Celebrity Passengers

I am probably too old to recognize anyone who qualifies as a celebrity these days but as a taxi driver in the seventies and eighties I had a collection of folks who were famous. These days they all have private drivers, I mean why would anyone famous take an Uber car unless they are already cheap and willing to take a gamble on an amateur driver who doesn't know their way around except to depend on the GPS.

In the past I drove Van Cliburn ( a famous Chopin pianist) Allen Funt (Candid Camera) Leonard Nimory (he was in Star Trek) Donald O'Conner (Singing in the Rain and a lot more), Count Basie (jazz pianist band leader), Ron Kovic (Born on the Fourth of July), Alistair Cooke (Masterpiece Theater host)James Beard (chef and cookbook author) and Marlon Brando, who you may have heard of, at least after he was in the movie The Godfather.

What I noticed about some of these folks was that often their publicists were with them and almost immediatley announcd after getting in the car, "do you…

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I am probably too old to recognize anyone who qualifies as a celebrity these days but as a taxi driver in the seventies and eighties I had a collection of folks who were famous. These days they all have private drivers, I mean why would anyone famous take an Uber car unless they are already cheap and willing to take a gamble on an amateur driver who doesn't know their way around except to depend on the GPS.

In the past I drove Van Cliburn ( a famous Chopin pianist) Allen Funt (Candid Camera) Leonard Nimory (he was in Star Trek) Donald O'Conner (Singing in the Rain and a lot more), Count Basie (jazz pianist band leader), Ron Kovic (Born on the Fourth of July), Alistair Cooke (Masterpiece Theater host)James Beard (chef and cookbook author) and Marlon Brando, who you may have heard of, at least after he was in the movie The Godfather.

What I noticed about some of these folks was that often their publicists were with them and almost immediatley announcd after getting in the car, "do you know who is in your car? This is_____" And I would say something like, "well, I wasn't paying attention, how nice to meet you!" Not all of them were recognizable to me, but I certainly knew who they were. Of those who had to tell me who they were, Ron Kovic was the nicest and the most gracious, and I drove him twice, memorable for having to help him into the car and put his wheelchair in the trunk. I wished I could have talked to him longer, he was that nice. On the niceness scale, Marlon Brando was as good as it gets, sitting in the front seat and chatting all the way to the airport and tipping by paying double the fare.

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