FEATURE: You’re 15th Minute Never Ends at the Swap Meet Hall of Fame

I dreamed I died and went to Hollywood Heaven. It was a strange-looking place, more like the wide, pine-walled ballroom of an early-'70s medium-rise Holiday Inn. It was very crowded with people of every age, pushing from table to table where familiar faces from big and small screens past sat signing autographs, awaiting their induction into the Big Afterlife in the Celluloid Sky. Noisy, badly ventilated and way too crowded with gawkers—were these "civilians" all on leave from purgatory?—the only thing ethereal about the place was, of course, the "stars" themselves. I expected to run into the likes of Darryl Zanuck and Sam Spiegel up here, but it seemed like I'd been relegated to the actor's wing. I looked around to see who I recognized. At a table next to me, a jovial, familiar-looking, middle-aged guy in a state trooper's uniform was signing his photos. I couldn't conjure his name or roles, but a big sign draped over the table said Rick "Cletus" Hurst of The Dukes of Hazzard. Across from him was the very recognizable, albeit very old, Barry Morse, the great Brit who played relentless Lt. Gerard in The Fugitive TV series. Behind me sat Beverly D'Angelo, Chevy Chase's wife from the National Lampoon's Vacation pictures (and several better ones). Across from her was Charlie's Angel, Kate Jackson, and next to me … I heard, "Hi. How are you?" I looked toward the familiar voice and it was a young actor, James Marshall (one of Twin Peaks' young leads), whose father was a friend. I started to say it, but stopped cold at the thought: "Hey, you're not dead!" But, of course he wasn't, and, it dawned on me, neither was I.

And then I awoke in a sweat. Where was I? I looked at a little cardboard ID velcroed to my shirt pocket. "Two-day admit. Hollywood Collectors and Celebrities Show." I was alive and well and living at this show, along with some 80 personalities from screens of the distant-to-recent past, and hundreds of their fans. Making sure to feel both feet on the ground, I joined the crowd, checking out those autograph lines.

You had to be there. On a recent weekend, the now five-times a year Hollywood Collectors and Celebrities Show settled in, appropriately, at the Beverly Garland (remember the wannabe mom on My Three Sons?) Holiday Inn, where Studio City meets North Hollywood. This event has permeated Hollywood, both the landscape and the culture, for over a decade, and has spawned a series of imitators who try to expand it (not yet as successfully) to the hinterlands, including several gatherings in Las Vegas. It brings a wide assortment of Hollywood movie and TV celebrities together with fans from every generation. On the surface, the show is based on the presumption that there is commerce of a sort between these recognizable personalities and their audiences. "Fans" are generally collectors of memorabilia of the entertainment in their lives. Who better to market the memorabilia—including their autographs—than the personalities themselves? For two days, "celebrities" representing six decades of film and TV, ranging in age from their 30s to their 80s, sit at tables bearing their names and "screen images," with assorted photos and lobby cards and occasional (often vanity-published) memoirs for sale, along with their autographs and availability to pose for photos. Prices are generally uniform: autographed black-and-white glossies or stills from their movie or shows: $5. Larger photos and or/color: $10. Photo ops with fans: $10.

The event I went to attracted more than 80 celebrities, several participating for the first time, and no one from the previous two shows, since event founders Ray and Cathy Courts limit repeat appearances, fearing diminishing returns on the part of serious collectors. Publicity for the event consists of continuous preaching to the converted. The Courts have a gaudy, two-color website (www.hollywoodcollectorshow.com) that announces star appearances at recent and up-coming shows in blinding bold face:

The site continues with page upon page of celebrity names and credits, in no apparent order:

Lou Ferrigno (Hercules, Pumping Iron, The Incredible Hulk); Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball, The Green Slime); Robert Fuller (Return of the Seven, Wagon Train); Eric Pierpoint (Midnight Man, Liar, Liar and Detective George Francisco on Alien Nation); Dwayne Hickman (Cat Ballou, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, and as Dobie Gillis on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis).

Order? According to Ray Courts, the random listings of celebrities regardless of the scope and nature of their credits is exactly the point. "We never promote anyone disproportionately to anyone else, except when it's their first time at a show. This year we 'welcomed' Mamie van Doren and Kate Jackson by listing them at the top; last October it was Val Kilmer. But otherwise, we treat all our celebrities equally. There are no 'billing' priorities at this show, and we tell that to the stars from the get-go."

And so, as I line up outside the Beverly Garland's ballroom to pay my discounted $25 two-day admission (from the $15 per day standard rate), I note on my handout that the likes of veteran above-the-title feature stars, critically acclaimed actors and series leads (Margot Kidder, Howard Keel, Beverly D'Angelo, Carol Lynley, Adam West, Jan Sterling, Julie Adams …) have accepted equal billing with "featured and bit-playing talent" (Tommy Bond, "Butch" from Our Gang; Keith "Little Ricky" Thibodeaux; Waverly Wonders' Gwynne Gilford; Beaver's pal "Lumpy," two co-stars of Plan 9 from Outer Space and survivors of Cult of the Cobra, Garrison's Guerillas and The Brides of Dracula). Considering we're still in Hollywood, this is an extraordinary event indeed.

It's nearly noon and the room, which opened to the public at 10 a.m., is packed. "There'll be lots of lines at most of the tables all day," Ray Courts had told me earlier. "You'll see. You'll see fans from foreign countries and folks from right here in the Valley, many with their kids, and that's not counting all the serious collectors, especially the autograph hounds."

I look around at the threadbare tables, graced by signs or banners, or the occasional blown-up photo labeling its celeb resident. Nearest to the door is Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno, looking great, with just a hint of gray shining on his designer buzz cut. He's busy with a deep autograph line, shaking hands and engaging in mini-conversations with fan after fan. The ex-weightlifter, whose "acting" career briefly paralleled Arnold's (both men debuted in 1980's Pumping Iron), is so engaged in the public embrace he looks like someone running for office himself. He seems as triumphant as Arnold, signing for his fans. The autographed Hulk photos are the standard $5 apiece, but his table is a merchandising boutique, featuring comic books, posters, even a paperback book on Hulk animation (for a lot more). Then there is an assortment of Hercules figures and pop-out kids' book … To his right sits a woman about his age collecting the money. A good-looking, well-built teenage boy in the next chair looks like his son. No has-been syndrome at this happy table.

I amble through the crowd, trying to size it up. There are about as many women as men, many, it appears, from my baby-boomer generation, and a fair number of kids under 12. Noting the generational range among the room's famous, it's clear there is someone here for everyone's nostalgia, including the kids'. Counting myself as a master of showbiz minutiae, I'm a little dismayed that so many of the names on the guest list are unfamiliar. But this is a "faces" convention, after all, and scoping out each table ought to reveal familiar faces.

Most of the tables are as jammed as the Hulk's. I see the sign for Mamie van Doren. The perennial blond bombshell of the '50s and '60s, who rarely starred in anything except her own publicity, is still at it at 70, promoting her image, this time as a "web mistress." www.mamievandoren.com claims more than a million hits annually. It includes dozens of photos, most from her heyday (but with a fair number of almost-as-sexy pinups since); pages on her "acting" career; candid tales of her endless array of affairs in Hollywood and beyond; an annotated photo gallery of her occasional career as a Vegas headliner. She also keeps readers up on the latest Hollywood gossip and endorses a wide-variety of cosmetics, lingerie and prosthetic breast enhancers. The long line of autograph-seekers at her table is proof that, among all the celebs gathered here, Mamie is the one successful example of the reinvention of a star.

I look at her standing behind that table, and I can't help but notice that, like most screen icons, she is shorter than I had imagined. I suddenly conjure the image of Robert Blake, whom I'm sure would love to be here, in the movie Electra Glide in Blue, when his half-pint motorcycle cop character impresses a couple of nubile biker girls by saying," Do you know I'm the exact same size as Alan Ladd?"

Earlier, Ray Courts, a 57-year-old Floridian, had explained to me how the show came to be. "I'd been a collector and a dealer in the nostalgia market for a good number of years. We had a mail-order warehouse in Florida and used to attend dealer shows around the country. In the late '80s, I came to a show here in LA, when I found out that the folks who ran it had turned down some celebrity requests to appear and sign their merchandise. I demanded to know why they were refused, and the show-runners said, 'Because they're a damn distraction. When they show up, and people get in line for autographs, they don't buy enough from the other dealers.' To me, that was ridiculous. The next year I contacted the movie and TV people I knew [and told them] that we were going to hold a show here where the stars could come and market their own things. We offered to give everybody the space free. They could all keep 100 percent of what they collected. We would take all the gate money and arrange for fees to package hotel bookings and the like. We've been at it since 1991. Here in LA, we're up to four shows a year. We keep trying other cities, like Chicago coming up this spring, which worked OK before. A few other places have not drawn the audiences. But every year we attract more celebrities."

I look around to see if any table is not crowded. About 10 feet away from me is a row of three tables occupied by younger celebrities. One, actress Erin Gray (Silver Spoons, The Adventures of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) is missing, probably because it's lunch time. Next to her, the youngest member of the show's entourage, TV actress Julie Benz, as youthful-looking and attractive as her Angel pictures, talks to a couple who apparently want her to pose. She accommodates. Her smile is genuine, and although she's not mobbed up like Mamie or The Hulk, she's definitely in the "pleasure to meet" groove. Next to her sits a good-looking young guy with nary a visitor: James Marshall. I do indeed know his father, a fellow producer from my earlier life. Marshall, listed as one of the Twin Peaks ensemble (which ended in 1991), was a real potential heartthrob with talent, of the Tom Cruise variety. (He worked with Cruise in A Few Good Men in 1992.) "Jim Marshall Greenblatt?" He acknowledges me, looking especially pleased, perhaps that anyone is recognizing him at this gathering.

We chat. It occurs to me that I haven't seen him on either screen for a spell. But, I think, he's a little young to be among this group, and it seems, so does he. Apparently he and some of the younger counterparts seated around him were advised that celeb shows like this were becoming new kinds of gigs for actors. I don't think he'd agree with that now. Like many actors whose careers may have peaked, Jim has found his fallback, having segued into directing (Smallville).

I make a note that "celebrity" in this place is defined by recognition by certain audiences just for having been visible for some period in their lives. The fans in this hall aren't reflecting on the skill and talent of these actors. These nostalgists have come to the show to recapture images that have lingered in their imaginations. Who are these autograph/memory seekers?

There is an outdoor barbeque area between the lobby and the meeting rooms at the Beverly Garland, and many of the paying crowd are scarfing down a quick lunch. Once seated, I ask a forty-something fellow next to me why he's come to the show. He tells me he has been a serious collector for 10 years, and this show usually nets him the kinds of objects and celebs he's looking for.

"What are those?," I ask.

"I love all the horror and sci-fi stuff from the mid-'60s to the mid '70s. You know. From when I was a kid watching it in theaters." Just then, his wife joins us. They are from a suburb of Bakersfield. Both work in agricultural engineering. And both are fans of mid-20th-century sci fi and horror, which they grew up on.

"Got it!," the wife beams as she takes out a black-and-white poster of a 1963 British sci-fi movie, The Day of the Triffids. One of its stars, Howard Keel—best known as a leading man in musicals and for starring in Dallas—is here at the show. They are determined to get his autograph on their poster. When I ask about their interest in his great singing roles in Annie Get Your Gun and Showboat, they add, "Oh, those are nice, too, but not our kind of pictures."

A Japanese gentleman across the table chimes in. "Day of the Triffids, yes. Did you purchase that here?" Suddenly there is a quorum for "their kind of pictures."

As I get up to leave, a young, full-figured woman asks if I'm "a collector. Or, what?"

I tell her I'm writing about them/her, and ask where she's from and what she's looking for.

She's from Wichita Falls, Kansas, and she and two friends have made the show their LA vacation, citing the hotel's package rate. One of her friends had been here before, in 2001. "She's a real star nut. Never gets away from the autograph lines. I left her at Batman's." (Adam West has today's longest lines. He's billed as "Saturday only.") When I mention she and her friends might be a little young for some of the celebs here, she retorts, "Not us. I may be only 28, but we all grew up watching most of the people here, even if they were in reruns. This is nice, since you get to meet stars close up and take their pictures."

"So what do you collect?" I ask.

"Stuff from the stars, like they're selling here. Pictures. Books. I just love the experience of getting up close. I mean, sure, a lot of the stars I grew up with don't look the same, but everybody gets old." She takes out her Polaroids of herself with paunchy, middle-aged Frank Bank, "Lumpy" from Leave It to Beaver. Then she matches them to a glossy of the ruddy-faced 13-year-old from the 1957 season. "They still show Beaver on cable, all over. A lot of people I know, my parents included, wish they could get here. They will one day."

After lunch, the lines are even longer and the din of the crowd is deafening. The room is about 10 degrees hotter. I decide that since I'm registered for tomorrow, I can leave. As I work my way to the exit, I stop by Adam West's table, where the still good-looking ex-Batman is zestfully embracing two attractive young women for a photo op. After the flash, he hugs each of them and says something like, "Hold here, OK, sweeties." Then he steps up to the husband or boyfriend holding the camera and instructs, "Try to angle over a little more this way. I'd rather not get any profile in. Just get the face … faces." And he steps back.

My guess about a more manageable crowd is right. At 12:30 on Sunday the Beverly Garland's ballroom is relatively empty. A few of the celebs—Mamie and Margot Kidder—have lines that are four and five deep, but most tables are down to the stars themselves, and maybe a friend or relative. Here is my chance to get up close and personal. I walk down a row of tables, avoiding eye contact with anyone seated. The place is so empty, and the celebs seem almost anxious for attention, I can feel the stress. With the corner of my eye I glance at the names and pictures of those waiting for attention. Celeste Yarnall (Live a Little, Love a Little, an Elvis movie); Bob Hastings (McHale's Navy); Yvonne Monlaur (The Brides of Dracula); Kim Darby (True Grit) … Where has she been? I stop and turn to the table. Lots of "then" and "now" photos, the "now" unrecognizable, but no Kim Darby. Damn.

I keep moving. My peripheral vision picks up pairs of anxious eyes whose looks I don't return. They drop with disappointment as I amble by. (Well, who knows everybody?) Then, suddenly, a very familiar voice. He is talking on a cell phone. "Damn. Today's a dud. Empty. No business…" I look. It's an actor whose face has been indelible in my consciousness since I was an adolescent internalizing his subliminal fear in Invasion of the Body Snatchers—Kevin McCarthy! At last, a figure of my own nostalgia. (In the original 1956 Body Snatchers, this actor suffers the ultimate, subliminal woman's betrayal. His fiancée, Dana Wynter, has closed her eyes just as he kisses her and … WHAM … she's no longer her. The face is still the same, but her eyes say it all. She's a … POD!!!) I'm back in that celluloid moment ...

"Two damn NFL Playoff games. I knew I shouldn't have come." Kevin McCarthy suddenly notices me gaping. "Oh, hi … just a sec." Into the phone: "Gotta go. Great talking to you, too. Bye." He pockets the cell phone. I tell him what a fan I am. I note he isn't on the bill for the show, and he explains that he had been here last year and wasn't planning to attend, but a "coincidental brunch" in the Beverly Garland dining room led him to the ballroom. He just happened to have a stack of glossies, circa 1956, and handbills about his website. I let him know I'm aware of his New England blueblood background (brother of author Mary McCarthy) and his vast New York stage experience, but, like everyone else, I'm a Body Snatchers nut. I even ask about his fairly famous book about the film, They're Here!, implying it's something I'd buy. He bemoans never having bought up the remainders, since it's long out of print. As I tell him I'm a writer, he delicately stacks away his pile of glossies for autograph sale. But even though I'm the wrong kind of groupie, he remains dignified and polite. He is also still a great, prosperous looking man. We shake hands, and he leaves. I guess I was the last bit of proof that he never should have come.

At the table next to him sits an actor with a very familiar face, though his name, Robert Pine, is a blank to me. He's witnessed my talk with Kevin and grins. I introduce myself. Items at the table tell that Robert Pine is a 30-year veteran of mostly TV roles, including as a regular and third lead on CHiPS. I ask what he thinks of the celeb show. Speaking frankly and intelligently, he completely demystifies the "celebrity/star" context.

"I'm just an actor. Been at it for over 30 years. Member of SAG, AFTRA, EQUITY. Most of my work has been on episodic TV, with CHiPS being as close as I ever came to a real hit. I've worked in a lot of things, but there's a big myth about all actors being rich. Like a lot of guys in my generation, I get little or no residual payment for shows I've done in the past. CHiPS nets me a little, but it was just a few years later when SAG negotiated those big payoff packages on reruns. The stars of M*A*S*H and Cheers never have to work again. And you don't see them here, either."

Point very much taken. "This show," Pine explains, "is a kind of found-income opportunity for a lot of us. And there are more and more around the country, if you're willing to invest in traveling." Pine adds that he loves the fan interaction as much as the income, and he's sure his peers do, too. He chuckles at Kevin McCarthy, with whom he's worked, and who, "like a few others here, is quite a wealthy man."

I purchase two of Bob Pine's photos, which he signs. He asks if I want them inscribed to me personally, and I tell him no. "Those serious autograph dealers say the signature has more value unadorned and impersonal. Just the picture and the name."

He grins. "Hope so, for both our sakes."

Onward down the aisles of fame, I spot another genuine icon of my generation. Dwayne Hickman looks just terrific standing at his table next to his attractive wife. The one and only Dobie Gillis had been on one screen or another since he was a kid. After Dobie and a few movies in his early 20s (like Cat Ballou), Hickman quit acting to become a pretty fair landscape painter with quite a gallery following. He's at the show promoting his art and selling copies of his Dobie memoirs. Yesterday his table was packed. But today there is just one person in front of me, a young, leather-clad refuge from Hollywood Boulevard, armed with a digital camera. I talk informally to Mrs. Hickman, while Wild Thing gushes over everything Dobie.

"Oh, wow, and where's that Maynard G. Krebs guy … y'know, Gilligan, hangin' out?'

Dwayne politely indicates that Bob Denver will probably be at the next show. The leather guy picks out two photos for Dwayne to sign. Then he asks if he can snap a shot as well. Since Hickman apparently has no photo-taking fee posted, the fan snaps away. Then, in very short order, he hands me the camera and zips across to the other side, placing an arm around "Dobie." Grinning widely, then with a quick nose in Hickman's face—"You don't mind, do ya, Dobe?"—he asks me to shoot. I snap. He switches sides. Before I can protest, he signals, and like a fool, I shoot again.

"Thanks bro," he beams. Then he reaches for the two signed glossies and starts to split.

"Wait a minute." Mrs. Hickman puts a hand down on the pictures. "That will be $10."

"Wow. Sure." Wild Thing takes out a big leather wallet; empties it. A driver's license and a buck and a quarter fall out.

"Gawd. Left my cash in the car." He hands back the glossies. "Listen, hold on to these. I'll go right out to the car and get my money. Thanks a lot, Dobie."

And he's gone. Gone with a roll of digital photos of the star, with his face all over two of them. And, in violation of the code of Ray Courts' show, he hasn't paid for anything.

I comment to the Hickmans that we've just witnessed a celebrity image bait-and-switch. The jerk just stole Dobie Gillis.

Without missing a beat, and in the exact tone of his 1959 character, Hickman mutters, "Well, whataya know…."

I head back down the next row of tables. More names and faces I can't match … too many. Finally I reach one of the star attractions. Margot Kidder, who signed her hand off yesterday on hundreds of Lois Lane glossies. Here was an actress who seemed to be having a blast with the fans, while pulling in as many bucks as any of her peers. Considering that her personal life had been greatly troubled a few years ago (when she was found homeless, wandering around her old Malibu neighborhood), she looked to be making a healthy comeback right here. Next to her was a slightly younger guy, a bit paunchy, wearing a heavy gold chain. He had a sign in front of him: Rick Saphire, Celebrity Management.

"You might say that I'm a new breed of agent/manager. I represent Margot and a host of celebrities for shows like this, publication deals, personal appearances, college lectures …" He lists among his clients Jerry Lewis, Sir John Mills and daughter Hayley Mills, as well as several former child stars, like Keith "Little Ricky" Thibodeaux. Saphire explains that he, himself, was a former child star and "understands the plight many go through from early traumas in the limelight." (Was Little Ricky ever that important to I Love Lucy?)

I try to get Kidder's attention, and finally she turns to me. I explain that I'm a serious journalist covering the show and would like to have a separate word or two with her about her comeback. The noise level around her is pretty high, and she asks me to "say again." I repeat, adding something I knew I shouldn't have the split second I uttered it.

"A serious journalist, like Peter Biskind …"

She heard that.

"Oh, Peter Biskind …" She nods. Then she turns away, forces a smile at a fan and never looks my way again.

Biskind had, in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, portrayed the Malibu beach house shared by Margot Kidder and actress Jennifer Salt, as party central for all those high-profile swinging actors and directors in the '70s. Great book; badly timed reference.

Saphire, picking up on my frustration, tries to divert my attention. He asks if, as a favor to him, I'd visit a client of his who might value a little attention. Her name is Kathy Garver, and she had played Cissy in the early '60s sitcom A Family Affair. He then relates a sob story about her house burning down recently.

The crowd has picked up, and the noise and stuffiness factor are starting to overwhelm me again. Now a sob story! OK. It'll be my last stop. I'm celeb'd out.

He points to a table across the room where whomever I'm looking for is dwarfed by the crowds.

"Don't tell her I sent you," Saphire adds.

As I make my way across the room, I see a middle-aged woman at a table rise for a picture with a small group of admirers. Her sign says "Darlene Thompkins," and she is posing with a color poster for Blue Hawaii. Another Elvis leading lady. Wasn't a great career move, I think.

As I get near the Family Affair waif, I see … Wild Thing. He is saying goodbye to Charlotte Rae, the ex-Broadway musical comedienne better known for the sitcoms The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes.

"I'll just go to the car for my cash. Right back with ya …" And he flees with his digital camera raised over his head triumphantly.

Finally, I've reached poor Cissy. She's tiny, almost shrunken, wearing dark glasses; she seems very old and very out of it. I launch into a rap about what it was like for kids on TV back then, and whether she knows Lumpy and Little Ricky. She glares at me in sheer terror.

"Miss Garver, are you alright?" I ask.

A young man next to her finally realizes why the lady is in a panic. "Wait, this isn't Kathy Garver. She's the next table. This is Jan Sterling." He points to a number of striking photos spread across the table. The tiny woman turns away from me as I confront my mistake.

Jan Sterling? She is an actress who lives forever in the memories of any fan of '50s film noir. The photos on the table tell it all. Jan Sterling was a tiny, iced-platinum blonde who played femme fatales for more than a decade. Her most famous roles were as the conniving waitress who aided scoundrel reporter Kirk Douglas in hyping up the story of a trapped miner in Billy Wilder's masterpiece, Ace in the Hole; and as the hooker who poignantly peeled off her makeup as the big airliner was about to crash in The High and the Mighty. Those roles live forever in my cinematic mind. Beholding the frightened, tiny geriatric in dark glasses first shocks, then moves me deeply. I'm very embarrassed. Recovering, I pick up a photo of the actress and Kirk Douglas. The guy at the table gently nudges the former actress to face me again.

"Hello. Miss Sterling. I'm a great fan of yours. This is one of my favorite films. Would you sign it, please." I mean every word.

The guy at the table hands her a red marker and helps her sign. "That will be $15, please."

Ten bucks over the asking price, but what the hell … maybe I'm compensating for the likes of Wild Thing.

I took leave of Fame's Swap Meet after that. It made an indelible impression on me, certainly. The joy of my own nostalgia was mixed with the melancholy of seeing these stars reduced to charging tiny fees for autographs.

I found out a few days later, interviewing Mamie van Doren on the phone, that Sterling, in her 80s and a resident of an assisted-living facility, had just lost a son. She had been persuaded to attend by a nephew but, she confessed to Mamie, regretted it.

Not so the still-vivacious Van Doren. "I had a blast at that show, and it wasn't because we moved a little merchandise. How great it is to be remembered. It means so much, that."

Yes. I suppose it does.