Raiding the Closets of Rich and Famous to Help the Needy : Charity: Celebrity Knick-Knacks makes a business of being a liaison service between celebrities and charities.

George Burns’ half-smoked cigars. Phyllis Diller’s leftover gowns. Ray-Ban sunglasses signed by Tom Cruise. Bottles of Mickey Rooney’s soft drink, Mickey Melon. A baseball bat signed by Tommy John, Ernie Banks and Japanese home-run king Sadaharu Oh. A Joker doll signed by the “Batman” TV show’s original Joker, Cesar Romero.

This is the stock and trade of Edi Boxstein.

No, she is not a collector. Boxstein is the founder of Celebrity Knick-Knacks, a North Hollywood-based business that she says is the world’s only liaison service between celebrities and charities. Boxstein takes from the rich and famous and gives to the needy--and turns a perfectly legal profit in the process.

The 30-something former public relations executive takes such items as teddy bears from Burt Reynolds and autographed bottles of cranberry juice from Whoopi Goldberg and funnels them to charitable organizations ranging from the American Red Cross to the American Diabetes Assn., which auction them off at fund-raisers.

Charities from all over the world call Boxstein routinely with wish lists of things they would like celebrities to donate. Requests range from famous Xeroxed and autographed handprints (and prints of other body parts) to “anything at all” from pop star Michael Jackson.

“Put simply, I came up with a service that makes donating easier for the celebrities and receiving easier for the charities,” she said. “My motto is, ‘We do all the work, and you get all the thanks.’ ”

And what is so hard about donating? The volume of requests. Just over two years ago, while she was still in public relations, Boxstein walked into a celebrity client’s office and saw backlogged requests from charities stacked four feet high along the length of a wall--and that was just two months’ worth. She saw an opportunity, bailed out of her job, and Knick-Knacks was born.

Today her regular clients include Mickey Rooney (aside from donating 15 bottles of his watermelon-flavored soft drink, he also sent some “Honk if you’ve been married to Mickey Rooney” bumper stickers), John Ritter (who deluges Knick-Knacks with welcome, unsolicited donations), Marsha Mason, Mark Linn-Baker, George Burns, Ed Asner, Tony Dow, Ally Sheedy, New World Pictures, Stephen J. Cannell Productions, Tony Curtis, Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.

The celebrities or production companies simply send items to Boxstein, who distributes the goods to reputable charities, traces the fate of every item, then tells the client how much money the item raised and what cause it helped. Her profit is about 30% of whatever the charity manages to raise--but only if the item is sold.

For the record, framed specimens of Burns stogies--El Producto Queens, which sell for about $15 a box--have raised as much as $50 to help protect animals at the Flamingo Gardens preserve in Florida. Cruise’s autographed sunglasses raised $85 for the preserve.

“At first, Tom didn’t want to sign them--didn’t want to destroy a good pair of sunglasses,” Boxstein said, laughing. Goldberg, said by Boxstein to be “down to her underwear” in things to donate, signed a bottle of her favorite drink, cranberry juice, provided by Boxstein. It was auctioned for $125 for Photoaid, a New York-based group of photographers fighting AIDS.

Mounted individual frames from John Ritter’s film “Problem Child” (autographed, of course), old “Rifleman” scripts signed by Chuck Connors and a dress Marsha Mason wore in “Chapter Two” helped raise money for AIDS research and American Civil Liberties Union support groups.

“There’s no other way a charity is going to get things like, for example, George Burns’ cigars, except through Celebrity Knick-Knacks, because George is not going to be bothered with it,” said Boxstein, whose staff consists only of a secretary.

“He gets far too many requests, and he needs somebody to handle this for him. I’ll be able to tell that a cigar that he donated sold for X amount of money for such-and-such charity, and he gets a kick out of it--knowing that a used cigar could help somebody or something.”

Or a used teddy bear. Dozens of the fuzzies recently sent to the Kidney Foundation of Canada--most gathered by Boxstein--helped raise money to send children on dialysis to summer camp. Bears were sent by, among many others, Elton John, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cougar Mellencamp, Hugh Hefner, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), Vanna White, Joan Rivers, Loni Anderson, Burt Reynolds and Sheena Easton.

Kidney Foundation Program Coordinator Valerie Bunz said the bear drive might not have been feasible without Knick-Knacks. “At the very least,” she said, “Edi saved us a great amount of time.” Easton’s bear brought in $600 alone.

“When I first went into business, we had a request for toothbrushes, which celebrities thought was very odd,” Boxstein said. “So we wrote to a dozen celebrities and sent them each a brand-new toothbrush. They autographed the tag, and we put them in a frame and made it available for fund-raising. And I think a dentist bought it.”

Boxstein said she often gets ideas by brainstorming with charities.

“I might say, ‘If I purchase a giant lollipop, would Telly Savalas sign the plastic cover on it?’ And then the charity is very excited, because they have something that T. S. would never have donated any other way.”

This process puts her in contact with other clients ranging from the teddy bear donors to, yes, Michael Jackson.

Knick-Knacks recently got three copies of his book “Moonwalker” from him. “I don’t want to bother him again, but his name comes up on every wish list,” she said. “Even though I have access to him and I know he would respond, I don’t like to bug him. Because I don’t want him to feel that when he donates to charities through me that he has more work than what he already has through his office.”

There are some things she won’t take--even from Jackson. “Occasionally someone offers bikini underwear and things like that,” Boxstein said. “But I don’t take it for a number of reasons. First, I never wish to embarrass a celebrity-- never. And I’m not certain that celebrities have their own best interests at heart. The publicist in me can’t put them in a bad light.”

The most unusual donation, she said, was the very first she handled--a Jaguar XKE from Tony Dow. It is one of her few less successful efforts: “Tony wanted to be magnanimous to a charity, and I talked him into it. We made it available to an eye institute in Chicago. They thought they could sell it for $20,000, but in the end they sold it for Blue Book, which was very disappointing.

“Because it was my first time, I got snagged on all the interstate laws on pink slips. By the time all that was cleared up, the person who purchased it didn’t even want it any more.”

But even Dow’s generosity is no match--at least in terms of weirdness--to the remarkable donations made by Knick-Knacks client Ed Asner. The former star of TV’s “Lou Grant” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” who is well-known for political activism, has, on occasion, donated, well, himself.

“Ed is an enormously gracious man who will take somebody to lunch for charity,” Boxstein said. “He once took a woman with neurofibromatosis to lunch, and that woman just has the memory of her lifetime having gone out with Ed, and through that he has become a supporter of organizations fighting the disease.

“He has also allowed himself to be auctioned off for phone conversations when he hasn’t been able to actually take somebody out to eat, or he’ll meet people in his office. And that’s what charities really like--a dinner, a photo opportunity.”

Yet it is using Boxstein’s services that freed Asner’s staff, and indirectly freed Asner for his occasional donation of a lunch or chat. “I admit the idea of a celebrity ‘clearinghouse’ for auctions was perplexing,” Asner said. “It seemed a nonessential for my office . . . until my staff revealed to me how many man-hours had gone into fulfilling these requests in the past. Edi’s ingenious idea saves my time, as well as helps deserving organizations glean whatever proceeds my celebrity yields.”

Asner’s is not the only donation of a human presence for charity, however. People bid highly for visits to the sets of popular television shows, where they can hobnob with a favorite star, and for walk-ons, where they can appear in their favorite show as a background extra.

A visit to the set of NBC’s “Cheers” to meet Woody Harrelson netted $870 for the Canada Kidney Foundation, and a recent visit to the closed set of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fetched $670.

It’s all very satisfying to Boxstein. Sitting back at her desk next to a chart of stars she hopes to nab--Steven Spielberg, Madonna and Bill Cosby among them--flipping a pencil with erasers at both ends (donated by Johnny Carson), she smiled.

“I love this,” she said. “I love waking up every morning, coming to work, talking to the charities, getting the items, meeting people. . . . This is one of the nicer sides of the business.”