Over the past few years, the Post Office has honored Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Cary Grant, James Dean, and Elvis Presley with special commemorative stamps and these boys look as good or better than the usual American History icons. They've also given us Marilyn Monroe on a stamp and she too looked as fabulous as any icon of any era, cinematic or otherwise. That Grace Kelly stamp was lovely too, very subdued like its subject, the perfect touch of refinement for our boring old cable-TV bill. And several years ago we were treated to a set of stamps that honored the films Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Beau Geste and Stagecoach, all with lovely likenesses of their respective stars: Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, and the Duke. These are, after all, the generally agreed-upon Gods and Goddesses of the silver screen, timeless glistening images for that sublime cinematic epoch that was the 20th Century.

Here at the Meeker Museum we certainly don't want to tarnish anybody's glistening images. A problem for us, though, is that Gable and Garland et al are not necessarily the icons that we would select for our own worshipful devotion, never mind for stamps. As much as we love that old warhorse Gone With the Wind, you won't find us among those fanatics who rave about having seen this classic over 100 times.

Let's face it, not many movies are really worth viewing 100 times, or even twice for that matter. However we do believe that a classic like 1961's Parrish is perhaps worth viewing thousands of time. Ahhh Parrish. Now there was a cast of glistening images: Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, Diane McBain, Sharon Hugueny, and in smaller roles, Madeleine Sherwood and Sylvia Miles. How all those cineastes  and stamp collectors at the U.S. Postal Service could have overlooked virtually everybody in this cast, including the relatively non-glistening Claudette Colbert and Karl Malden, is almost beyond our comprehension. However, we have learned to expect that conventional movie fans usually are not prepared to admit that this century's greatest art form is fun mainly because of icons who have names like Troy and Tab and Tuesday and Ty, to name just a few that we particularly admire.

Movies seem to be a lot more user-friendly when they don't have "classic" anywhere in their description, although here at the Meeker Museum we do occasionally slip and use such words to describe undisputed masterworks such as 1959's Girls Town or 1962's Bachelor Flat.

We can't help it if we find ourselves attracted to the underrated, the overlooked, the downright despised, and in some cases even poor Sue Lyon. We admit to vastly preferring Diane Varsi over Ingrid Bergman, Jeffrey Hunter over Gary Cooper, Gloria Grahame over Greta Garbo, and Patrick Wayne over his daddy. For swashbuckling adventure we look to Kerwin Mathews, rather than the relatively bland Errol Flynn. We unabashedly go ape for Fabian westerns, Anne Francis sci-fi, and almost anything with "Beach" in the title even if it was directed by Cornel Wilde. We like almost any movie where Carroll Baker plays George Peppard's stepmother. We look upon Troy Donahue's 1964 marriage to Suzanne Pleshette as the wedding of the century. We believe Carol Lynley should have taken home at least one Oscar per year throughout the sixties, whether she was working in movies or not. And most of all, we just go crazy for Ralph Meeker movies.

So, welcome to the Meeker Museum. It may or may not go as far as a postage stamp, but it ought to fill the bill until those stylesetters at the U.S. Postal Service wake up and realize that Ralph Meeker is an ideal candidate for stamphood.