Friday, May 7, 1999 | 9:58 a.m.
JUPITER, Fla. -- So this is what it's come to:
Photo of Burt and then-Gov. Bob Graham. $5.
Burt and a guy in an ascot. $5.
Burt and the pope. $50.
Burt and Loni. Both smiling. $10.
Burt "and an older gentleman," said auctioneer Jay Sugarman. "That's Groucho Marx," offered D. Cooper Getschal. $20.
About 200 people attended one last performance Tuesday at the long-dead Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater as the new owners cleaned out the closets with an auction.
On the block were 162 pencil sketches of the stars of each play that decorated the lobby, dozens of signed and unsigned photos of Reynolds and to Reynolds by show biz personalities, light bulbs, kitchen equipment and play posters, among other artifacts.
Where else could you find a belly full of Ned Beatty and a chubby Charles Durning in the same photo? (It's a horizontal picture).
"Doesn't that look like a mustache and beard on Loni?" said one browser of a photo of Loni Anderson, one of Reynolds' exes.
The auction took 6 1/2 hours and earned "a drawerful of money" for the theater's new owners, Christ's Church of the Palm Beaches, said Getschal, the church's music director. The "tens of thousands" will be spent on the children's program for the evangelical, nondenominational church, which plans to open in the fall.
Michael Galvin of Palm Beach Gardens picked up a black-and-white photo of Reynolds and some of the Rat Pack -- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis and Reynolds sidekick Dom DeLuise -- for a hotly contested $2,250.
"I've been a fan of Burt's," Galvin said. "And when I saw the Rat Pack, I knew I had to have it. It's so unusual to find all these signatures together. The Dean Martin line is a classic."
But too profane to be repeated in this newspaper.
"We had to get rid of it," laughed the church's children's program director, Chelly Templeton. "We couldn't put it in the church, not even in the coffeehouse."
"I'm king of the Longest Yard Sale," Getschal said.
Caterer Enrico Vittori waited patiently through the memorabilia sale to bid for champagne glasses, plate warmers and trays. "Just imagine," he laughed, holding up a plate, "Burt Reynolds ate on it."
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