Most authors will tell you writing a book means spending many hours at the computer.
To that, Steve Platto adds: Be prepared to rack up the miles, too.
Platto and his wife, Cris, logged more than 2,300 miles in and around Detroit while producing his book, “Motor City Famous: Celebrity Homes, Gravesites & Little-Known Locales.”
Platto calls the effort a “Sherlock Holmes-like journey” that included driving their Mini Cooper around on weekends to confirm and photograph some 115 homes and landmarks linked to a stunningly diverse array of notables with links to the Motor City.
Among those:
• Ed McMahon, who was the happy sidekick to Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” (McMahon was born in Detroit’s St. Mary’s Hospital.)
• Actress-comedian Lucille Ball, who lived in a Wyandotte apartment as a toddler.
• Actor Tom Selleck, who was a young child living on Lakepointe Street in Detroit.
• Skateboarding phenom Tony Hawk, who owned a house at 3966 Trumbull St. in Detroit’s Woodbridge neighborhood. It once was the home of Trumbull General Hospital.
• The house from Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino.” Eastwood played a retired auto worker who takes no guff while living at 238 Rhode Island St, Detroit.
“I’ve always been interested in genealogy, history and celebrities,” said Platto, 64, a Royal Oak resident and creative director at Ludwig Plus in Franklin.
Raised in Livonia and a 1979 graduate of Rochester High School, Platto said he grew up with a “voracious love for reading” and a penchant for Mad magazine, pop culture and humorous editorial cartoons.
“Once I got into it, I found a number of people who you’d never suspect had ties to Detroit,” he said.
With that, the book also includes a load of famous folks whose Detroit connections are well known, including music industry all-stars Smokey Robinson, Ted Nugent, Martha Reeves, Big Sean, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye.
Platto traces the idea for the book to his earlier work on a Page-A-Day calendar pegged to the dates celebrities died.
“A lot of research went into that,” he said, noting that those efforts served him well in collecting facts for the “Motor City Famous” book.
Platto said his interest in metropolitan Detroit celebrities was kicked up a notch when he learned that comedian Robin Williams had lived in Oakland County and attended Detroit Country Day School.
“That got me to thinking and digging up more information,” said Platto, a 1984 graduate of Western Michigan University.
When an item he wrote about Williams blew up on Facebook, Platto said the idea of a book gathered momentum. Running down the information led to hours of research at libraries in Bloomfield Township, Grosse Pointe, the Burton Historical Collection in Detroit, Detroit Public Schools Library and the Clarkston Independence District Library.
“They were invaluable,” Platto said.
So, too, were interviews with friends, acquaintances and relatives of celebrities.
Unable to locate public records to confirm details of Ed McMahon’s connection to Detroit, Platto reached out to the star’s daughter for assistance. That led him to a family Bible and confirmation of McMahon’s birth at St. Mary’s while his mother and father were traveling through Michigan on business.
Ultimately, he decided to combine short comments about the celebrities with photos of relevant homes and landmarks, including gravestones. Along the way, he even visited his childhood home in Livonia.
Locating the homes and landmarks proved challenging at times, Platto said, noting that online maps sometimes led him the wrong way. That lesson learned, he and his wife obtained a “big paper map” and plotted addresses across the Detroit area.
“She was co-pilot,” he said of their weekend searches.
“It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. It was fun to play Sherlock Holmes to track it all down.”
“Motor City Famous: Celebrity Homes, Gravesites & Little-Known Locales” is available in paperback for $24.99 through online retailers and selected bookstores and gift shops.
