Some people get famous and you’re not exactly sure why. All I know is that as soon as I saw that Rip Taylor was announced to appear at the Hollywood Show on August 4, 2012, he immediately went on my list of people I had to have. Although for me, it’s hard to put a finger on what he’s actually done (game shows for sure), he does have some interesting credits: a regular on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, a couple of appearances on The Monkees, The Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning offering Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and of course Hollywood Squares and Match Game.
But really the essence of how he got famous is form his flamboyant mugging. And before I left his presence that day, I’d get more than my share of that. He also lived up to his name Rip, as I feel I got to rip him off, got to watch him rip something, and came in danger of him ripping me a new one.
The price was right for what he was offering. He didn’t have a huge variety of photos, but the one that he had from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters was just fine (even though I mistook it for some production of The Wizard of Oz). It was just $20 and it included a free photo. That’s where the trouble started…
He signed my photo and then I crouched next to him and had my friend Ashleigh snap our photo. She showed it to me before I got up and I saw that he was making one of his hideous faces. Yeah yeah, all fine and good – and of course it did capture the essence of Rip Taylor, but still I wanted a nice photo of the two of us. So that’s what I requested and we took another one. This one was even worse, as he was now obscuring his face with the signed photo.
One more try. One more ridiculous pose.
See what I mean? So then I asked sincerely that we take a nice photo and by now I think I had worn him down, so he finally obliged. Turns out I was actually happy that I had to go through so much rigmarole to get the photo, as now I have four different shots, three with the famous Rip Taylor mugging.
As we were thanking him, Ashleigh noticed that he had a couple of luggage tags in the shape of his face (seen at the top of the posting) on his table and asked how much they were. One dollar. One dollar! She bought one and I bought one and he signed them both – making this probably the oddest autographed item in my collection. Unfortunately, the one dollar purchase didn’t get her a free photo op. He may be silly, but he still had a little bit of business sense. Still I felt like we ripped him off with the one dollar price.
We thanked him again, and walked away. Then I happened to notice that his signature was a bit smeared on my photo…probably from him using it as a prop during our photo op. So I had to return to his table and bother him just one more time.
I’m not sure if he was ready to rip me a new one, or he was just doing more flamboyant mugging, but he took mine and ripped the corner with his signature off the photo and then signed a new one. He let me keep the rest of the first photo as a souvenir.
No matter what your opinion of Rip Taylor is as a performer, I can honestly say that he is pretty much exactly the same in real life, making this one of the most memorable encounters of the day.
Celebrities of the Summer 2012 Hollywood Show will continue…
Leave a Reply