AUTOGRAPH ARMY ALWAYS ON TRAIL OF CINEMA STARS
Restaurant Employee Pays For Olivia De Havilland’s Meals For Signature
REDEEMS HER CHECKS
Player Is Now With Errol Flynn in “Adventures of Robin. Hood”
By FRANK HEACOCK Hollywood,Cal., March 3, 1938
The prophet may be without honor in his own country but the movie star certainly isn’t. One of the demonstrations of the honor in which the screen darlings are held is their pursuit by autograph hunters. And nowhere does the autograph hunter flourish more lustily than in California, country of the movies. And California signature-seekers have several times achieved new highs of ingenuity in devising methods of obtaining the coveted name scrawls of their film favorites. Most unusual of them came to light recently during the filming of “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” when the company was on location near Chico, Calif.
Signs the Checks
When a film troupe is on location, be it explained, the studio takes care of meals and accommodations for its members. And to simplify the business of paying for meals the studio arranges for members of the company to sign their checks; a company auditor paying them later. Members of the “Adventures of Robin Hood” company, in which Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland are co-starred, ran up a healthy accumulation of meal checks to be paid off. But a week after her arrival at Chico it was found no meal check signed by Miss de Havilland had turned up at the hotel where she was staying.
Auditor Stumped
Now Miss de Havilland, by her own admission, is a girl who likes her victuals. She wasn’t on a diet and she certainly wasn’t paying for for own meals. The auditor couldn’t figure it out.
Sold Autographs
Investigation disclosed that a kitchen employee had been removing her “autographed” meal checKs from the daily collection and dropping into the cash register an amount equivalent to the price of her meals. The hotel employee then proceeded to sell the “autographs” to a Hollywood autograph broker of whom there are dozens. The broker, according in the avid autograph collector, was paying him fifty cents more for each signature than the check bearing it cost him. Considering that there was nothing intrinsically dishonest in his actions, the hotel contented itself with a reprimand and a proposal that he denote his profits to a local charity. But by that time eighteen Olivia de Havilland autographs had found their ‘way to market’.
Tribute to California’s ingenious autograph hunters. Tribute, too, to the healthy appetite Miss de Havilland worked up during the making of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” in Chico’s bracing atmosphere.
…
— Tim
