When Fred and Orsen and Clint and Tallulah and Ingrid became part of their lives

Close encounters with the stars, in the days when stars were more accessible, seem to be unforgettable experiences.

I have heard from many readers with stories to match Ray Bradbury’s memory of bumping into Greta Garbo years ago in front of the old Biltmore Theater, and holding her, for a moment, in his arms.

Not all the encounters were that close, to be sure, but a star of the first magnitude leaves an indelible mark on anyone who unexpectedly crosses his or her orbit.

Doris Winkler of Hollywood remembers one night near Christmas in Bullock’s Westwood. “Suddenly, at the men’s socks display, I found myself staring at Fred MacMurray.

“ ‘Fred!’ I babbled, as though I had known him 20 years. ‘I saw you in your very first movie!’

“ ‘Well, kid, that dates both of us,’ Fred said, fleeing.”

Nell Grzywinska of Seal Beach tells a story with a plot that reminds me of “Casablanca.”

“In 1942 my Polish husband and I were living in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while, he, Franciszek, a member of the Polish Legation in exile in London for the duration, was assisting in the Allied effort to expedite rubber from the interior and consequently spent much time in the bush.

“He and an American had been stranded for weeks in a small village waiting for a small, ‘short-winged’ unscheduled plane to appear over the cleared-off patch of jungle. In telling me about it later he said, ‘This American was an interesting conversationalist and we whiled away many hours on many subjects. He seemed to be someone important in the States--kept talking about motion pictures. His name was Orson Welles, darling. Have you ever heard of him?’ ”

David Nichols of North Hollywood remembers a scene that might have been from a Clint Eastwood movie. Nichols was in the bar of the Howard Johnson’s hotel in North Hollywood one day during the Happy Hour. A middle-aged man who appeared down on his luck told the barmaid that Clint Eastwood was coming in to see him.

“ ‘That’s fine,’ she said stoically. ‘We get a lot of celebrities in here.’

“Which is true. They also get a lot of big talkers, small-time schemers, and would-bes of every stripe. But let’s face it--Clint Eastwood just doesn’t drop in for Happy Hour at the North Hollywood Howard Johnson’s. . . .”

The clock ticked on. Even the man who was waiting for Eastwood began to look as if he didn’t believe he’d ever come. “Then, slowly the door opened, letting in the last light of the day. A jolt of electricity crackled in every corner of the room. For there, framed in the doorway, backlit by the sunset, stood all 6 feet and God-knows-how-much of Clint Eastwood. . . . I’ve seen all the Dirty Harry movies, but I’ve never seen a rescue more dramatic or more appreciated than that one. . . .”

It was not in Los Angeles, but on the sidewalks of New York that Robert Bentley of Glendale had his unforgettable encounter with Tallulah Bankhead in the late 1950s.

“Waiting to cross Fifth Avenue near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I found myself side by side with Tallulah. She saw that I recognized her. She also saw that I didn’t intend to make an issue of it.

“ ‘Will you do something for me, dahling?’ she asked rather reservedly.

“ ‘Of course,’ I smiled.

“She looped her arm in mine and we crossed the avenue. She guided me to the side street door of the cathedral chapel of St. Pat’s. Inside, we approached the altar and she knelt. I knelt beside her. After a minute or so, she rose. I followed. On the street she thanked me graciously and went on her way.”

Imagine the uninhibited Tallulah leading a young man to prayer.

A story so romantic that it sounds like a movie scene is told by Doug Boyd of Burbank. As a 14-year-old school kid in 1938 he was sailing his 14-foot, two-seat kayak off the Santa Monica surf in a heavy sea one morning when suddenly he heard “a faint, shrill voice” calling for help.

He was beyond sight of land, and struggling to keep the small craft afloat. As he turned toward the voice he was almost capsized by an enormous swell.

“Then I saw for only an instant a lovely white face with wide open eyes staring up at me, mostly submerged in the foamy froth. . . .”

The swimmer kept disappearing in the swells. Miraculously, Boyd reached her.

“I pulled her up to me. Her arms clasped tightly around my neck and she pressed tightly to my own quaking body. . . . I could feel her heart pounding against me. . . . I felt scared to death. . . . She was the first young full-blown woman I’d ever held this way. . . . She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. . . .”

As he rowed toward shore she explained. She usually took a five-mile swim in the morning, but this morning she had been caught in the tide, and had spent the past two hours struggling to stay in one place. He thought she said her name was Inga. She was living in a beach house with a film director who was going to make her a star.

He did, too.

She invited the boy who had saved her life to come back in a day or two and she would cook him a Swedish breakfast.

He never went back; he was too shy; and it was only later, when she had become a star, that he knew she was Ingrid Bergman.

I’d have gone back. In 1938 a free meal was not to be rejected.