One man tells of being on vacation with his young-adult daughter in New Mexico. In Santa Fe, they stopped for some fruit in a grocery store, and then headed for the checkout line. While they waited for their turn, the man happened to glance at the couple in line ahead of him. The woman was a total stranger, but it occurred to this father that the man resembled the actor Alan Arkin. In fact, the more he studied him, the more convinced the father was that he was Alan Arkin. So he whispered to his daughter, “I think that’s Alan Arkin.” To which she responded, “Who?” So he quietly mentioned some movies in which Arkin had had leading roles: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Wait Until Dark, The Seven Percent Solution and Catch 22. The daughter had never heard of, let alone seen any of them, but she noticed that the man was filling out a charge slip, and when the cashier set it aside, the daughter managed to get a look at it. She saw that he signed it, “Alan Arkin.”

            After the father and daughter paid for their groceries and were exiting the store, they noticed Arkin standing near the door, so the father told him that he enjoyed his movies. Arkin thanked him, but when his companion arrived, he beat a hasty retreat toward his car, apparently concerned that he had been recognized.

            Notice that the father recognized Arkin but the daughter, who obviously belongs to a later generation, didn’t. But Arkin is not a has-been. He is still a working actor. At that time, he had a reoccurring part in a TV series and had two movies in production. Still, he is not the big star today that he once was.

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