celebrity postal test How famous is famous? We've always figured that if an average American — say, a Postal Service employee — knows your name or your face, you're a bona fide somebody. Thus, a carefully orchestrated Celebrity Postal Experiment, in which the relative famousness of 58 celebrities has been determined by their ability to receive incompletely addressed fan mail. Each celebrity was sent four letters: the first inscribed with only the celebrity's name; the second, with the celebrity's name, city and ZIP code; the third, with only a glued-on photograph of the celebrity; and the fourth bearing a photograph and the pictured celebrity's city and ZIP code. All the letters requested an autographed photo for a fictitious 12-year-old boy named Chad.
The experiment offers many revelations on the nature of celebrity. Among them: that no matter how famous you are, an envelope adorned with nothing but your likeness will not be delivered to you (all the photo-only letters were returned); that no matter how big Madonna and Woody Allen are on the coasts, heartland favorites like Norm Schwarzkopf, Ann Landers and Michael Jordan (the only people whose names alone were enough to get mail to them) win out in the postal-clerk-recognizability department; and that Tina Brown is in the same rank of celebrity as Bob Denver and Charles Manson, who were insufficiently famous to receive any of our letters.

* denotes letter was delivered
** denotes letter delivered and solicited response.

(1) Autographed photo was a 1950s-vintage postcard promoting a Gabor performance at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas.
(2) A terse note on KATHARINE HOUGHTON HEPBURN stationery explained, "Miss Hepburn does not sign or send photographs or other items."
(3) Letter was returned undelivered with a Hitler mustache drawn on Kiam's face.
(4) O'Connor's autographed Bachrach portrait was accompanied by a note that read, "I can't believe (your letter) reached me"
(5) One of Will's assistants wrote back, to Chad's mother. The letter read, in part, "Do you have any other children?... I am extremely sorry if this question offends you in any way. It was not asked for that purpose at all."

celebrity postal test: the early years

"When an admirer in California decided to send President Theodore Roosevelt a valentine, there was no need to address it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead, the anonymous well-wisher simply sketched the president's face on the card, and it duly arrived at the White House several days later. Though not quite on the same scale as Mount Rushmore, the postcard is still an uncommon tribute to Teddy's fame, to the artist's accuracy — and to the now-faded glory of the U.S. Postal Service." (from Civilization, January/February 1995)