Visiting Column #45 -- Wait a Minute, I Actually KNOW That Guy!

OK, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world, which makes it the perfect time to write about something that is totally irrelevant and will in no way make the world better, unless reading it distracts someone from doing something unproductive.

My wife had some family up north back 20 or 30 years ago, and she and I and the boys were visiting them then, when we decided to take the kids on a side trip and head further up, to New York to see a show on Broadway.  The show was "Oklahoma", one of what I assume to have been several revivals over the years of the ancient Rogers and Hammerstein classic.

At some point early on, a male character appeared on stage -- forgive me, I have long forgotten most of the plot, but this was a friend of the main male character, if I recall correctly.  The actor was a tallish blond fellow who looked really familiar ... really familiar ...

I leaned over to my wife and whispered, "I know that guy!"  As it turned out, I was right.  I hadn't seen him in maybe 20 or 25 years, and barely knew him then, but sure enough, there in the program was his name.

Now, as you know, I am an MIT graduate, and trust me, MIT does not have a theater department, although there is a lot of theatrical extracurricular activity, at least back in my undergraduate days.  The idea of someone who was a student there, a year behind me, having a career in show business is a pretty wild one.  The odds that I would happen to show up from far out of state and actually see him on stage and recognize him are pretty long.

Now, in case you're wondering, no, I didn't wait outside the stage door, or whatever they have there, to see him after the show.  To be honest, although we were both in a production of "Camelot" in 1972, I didn't know him that well and frankly, I kind of hated "Camelot."  I didn't even have any good or bad feelings about the guy himself; I just knew him and he seemed perfectly nice in our minimal interactions.

The funny thing is that while he was pretty good in "Camelot", he was not someone who got your attention with his talent, the way some people do.  He was perfectly fine, but not in an attention-grabbing way.  I hate to say that occurred to me as soon as I realized it was he up on stage there on Broadway, but it did, kind of like "Good for him, but how'd he get there?".

I believe he is a home contractor in South Carolina these days, in case you are wondering, and his IMDB listing suggests that he also had parts in a couple movies or TV shows.  I'd reach out, except that (A) I have nothing to reach out for, and (B) I imagine he doesn't have any memory of knowing me, either.

You would think that kind of occurrence would be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, but not in my lifetime.  By God, if you're going to knock Lucille Ball over on national TV and do the national anthem at a baseball game in front of 40,000 people and have to lip sync to a recording of four people, well, you're going to have some things occur twice.

Sure enough, not long afterward, my missus and I were watching an episode of the original Murphy Brown show with Candice Bergen (back when it was reliably funny).  There was a scene in which she was in a line in a store for some reason, and cut in front of a little fellow with glasses, who took exception to her self-importance.  The fellow had a high, thin voice, and seemed kind of familiar, and ...

I leaned over to my wife once again and whispered, "I know that guy!".

Well, I thought I did, anyway.  The person I thought it was in this case was not an actor, to my knowledge, so I thought I was likely mistaken.  And in this case it was someone we both would have known, her less so than I.  The fellow was named Bob Ryan, and he had been in a chorus with the two of us that was a sort of two-county high school all-star chorus back in the 1960s.  Bob was in a different school, but we were in the same voice-part section and hit it off pretty well.  Same stupid sense of humor, I guess.

Of course, I couldn't wait for them to roll the credits, and sure enough, that was he.  In that case, as opposed to the Broadway fellow, I did indeed reach out to him, and discovered that he had moved out to LA a few decades earlier to pursue acting, despite his degree from Dartmouth.  He was working as a law librarian and had been a writer for the Fox NFL pregame show, but without much other acting credit.

Bob passed away a few years ago.  Indeed, I did "actually know that guy."

It's sort of the opposite of the social game where people our age compare notes on famous people they have met in their lives.  These two were far-less-famous people seen in very public settings that we didn't expect to have seen them in.

Perhaps we all have had that sort of experience, or maybe few of us have.  Just thought I'd share mine.  Have a nice day. 

Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton