In the early 1980's, while on a business trip to Washington, D.C., I was doing some paperwork on the patio outside my suburban Virginia hotel room. Two women approached and asked for my autograph. Surprised, I asked who they thought I was and they said, " Why Burt Reynolds, of course."
Note: Burt Reynolds was staying at the same hotel to attend an event that Elizabeth Taylor, then the wife of Senator John Warner, was staging that evening. Those two women mistakenly thought they had found what they were looking for.
My family has a history of being mistaken for celebrities.
My grandfather, Ernest Luff, was an accountant in Upstate New York who traveled to New York City often to meet with clients. He would stay at the Essex House and often be mistaken for Charles D. (Casey) Stengel, the baseball Hall of Famer who managed the New York Yankees from 1949 to 1960 (from his 58th year to his 69th year). Casey lived in the 515 room Central Park South Essex House during his Yankee managing days and he and my grandfather became friends due to this mistaken identity; with the look-a-likes getting together when my grandfather was in the city.
The recent $500 million sale (almost a $1 million per hotel room) of the Essex House to the government of Dubai reminded me of a time in the early 1950s when my grandfather took my brother Jim and I to NYC---combining business and the pleasure of taking his grandsons to watch the Yankees play. I remember Casey, known as "The Old Perfessor," entertaining my brother and I at the hotel with stories of his minor league baseball travel adventures.
At Yankee Stadium, we not only enjoyed the game but were invited into the club house and each given a baseball autographed by the Yankee stars of the time: Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantel, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Yogi Berra and others. I have wondered what happened to those autographed baseballs and concluded they were probably put into service when we needed another baseball for a game on the sandlot next to our home.
However, my most vivid memory of that visit to Yankee Stadium was walking past celebrity Jayne Mansfield as she was walking toward her waiting car outside the stadium. It was no mistake that Ms. Mansfield turned many heads that day.