Celebrity fair soon will be making another run

Lisa Ferguson

Thursday, Dec. 18, 1997 | 8:39 a.m.

You may not know Jeraldine Saunders' name, but you certainly know her life story.

At least a big part of it, as long as you owned a television during the '80s.

The Southern California woman was the world's first female cruise director, and her autobiography, "The Love Boat," was the basis for the long-running ABC series.

And if you can recall the name of the prime-time party boat's cruise director, you'll understand why Saunders says, "I always tell everyone I'm the real McCoy." (Actress Lauren Tewes played perky cruise director Julie McCoy.)

In fact, Tewes is one of the few "Love Boat" cast members who won't be taking part in Saunders' latest venture, hosting the Jeraldine Saunders Celebrity Fair this weekend at Ballys hotel-casino.

Bernie Kopell, who played the ship's doctor, Adam Bricker, and Jill Whelan, best known as Captain Stubing's teenaged daughter Vicki, will be on hand at the oversized autograph and memorabilia show, along with several dozen other celebrities, including actress Jane Russell ("Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), Hermans Hermits crooner Peter Noone, baseball legend Reggie Jackson and television's "Batman," Adam West.

Tewes declined the inviation to appear, Saunders says, as she is performing in a play in Seattle.

And what about everybody's favorite bartender, Issac, played by actor Ted Lange? "I'm not sure yet whether he can make it or not," Saunders says. No word, either, on ex-congressman/Iowa gubernatorial candidate Fred Grandy, who played Gopher, or Capt. Stubing himself, Gavin MacLeod.

So much for a full-blown "Boat" reunion. But that's not what most people attending the Celebrity Fair will be there for, says Saunders, who recently attended a similar event in Los Angeles.

"They're like beehives; people were swarming in there," she says. Besides celebrities, vendors peddling rare photos and collectibles also set up shop.

What is the attraction? "I guess everyone falls in love with a certain star or program," Saunders says, and attaining an autograph "is like grabbing something that's beautiful from the past, you want to hang on to it."

She recently began collecting notable John Hancocks herself. Saunders' first acquisition was Kopell's signature. "I showed him the original "Love Boat" book ... and I said, 'Hey, would you mind autographing this for me?' "

Saunders, also an astrologer who was previously married to -- and learned the craft from -- astrology king Sydney Omarr, rounded up the cavalcade of stars for the fair mostly through her charity work for the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif.

For the past 15 years, she has spent one day a week at the facility, open to members of the entertainment industry, lending a hand in its thrift shop, where celebrities donate their used clothing, which is auctioned off annually to benefit the hospital.

Getting "Love Boat" cast members to appear at the Fair was easy, as Saunders consulted on the set of the show, which ran from 1977-86, and is still friendly with most of its stars.

She plans to have her hand in upcoming reincarnations of the show. She'll executive produce a feature film due out next spring called "Love Boat -- The Movie," being produced by Disney and Aaron Spelling.

She's also rewriting her autobiography to include storylines for another "Love Boat" television series, also being produced by Spelling.

Maybe Saunders will include a few anecdotes about how she used to give astrology lectures to ship passengers as well as read their palms.

"A lot of times they'd come to the lectures because they didn't have much choice of anything else to do aboard the ship, sort of like a trapped audience," says Saunders, who also authored the astrology book, "Signs of Love" (Llewellyn Publications, 1990).

The original "The Love Boat" series, she says, is currently seen in 112 countries around the globe. Television executives, she explains, "say it's the easiest series to be syndicated around the world because there isn't any violence or gratuitous sex."

Just a lot of love.

"Something special happens when people go on a cruise," she says. "It doesn't happen on an airplane, it doesn't happen at a resort, it doesn't happen at a hotel.

"There's something about the movement of a ship that makes people let their protective walls down and they become more playful, more childlike. They're just ready to have fun and accept people."