Parking Lot Photography


Back when stars were frequent guests on radio, fans got wise to programming schedules, then staked out parking areas surrounding the broadcast location so they could grab neat autographs and snapshots. Most of these candids we run across today are surely one-of-a-kind, since amateur photographers would more than likely salt their handiwork away in personal scrapbooks or albums. My hat’s off to these dauntless and determined shutterbugs patiently awaiting celebrity arrivals and departures. Note the star’s dressed-to-the-nines look, particularly among the women. Vera-Ellen, Jane Withers, Evelyn Keyes … they really knew how to turn themselves out, even for a radio appearance where they’d be largely unseen, except by a studio audience. Love Eddie Robinson’s hat, by the way, and I assume that’s a camera around Red Skelton’s neck. Fans must have been a lot less intrusive in those days, as these star subjects don’t seem unduly annoyed by their presence. That gauntlet between the car and the station door was surely one these luminaries expected to run whenever they had a guest spot to fill. Indeed, their disappointment might have been greater had there been no anxious admirers awaiting their arrival.