Hollywood Legends?

I Think Not...

OK, So I'm in the Dollar Store with my wife picking up some wrapping paper and a few Christmas odds and ends...and I see this rack of various kinds of trading cards. They have baseball cards, football cards, NASCAR cards and some other, mostly off-brand-y looking Dollar Store type stuff. So I see this one kind that has James Dean's picture on the package and "Trading Cards from Hollywood's Biggest Legends". (See picture above)

Now my wife and I have this Christmas Eve tradition with some good friends where we have dinner together at one of the restaurants in our downtown Plaza and exchange friendly usually slightly weird Goodwill bought type presents. It occurs to me that I have these little plastic card holders at home to which I had attached magnet strips. This enables you to make a fridge magnet out of any trading card. I used to make them out of Charlie's Angels cards or Star Wars cards when I was into buying and selling vintage junk...uh...I mean "Collectibles".

So I thought it would be fun to buy a few packs of these cards and some of the magnet holders and we could open them and trade them so we'd each have a card/magnet with the celebrity Hollywood legend of our choice. I'm thinking we'd be saying stuff like, "I'll trade you James Dean for Marilyn Monroe." or "I'll give you Clark Gable for Marlon Brando." So I bought 6 packs and brought them with all the other gifts.

Once we opened them though, we were surprised to find that most of us had never heard of most of the names and considered none of them to be very "legendary". Here is a list of all the "Hollywood Legends" we got in 6 packs. Oddly, there were no duplicates. It ended up being good for a laugh, just not the kind I intended! I'll include their major claim to fame, at least what the back of the card said...

Paul Le Mat (American Graffiti)

John Hurt (Alien, Elephant Man)

Elise Avellan (Grindhouse, Machete)

Barbara Morgan (Astronaut)

Piper Laurie (The Hustler, Carrie)

Peter Tork (The Monkees)

Patty Duke (The Patty Duke Show, Miracle Worker)

Pamela Anderson (Playboy)

Ric Flair (Wrestler)

Tommy Chong (Cheech & Chong...OK this dude is a legend...)

Sofia Milos (CSI: Miami)

Anson Williams ("Potsie" on Happy Days)

Katie Hoff (Olympic Swimmer)

Linda Hamilton (The Terminator)

Noel Neill ("Lois Lane"/50's TV Show)

David Ladd (Acting: The Proud Rebel, Producing: The Serpent & The Rainbow)

Pasha Lychnikoff (Mostly played Russian soldiers in movie and on TV)

Robert Vaughn (The Young Philadelphians and others credits that strangely didn't include "The Magnificent Seven" or "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.")

Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill)

Tony Todd (Platoon, Candyman)

Erika Eleniak (Baywatch, Playboy)

Kenny Baker (C-3P0 in all 6 Star Wars movies, also Ewok in Return Of The Jedi)

Edd Byrnes ("Kookie" on 77 Sunset Strip)

Walt Cunningham (Astronaut)

John Schneider (The Dukes Of Hazzard '79-'85)

Gloria Stewart (The elderly lady in "Titanic")

John Buccigross (ESPN Announcer)

Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Gunfight At The OK Corral)

Heidi Androl (Finalist on "The Apprentice", TV Host)

Joey Lawrence (Gimme A Break! '83-'87, Blossom)

I'm not sure what you'd call this particular group of people but "Hollywood Legends" doesn't come to mind...