ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Larry Lazenby said decades ago, he was reading an interview in a Rochester newspaper, about Tom Selleck.
“And one of the questions they asked him was, ‘Was there ever a Christmas gift that you always wanted but never got?’ And his response to that question was, he wanted a Fanner 50 which was a Mattel toy cap gun that came with a full leather holster, and that’s what he always wanted and never got it,” Lazenby said.
Lazenby said he told his wife that answer, and she had an idea.
“My wife looked up from the article and said, ‘You have a Fanner 50 with a holster. Why don’t you offer it to him?’ And my first comment to her was, ‘I’m not giving away my Fanner 50.’ I know how he feels! I wanted it, and I have it,” Lazenby said.
But an interview he saw with Selleck after, sparked a change of heart.
“They were interviewing another actor named Lee Horsley in the show that he was on was “Matt Houston,” which was almost identical to “Magnum, P.I.,” Lazenby said. “He was getting all kinds of grief from critics and the public for copying Tom Selleck. And during this interview, Lee Horsley told the person that he received a phone call from Tom Selleck saying, ‘Ignore the critics. Don’t listen to them. You’re a great actor. Your show is great. Continue doing what you’re doing and be proud.’ And I sat there and thought, ‘That’s the kind of guy I could give my Fanner 50 to.’
So, Lazenby got to work. It came at a time when he and his wife were getting ready to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary, in Hawaii.
“I wrote a letter to his press secretary and gave them the dates of when we were coming over. And then I had a very special gift to give Tom Selleck, which would be the fan of 50 cap pistol with a leather holster and told them where we would be staying on Oahu. We got to Hawaii, spent a beautiful honeymoon there, and never heard a thing.”
That all changed on the last day of the trip.
“We were out touring, came back to the room, and there was a phone call, and it was from the press secretary, and the press secretary let out this. ‘Thank goodness. I can’t believe I finally reached you. I lost all of the information you gave me, but then I remembered your last name was the same name as a pen pal I had in England while I was in high school, so I remembered your last name. So, I’ve been calling every hotel in Oahu asking if they have a Lazenby registered there, and I finally found you. If I had not found you, Tom would have been furious, because he wants to meet you.’”
She quickly gave the Lazenby’s the address where Selleck happened to be filming.
“If you could be there by this time, it would be great. Fantastic. We immediately go downstairs. We get a cab. Give them the address where they’re filming the next episode of ‘Magnum, P.I.’ The driver of the cab takes off, and shortly we realized he was driving in circles,” Lazenby said. “It turned out the cab driver couldn’t speak English and had no idea where we wanted to go, and my wife and I are looking at our watches, thinking we can’t believe that we’re not going to get there because we have a cab driver who couldn’t speak English. Look out the window of the cab and coming down the street is an ambulance without his lights and sirens going. I hopped out of the cab, flagged down the ambulance, told them the circumstances of where we were supposed to be going, and I said, this driver doesn’t speak English. And the cab driver, or the ambulance driver was nice enough to say, Follow us. We’ll take you right where you want to go. And we did. The cab driver followed the ambulance took us right to the set of where we were, and we watched part of their filming.”
Then, came time for a break.
“Selleck comes immediately, right over to my wife, Diane and I, and introduces himself. We opened up a box that had the fan or 50 in it and said, ‘We want to give this to you. After seeing some interviews and stuff, if I’m going to give it to one person, it’s going to be you, because I know you’ll take care of it,’” Lazenby said. “He must have stayed with us at that time for a good half hour while they were shooting. Finally, the director yells out, is anybody going to work today? Well, the director, and you would not remember this either. Do you remember the old show, Mod Squad? No, it was way back. It was quite popular. Well, this one of the stars of that was Clarence Williams, the third who was a famous movie actor of himself, and he was doing the directing. Well, everybody laughed. They went back to work. Shot another scene, and as soon as the scene was over, he comes back and starts fooling around again, doing quick draws, orders wine for us, and then proceeds to stand there and have wine with us while we’re watching the scenes and talking about this Fanner 50 gun. Eventually, what they finished their filming, they were wrapping up, he said, ‘Let me do this.’”
