much of my immediate family, as well as select friends, look you see, will know that i have a proclivity to watch them "junk" related reality shows off of America. by this i mean, to be sure, things like American Pickers, all variants of Storage Wars, now that i think Storage Hunters, Hardcore Pawn, Pawn Stars and so on. oh yes, also a favourite in the form of Shipping Wars. and Container Wars and Baggage Battles.
i just find them interesting. every now and then they stumble upon an item that would be of general or indeed specific interest to me, but mostly it's something just plain fascinating. recently i saw an episode of one of them, Pawn Stars, that i felt was worth taking some screenshots of to trouble you with.
giving you the details of what episode exactly is tricky. i believe it was called Gone With The Schwinn or something like that. the series / season and episode number would seem to vary depending on what country you are in. anyway, whilst the title refers to some sort of bike, it's a little segment in the episode away from that which caught my interest.
what you can see above, and indeed as clarified below, are "personal property" items which belonged to the late, great Sammy Davis jnr, loving referred to here and beyond, of course, as "Glass Eye" after an edition of Viz called him that when they reckoned he was building a big massive base in a hollowed out volcano in the style of a James Bond villain.
the chance to own a unique item that belonged to someone as prestigious and revered as Sammy is, surely, quite something. alas, perhaps, at least for the proprietor of the pawn shop out of Pawn Stars, there were no treasures as such.
as those who are familiar with the episode will know, or indeed will those who have read the title of this post and made an assumption, what all of these "personal property" items belonging to Glass Eye turned out to be was his most impressive video (and i think audio) tape collection.
yes, this is probably a little (lot) voyeuristic, maybe, but i found this to be one of the most fascinating things ever. Sammy came from a time when our most celebrated of entertainers, after all, held private lives which were actually private. there was no "twitter" or picture sharing social networks, so the stars could lead a quiet life, the details of which were mostly elusive to us humble, normal people fans.
if i had been asked to have a guess at what Sammy did at home to relax, i would have given an exciting answer. my imagination would have stretched as far to assume he lived in a massive palace, with a bar in each room. yes, lots of showgirls and models coming in and out, but mostly i like to picture him sitting and having a drink, listening to his many excellent records. also, his chums, such as Dean Martin, Mr Sinatra and perhaps even Omar Sharif, popping over for a game of cards or similar.
no, then, it had not dawned on me that Glass Eye would, a little like me, have a massive collection of video tapes. who knew that when not acting in movies, singing in a studio or performing on stage that Sammy quite liked to hit the couch and watch a film or two?
to me it's just interesting, even if only in a curiosity way, to think of a megastar like Sammy Davis jnr or if you like and Pawn Stars seem to jr, doing something everyday and usual like us, the simple common folk, would. i suppose a point of fascination is that Sammy was probably in a position where he could call up any one of the (assuming they were alive at the time) stars of any of the videos he watched and tell them that he appreciated it, or just liked it.
in the above image, for instance, the clearest shot of one of the titles is the first Lethal Weapon film. had it amused him to do so, just after watching the tape i would think Sammy had the power and clout to call his people, tell them that he liked the film, and would very much like to invite Mel and Danny over for a drink. Gary Busey too, i suppose.
quite a smart insight off of this is the position Sammy had in respect of the format wars. many of us, in particular those there at the time, tend to view the 80s exclusively in terms of VHS vs Beta. it is all too easy to overlook that there were other choices. Glass Eye did indeed take one of those alternate choices, for all the tapes on display are in the less popular, but i am led to believe superior quality, format of Video 8.
would i have guessed that Sammy was a Video 8 man? no. my assumption would be that he went for the low cost, reliable and widely available VHS. others in the Rat Pack? my guess would be that Mr Sinatra had a full blown cinema in his palace, and just summoned film studios to either bring him what he wanted screening, or commanded them to make what he wished to show. for quieter moments i suspect he had a Video 8, i suppose, and a VHS and Beta before moving to laserdisc.
Dean Martin is a little bit more tricky to guess at. so long as there were ladies and high grade whisky i doubt very much that he cared for such things as video for home entertainment. at a push i suppose he had a Betamax, bought second hand off of Mr Sinatra at the bequest of Mr Sinatra, for several thousand dollars.
any tapes visible in the shown segments of the video collection of Glass Eye that are notable or of interest? all of them, i guess. i mean, it's kind of interesting to think that Sammy would sit and watch the same films that a lot of us did in the 80s. maybe a special nod, perhaps, to the fact that he had Monty Python & The Holy Grail in his collection. also Silent Rage. with respect to the latter, i wonder if Sammy ever gave thought to calling up Chuck Norris, the star of that film, and inviting him over for some fisticuffs.
in terms of the show, the proprietor of the pawn shop, i think Rick is his name, declined to buy them. he reckoned there was no money to be made. whereas i appreciate that his business model relies on a quite fast turnaround of stock, i am not sure this is the case.
firstly, a quick and decidedly unscientific search suggests these Video 8 tapes have a value in their own right. going on that eBay thing it would appear that the tapes go, whether used or new and sealed, for around $10 a go, with the $ being decidedly American dollars, buddy. with hundreds of tapes, that could - admittedly in the long run - translate into thousands of dollars. someone somewhere, surely, would like the double tape edition of The Last Emperor on Video 8.
going beyond that and there is indeed the provenance. whereas i would have absolutely no practical use whatsoever for an NTSC copy of Raiders Of The Lost Ark on Video 8, i would totes pay around $10 or even maybe $20 to have the copy of it once owned by Sammy Davis jnr on my shelf. no, i don't have all that many friends and even less visitors to show it off to, but i would be content to have it as i would think such to be quite cool.
i would imagine that the "holy grail", of sorts, of owning a video tape what once belonged to a celebrity would be to take over custody of the video of The Exorcist what John Lennon owned. with some certainty i am sure i have covered this before, but one of the great rites of passage for noted British people visiting America in the 70s was to go to New York, visit Lennon in his apartment and watch his video of The Exorcist. the film wasn't so much "banned" in the UK at the time as much as it was simply never released. Warner Bros were advised that the chairman of the BBFC was unlikely to let it be screened, so they never bothered trying to give it a release at the time.
now that i think about this, it is quite awesome. and why not? i mean people collect clothing, costumes and so forth. to me it would be boss, for example, to take over ownership of a video that Kubrick owned. doesn't have to be anything special. or how about Bowie's copy of Dark Side Of The Moon, or whatever it was he listened to. boss, i guess, would be Mr Sinatra's video of The Godfather, unless of course he happened to also sell that to Dean Martin. probably did, for several hundred dollars. thousands if he signed it for him too.
whilst confessing earlier that there is something of a voyeuristic nature to this, i am not sure if it a freaky or disturbing idea. for the most, if not all, part, i am a great believer in keeping your distance from those artists and performers you like and admire. when they are not releasing recordings or doing films they are not "that" artists, as such, and should be left alone. but, in terms of the disposal of the deceased estate of the famous and celebrated, why not take ownership of one of their videos or albums?
this sort of thing is probably not done, of course, for the danger of some "stalker" type figure getting involved and taking ownership. or maybe, as was clearly not the case with the family of Glass Eye, the surviving family of the famous type of person quite wished to keep the tapes themselves, thank you.
yes, indeed no, i am most certainly not going off to hunt down and take ownership of a tape or anything what once belonged to someone famous. i just find the idea of being able to do so unusually interesting and quite fascinating.
anyway, time to get on with things.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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