The encounter that Jamie and I had with Eddie Mekka was rather amusing. Eddie had portrayed Carmine Ragusa, the ex-boyfriend and on-again/off-again romance partner of Shirley in the TV sitcom Laverne & Shirley – affectionately referred to as ‘The Big Ragoo’. He had been a regular in the series during its entire run from 1976-83 and appeared in 147 of its 178 episodes. Our encounter came during the Hollywood Celebrities Show in Chicago on Saturday, October 1, 2011. Eddie was there as part of a Laverne & Shirley reunion.
Right away he was very friendly, joking that his signed photos would cost $1000 and if he just could sell one, it would have been worth it to come for the show. I opted out of buying a cast shot, since I already had a joint Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall photo in the works. So I picked the shot above and asked him to add his character name. He said, “Oh, I did. I just have sloppy handwriting.” In case you’re wondering, what the signature actually says in ‘Carmine Eddie Mekka’.
The encounter became even more humorous when it came time to get my picture with him. I posed with him while Jamie snapped the photo. Then he offered to take a picture with her. He danced her and spun her around in his arms and then beamed his friendly Italian smile. I snapped the photo, but then noted that he had his eyes closed. We tried one more time… eyes were still closed and this time he looked like a chipmunk. So we tried a third time and finally got an acceptable result. Then Jamie noted that his eyes had been closed in my photo as well. So we tried one more time and finally got the result below.
Eyes closed
Eyes closed with chipmunk teeth
Our second attempt. He literally held his eyes open with his fingers for a minute before we posed.
I couldn’t help but let out the quip that my friend Bob has made famous, “we could have filmed a movie in the time it took to take this picture!” It was nice to see that the Big Ragoo was a good sport about all of this – especially considering that he wasn’t even charging for the photo op.
Celebrities of the Fall 2011 Chicago Hollywood Celebrities Show will continue…
He WAS a very nice Italian chipmunk!
Jamie
October 18th, 2011
Oh, I don’t mean “WAS” like he no longer exists. I just wanted to emphasize agreement.
Jamie
October 18th, 2011