Roseanne Cleans Out Closet for Children’s Charity

Liberty Bennett knew ahead of time exactly what she wanted: the Marie Antoinette hoop gown that Dan wore on the Halloween episode with sister-in-law Jackie, tucked into the folds, impersonating the severed royal head.

She was prepared to go $300, but figured that wouldn’t come close to the asking price. “If it doesn’t sell, I could leave my name on a list,” Bennett said.

But that wasn’t really the point. “I have to see it,” she said.

Bennett was the first in line at CBS/MTM Studios Friday for the two-day garage sale of studio garments from “Roseanne” and “The Jackie Thomas Show,” plus hundreds of discards--many as yet unworn--from Roseanne Arnold’s amply stocked personal wardrobe.

Arnold’s public relations firm, PMK, put the word out sparingly to avoid a stampede at the studio gate. And, indeed, only about 75 people had lined up behind Bennett by the scheduled 10 a.m. opening. They were left waiting a few more minutes while Arnold, wearing red stretch pants and a blue sweat shirt, made an appearance for the news media inside a studio sound stage.

After enduring three waves of lurching, flash-popping and, ultimately, grousing paparazzi, Arnold answered questions charmingly, in her own gritty sort of way.

She said she was just cleaning out her closet and decided, “Why not have a garage sale for charity?” It turned out to be very therapeutic. Now she can even find things in her closet, she said.

“I like go shopping and then I put things in my closet and I never wear them,” she explained. “I think maybe I’m going to, you know, lose weight and fit into them, but it never, ever happens.”

Arnold turned emotional, then strident, explaining her cause and the beneficiary of the sale’s proceeds: the Tom and Roseanne Arnold Foundation for molested and sexually abused children. She said the foundation’s work ranges from grants to buy anatomically correct dolls for rural investigators to educational initiatives to enlighten some of what she described as myopic officials.

An example would be getting child abuse experts, instead of a bunch of Yale law students, to decide whether Woody Allen is guilty or not, she said, or waking up some of the country’s “demented” judges who give custody to abusive fathers.

“This happens in like 60% of the cases, that custody is given to the wrong parent,” she said. “It’s definitely screwed up.”

Arnold slipped out through a curtain as the public came in. But no one really seemed to expect to see her. It was enough to see, touch and possibly carry away something she had actually worn, or purchased intending to wear.

The shopping was a blend of Hollywood hysteria with the psychology of the May Co. bargain basement.

Nicholas Comella was looking for anything from a Halloween episode plus three pairs of underwear--for three different friends. He was delighted with his catch, a kind of doctor’s smock with syringes, scissors and surgical clamps dangling from blood-stained holes. Obviously, he intended to show, not wear , it, and he had no idea what his friends planned to do with the lacy briefs on his arm.

Bennett had no chance to get the Marie Antoinette dress. It had been pre-sold at $3,500 to a Hollywood museum. Anyway, it had a neck size of about 48. Bennett was looking for things to wear. She settled on some blue jeans for her son and a couple of Pendleton shirts at $40 each for her boyfriend. Then she was seduced by a diaphanous white silk dress with miles of beading and lace embroidery. It was $350.

“I might buy it to get married in if my boyfriend would marry me,” she said dreamily. She took it.

A black couple were shopping for exhibits for the Ola Mae Johnson Black Historical/Memorabilia Society in Los Angeles. Ola Mae Johnson said she wants to give inner-city kids a taste of life they can’t see for themselves.

She wanted anything she had seen Roseanne wear. She settled on a pair of paint-splattered cowboy shirts, mementos of a Roseanne and Dan spat and items of such value they were numbered, not priced. But one of the painted shirts was snatched up in front of her eyes by Darlene Flading, a shopper on a wild, giggling spree.

Flading, who had stopped at the bank the night before to pick up a wad of $100s, also grabbed the tiger-skin jacket Roseanne wore on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” for $500, and a pile of blouses, shirts, jeans and jackets which she dumped into her brother’s arms.

The plump and cheery Flading swore she planned to use everything. “It’s no shrine, “ she said. Besides, she confided, “I have a real hard time finding clothes that fit me.”

Hoping Flading might lose interest in a few items at the cash register and drop the painted shirt, Johnson kept a tail on her for most of an hour. But there would be no happy ending.

Flading checked out for $1,145. In recognition of her largess, they gave her a deal on the painted shirt: $15. When Johnson put her matching shirt on the counter, “Roseanne” costumer designer Erin Quigley marked it $200.

Johnson protested in the name of fairness. But Quigley and a vice president for the Tom and Roseanne Arnold Foundation declined to negotiate. Johnson and her husband went away without the shirt.