Memorabilia and Souvenirs

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      Princess Leia’s Dress From the Original ‘Star Wars’ Is Up for Bids

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      A ceremonial gown worn by Carrie Fisher was believed to be destroyed after the production of “A New Hope,” but it was recently found in an attic and restored.The long, white dress worn by Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the final scene of the original 1977 “Star Wars” movie, “A New Hope,” was once thought to have been long gone, destroyed after the film’s production.But the iconic dress was recently found in a London attic and will go up for sale at a live auction on Wednesday. It could sell for as much as $2 million, according to an estimate by Propstore, a company that sells film and TV memorabilia and is organizing the auction.In the film, Princess Leia wore the dress, a ceremonial gown that was made from lightweight silk and styled with a silver belt, during an awards ceremony. In the scene, the princess, who is a leader of the Resistance, honors Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, and Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, with medals for their work in helping to save the galaxy.The dress was thought to have been destroyed after filming for the movie had been completed. Brandon Alinger, chief operating officer of Propstore, said it was common during filmmaking in the 1970s for costumes to be destroyed or returned if they were rented.“There was not a great focus on saving this material when that first movie was made,” Mr. Alinger said.The dress was among the items that had been slated to be destroyed, but a crew member of the set recognized it and held on to it. The dress had been stored for years, until recently, when it was found in an attic at the home of the movie crew member in London, Mr. Alinger said.Textile conservators spent months restoring the Princess Leia dress after it was found in “a poor state” in an attic in London, said Brandon Alinger, chief operating officer at Propstore. He wore white gloves to handle the dress at the company facility in Valencia, Calif.Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“When we first saw it, it was in something of a poor state,” Mr. Alinger said.After the dress was found, textile conservators in London spent eight months working to restore it, removing dust and dirt that had accumulated on it and restitching open seams, according to Propstore.“This is sort of very painstaking work,” Mr. Alinger said. “Imagine someone bent over with a microscope or a magnifying lens, studying the little holes and trying to fill those holes with a similar material.”The dress was conceived of by John Mollo, who won the award for best costume design for “Star Wars” at the Academy Awards in March 1978.“It’s incredibly important because it’s literally the last thing that you see in the original ‘Star Wars’ film,” Mr. Alinger said of the dress. “I think if you’re a ‘Star Wars’ fan, you look at it and it just gels for you.”There are no words spoken in the final scene of the movie — except for guttural noises from the Resistance fighter Chewbacca and beeps from the droid R2-D2.In that scene, the leading characters, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, walk down a long hall, where a crowd has gathered for the ceremony. Princess Leia places a medal over Solo and then another over the neck of Skywalker. Skywalker and Solo bow before Princess Leia, and then turn around and face those gathered in the hall as they applaud the heroes.The auction for the dress, which began on May 31 for online proxy bids, started at $500,000, and an absentee offer was submitted for $750,000, according to Propstore. Bids can be submitted online or in person at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.The dress is among more than $12 million worth of TV and film memorabilia that will be sold at the auction, with bids ending on Friday. Items include a shield from the 2004 movie “Troy” that was worn by Brad Pitt while playing the main character, Achilles. More

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      Taylor Swift Mania: Fans Seek Sweatshirt

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      TAMPA, Fla. — Did you hear about the women who hid all night underneath the truck?Rumors were flying outside the Raymond James Stadium more than 36 hours before Taylor Swift took the stage of the 75,000-seat site on Florida’s west coast.They went from person to person, as in a children’s game of telephone. But the lines outside the stadium last week were made up of fans of all ages willing to put up with hours of discomfort to buy souvenirs tied to the singer’s Eras Tour. Many of them arrived well before sunrise.When word went out that certain prize items might be sold out, some Swifties spoke darkly of resellers with suitcases who had bought up boxes of T-shirts and sweatshirts at previous tour stops. There was also talk that a couple of women had spent the night beneath a merchandise truck.That turned out to be true. One of the women, Larisa Roberts, had the selfies to prove it — grainy photos showing that she and a friend had spent hours taking shelter from the rain under the official Eras truck.“No one was here,” Ms. Roberts, an interior decorator from Trinity, Fla., said of the scene outside the stadium when she arrived between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Wednesday. She added that she planned to buy sweatshirts for her daughters, Lilly and Daisy.Z Souris, left, with her mother, Selma Souris.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesA fan passes the time by making a friendship bracelet.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesSwifties lined up on a sidewalk in the early morning rain outside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesJonathan Amador wore a metallic blanket to protect against the elements.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesProvisions were scattered on the sidewalk.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesShirley Vogler, a nurse in Tampa, said she had made it to the Eras truck at 10 p.m. the night before. Like other early arrivals, she had been moved from spot to spot by security guards in the rainy predawn hours. At 5:45 a.m., she was among the hundreds of people camped out on a sidewalk next to the six-lane West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Ms. Vogler, 31, was seated on the ground toward the front, chatting with two other women whom she had befriended.Fans were able to buy merchandise inside the stadium on each of the three nights that Ms. Swift would perform at the home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. So why bother waiting all night in the rain? Ms. Vogler, who had tickets to a show, said it was because of what she had seen on social media — specifically, “the TikToks about how bad all of the arenas are with the merch lines and the traffic.”Several other fans mentioned having seen posts by Bailey McKnight-Howard, one half of the twin influencer duo @brooklynandbailey, an Instagram account with nearly nine million followers. A few days earlier, Ms. McKnight-Howard had put up pictures of herself waiting outside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.She had also modeled a newly purchased blue crew neck sweatshirt, the most-sought after item among fans. Nearly every person outside the stadium on Wednesday morning was trying to buy one, or two, or as many as they were allowed to have.There was nothing flashy about it. The sweatshirt had no sequins or embroidery or hidden pockets. It was just your average everyday sweatshirt, with Ms. Swift’s name and “Eras Tour” printed across the front and the tour dates and the titles of her albums on the back. If you closed your eyes and conjured a blue crew neck sweatshirt with some writing on it, your mental image would probably match up with this in-demand item.One thing that made it special was the fact that, unlike some other tour souvenirs, it was not available in the “merch” section of taylorswift.com. It was also, notably, the rare garment for sale that day without Ms. Swift’s face printed on it. In the weeks since the start of the Eras Tour, fans had elevated this unexceptional article of clothing to cult status.“Every Swiftie wants the blue crew,” said Debbie Losee, a 60-year-old teacher who said she was waiting in line on behalf of her daughter.The rain cleared off as the fans lined up outside the trucks selling tour souvenirs.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesThe apparently limited supply made it even more prized. “The resale on the sweatshirts is $300, Jake!” one fan was heard shouting into her phone. She was correct. The sweatshirt is available on eBay for more than four times its $65 list price.“I’ve been having nightmares about getting this crew neck,” said Emily Rottkamp, a 20-year-old employee at Disney World. “I haven’t been sleeping.”Alyssa Misay, a personal injury specialist from Land O’ Lakes, Fla., joined the line before 5:30 a.m. She said her teenage niece had given her strict instructions: “‘The sweatshirt, the sweatshirt!’”“Social media just makes things a bigger deal than what they are — like, almost unattainable,” Ms. Misay, 36, said. “Like, if you don’t have it, you’re not cool in school.”Nearby, Venisha Jardin, a sophomore at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel, Fla., wore a hooded plastic poncho to protect her from the rain. In the hours before sunrise, the glow from her phone illuminated the area around her. “I’m missing school for this,” she said.Her mother, Chrys, was sitting in a nearby parked car.“I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m missing merch just to go to school,’” Ms. Jardin said, describing how she had managed to convince her parents. She added that she planned to buy at least five items, including the you know what.The item most coveted by fans in Tampa was a simple crew neck sweatshirt commemorating the Eras Tour. It cost $65.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesDespite the chill in the air and the steady drizzle, spirits were high. Gina Delano, 27, walked up and down the sidewalk telling people she had a cooler full of free snacks and drinks. Wearing a cardigan that had gone on sale at taylorswift.com at the time of the singer’s 2020 album “Folklore” (which includes the song “Cardigan”), Ms. Delano said she had traveled from her home near Buffalo.“The weather could definitely be better,” she said, “but if this is what it takes to get merch, then this is what we’ll do.”Elsewhere in the line, Jess Montgomery, a wedding photographer from Dade City, Fla., cradled her 7-week-old son, Denver, in a blanket. Standing beside her was her 11-year-old niece. “I’ll be 40 next year,” Ms. Montgomery said, “and when she’s my age I want her to look back and say, ‘My aunt was super cool.’” She added that she had struck out in her attempts to score tickets for any of the three sold-out Tampa shows.Fans reacted to a TV news crew as they lined up in the lot outside the stadium.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesThe people outside the stadium included teenagers who had never known a world in which Ms. Swift wasn’t an international superstar and women who had grown up alongside the 33-year-old singer. The hours of waiting gave them a chance to feel at home among hundreds of others who shared a love for Ms. Swift’s songs about high school bullies and first loves, about heartbreak and loss.“The worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad, dumb or stupid for being excited about something,” Ms. Swift said in a 2019 interview. It’s a line that her fans have often quoted on social media in reply to the haters.Shortly after 7 a.m., Matt Langel, a Tampa resident, was sitting on the sidewalk decked out in Pittsburgh Steelers gear while his daughter, Alexis, filmed the scene for her mother. Ms. Swift’s music had become a lifeline for the family, Mr. Langel said, adding that his wife was disabled. “My wife, since she’s been bedridden, pretty much Taylor is what got her through,” Mr. Langel said.At 8 a.m., two hours before the merchandise was to go on sale, stadium workers opened the parking lot. Some fans tried to respect the existing line as others rushed toward the front. Because many people had been waiting at different locations, there was a scramble. Fans who tried to abide by an honor system found themselves more or less out of luck.“Everyone started running from all different directions,” Ms. Roberts, the woman from under the truck, said after she had managed to secure a spot near the front of the line.Farther back, some people squabbled with those trying to cut in. “Back of the line or I’m going to have to put you in jail,” an officer with the Tampa Police Department can be heard saying in a video of the scene recorded by a fan and reviewed by The New York Times. Some people cheered as several of the apparent line-cutters obeyed his order.As 10 a.m. approached, local TV news crews showed up to interview fans, and a helicopter whirred not far above the merch truck. Strong winds whipped across the lot, stirring up dust. Tears streamed down Haylee Lewis’s face.“I just feel like camping overnight is a little much,” said Ms. Lewis, a 21-year-old college student who lives in Orlando. The line was already over 1,000 people long when she had arrived at 8:30 a.m., she added. “I understand it, maybe, for concert tickets, but for the merch line it’s actually insane,” she said.Bailey Callahan with her freshly bought Taylor Swift souvenirs.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesDolly, wearing a homemade Taylor Swift T-shirt, waited with two fans, Clara Rath and Brittany Mendes.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesThe front of the line, at last.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesLarisa Roberts, who spent part of the night beneath the merchandise truck, with her haul.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesA pair of fans, Kaila Shelley and Amanda Stiemann, in their custom Eras Tour jackets.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesThere turned out to be two trucks selling merchandise. Next to the Eras truck, which was patterned with images of Ms. Swift’s face, there was a plain black truck topped with a sign reading “COOL STUFF” in big red letters. Both trucks sold the same items.Inside the trucks, sales people prepared for the rush, unpacking boxes of shirts, tote bags, light wands and posters. They wore black Eras Tour T-shirts, the same ones they would be selling for $45 apiece. (Online, some fans have complained that certain shirts fade noticeably after washing.) There was one rule for the day: only two blue crew neck sweatshirts per customer.At 10 a.m., the line lurched forward. A pair of AirPods flew into the air and landed on the ground, their owner seemingly oblivious. Things progressed slowly as the fans who made it to the very front asked to see various sizes and mulled their options. The mood was tense but jovial.Less than an hour later, the vibe shifted as word circulated that the prize sweatshirts had sold out. Anna Avgoustis, a 26-year-old fan, got one of the last ones.“By the time I got to the front, they were taking them off the wall,” she said. “I was like: ‘Please give me the last one. I will do anything for you. I’ll run you guys Starbucks.’” A few hours later, true to her word, she returned with coffees for the sales crew.Kristi Kall, 38, and her daughter, Kaylee, 11, said they would try to buy a sweatshirt at the concert. “I just wish they would have had a little bit more, because they knew that’s what everybody wanted,” Ms. Kall said.“I’m a little upset,” said Kaylee, who bought an Eras Tour-branded water bottle instead.Brisk sales meant empty boxes.Zack Wittman for The New York TimesIn the afternoon, Laura Gavagan, a 33-year-old fan in Baltimore who had come directly from the airport, joined the line outside the truck, her suitcase rolling behind her. “I’m getting some looks,” she said.Jaclyn Quinn, a high school English teacher from Joliet, Ill., said that Ms. Swift’s work came in handy in her lessons. “We use ‘The Man’ to teach critical lenses and talk about the feminist lens versus the genderqueer lens,” she said. “We use her song ‘Bad Blood’ to talk about metaphor.” She bought an Eras Tour wall tapestry for her classroom.As 5 p.m. approached, the salespeople began straightening up the trucks and peeling off the tour T-shirts. When asked if they got to keep the shirts they had worn that day, one of the workers said, “No.” Instead, they folded them and returned them to the stacks to be sold to the next day’s fans.“Isn’t that so gross?” the salesperson said. “Don’t tell.” More

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      Meet Radio Man, a ‘Bum’ Who Befriends Movie Stars and Sells Their Autographs

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      On a blustery February evening in Midtown Manhattan, opposite an unmarked side entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theater, a crowd of more than 60 people stood crushed against a row of steel barricades. They all knew that at any moment, Harrison Ford would arrive for an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” They elbowed and cursed one another, jockeying for position, each clutching a sheaf of photographs for Mr. Ford to sign.They weren’t fans — not most of them, anyway. They were “graphers,” who make a living by hounding celebrities for autographs and selling them to the highest bidder. For many of them, graphing is a full-time job. Some have been at it for decades. They can flip a single signature for anywhere from $25 to more than $1,000, depending on a star’s cachet and how frequently they sign. A Harrison Ford autograph, for example, retails for about $750.At 5:30 on the dot, a black Escalade pulled to a stop in front of the theater. The rear door swung open, and the pack of graphers across the street broke into a frenzy. “Harrison!” they hollered. “Harrison, please!”Slumped near a dumpster by the stage door, a disheveled man with a mane of gray hair and a wild beard let out a grunt. He clambered to his feet, reached into a grocery bag and pulled out an overstuffed FedEx mailer, inscribed in large, looping cursive with a note. “Thank you, Harrison,” it read. “Love, Radio Man.” He staggered past the theater’s security team and approached the Escalade.“Harrison!” the man called as Mr. Ford climbed out of the back seat. “How are ya?”Mr. Ford grinned. “Radio,” he said warmly. They shook hands. Fifty feet away, the graphers behind the barricades bellowed in a desperate chorus.Giovanni Arnold, who has been graphing in New York City since 1999, unrolling movie posters outside the Edison Ballroom. He waited outside for over three hours hoping to get Mr. Spielberg’s autograph as he entered the venue for the Writers Guild Awards.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“Listen, I’ve got some photos for you,” the man said, handing Mr. Ford the package.“Sure, sure,” Mr. Ford said, accepting it. They made small talk. Mr. Ford asked after the man’s health, and the man asked after Helen Mirren, Mr. Ford’s co-star on the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1923.”“Good to see you, Radio,” Mr. Ford said. He slipped into the theater without acknowledging the graphers screaming his name. They would have to wait until he had finished his interview.There are at least 150 professional graphers in New York City, according to Justin Steffman, the founder of the autograph authentication company AutographCOA. And right now, they are working at full tilt. All winter long, celebrities have been flocking to New York to campaign for projects up for various film and television awards, culminating in the Oscars. For graphers, collecting signatures during awards season is like fishing at a trout farm.The rest of the year is by no means slow. Stars are always cycling in and out of Broadway theaters, concert venues, luxe hotels, film shoots and, most reliably, morning shows like “The View” and late-night shows like Mr. Colbert’s. Their constant presence has made New York the graphing capital of the United States, topping even Los Angeles, whose sprawl, closed sets and tight security make life more challenging for graphers. “It’s got to be a billion-dollar industry,” Mr. Steffman said. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.”There are at least 500 full-time graphers around the world, Mr. Steffman said, and thousands more who graph on a regular basis.But none of them do it quite like Radio Man.Radio Man — legally known as Craig Castaldo, though no one ever calls him that — has been graphing in New York since the early 1990s. Over the years, he has managed to charm a small army of celebrities into accepting his hefty packages of photographs, which they sign and return to him. Where most graphers would be lucky to get more than one signature from a star at a time, Radio Man regularly nabs dozens, sometimes hundreds. He considers the A-listers who sign for him his personal friends.Craig Castaldo, known to all as Radio Man, outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York during a taping of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesAfter his exchange with Mr. Ford, Radio Man made his way to the Park Hyatt to pick up a package that Sarah Michelle Gellar had left for him at reception. It was adorned with a heart in black Sharpie, along with a handwritten note: “Only for you, Radio.” Inside were 43 signed photographs of Ms. Gellar.“It’s amazing how they take to me, these actors,” Radio Man said. “A bum! I don’t understand it.”Radio Man, 72, lives just above the poverty line, in a basement apartment in Yonkers he rents for $900 a month. He commutes into the city each morning on his bicycle, a 13-mile journey that takes him about two hours. He said he survives exclusively on food he gathers from free pantries and movie sets.Though he could make a small fortune selling his autographs directly to collectors, his grasp of the necessary tools — photo databases, printers, the internet — is tenuous at best. Instead, like most graphers, he peddles his merchandise to a dealer, who in turn hawks it at a significant markup on eBay and other, more obscure autograph marketplaces.Leaning against a wall outside the Park Hyatt, Radio Man pulled out his phone and made a call. A few minutes later, a silver sedan pulled up to the hotel. A tall, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and a manicured beard stepped out of the car and into the frigid night. Radio Man handed him the package of signed photographs from Ms. Gellar, and the man accepted them without a word. He hurried back to the warmth of his car, leaving Radio Man alone next to his bicycle.“Hey,” Radio Man called out to him. “You got six bucks so I could get a tea or something?”“I don’t have any cash on me,” the man said. He ducked into the car and drove away.The man, Radio Man’s de facto handler, supplies him with his FedEx mailers of photographs. Once Radio Man gets them signed, the handler sends them to a dealer based in Florida, who is rumored among graphers to be a millionaire. All told, the autographs Radio Man received from Ms. Gellar are worth approximately $6,000. He was paid about $300 for them.“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”By “friends,” he meant the celebrities who have taken an unlikely shine to him since he stumbled into their world more than 30 years ago.As Radio Man tells it, he made his first famous friend when he was homeless. One winter day in 1990, he was walking through Central Park when he encountered a man dressed in rags, whom he took for “a bum like me,” he said. He offered the man a beer. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.It was Robin Williams. He was shooting “The Fisher King,” Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film in which Mr. Williams plays a vagabond searching for the Holy Grail.The actress Riley Keough signed autographs from her S.U.V. after a taping of “The Late Show.” Graphers chased her car down the street, catching up to her at a red light.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“You’re doing this all wrong,” Radio Man told him. “You’re not acting the way a bum should be.”He introduced the actor to life on the street, showing him “where to go and what to do.” Mr. Williams patterned his performance in “The Fisher King,” which earned him an Oscar nomination, after Radio Man. Or so Radio Man claims.In exchange for his guidance, the movie’s producers gave Radio Man $200 and a case of beer. They also cast him as an extra. From then on, he made a habit of hanging around film sets in New York, where he helped himself to food from craft-services stations and scored low-paying parts as a background actor. Graphing was an easy way to make money.“I’ve been getting movies ever since,” Radio Man said. “Here and there, playing my role: bum, homeless guy, guy on a bicycle with a radio.”But that’s just one version of the story Radio Man tells about his origins.Another version involves running a newspaper stand in the 1970s and being cast as an extra in “The In-Laws,” starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Another involves sharing a beer with Bruce Willis on the set of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Yet another involves showing up to shoots with a boombox around his neck and playing it at full volume until someone paid him to leave, a racket that supposedly earned him his nickname. (“A cop was there and he said to me: ‘Hey, radio guy! Hey, radio person! Hey, radio man! Can you turn that down, please?’ And that’s how I became Radio Man.”)Whatever he may claim about his past, this much is true: Radio Man is a fixture on film sets in New York. He has appeared as an extra in dozens of movies, including “Ransom,” “Zoolander,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman.” He has a preternatural knowledge of actors’ whereabouts and shooting schedules. And he has forged something like a friendship with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.Radio Man biking through Midtown Manhattan after staking out the stage door to “The Late Show.” He was hoping to see Sarah Jessica Parker at a nearby filming location.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesOn a January night in Chinatown, Radio Man sauntered around the set of “Wolves,” a forthcoming movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as if he were its executive producer. He weaved through packs of stagehands, chatting amiably with anyone who crossed his path. During a break in shooting, he shuffled over to Mr. Clooney, who was sitting in a director’s chair. “Clooney!” he shouted, followed by an expletive-laden insult.“There it is,” Mr. Clooney said.“You know where you’re going tomorrow?”“I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow,” Mr. Clooney said.“Under the Manhattan Bridge.”“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Mr. Clooney said, as the production crew standing around him laughed. “You don’t need a call sheet. Radio Man is the call sheet.”Mr. Clooney first met Radio Man in 1996, on the set of “One Fine Day” in Manhattan. The actor has “never not seen him” during a trip to New York since, he said.“Radio’s everywhere,” Mr. Clooney said. “Every hotel you show up at, Radio will be standing out in front of it going, ‘De Niro’s over at this, and Cate Blanchett’s over here staying at the Carlyle.’ He’s got all the intel.”Radio Man endeared himself to Mr. Clooney, the actor said, after rescuing his wife, Amal Clooney, from a throng of paparazzi that had swarmed her on Fifth Avenue. Radio Man blocked them with his bicycle, hailed a cab and steered Ms. Clooney inside, securing her escape.“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Clooney said. “He’s a lovable mess, which we all are.”About six years ago, Mr. Clooney got together with a few other actors and flew Radio Man out to L.A. They sent him to the Oscars. He wore a tuxedo. He walked the red carpet. He sat in the audience. He brought a date.A grapher outside the Ed Sullivan Theater with the tools of the trade. She was among a small crowd hoping to get signatures from Michelle Yeoh and Riley Keough.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesA few nights after bumping into Radio Man in Chinatown, Mr. Clooney poked his head out of a white trailer parked on East Broadway and peered down the street. “Radio!” he yelled.Radio Man ambled over. Mr. Clooney strode toward him holding a large bag, trailed by a pack of photographers.“Here you go, Radio,” he said, dropping the bag on the sidewalk with a thunk. “This thing weighs a ton, by the way.”Radio Man reached inside and pulled out two bulging FedEx mailers. They contained 185 signed photographs of Mr. Clooney, worth approximately $18,000.Mr. Clooney said that Radio Man is the only grapher he will take a package from. But he signs for all of them.“Every one of these guys who come over for autographs, it’s a business for them,” he said. “You try to help them out when you can.”“My job baffles me,” said Mr. Arnold. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesThere is at least one other grapher in New York capable of exchanging packages with celebrities: Giovanni Arnold, 38, who has been graphing in the city since 1999. He calls himself “Black Radio Man.”“There isn’t really an elite group of graphers who are getting packages,” Mr. Steffman said. “There’s Gio, and there’s Radio Man.”On a Saturday afternoon in January, Mr. Arnold sat in a dark bar in the East Village indexing several large bags of autographed memorabilia he had just received from Daniel Radcliffe, who was starring in a production of “Merrily We Roll Along” at the New York Theater Workshop a few blocks away.He laid out his haul on a grimy, beer-stained table, examining each item — cheaply printed photos, plastic Harry Potter eyeglasses, Gryffindor neckties — for Mr. Radcliffe’s signature. He counted 95 autographs in all, whose total value he pegged at $10,000. “I’m hype right now,” he said. “He really blessed me.”Mr. Arnold celebrated with a Guinness. He took a sip from his pint glass and shook his head, pondering a question that has long puzzled him: Why would anyone pay for an autograph?“My job baffles me,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Mr. Arnold has taken a different approach to the business of graphing than most of his peers. He sells his own merchandise on eBay, as well as directly to private collectors, which has allowed him to accrue a level of wealth few graphers seem to enjoy.He documents his day-to-day life hunting for autographs on Instagram under the handle @gtvreality, where you might find him giving Lady Gaga a ride on his bicycle, holding hands with Ben Affleck or shouting his catchphrase — “Stay Black!” — at Bob Dylan. He hopes to turn GTV Reality into a full-fledged brand and to monetize his content, though at 5,000 followers, he hasn’t quite figured out how to do so.“I’m trying to move in a different direction,” he said. “Everyone and their mama’s an autograph-getter now.”Ultimately, Mr. Arnold wants to find a way out of the memorabilia industry. He doesn’t derive the same kind of joy that Radio Man does from chasing down celebrities, and he isn’t willing to dedicate his life to it.“I’m good at what I do,” Mr. Arnold said. “But he’s another level.”“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said of the autograph middlemen. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesBack on the set of “Wolves,” Radio Man cruised the streets of Chinatown looking for the director, Jon Watts. He was hoping there might be a scene he could sneak into. But the cameras were already rolling, and Mr. Watts was occupied.Radio Man returned to his usual post outside Mr. Clooney’s trailer. It was closing in on midnight. He was standing near his bicycle and sipping a hot tea, killing time until the next break in filming, when he was approached by someone he didn’t recognize.“Radio,” the man said. He held up an 8-by-10-inch photograph, taped to a sheet of hardboard, of Radio Man. “Do you mind signing real quick?”“What do you want me to say?” Radio Man asked. “Just, Radio Man?”“Yeah,” the man said. “Radio Man.”Radio Man signed the photograph in big, sloppy cursive. The man thanked him and walked away. It was hard to say if he was a grapher or just a fan. More

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      Pieces of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s Life Together Head to Auction

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      More than 300 items that belonged to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward will be sold in June in a series of auctions run by Sotheby’s in New York.Shackles from the film “Cool Hand Luke”; a script from the 1963 comedy “A New Kind of Love”; the wedding dress that Joanne Woodward wore the day she married Paul Newman in 1958.These artifacts, along with some 300 others, tell the story of a union between two of Hollywood’s most enduring film stars that lasted more than a half century. It began in 1953 and lasted until Mr. Newman, a magnetic titan of the screen, died in 2008 at the age of 83. Ms. Woodward, 93, a formidable talent, has kept a private life since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007.The objects will also take on another kind of value later this year, when they are put up for sale in a series of auctions by Sotheby’s. If previous demand for Mr. Newman’s belongings is any measure, the events are likely to be lucrative: A Rolex he owned sold in 2017 for a record $17.8 million. Three years later, another of Mr. Newman’s watches sold for more than $5.4 million.The auctions, which will take place both online and in person in New York, follow the recent release of “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke and based on audio transcripts of interviews with the couple’s friends, colleagues and family members.Mr. Newman’s posthumous memoir, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,” was also published last year.Putting a Price Tag on ArtCard 1 of 6Hot commodities. More

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      Jim Irsay: NFL Owner by Day, Rock ’n’ Roller by Night

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      While other N.F.L. owners sail on their yachts far from prying eyes, Jim Irsay roams the country showing his museum-quality memorabilia and jamming with rock legends.Jim Irsay is not your typical team owner, especially in the buttoned-up National Football League.Last month, Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, replaced his head coach with a former player whose only coaching experience was leading a high school team. A few weeks earlier, Irsay called for a scandal-plagued owner to be removed despite his own very public troubles. And he continues to use his Twitter account to mourn the loss of beloved rock stars and football players and post videos of himself singing classic Bob Dylan songs in his raspy smoker’s voice.Irsay’s hobby also speaks to his singularity. While other owners splurge on art work, beachfront property and European soccer teams, Irsay has spent $100 million building a collection of music, sports and other pop culture memorabilia. He paid $4.9 million for the guitar Kurt Cobain used in the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” He acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. And this past summer, he paid $6.5 million for one of Muhammad Ali’s championship belts.Rather than stuff these items in a mansion or museum, Irsay, 63, shows them off during free, one-night-only events around the country, accompanied by an all-star rock band. Since September 2021, his collection has traveled to seven cities including Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles and Indianapolis. This Saturday, a sampling of his 1,000-plus-piece collection will make its way to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, where some of the items will lean into the city’s role in rock history and the blues legend Buddy Guy will be joined onstage by Ann Wilson, John Fogerty and Stephen Stills.“For me, I’d rather do this than be floating around on a $200 million yacht,” Irsay said before one of his shows this summer in Chicago. “If I float on that, I’m going to say, ‘I’m bored. Why am I here? Like, what am I doing here?’”Irsay has a particular love for the guitars of iconic musicians, including the one Kurt Cobain used in Nirvana’s music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s passion project is an unusually personal form of philanthropy and even therapy. The artifacts speak not just to his love of music, sports and history but also to the turbulence in his life, including the loss of his sister, who died in a car accident, and the alcoholism of both his father and grandfather. Irsay, too, has had battles with substance abuse. He was also suspended for six games by the N.F.L. in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence of painkillers.Irsay’s willingness to embrace his foibles make him something of an oddity in one of the country’s most exclusive clubs. He talks openly about his struggles with addiction and started a charity that raises awareness of mental health disorders. After getting injured playing football in college, he took up competitive power lifting, once squatting 725 pounds. Then he lost 55 pounds and started running marathons. Irsay still hits the gym despite having undergone 20 surgeries.Plenty of sports team owners are philanthropic, and some even live out their rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. For example, Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks who died in 2018, built a museum in Seattle to house his guitar collection, and James L. Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, performs as the frontman with his blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot. But unlike those famously private owners, Irsay has been uniquely unguarded about his life and his collecting.“Jim is sui generis, a one-off with no duplicate,” said Douglas Brinkley, who teaches history at Rice University and advises Irsay on his purchases. “He marches to the beat of his own drum and honors his own passions and believes there’s an audience for it.”Items in the collection include, clockwise from top left, a cape worn by James Brown, the original, hand-written script for “Rocky,” Hunter S. Thompson’s “Red Shark” convertible, and one of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight championship belts.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay first got hooked on baseball cards, though with less than altruistic motives. Growing up on the north shore of Chicago, he rode his bicycle to the local drugstore on Monday mornings and bought entire boxes of baseball cards before other boys could get there. He funded the purchases by selling bubble gum at a markup at school.“I guess I was an illegitimate dealer in grade school,” he joked.Irsay said he wanted to begin collecting after college, but his father, Robert, who used the fortune he made in the air conditioning business to buy the Colts, paid him a $100,000 salary. With a mortgage and three children, there was not much left to bid on prized objects, he said.But 25 years ago, when Irsay inherited the team, he also gained the wherewithal to bid for top shelf items. His first big foray into collecting came in 2001 when he paid $2.4 million for the 120-foot-long scroll that contained the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road.” It was the only time Irsay showed up, paddle in hand, to bid for an item.“I’ve always been mostly attracted to great writers,” he said. “The scroll became a writer’s Holy Grail.”Collecting at this level is unpredictable, but Irsay seems to revel in the chase. He consults with Brinkley and other experts as well as with his curator, Larry Hall, whom Irsay texts and calls at all hours to talk about items he covets. He will relay his bids by phone, which he did from Hawaii when Cobain’s guitar was auctioned. He gave Hall a top bid of $2.2 million, then dropped out after it passed $2.4 million. But on a hunch, he raised his top bid to $3.6 million and went to bed. When he awoke, he discovered he got the guitar for almost precisely his maximum. (With fees and taxes, the total price hit $4.9 million.)Irsay acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s interests range across American and film history as well. The oldest item in his collection is a lottery ticket from 1765, sold to raise money for Faneuil Hall in Boston, that was signed by John Hancock. He spent nearly $600,000 on the rocking chair John F. Kennedy used in the White House, and another $550,000 for one of Abraham Lincoln’s pocket knifes. Sylvester Stallone’s original, handwritten script for the movie, “Rocky,” cost Irsay $500,000.Irsay has never sold pieces in his collection, despite the explosion of the memorabilia market in recent years. And though he has toyed with the idea of building a museum for his acquisitions, for now he is committed to taking them on tour.“He gets so attached to the items because he knows the joy they bring when he shows them,” said Hall, who verifies the quality of the items that Irsay brings to him. “That’s why he never charges a penny to share his collection.”Irsay said the rush of acquiring these items and planning to show them can mirror the adrenaline rush of how football teams get ready on game days. Sometimes, he said, his football brain might take over at his events.“I admit it’s a little bit of a different hat,” Irsay said. “When it comes to professional football, the intensity above the goals of winning and all those sorts of things, sometimes that comes out in organizing this thing. So all of a sudden you find yourself talking like the general manager or head coach, and people onstage are like, what?”Irsay was the center of attention in Chicago, where he showed off his collection at the AON Grand Ballroom in early August. Friends and fans stopped him so often that he was late to his own news conference to kick off the event. Standing between Muhammad Ali’s title belt and the founding document of Alcoholics Anonymous, known to adherents as the “Big Book,” Irsay introduced Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns star and Hollywood actor whom Irsay flew in from California.“It’s an eclectic collection, but really it’s about spirituality, it’s about human beings being as great as they can, and changing the world with love and strength,” Irsay said.“I want the best of the best,” Irsay added when describing why he bought Neil Armstrong’s items from the Apollo 11 mission. “Nothing against Buzz Aldrin,” referring to the second man to walk on the moon.At the concert in Chicago this past August, Buddy Guy was one of the main attractions.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesThen Irsay marched back to the green room where he nursed a bottle of Hawaiian Punch and waved off minders trying to keep him on schedule. Buddy Guy walked in and Irsay was distracted all over again, peppering him with questions about Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and other blues greats.The two-hour concert began around 8:30 p.m. with Irsay sitting onstage and singing Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” After Irsay left, the band, led by Mike Mills of R.E.M., ripped through blues and rock classics. Guy — a hometown favorite — came on to a big ovation, as did Ann Wilson from Heart.At times, the concert and the collection blurred. Midway through the show, Irsay came back onstage with Edgerrin James, the former Colts running back who threw a dozen signed footballs into the crowd. Fans wandered between the stage and the back of the venue to look at the artifacts, including the guitar Dylan used when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Hunter S. Thompson’s Chevrolet Caprice convertible (known as the “Red Shark”), or the hat that Harry S. Truman wore at his inauguration.Irsay returned to sing the last three songs — “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” by Neil Young and “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones — before the lights popped on. Several Colts cheerleaders in white outfits and blue pompoms ushered the crowd out. For another night, Irsay had turned the threads of his life into a shared spectacle, one that helps him keep the demons at bay.“Many a man has tried to manage the opiates, you know, for millenniums, whether it’s Jerry Garcia or Tom Petty or Prince or Elvis,” Irsay said. “The pursuit can get really bungled and mismanaged. So, it’s really a thrill in life as we get older to try to have more experience and know what’s always the light and not the dark, because sometimes the shadows can fool you.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Casablanca’ and the Romance of the Refugee

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      A showcase of memorabilia at the Neue Galerie spotlights the Central European exiles who crafted Hollywood’s great wartime love story.Round up the unusual suspects. “Casablanca” has turned 80, and the most esteemed of all Hollywood classics enters its octogenarian years with a new ultra-high-definition DVD release. There’s also, right now in New York, an engaging new display of “Casablanca” artifacts, though you won’t find it at MoMA or the Museum of the Moving Image. Of all the joints in all the towns in all the world, the relics of this paragon of the Hollywood studio system have ended up in … a museum of German and Austrian modern art.That would be the Neue Galerie, conceived by the cosmetics baron Ronald S. Lauder and the art dealer Serge Sabarsky (1912-1996), which opened in 2001 in a former Vanderbilt mansion on a prime corner of Fifth Avenue. It’s celebrating its first 20 years with a showcase of its surviving founder’s own collection: not only jewels of modern Mitteleuropa, but ancient sculpture, medieval broadswords and reliquaries, and gleaming oddities from Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. Least expected are more than five dozen posters, lobby cards, props and press materials from the collector’s favorite movie, which he reports seeing “at least 25 to 30 times” — and whose memorabilia he has been buying up with foxhound-grade avidity.Medieval armor from Lauder’s personal collection is also on view.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” had its grand opening on the evening of November’s midterm elections — whose result, by the way, Lauder may have decisively influenced, having spent millions on lawsuits and campaign advertising for Republicans in New York, where the G.O.P. flipped four congressional seats. (Among his animating causes are crime, taxes, and a proposed wind farm off the Hamptons shoreline.) “I’m no ogre,” Lauder assured The Times this month in an interview at Café Sabarsky, the charmingly ersatz Viennese cafe on the Neue Galerie’s ground floor, and, certainly, the 500-odd objects here do not have an outward suggestion of barbarism. If anything, its rooms of princely baubles are rather oversaturated, as if Lauder didn’t know where to stop; drawings by Egon Schiele are hung sky-high, essentially invisible, and stuffed vitrines induced in me the novel feeling of ivory fatigue.The unexpected highlight is the “Casablanca” gallery, the show’s smallest and densest, which in its way fits right into an institution devoted to Central European genius and American inheritances. Its walls are covered with soft-focus images of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and posters both printed and painted. (“They Have a Date With Fate in … CASABLANCA,” reads one hand-lettered display from 1942, the title sparkling gold.) Lobby cards — those black-and-white stills you’d once see by the popcorn stand — take us back to the louche purgatory of Rick’s Café Américain, where the dashing Resistance hero Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) is gathering intelligence, and the charmingly corrupt Captain Renault (Claude Rains) is sizing up the loveliest exiles.Posters and lobby cards cover the walls with images of the film’s stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesDetail of a brass lamp, fringed with imitation jewels, used in the movie.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesA hand-lettered display from 1942 announces the film’s title in sparkling gold.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesYou’ll also find memorabilia from the film’s postwar releases in France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and, by 1952, Germany. Bergman appears in solo splendor on the German poster, beaming above a set piece of fez-topped musicians. There’s a brass lamp from Rick’s, fringed with imitation gemstones, and two rattan chairs where Europe’s desperate and displaced drank their cognacs and plotted their escapes. Looping in the background is “As Time Goes By,” performed by Dooley Wilson, a veteran of the Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project, in the role of the nightclub crooner Sam. Lauder apparently also owns the 1940 Buick Phaeton in which Rains drives our heroes to the Casablanca airport in the film’s final act. Lauder wanted to station the car outside the Neue Galerie for the run of the show, but no dice. Even with a net worth of $4.5 billion, nobody beats alternate-side parking regulations.“Casablanca” premiered in New York on Nov. 26, 1942; Warner Bros. pushed up its release date to capitalize on the excitement around that month’s Allied invasion of North Africa. It opened nationally in January 1943, and its tale of refugees and people smugglers was not only topical; it was nearly autofiction. A stunning number of its performers were Jewish refugees or anti-Nazi exiles — among them Conrad Veidt, previously a star of the Berlin studio system, who played Major Strasser; S.Z. Sakall, a Hungarian Jewish actor, as the club’s affable headwaiter; and Peter Lorre in the small but crucial role of Ugarte, who sells exit visas to the rich and desperate. The French actress Madeleine Lebeau, in the small role of Rick’s jilted mistress, cries real tears during the film’s stirring performance of “La Marseillaise”; she too was a refugee, fleeing via Lisbon to Mexico, and then to Hollywood. She escaped with her husband, Marcel Dalio (born Israel Mosche Blauschild), who plays the croupier at Rick’s, and who left France after antisemitic critics denounced his appearance in “The Rules of the Game.”The production’s transit papers for Victor Laszlo, “signed” by Charles de Gaulle, which Rick finally hands over in “Casablanca.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWhen it plays in the revival houses on Valentine’s Day, when it surfaces as the late movie after “Nightline,” “Casablanca” still endures as a wartime love affair, with Bogie and Bergman letting each other go in the airport fog. But for me “Casablanca” has always been a movie of visas and exit stamps, embassies and expediters, bribed officials and underground operators. It paints the modern world as the province of emigrants and evacuees, and subordinates the most enthralling of all Hollywood romances to the welfare of the persecuted. Which is why I was so astonished to discover, in Lauder’s collection, an extraordinary relic: the original (prop) letter of transit that sets the plot in motion, made out to Victor Laszlo and “signed” by General de Gaulle. The prop passports are here too, with Bergman’s and Henreid’s photographs stamped with the seal of the Casablanca colonial administration.I couldn’t believe I was seeing them, and seeing them here, in a museum of German and Austrian art. It was as if these fictional travel documents concentrated all the exiles and displacements that built midcentury American culture, of Mies van der Rohe and Marlene Dietrich, of “Doctor Faustus” and “Broadway Boogie-Woogie.” They burn, especially, with the shame of knowing that a contemporary “Casablanca” cast member could probably not procure one. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has forced an estimated five million to flee, the world has been shaken by the largest refugee crisis since everybody came to Rick’s. The United Nations now puts the number of displaced at 100 million — one in every 78 people on Earth — from Afghanistan and Venezuela, from Central America and Myanmar, and above all from Syria, whose civil war will soon enter its 12th year.The prop passport for Ilsa Lund, Ingrid Bergman’s character.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesNevertheless, under President Donald J. Trump, the United States cut its quotas for refugee admissions to the lowest level ever. The numbers have barely budged under his successor. Though President Biden increased the cap of the refugee admissions program, his government has come nowhere close to fulfilling it; just 25,400 refugees were admitted in the last fiscal year, leaving 80 percent of the places unfilled.The fundamental things apply. In “Casablanca” the Hollywood system reached the acme of its artistic and civic potential, and on that Orientalist soundstage, as the displaced of Europe oscillated in and out of character, these foreigners offered America a new self-portrait. It taught us that love and displacement went hand in hand, that ideals were thicker than blood. “I bet they’re asleep in New York,” Bogie mopes into his tumbler of whisky at the end of the first reel. “I bet they’re asleep all over America.” But the passionate clarity of “Casablanca” was not something we only dreamed.The Ronald S. Lauder CollectionThrough Feb. 13, Neue Galerie New York, 1048 Fifth Avenue, 212-628-6200; neuegalerie.org. More

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      in Music

      Galileo Forgery’s Trail Leads to Web of Mistresses and Manuscripts

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      The unmasking of a fake Galileo manuscript this summer brought renewed attention to a colorful, prolific early-20th-century forger named Tobia Nicotra.When the University of Michigan Library announced last month that one of its most prized possessions, a manuscript said to have been written by Galileo around 1610, was in fact a 20th-century fake, it brought renewed attention to the checkered, colorful career of the man named as the likely culprit: Tobia Nicotra, a notorious forger from Milan.Nicotra hoodwinked the U.S. Library of Congress into buying a fake Mozart manuscript in 1928. He wrote an early biography of the conductor Arturo Toscanini that became better known for its fictions than its facts. He traveled under the name of another famous conductor who had recently died. And in 1934 he was convicted of forgery in Milan after the police were tipped off by Toscanini’s son Walter, who had bought a fake Mozart from him.His explanation of what had motivated his many forgeries, which were said to number in the hundreds, was somewhat unusual, at least according to an account of his trial that appeared in The American Weekly, a Hearst publication, in early 1935.“I did it,” the article quoted him as saying, “to support my seven loves.”When the police raided Nicotra’s apartment in Milan, several news outlets reported, they found a virtual forgery factory, strewn with counterfeit documents that appeared to bear the signatures of Columbus, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Warren G. Harding and other famous figures.Investigators had also found a sort of shrine to his seven mistresses, at least according to The American Weekly. The article described a room with black velvet-covered walls, with seven panels featuring paintings, sketches and photographs of the women — one of whom was said to be a “novelty dancer,” and another an “expert swimmer” — with fresh flowers in front of each. “The pictures in some cases displayed their physical attractions with startling frankness, but they were in general highly artistic,” the article noted.“Incidentally,” the publication added, “he had a wife.”Over the years Nicotra’s counterfeits have fooled collectors and institutions, sown confusion, and been denounced by the esteemed Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who collected musical manuscripts and who wrote an article in 1931 naming Nicotra as a forger. Now Nicotra is back in the news, thanks to the Galileo forgery in Michigan, which was unmasked by Nick Wilding, a historian at Georgia State University who showed that the paper it had been written on had a watermark dating from the late 18th century, more than 150 years after Galileo supposedly wrote it. He also linked it to several other Nicotra forgeries.“Either he thought he was just invincible, or he was maybe just incredibly desperate,” Wilding, who is working on a biography of Galileo, said of Nicotra. While other forgers have been more prolific, Wilding said, few have been as daring — or as talented.“Everything Nicotra does is plausible; there are no jarring anachronisms,” he said. “He knows enough to try and get it right.”This manuscript was one of the University of Michigan Library’s most prized possessions when it was thought to be by Galileo. It was unmasked this summer as a 20th-century forgery, most likely by Nicotra.via University of Michigan LibraryThere is relatively little concrete information about Nicotra, and, given that he was a professional forger, the existing documentary evidence must be taken with a grain of salt. “The facts just seem to slip away from him,” Wilding said. While some accounts say he was 53 at the time of his trial, a birth certificate suggests he may have been 44. Contemporary news accounts, and interviews with several scholars who have studied him, however, begin to give some sense of the man and his prolific career.A courtroom sketch of Nicotra that appeared in The American Weekly portrays him as a balding, thin-faced man with glasses perched on a pointy nose, sporting a mustache and goatee, and wearing either a thick scarf or some kind of furry, Astrakhan-like collar on his coat.Nicotra cast a wide net in the types of documents he counterfeited, and seems to have possessed real talent and learning. He forged a poem he claimed was by the Italian Renaissance poet Tasso, musical manuscripts by leading composers, and was even said to have started a minor international incident by creating a fake Columbus letter identifying his birthplace as Spain, not Italy, prompting the mayor of Genoa to write a lengthy rebuttal reaffirming Columbus’ Italian ancestry.An account of his 1934 conviction by The Associated Press, which ran in The New York Times under the headline “Autograph Faker Gets Prison Term,” described how Nicotra operated: “His method was to visit the Milan Library and tear out the fly leaves of old books or steal pages of manuscript and write on them the ‘autographs’ of famed musicians. The librarians of Milan testified that he had ruined scores of their books.”In 1928, he sold what appeared to be a signed Mozart aria called “Baci amorosi e cari,” supposedly written by the composer at age 14, to the Library of Congress.“It was so special because first of all it was unknown, so it wasn’t reported in any of the thematic catalogs of Mozart at that time,” Paul Allen Sommerfeld, a music reference specialist at the Library of Congress, said in an interview. “He claimed that he found this manuscript and then published the song.”The library paid $60 for the document, which was later believed to have been composed by Nicotra himself.Nicotra said he was the son of a botany professor, and he wrote in one letter that he had graduated with a music degree from a conservatory in Naples in 1909. “We don’t know whether that’s a true fact or not,” Wilding said.When he published his biography of Toscanini in 1929, early critics noted that it contained a number of errors. It is seen as even more unreliable today.“It’s mostly invented conversations and so on,” said Harvey Sachs, the author of a definitive 2017 biography, “Toscanini: Musician of Conscience.” “Just made-up stuff.”His conviction in 1934 made headlines around the world, including in The New York Times.In 1932, Nicotra toured the United States while masquerading as Riccardo Drigo, an Italian conductor and composer who had been the conductor of the Imperial Ballet in Russia and who may be best remembered for the arrangement of “Swan Lake” he created after Tchaikovsky’s death. (The Associated Press reported that Nicotra had been “feted widely in the United States as the former orchestra conductor of the Czar of Russia.”) Apparently no one realized that Drigo had died two years earlier, in 1930.“My main way of characterizing him would be ‘bold,’” said Erin Smith, who wrote her master’s thesis on Nicotra at the University of Maryland in 2014. “He was able to carry on with this for a good number of years.”Nicotra was also known for forging works by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an early-18th-century composer who died at the age of 26 and whose posthumous fame attracted forgers. One Pergolesi forgery wound up in the collection of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. When Christie’s auctioned it in 2017, it described it as an “intriguing forgery, once thought to belong to the hotly debated Pergolesi canon” and cited authorities who list it as “created by the prolific forger Tobia Nicotra.” It fetched $375.The discovery of the Galileo leaves open the question of what happened to the many other forgeries Nicotra created, which he was quoted as saying could number as many as 600.“I don’t know if he did 600, but I’m sure he did more than the little we’ve found so far,” said Richard G. King, an associate professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Music, who has been researching Nicotra. “I don’t think people are willfully hiding these things, but it’s just hard to find them.”Unless an institution has a record of buying documents from Nicotra, Wilding said, it may be hard to identify other forgeries. He suggested that documents by figures Nicotra habitually forged that lack clear provenance before the 20th century “are probably really worth looking at very, very closely.”Nicotra eventually ran afoul of the law after selling the fake Mozart manuscript to Walter Toscanini, who persuaded detectives in Milan to investigate the case. Nicotra was convicted, fined 2,400 lire and sentenced to two years in prison.Some accounts suggest that Nicotra was let out of prison early, because the Fascist government wanted his help forging signatures. That story, notes Wilding, “is just too good to be ignored, and maybe too good to be true.” More