Good evening, and welcome. I have been collecting autographs for twenty-five years this fall, and in that time I have found that most people, when they learn of it, have one of two reactions. The first is, "Oh, how do you get them?" The second is, "Isn't that a bit silly?" This page is for the first sort of person. To the second sort I say only that a signature is the one thing a famous person makes with their own hand and gives to you personally, and that a letter that comes back to you with a name at the bottom, written by the person whose voice you know from a hundred films, is a small, real, private thing in a world that is mostly neither. That is why I do it. Now, on to how.

I was twenty years old in 1974 and working at a lending library, and I wrote my first letter to an actress of the 1940s whose films they showed on the late movie. I did not know what I was doing. I did not enclose an envelope. I did not enclose anything. Eleven weeks later a photograph came back, signed, with a note, and I have been at it ever since. I still have that photograph. It is not the most valuable thing I own, but it is the one I would carry out in a fire.

Most autographs, in my collection and in everyone's, come through the post. It costs a stamp and a little care. Here is the method I have settled on, and I will tell you frankly that the care is the part that matters.

Find the address. Your public library has reference books that list addresses for actors, authors, athletes and public figures, usually by way of an agent, a studio, a publisher or a fan club. Ask the reference librarian; they know the books. Newer stars can often be reached through the studio that made their latest picture. Older stars sometimes have fan clubs run by devoted people who will forward letters. Write the address neatly and check it twice. A letter that never arrives is not refused; it is simply gone.

Write a real letter. By hand, if your hand is legible; typed is fine if not. One page. Say who you are in a sentence, say what you admire and why, and be specific: a particular film, a particular scene, a particular song. The people who receive these letters can tell a form letter from a real one at twenty paces, and so could you. Then ask, politely, for what you would like: a signed photograph, if they have one, or their signature on the card or photo you have enclosed. Ask for one thing. Thank them for their time. Sign your name.

Never mention buying, selling, or value. Never ask for more than one signature "for a friend." Never ask a personal question. Never enclose anything you would mind losing.

The SASE. This is the self-addressed stamped envelope, and it is the whole engine of the thing. Enclose an envelope, addressed to yourself, with the correct postage already on it, so that all the person or their secretary has to do is put the photo in and drop it in the mail. If you are sending a photograph or card to be signed, use a stiff mailer or put a piece of cardboard in the envelope so it comes back flat, and write "Please Do Not Bend" on the outside. Weigh it at the post office with the cardboard in it; a photograph with a stiffener is more than one stamp. A letter that comes back to you "postage due" has already been an inconvenience to someone.

If you write to someone overseas, your American stamps are no good on the return envelope. The post office sells international reply coupons for exactly this purpose; ask for them at the counter.

Then, patience. Some replies come in two weeks. Some come in two years. I have had letters answered after so long that I had to look up who I'd written to. Many are never answered at all, and that is the person's right; you asked a favor of a stranger. Keep a little notebook with the date sent, the address, and what you enclosed, so that when an envelope in your own handwriting arrives, you will know what is in it. That moment, incidentally, never gets old.

When it comes back, write a short thank-you note. Very few collectors do this. Do it anyway.

I live near enough to Hollywood Boulevard to walk to the theaters on a premiere night, and I have done so more times than I could count. It is a different sort of collecting: less certain, more exciting, and it rewards manners even more than the mail does. Some rules I live by:

• Arrive early and stand where you're told. There are ropes or barricades for a reason. The people behind them who are quiet and pleasant get noticed; the ones who shove and shout get moved along by the security men, who have seen everything.
• Bring one thing to sign and a good pen. For a photograph, a fine-point permanent marker; for paper or a card, a ballpoint or a fine felt-tip. Have it uncapped and ready. A star will give you ten seconds. Do not spend them looking for a pen.
• Say please and thank you, and say the person's name. "Miss So-and-so, would you please?" Look them in the eye. You would be surprised how many people never do.
• Take no for an answer, gracefully. They may be late, or tired, or with their mother. It is not personal. A small smile and "another time, then" costs you nothing and is remembered more often than you'd think.
• One item, one signature. Do not hand over a stack. Do not send a child forward with your stack. Everyone can tell.
• Do not ask during a private moment: at a restaurant table, in a hospital, at a funeral, at the cemetery. Yes, people do. Don't be those people.
• Never take a photograph without asking, and if you do ask, ask after the signature, not before.

And a private rule of my own: I do not chase. If someone is walking quickly with their head down, I let them go by. There is always another night, and the good ones remember the face that didn't grab at them.

A word about a sad subject. Not everything that comes back in the mail was signed by the hand you hoped. Busy people have secretaries, and some secretaries sign the mail. Some very busy people, and some government offices, use a machine called an autopen, which holds a real pen and traces a stored signature. A secretarial signature is usually a little too neat and a little wrong somewhere in the letters. An autopen signature is the same every time, to the hair, and the pen pressure is uniform from start to finish because a machine does not speed up and slow down the way a hand does; often there is a tiny dot or wobble where the pen came down and where it lifted. Compare it with one you know to be genuine, and compare notes with other collectors. Some stars also send out pre-printed photos where the signature is part of the printing; you can tell by looking at the ink under a magnifying glass. There is nothing to be done about any of this except to learn, be philosophical, and enjoy the real ones more.

Which is the other reason for the "in person" method: you watched the hand do it.

Paper is fragile and ink fades. Some rules, learned partly the hard way:

• Keep everything in acid-free sleeves and folders, from an art supply or archival supplier, not the drugstore. Ordinary paper and plastic go yellow and brittle and take your autographs with them.
• Out of the sun. Sunlight, and even strong lamplight over the years, fades ink and yellows paper. Nothing of mine hangs on a wall that gets afternoon light, and most of it is in albums in a closet.
• No tape, no glue, no lamination. Ever. Tape stains through in a few years, glue does worse, and lamination is permanent and ruins the item for good. Use photo corners in an album if you want to display something.
• Keep the letter with the signature. If a note came with the photograph, or the reply came on the person's stationery, keep them together in the same sleeve. The envelope too, with its postmark. It is the story of where the signature came from, and someday someone will want to know.
• Cool and dry. Not the attic, not the basement. A bedroom closet is about right.
• Write down what you have. I keep a card file, one index card per item: name, what it is, date received, how obtained. Twenty-five years of this and it is the only way I can find anything.

You will notice I have not put a list of names on this page, and I am not going to. Partly that is because a list of names on the Internet is an invitation to people who want to buy, and nothing here is for sale, now or ever. Partly it is because I think the names are the least interesting part. So here is the shape of it instead.

There are about 340 items in the card file. Roughly:

• The largest group, and my first love, is the stars of the 1930s and '40s: leading ladies and leading men of the studio era, character actors, a few directors. I began writing to them in 1974, when many were still living quietly and were, I think, pleased to be remembered. Most of these came by mail, with kind notes, and the notes are as precious to me as the signatures.
• Television actors of the 1950s and '60s, from the comedies and westerns I grew up with. A cheerful, generous bunch as a rule.
• Broadway. Signed programs, mostly, from stage doors on trips to New York, where the etiquette is the same as at a premiere except that it is colder.
• Astronauts of the Apollo years. A small group and a proud one.
• Authors. Books signed at readings, and a few letters. Writers, I have found, answer letters more often than anyone, perhaps because they like getting them.
• Baseball. My late husband's department, on index cards and a few balls, and I keep them for him.
• Odds and ends. Two First Ladies (through their offices, and yes, I have looked hard at those pens), a handful of musicians, one famous chef, and a bandleader who wrote me three pages about the war.

The oldest signature I own is from 1931, on a studio portrait. The newest is from a premiere in August. The one I would save in a fire, I've already told you about.

Every collector has one. Mine is not a signature I lost; it is one I never asked for.

In the winter of 1974, having had that first success, I sat down to write to an actress of the silent era, then very old, who had been the whole reason I fell in love with old films in the first place. I wanted the letter to be perfect. I wrote it four times. The first draft was too gushing, the second too stiff, the third too long. The fourth sat on my dresser for a month while I looked for exactly the right photograph to enclose, and then for the right mailer, and then I was busy, and then it was spring.

She died that summer. The letter is still in my desk, in the fourth draft, unsigned and unsent, with a stamp on it that is no longer enough postage.

So the last rule, and the one I would put first if I were starting over: send the letter. Not the perfect letter. The letter. Say the true thing plainly, put the envelope in, and put it in the box. What comes back, or doesn't, is out of your hands, and always was. What was in your hands was the asking.