A High School Memory of a Future Pop Legend

Re “Music Legend Phil Spector Arrested in Woman’s Killing,” Feb. 4:

I hold myself partially to blame for Phil Spector’s current problems. As a classmate of Phil’s, I was in attendance the first time he performed at a school assembly. We sat, stunned, as he strummed on his guitar and sang. The idea that anyone with that nasal, New York wheeze would sing outside the confines of his shower redefined chutzpah for us. The end of his performance was greeted with absolute silence. After a few moments, moved by compassion for a fellow human being, my friend and I started to applaud. Soon, the rest of the student body joined in. To our collective horror, this so buoyed Phil’s spirits that he did an encore!

Soon after graduating from Fairfax High School, Phil, who had seemed destined to be our class’ “Least Likely to Succeed,” began making his mark on the music world. When we congregated at the Ambassador Hotel for our 10th reunion, Phil was the one who showed up in a limo he actually owned, along with three bodyguards whose sole function was to ensure that none of us got within 10 yards of the man.

If my pal and I hadn’t encouraged Phil that fateful day, I find myself wondering if he might not have become an accountant and been spared the drugs, the booze and now his arrest for murder. At the very least, we’d have been spared that really awful encore!

Burt Prelutsky

North Hills

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I found “Slain Actress Had A-List Dreams, B-Movie Reality” (Feb. 5), about Lana Clarkson’s life, to be tabloid journalism. “The killing has called attention to the frustrating existence of B-movie actresses: performers who star in cheap mass-appeal films without ever securing that definitive role.”

No, the killing doesn’t call attention to it, but the article does. Clarkson, whom I didn’t know, was obviously loved by her friends and co-workers; that she was 40 and worked in B-movies isn’t relevant to her death. “She was holding on by her fingernails to make a living, yet ... smiling cheerfully all the while.”

Come on. And people who don’t realize their dreams should hang their heads in shame? Is there a point in going over the list of people who worked on Roger Corman films and found success in A-movies? The same should apply to those who write for A-newspapers -- that they don’t employ B-writing standards.

Richard Martini

Santa Monica