By Eleanor Kazdan, Philadelphia, PA 01/21/2021 — It’s amazing that in my 70 plus years of living I haven’t met more famous people. I had a slight brush with fame when I was 8 or 9 years old, although not in person. Every week my father listened to the famous folk singer Burl Ives on the radio. That was in the radio days. I can still hear the theme song, “Sing a Little and Play a Little,” in my mind. My father would sing along to the songs he knew in his mellow baritone voice. At the end of each program, an announcer would give an address to send away for an autographed picture of Burl. One week I had the idea of doing this. I think I had already forgotten about it when a postcard arrived for me with the promised autographed picture of him. I was elated. I treasured this and still have it tucked away in a box somewhere.
When I was 11 years old I became best friends at summer camp with Mary Beth Solomon. It was my first ongoing friendship with someone who didn’t live in my neighborhood or go to my school. Mary Beth lived a 20-minute bus ride from me. She and I had a lot in common including taking piano and singing lessons. Mary Beth was a whiz. Her grandmother had secretly taken Mary Beth for piano lessons, against the wishes of her parents, when she was 4 years old. Apparently Mary Beth was so nervous that she peed on the teacher’s piano bench. Her father, Stanley Solomon, was a viola player in the Toronto Symphony. I was certainly proud to have a friend with such an illustrious father. As well as playing in the symphony, Mr. Solomon, as I called him, played in the O’Keefe Center Orchestra for Broadway musicals.
One day he invited me and Mary Beth to meet him backstage after a performance of Camelot. There was quite a crush of people. We spotted Mary Beth’s father and went over to him. “I’d like to introduce you to someone,” he said, “Robert Goulet.” Go time. There was the star of Camelot, Robert Goulet, in front of 2 gaga 11 or 12-year-old girls. [He was] smiling from ear to ear, perfectly capped teeth gleaming, looking at us with his piercing blue eyes in a tanned super handsome face. His black hair was slicked with greasy kid stuff. Suddenly, he bent down and planted a kiss on the cheek of each of us. I felt faint. There must be something about fame that makes one’s heart beat faster and causes unexpected reactions — especially in pre-teen girls.