the Night) who had more recently starred (as a serial killer) in No Way To Treat a Lady—one of my favorite guilty-pleasure movies.

I suppose I must have been staring in disbelief—perhaps even gawking!—at the unfortunate Mr. Steiger, who was perhaps 20 feet away. At nearly 6-foot-2, I stood a head taller than much of the crowd. A look of obvious discomfort—that deer-in-the-headlights look—fleeted over his face. Perhaps he was afraid of another autograph-seeker? All I know is that when I turned to my girlfriend to point him out—she was a foot shorter than I was, and unable to see over much of the crowd, he disappeared.

Steiger starred opposite Lee Remick and George Segal in this underrated 1968 thriller. Courtesy Wikipedia

So much for my Broadway “debut.” Fortunately, my Heels went on to beat both Duke (semi-finals) and Georgia Tech (finals) at Madison Square Garden, and Carolyn and I returned home to Chapel Hill in near-euphoria, especially after South Carolina got knocked out of the Eastern Regionals (and then left the ACC, abruptly—good riddance, I said!).

* * * * * *

Fast forward 10 years to Chapel Hill, once again, in the fall of 1981. I was in graduate school by then, and almost got the chance to meet another of my favorite film stars, Natalie Wood, who was starring in what turned out to be her final movie, a science-fiction thriller called Brainstorm. They were filming it at various locations in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, as well as in Pinehurst and the Outer Banks.

This1983 film was Natalie Wood’s last, starring with Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher, and Cliff Robertson. Courtesy Giggster.com

According to Giggster.com. the Brainstorm production process officially started in September 1981. “The team shot the bulk of the movie’s scenes in North Carolina for six weeks. Having run over budget, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios halted the filming process. It was around the time of Wood’s untimely passing.”

During this period, local extras were being widely recruited for brief appearances in the film, and friends of mine in the drama field tried to talk me into signing up, just for fun. I had always had a bit of a crush on Natalie Wood, and greatly admired Louise Fletcher, a 1957 Carolina graduate, after all. So I toyed briefly with the idea—who knows where it might have led?—but because I had never acted before and was tied up with teaching duties in the journalism graduate school, I got cold feet. So much for missed opportunities …

UNC alum Louise Fletcher receiving her 1976 Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Courtesy Wikipedia

Maybe if I’d had a crystal ball, and known Natalie Wood would drown under mysterious circumstances in California during the production hiatus (November 29, 1981), I might have swallowed my reservations and tried out, just to catch a glimpse of both of them. Anyway, after Natalie died, MGM eventually resumed filming, using her sister Lana as a stand-in, and wrapped up in October 1982, before releasing the film in 1983.

That same year, I left graduate school to become a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State.

* * * * * *

By 1991, I was living in Singapore, where I was posted as a regional personnel office for the U.S. embassies in Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. One lazy afternoon, my wife Margaret and I decided to take in “high tea” at one of the many lavish hotels in Singapore—the 72-story Westin Stamford, now known as Swissôttel The Stamford. Opened in 1986, it was still the world’s tallest hotel at the time, and featured a stunning view of the city-state from its top floor restaurant, a two-floor arrangement where some guests were able to sit on a larger balcony overlooking the main floor.

The Westin Stamford Hotel, the skyscraper which Margaret and I visited in 1991. Courtesy Wikipedia

Then, as now, Singapore was a flourishing tourist center, among the safest and most luxurious cities in the Far East. I never did find out why actor Richard Dreyfuss was in the hotel restaurant at the same time—perhaps on a promotional tour for either of his 1991 movies?—but there he was.

Actor Richard Dreyfuss, ca. 1987. Photo courtesy New York Public Library Digital Collection

I was sitting overlooking the rail of the balcony when he walked past me just below, and happened to glance up at my awestruck face. Like Rod Steiger 20 years earlier, Dreyfuss met my gaze and went into full-panic mode—before I could point him out to Margaret, he scampered out of view. What was I, a stalker? A terrorist?

Richard Dreyfuss could have been promoting one of these lesser-known 1991 films, with all-star casts. Courtesy Wikipedia

* * * * * * * *

But my favorite story about a Hollywood celebrity I did not meet involves a stranger who mistook me for him. And for once, I did not scare off the celebrity but the stranger, instead …

I was manning the cash register at my parents’ retail office supply in Fayetteville, North Carolina, one day in mid-April 1980, when the on-door overhead bell rang and a customer walked in. Suddenly she gasped, threw her hand to her face, and rushed back out just before I could finish saying, “Good morning …”

Our store was located on Bragg Boulevard, not too far from the the old Fort Bragg military reservation (now renamed Fort Liberty), and we often had our share of whimsical customers. So I shrugged and resumed what I was doing. Maybe she’d had a change of heart about those staples or Number 10 business envelopes she only thought she needed … or realized she couldn’t sell her plasma in our store (a plasma bank was just steps way across the street in our shopping center).

Some time later, she sheepishly reappeared in the doorway, summoned up her courage, and walked toward me, again at the cash register. “I have to apologize for my behavior earlier,” she stammered. “You see, I just saw the Jim Jones TV movie this weekend, and I you looked so much like him that it scared me…”

I, too, had just seen Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, a CBS-TV two-part series about the horrific suicide-massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. It starred actor Powers Boothe, who later won an Emmy for his role. We were roughly the same age—Boothe 12 months older—and the same height. He had hazel eyes, mine were blue. But no one else has ever remarked upon any facial resemblance between us.

He was a gravelly-voiced tough guy, a very good choice for the devilish cult leader. I was anything but: a cream puff by comparison. And I certainly did not wear those famous aviator glasses—so perhaps it was the hairstyle? Or was I simply scarey-looking?

I laughed about the odd encounter for years, until I joined the Foreign Service in 1983 and was posted in 1991 to Suriname, next door to Guyana—and learned the awful details of the massacre from folks who had worked the aftermath. From that day forward, it was no longer a laughing matter.

Next time: Back to political research, and the 1880s …