Definitely a Baldwin
January 9, 2006—Early Monday evening, I noticed a Tall, Dark, Handsome guy at the checkpoint, wearing a rather unusual T-shirt, black with a circular logo referring to children.
Someone next to me said, "Look, there's Alec Baldwin."
He came through the walk through metal detector and, while I helped him gather his belongings, Peter, a supervisor, approached, shook hands with him as did I and handed him a business card and said, "If there's anything I can do for you . . ."
They chatted about children, Mr. Baldwin mentioning that he had three young kids.
Mr. Baldwin was charming, natural, approachable (and did I mention handsome?). If you did not know who he was, at least you knew he was a celebrity—like Harriet Wasser and Nik Venet have said about our Bobby.
As I was moving bins, I said to Mr. Baldwin, "May I ask you a question?"
The timing was right. Sometimes it is not. For instance, I never segued into my Darin Name Dropping with Marty Allen as I was so shocked to see him face to face after 40 years. This time, however, I was not going to miss an opportunity.
He replied, "Sure."
"Do you know who Bobby Darin is?"
His wonderful response was "Of course I know who he is. I love his music and style. In fact, one of my best friends, Kevin Spacey, made a movie about him."
I jumped in with, "Yes, I know, I went to see him perform Bobby Darin's songs on South Beach and saw Beyond the Sea."
Mr. Baldwin said, "Only bad thing was, the movie was a flop!" (His words.)
I mentioned that I was grateful to Kevin for bringing Bobby back into the limelight. I told him about the "Once In A Lifetime" event being planned in New York City and mentioned that we wished Kevin could attend but he would probably be too busy.
Mr. Baldwin said, "Yes, with his new movie . . ."
"And," I replied, "with being so busy in London with the Old Vic theater."
Then Mr. Baldwin said, "Bobby Darin was closer to my Dad's era along with Tommy Dorsey and the big bands."
Now here is a moment you have been waiting for . . .
He then said, "Bobby Darin is an ICON."
That gave me chills!!!!
Epilogue
On break, I called a friend to tell her, but I just knew it was not Alec.
The next night my daughter, Kerry, called me over to the television, "Mom, you're not going to believe this, but they're doing a Baldwin Brothers special on E-Entertainment right now."
It was definitely William Baldwin to whom I spoke, no doubt in my mind. His voice was the same. EVERYTHING. And you heard it here first, folks!!!! William Baldwin said "Bobby Darin is an ICON." It doesn't get any better than that . . . and now you know the rest of the story.
Continuing
to Drop the Delicious Darin name . . .
Without compromising passenger safety!
P.S. Did I mention the strands of dark hair that fell over William's forehead much the way Steve Karmen described Bobby's hair long ago?
