Hollywood poster boy

Collector donating 1,050 posters to Oscar library

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press May 9, 2001.

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

PALMDALE - Call Joseph Yore the poster boy for Hollywood posters.

Well, not a boy. Former Marine and Korean War era veteran. Actor, singer-songwriter, career movie extra, dabbler in property and career autograph hound. Retired, he's also a local environmental activist and a self-proclaimed City Hall "agitator." But that's another story.

If modern life is awash in a sea of popular culture, Yore has sailed the briny waves as a yachtsman and a skipper.

"I was everywhere in Hollywood for years," he said. "It finally got so autographs were more important than pay. Money is just pieces of paper."

And he doesn't sell them, the way autograph marketers do these days at such hefty markup.

"I wouldn't dream of selling them."

Enter his Palmdale home and you walk into a Hollywood backlot of the mind. Images of Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe abound on the walls covered with photographs, figurines, dolls, statuary and masks. But there's a lot more than the classic icons everyone knows these days.

Along with James Dean, there's Anita Ekberg. More on that later.

The Hollywood bug bit Yore early as he made his way west in the late '50s from Emporium, Pa. You remember Emporium. The hometown of Silent Era film cowboy Tom Mix.

Tom Mix makes the Joseph Yore wall of fame. Along with others more famous and more obscure.

During his Hollywood period, spanning about 30 years, Yore frequented watering holes like the Brown Derby and Chasen's. A drink here. A story there. An autograph for the collection.

As a musician, he collaborated with Debbie Reynolds on "Am I That Easy to Forget?" Debbie remembered Yore. She signed his copy of the album.

Take a close look at Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif making the big goo-goo eyes at each other on a lobby card for "Funny Girl." Just beneath La Streisand's famed proboscis and Sharif's jutting jaw, can you make out the profile of Yore.

"I was an extra who played a young Jewish kid."

Kind of like Woody Allen in "Zelig." Witness and companion to history. Definitely there, wherever there happened to be.

He shared an elevator with Edith Head and with Elvis. Yes, that Elvis.

"Hollywood and Vine, the star's doctors worked on the 12th floor," Yore recounted. "I was an extra when Elvis made `Viva Las Vegas.' "

Also, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

"I was just part of Hollywood."

Over the decades, Yore managed to amass a collection of movie posters and memorabilia that a museum curator would envy. In fact, the archivists are on their way out to Yore's house today.

"I'm donating 1,050 movie posters to the library of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences," Yore said. "The posters really are an art form."

The great, the near-great, the lesser and the obscure. They're all in the boxes now, crated and ready to go to Oscar's library.

Sure, lots of people have heard of the film classic "From Here to Eternity." But how about "Back to Eternity"? With a poster declaring "Oooh, that Ekberg!" Reference is to Anita Ekberg, a siren of her day, famous for a few years, but now forever in Monroe and Rita Moreno's shadow.

Others among the greats and the near-greats. A lot of people in the pop culture quiz game would know that Mickey Rooney played the loveable Andy Hardy, son of Judge Hardy, in a series of teen comedy romances with Judy Garland.

But how many remember Rooney played the gangster "Baby Face Nelson"? How about the supporting cast? Carolyn Jones, later of "Addams Family" TV fame, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Jack Elam of "Support Your Local Gunfighter." Some cast.

And Rooney, wielding a "chopper." No, not a Harley-Davidson. A Tommy gun with a drum magazine.

The "Baby Face" director was Don Siegel, who is only adored by French cinema buffs because of his command of the American filmed landscape in movies ranging from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "Dirty Harry."

A thousand posters. A thousand stories. Glamour. Heartbreak. Agony. Ecstasy. You get the picture.

Or, Oscar gets the pictures, as of today.

"You get to a point in your life of collecting, where when you've collected enough, you want to give something back."

Yore's giving streak has included donating stacks of books to California State Prison Los Angeles County in Lancaster.

He collects other stuff. He owns the signatures of Ronald Reagan as president, and several of the Watergate players. For the man who has everything, an autographed signed picture of G. Gordon Liddy.

Yore believes in donating so that his legacy will get another shot at redemption by being viewed and enjoyed by others.

"When I die, I don't want my stuff trashed," he said. "It's not junk."