Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Larry Manetti - 'Rick' on "Magnum P.I."

Larry Manetti is an actor who is perhaps best known for his role of 'Orville "Rick" Wright' on tv's 1980s series "Magnum P.I." which starred Tom Selleck as the title character. He's guest-starred on many other tv shows too, and has been in many feature movies, but I know him best as 'Rick'.

I've been enjoying "Magnum P.I.", catching up from the very first show, on dvd. I did watch the show when it was on first broadcast on tv, but only sporadically, so now I can watch all of the shows I missed, and I'm still on the first season, so I have plenty to go - the show was on for eight seasons!

In April of 2003, I met Larry Manetti at a Chiller Theatre Show in New Jersey. My very good friend Peter and I went to the show and spent a few hours roaming the celebrity rooms, seeing who was there. Peter knew Mr. Manetti was scheduled to appear, but there are always others who are interesting to see, too.

Mr. Manetti was selling his book, Aloha Magnum: Larry Manetti's Magnum P.I. Memories. Peter and I each bought a copy, and Larry signed them for us. Also, he was gracious to let us take pictures with him, without charging extra as many celebrities do. The photo of Larry and me can be seen here.

Here is the cover and the signed inside page from the book.
I remember the price I paid for the book - $15 - (and I don't remember if Mr. Manetti charged a few extra dollars to sign it) but I've noticed that resellers on Amazon have it priced from $64.99 for used copies, to $488.88 for a new, signed copy!

Larry Manetti has his own webpage which can be viewed here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Bill, for sharing this great memory of which I was a part!

But for the record, I had already purchased Larry Manetti's book as soon as it was published, and shamefully, I didn't bring it with me to have him sign. I didn't buy another one there with you, and given it's astonishing price these days, that's a great pity!

But I did buy one of the original MPI scripts that he had there for sale. I could be wrong, but I think he said it was one of the last one's he had. It was his actual shooting script from an episode of the show, and fortunately I did have him sign that.