Kudos to Winkyduck for starting the Bobby Bryde thread, to Phillip Hogan for his RX retrospective and especially to Las Vegas Sun reporter Jeff Haney for his fine piece in this morning's paper. I'm glad that Hogan mentioned Bobby's crackerjack article about Bill Brennan, the Stardust night cashier who "forgot" to clock out one night and walked out the door with a half-million or so in receipts. I was one of the last people to talk with Brennan before he disappeared like Judge Crater. If memory serves, Bobby wrote two different stories about that episode, one for the Las Vegas Weekly that stayed true to the known facts and another that had the tone of a non-fiction novel with Brennan getting murdered by the accomplice that set him up. I was surprised that Bobby had so many admirers, because his negativity was so off-putting. I know that he never forgave me for continuing on as a radio spokesperson for the Stardust after Scott Schettler was let go. I once wrote something about Ring Lardner to the effect that his fiction didn't read well anymore and Bobby got sorely pissed at me for "dissing" one of his favorite writers -- a guy who had been dead for about 70 years. Phil Mushnick of the NY Post wrote several damning columns about TV touts that were passed along to me in the proverbial unmarked brown envelope by someone that never identified himself. I'm 99 percent sure that the donor was Bobby, because he knew that I collected this kind of stuff. The comparison that a forum contributor made between Bobby and Alan Boston was interesting. I agree that had they known each other they would have eventually warmed to each other, or at least developed a mutual respect. In common with Alan, Bryde had nothing but contempt for corporate suits who derived their authority from their post in the hierarchy rather than from their ability. Above all else, Bryde was an uncompromising maverick. RIP.
