“As a kid I had a huge crush on John Phillip Law after I saw him in The Russians are Coming!, The Russians Are Coming!,” a producer friends recalls. “Anyway, one day I was in the post office on Fairfax and Santa Monica Blvd. in the late ’80s. That post office was a depressing green-fluorescent lighthole back then. Remember that that whole general area was on the dinghy side before the posh Whole Foods opened across the street and gave the neighborhood a facelift.

“So I’m standing there and suddenly I see a guy with bony white legs in cheap shorts, a faded T-shirt and a torn straw beach hat. I got a little closer as I used the xerox machine, and when I saw who it was I gasped — John Phillip Law. I was horrified. He looked like a homeless person. Later on I heard an anecdote from a close friend who had rented the lower level of a duplex in the hills that Law owned. He said that he/they moved out quickly after they realized Law was stark raving mad.”

Really? I would have put differently. I would have said “after they realized Law had more or less tipped over into eccentricity.”