Free How I Got This Way by Regis Philbin

continued to tell me stories. This guy was all stamina—he even got up to dance a little more soft-shoe!—while I was fading fast. Meanwhile, other late diners in the place came up to us—some for me, some for him, and most because they just couldn’t believe that Regis Philbin and Walter Winchell were hanging out together in an all-night Chinese restaurant in San Diego. I couldn’t believe it either. I was now beyond worn-out, but I’m pretty sure that he next asked me to cross the street with him to the Union-Tribune office where he wanted to bang out one more column. With regret I still feel to this day, I begged off. We shook hands good-bye on the sidewalk sometime around 3 a.m. I recall the way he straightened his hat, turned, and jauntily crossed the street to go find an available typewriter. I went home drained but exhilarated all the same.
    The next day I was surprised to receive a note from him. But Marilyn Monroe had just died mysteriously in Los Angeles and he was now headed up there to pounce on one of the biggest celebrity stories of the year, if not of all time. Then another surprise came a week or so later: I got an actual plug in a Winchell column. It was, of course, dazzling to see my name mixed into his parade of legendary three-dot items. My item read like this:
    Att’n network execs on both coasts: His name is Regis Philbin. No. One Rating-Getter in Southern Calif. Via Ch. 10 (San Diego to Santa Barbara). He is show-biz from head to toenails. Plus style, class, dignity. The only late-show personality around, we believe, who matches Johnny Carson’s way with a guest or a coast-to-coast crowd . . .
    I couldn’t believe it. I’d made the column. So had my toenails, for that matter. All those years of reading Winchell, and now I had turned up under his national byline, with lots of praise on top of it. Privately, though, it also gave me pause. I was proud, of course, but I had trouble believing that I deserved it. Strangely, I was a little embarrassed, too. In the end, that Winchell plug would lead me to the agent Max Arnow, my first syndicated show, and many great adventures to follow. Yes, it was Winchell I alluded to earlier as the celebrity guest who’d gotten the whole ball rolling for me. And it is to him that I owe a huge debt of thanks.

 
    WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM IT ALL
    There will always be something special and more impressive to me about newspaper print than about anything I’m likely to find on the Internet.
    Accepting a compliment from a hero—or from anyone you deeply admire—is harder than it really ought to be. Just accept it and don’t forget to say thanks, and it’s yours for the rest of your life.

Chapter Six
    SYDNEY OMARR
    A ll right, as you can probably tell by now, my path has intersected with people who not only impressed, delighted, or inspired me—there have also been those who’ve just plain amazed me. Maybe looming larger than any other in that category was the late remarkable astrologer Sydney Omarr, whose name is still revered in the mysterious realm of reading the stars via charts and birth dates, numerology, and mystical powers. He was a man who would later tell me things that guys like me should never begin to know!
    Anyway, as you’re well aware, that plug in the Winchell column did not go unnoticed. And flattered as I was, I also sensed that my life was in for some dramatic changes, probably much sooner than later. I mean, the great Winchell himself had suggested so very boldly that I was ready for bigger things than my beloved little Saturday-night talkfest in quiet San Diego. And though, frankly, a part of me didn’t want to believe it—not just yet, anyway—next there would actually come a glowing review of our Saturday show in no less than the showbiz bible Variety, as written by correspondent Don Freeman. (Yes, that would be the same Don Freeman who wrote for the San Diego Union-Tribune and whom I’d long admired, even if I never did muster up the