True Story

TRUE STORY

Universal Studios was founded in 1950 and it took them forty years to finally accept their manifest destiny and build a theme park in Florida. Universal Studios, Florida, a hopeful poke in the eye to the Disney empire, that mouse eared dynasty that so dominates central Florida that humming "When You Wish Upon A Star" to a native Floridian might just get you the business end of a fist sandwich or some sort of pro wrestling head-butt. In a flurry of chartered private jets and limousines, Orlando was deluged with sunglassed, freshly lip balmed stars of the past and present, all on a free vacation to Florida, all expenses paid, to celebrate the grand opening of Universal's new theme park. The unspoken deal was, we were to enjoy the park, a lot, and verbally so whenever anyone shoved a microphone or camera into our faces. And the shoving of electronics into faces began as soon as we arrived in Orlando, since the studio had armies of their own publicity crews to record every moment that we spent there, beginning with the arrival of our airplane.

Universal chartered a private jet for the trip from Los Angeles to Orlando and packed it with an amazing array of celebrities. Jimmy Stewart and his wife Gloria headed the list, but Mr. and Ms. Charleton Heston followed closely behind, with Ernest and Tovah Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, and a plane-load of other stars that brought into sharp focus that I, the actor that they were all squinting at, their heads cocked to a confused angle like the little terrier in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, I was what was wrong with this picture. If the plane went down, and the chances for that seemed good, since we already had the cast of a '70s disaster movie aboard, I had no hope of a decent obituary, and my family would have to be content with the banner headlines of national newspapers reading "Stewart, Heston, Perkins, Leigh, Borgnine die in plane crash; 57 others."

White stretch limousines, so many that they had to be rented from as far away as Georgia and South Carolina, lined the tarmac when we touched down, just in time for a summer thunder shower in the Florida steambath that they call July. Through the window of the plane, we watched scores of video crews and still photographers bail on the star filled plane of wonder and run into the nearest building. The crackle and boom of the storm continued for several minutes, and the door to the plane didn't open until it became obvious that we were being held hostage on the plane, and were not getting out of the thing until the Universal people opened the door, or we were rescued by the Mossad. As Robert Wagner and Jill St. John stood under a nearby awning, ready to come out and greet us for the cameras at the first hint of clearing sky, I looked across the airport with hopeful thoughts of Entebbe racing through my mind, scanning the ground crew for Idi Amin look-alikes.

In a brief moment of brilliant sunshine, a Universal publicity representative entered the now humid, darkened plane and told us the order of departure, as a small band gurgled brassy fanfares under the wing. Jimmy Stewart would exit first, followed by Charleton Heston, and a long list of stars, quite obviously in a descending order of magnitude. I settled into my seat and reopened The New Yorker, since it was apparent that I was scheduled to disembark right in front of the nanny who came to take care of Jane Seymor's children. I pressed my face against the oval window for a while as the Stewarts and Borgnines and Hestons descended the steel stairs onto the black top, its puddles reflecting blue sky peeking from behind rolling cloud cover. The procession continued, with Robert Wagner and Jill St. John giving an on camera welcome to each and every star and their family. When the fuselage had dumped all of its precious cargo, the perky publicity person came back and gave the Wilson family permission to deplane. It was then that I realized that none of the other stars had any carry on luggage at all. The women had small, fashionable purses, but the men weren't carrying anything at all, save Tony Perkins, who jauntily swung a leather satchel over his shoulder, making him look even more relaxed and star-like. 'Where do these guys keep their things?,' I marveled. Can you really store a paperback book under a toupee? My lovely wife and I, along with our two children, now screaming like smoke alarms about wanting to get off the plane, came to Orlando, Florida like every other family of four comes to Orlando, Florida. We began gathering the folding stroller and diaper bags, and a set of carry on luggage far exceeding the most liberal F.A.A. regulations, and begin the grunt, knock and slap that is left in the wake of any family getting off a plane. And finally, at the end of this hot-afternoon-of-a-hundred-stars, I, the famous film star usually introduced as "Tom Wilson!... You know...Biff?...from Back To The future--Right, the Michael J. Fox movies," stepped in front of the flight crew, who were trying to squeeze off before me to meet Jill St. John, and with my wife, Caroline and our two daughters, tumbled down the wet stairs, clanging a stroller against the slippery metal, yelling 'Hold my hand, honey! Hold my hand, honey!,' finally presenting ourselves before Robert Wagner and Jill St. John, sweating, tired and dripping a stream of soy baby formula on their shoes. I can only assume that the cordoned off welcoming audience, covered in logo emblazoned Universal umbrellas, were confused by our arrival. They seemed to think we were a lost arm of the Borgnine party, since the whoops and hollers dwindled to the polite applause that would be given for a distant relative of someone you actually like. The fuselage had emptied all of its important cargo, so as the crowd dwindled, heading back to their cars, Robert Wagner and Jill St. John were kind to us, not walking away, but welcoming us as they'd welcomed Janet Leigh and everybody else, confident that after we'd been spirited to a white limo of our own, someone would be nice enough to tell them who I was. R.J., Robert Wagner's nickname to lucky insiders, gave me his best It Takes a Thief look and said, "Hey Tommy," (he called me Tommy like my aunt Adele does, but that's okay), "they've got a great place down here." I looked over to Jill St. John, and she was looking into the stormy horizon, probably thinking about those Matt Helm movies she did with Dean Martin. An extended period of silence followed, and then the drive to our hotel.

We had a good time. It was free.