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B.R. celeb fest

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Even though we reside far from the spotlight, Baton Rougeans have their share of celebrity stories, and duly cherish the moments frozen in two-dimensional eternity.

We asked our readers to send in their snapshots taken with well-known actors, athletes, performers, politicians and newsmakers.

All in all we received more than 100 photographs, some accompanied by details of the celebrity encounter, others simply with the names of those in the picture.

The photos on the next several pages illustrate how excited Baton Rougeans, like most Americans, get when they meet stars.

Each picture tells its own story. Some were premeditated meetings, long coordinated and fantasized. Others were spontaneous and unexpected, like unforgettable night Kathleen Richard Callaghan met Neil Diamond.

With the release of “Solitary Man” in 1966, the Brill Building singer-songwriter quickly became one of Callaghan’s idols when she was 16. She remembers her mom ordering her to turn the record player down as Diamond’s songs blared from the speakers after school and during all-night slumber parties. But a strange thing happened between then and the mid-1970s: Diamond’s target audience shifted from pop-loving teens to middle-aged housewives. That demographic included, ironically, Callaghan’s once-dismissive mother.

By that time Callaghan herself was a wife and mom, and musically, she had moved on to Fleetwood Mac and Donna Summer. But when Diamond’s concert date at the LSU Assembly Center was announced in early 1977, her mother made sure they got tickets. But they got more than that. Callaghan’s father was head of the university’s public relations office, which yielded front-row seats and back-stage passes.

Though her mother, who would later follow Diamond’s tours around the country, showed more outright enthusiasm, Callaghan enjoyed the concert as a blast from her teenage past. The entire show was spiked with excitement about their planned backstage meeting. After the concert, Callaghan, her mother and her sister each gave the singer a kiss on the cheek and took a handful of pictures. She was struck by how kind and gracious Diamond was for a pop star (see photo, P.62).

“Looking back on it, I realize that he must have been exhausted after the concert,” says Callaghan. “So for him to be so nice and patient was even more impressive.”

Callaghan is right. Approaching a star can be a real crapshoot. Their friendly, charismatic image isn’t necessarily a mirror of the real thing. During the filming of All The King’s Men, Baton Rougeans who met Jude Law described him as inviting and kind, but according to some, Sean Penn was more surly than sunshine. This gap between image and reality can be found equally on the local level, but here it is more easily bridged.

At 25, Claire Hatty is one of the more prominent faces in the city. She is a reporter for WBRZ News 2 Louisiana. Though only on the tube for a couple years, Hatty is aged squarely amid a post-slacker generation that lives more enticed (and inundated) by the tendrils of celebrity than its parents ever were.

She gets recognized in public all the time. And she can’t help but notice the long glances, the groups of people mentioning her name but not approaching her. If they do, questions about recent news stories and what it felt like to be on the scene at certain events are topics that usually come up. Hatty takes it all in stride. Naturally outgoing, she has never changed plans or considered staying in because she didn’t feel like being spotted by strangers or meeting new people.

“One of the funniest things that’s happened to me was when I was at a coffee shop and the cashier asked my mom if people ever tell her that her daughter looks like Claire Hatty from Channel 2,” Hatty says. “My mom said, ‘Yeah, she gets it all the time.’”

Hatty has her own celebrity stories, too. She performed as a dancer during the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans. Because she was part of the show, photos and autographs were prohibited, but she did meet the guys from ZZ Top and David Letterman’s bandleader, Paul Shaffer. And she got a huge, sweaty hug from the legendary “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown. “That,” Hatty says, “was an experience.”

Click this link to read more of our cover package.