Steve Mizerany

St. Louis Icon Steve Mizerany

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People not from St. Louis might consider a St. Louis Icon to be Stan Musial, Phyllis Diller, Shelly Winters, or maybe even John Goodman or Kevin Kline.  But true St. Louisians know that the king of St. Louis icons is Steve Mizerany.  By Los Angeles standards you could consider Steve to be the "Bob Hope" of St. Louis.  I am very proud to call him a dear friend and mentor.  The fact is that Steve changed my entire life's direction with one simple gift.

How It All Started

St Louis, Mo. - 1980, I was working as a computer repairman for IBM and Steve Mizerany had the top chain of independent appliance stores called "The New Deal". Steve was known for his warm and generous personality, his entrepreneurial flare, and also by his ridiculous TV commercials where he roller skated around gorillas or famous wrestlers while hawking his "low, low prices".

One day I got an emergency service call. It was payday and dozens of employees were waiting for their checks at Steve's office. I was told ahead of time that the keyboard on their IBM System 32 needed to be replaced and I brought a spare. 

What they didn't tell me was that the operator had vomited all over the keyboard.  Not that watery kind of puke, but a mass of noxious funk that looked like a combination of Talayna's pepperoni and anchovy pizza mixed with some toasted ravioli, a few White Castle belly bombers, and topped off with a double fudge sundae from Ted Drew's minus the cherry. (If you're from St. Louis, you get the picture)

I could normally swap out a keyboard in under two minutes, but this was job above and beyond the call of duty.  They gave me a plastic trash can bag with holes cut out for my head and arms.  They also found some goggles and rubber gloves but no matter what they gave me to protect myself, the look and smell made me convulse and gag like Kramer on Seinfeld whenever something would shock him.

I finished the work and payroll was put out on time.  IBM even awarded me a plaque with a gold-painted air sickness bag on it.  Steve was so thankful that with permission from my boss, Steve gave me a floor model Beta Videocassette recorder as a gift.  He also showed me a shelf of video tapes that he let customers borrow like a library IF they bought a VCR from him.  I asked him why he didn't rent the movies and he said that nobody would ever want to rent movies.

Renting video movies seemed like it would be a good business and 8 months later, I opened the first video rental store in St. Louis called Video Library.

Because of time constraints, we had to trim our movie in many places and this scene was one of the casualties.  In the current version of our movie, Mike Howard is seen bringing home a Beta Video Cassette Recorder.  In the scene below, it shows how he got it.

NOTE: Because some music was embedded into the clip that we couldn't get clearance for, this clip was not put on our DVD in the deleted scenes section and it was too expensive to go back and edit it out.

  
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Peggy - Stacie Adkins
Mike Howard - Matt Letscher
Steve Mizerany - Pat Kiernan (Class of 1971 - St. Charles High)

Unfortunately time does take it's toll and Steve is now living in a nursing home in Ellisville, Mo.

Please take a few minutes to just say "HI" to a St. Louis icon by sending him a greeting card to:

Steve Mizerany - #317
c/o Autumn View Gardens
Autumn View Terrace Dr.
Ellisville. Mo. 63069