Jeff Conaway’s presence at the Hollywood Show on February 12, 2011, was a surprise. He hadn’t been on the celebrity schedule, and not knowing who he was, I’d nearly smarted off to him when he interrupted my encounter earlier in the day with Kim Darby by starting a conversation with her. There was another odd circumstance about his appearance too. He was there with a lady named Helen Darras who had authored a book about Butch Patrick called Eddie Munster Aka Butch Patrick: The Untold Story of His Early Hollywood-a, Could-a, Should-a Years. Clearly there was some feud between her (and Mr. Conaway) with Mr. Patrick. But Jeff, being a professed Christian, encouraged her not to bad-mouth him.
In retaliation, they were selling signed books and photos of Butch Patrick for just $5 each, while the real Butch Patrick was sitting an aisle over selling his own photos at the going rate of $20. I had no interest in who was wrong or who was right or even what exactly was going on. All I know is before it was all said and done, I bought the book and a nice color signed photo of Butch for just $10.
In addition, I got a free photo with Jeff Conaway, which was all the more significant was that he tragically passed away on May 27, just over three months after our meeting. He had had an interesting history, being most well known for his role as Kenickie in Grease and as Bobby Wheeler in 50 episodes of Taxi, and most recently (and notoriously) as a an actual patient on Celebrity Rehab.
I had already obtained a signed photo of him through my friend Bob when he made an earlier appearance at one of the collector shows in the late 1990’s. What was even cooler was that our eventual conversations about Butch Patrick led to a good rapport between us (he even asked me if I had been saved), and a really cool photo op when Loni Anderson wandered over to his table as we were talking. Helen, the lady friend author took her chance to jump into the photo op, and then we changed places and I got a mega-cool photo of Loni and poor Jeff, whose career would be overshadowed by his rather untimely death.
It was an interesting five minutes.
Celebrites of the Winter 2011 Hollywood Show will continue…
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