Governor to Be Back in Theaters This Summer

Red-letter dates on California’s June calendar:

* Billions in state loan payoffs come due.

* Alan Greenspan’s term as Fed chief expires.

* L.A.’s seriously messed-up King/Drew Medical Center must close its surgery training and radiology residency programs.

* 60th anniversary of D-day.

* The LAPD must be in “substantial compliance” with a federal consent decree on civil rights reforms.

* Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movie premieres.

Last July, before he launched his gubernatorial campaign on a late-night comedy show, Schwarzenegger filmed a feature role for a remake of the Oscar-winning film “Around the World in 80 Days.” And it opens in June.

Online descriptions show the 2004 remake bears some resemblance to the 1956 best picture film. But it bears less to the Jules Verne novel, which had no stolen jade Buddha, no eccentric inventor, no French female artist and no Wright brothers -- who were little children when Verne’s book was published. The book didn’t seem to suffer for want of them.

Schwarzenegger spent two days filming his role as a polygamous Turkish prince named Hapi. The word “hap” in Turkish seems to mean “pill,” but in ancient Egypt, Hapi was the Nile god of flooding.

In one scene, Schwarzenegger’s character is seated in his palace set, bent on adding French artist Monique to his seraglio.

“Miss Monique stays to be my wife,” he declares. “Wife No. 7.”

“You have seven wives?” she asks.

Schwarzenegger beams. “One for each day of the week. Will Tuesdays work for you?”

Financing the movie is Philip Anschutz, the telecom billionaire/publisher/movie mogul/sports team owner. The Denver rich guy and his empire have been generous in California politics, the secretary of state’s records show, doling out small sums to Democratic and Republican legislative candidates.

In 2001, Anschutz’s corporation gave $25,000 to the state Republican Party and $100,000 to Republican Bill Simon Jr.’s gubernatorial campaign. The next year, Anschutz gave $10,000 in “nonmonetary” contributions to Simon’s competitor, Gray Davis. And in 2003, his wife, Nancy, gave $10,000 to Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor, which, given his salary history, is probably much less than he earned for his film cameo.

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Wilson Gets Law Firm Job, Works on a Book

Now that he’s left Sacramento in big hands, one former governor of California -- there are five of them living, two Dems, three Republicans -- has ridden off into a kind of sunset: a law firm.

Pete Wilson, the ex-governor you often saw at the current governor’s side during the recall campaign, has joined the Bingham and McCutchen consulting group and is “of counsel” at the same law firm in downtown L.A.

The outfit works with large corporations, mostly for multi-state attorneys general investigations and political strategies. (Try fitting all that on a business card.)

Wilson spent much of last summer holed up in an office at the Getty Center, having requested reading privileges for a book he’s working on.

Most researchers get cubicles -- carrels, in academia -- but Wilson was given the use of the office, a Getty spokeswoman said, because of his public profile.

“Library patrons, and probably he, would find it distracting” to have him sitting one chair away, she said.

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Mayoral Appointee Is Suspicious of Her Firing

One minute she’s practically queen of the San Fernando Valley -- president and chief executive of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. and the mayor’s appointee to the Metropolitan Water District board.

And the next minute she’s booted off the board. The betting and speculating on why Mayor Jim Hahn fired Bonny Herman falls into two camps:

* That it had something to do with the fact that VICA has opposed parts of Hahn’s $9-billion makeover plan for Los Angeles International Airport, or ...

* That she was dumped a mere fortnight after she testified in favor of a ban on political fundraising by city commissioners appointed by the mayor -- a ban Hahn at first opposed in favor of simple disclosure, before he changed his mind and signed the ban into law.

Herman is demurring: “They never gave me a reason why they were replacing me. It makes you wonder. It just seems strange because I did testify just before it happened.”

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Points Taken

* Jack Corrie, who resigned as a deputy director for the DMV, quit for medical reasons, the governor’s office said. But the Sacramento Bee said the reasons were academic -- Corrie’s claim to bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the “University of Palmer Green,” which the Bee identified as a diploma mill. While the University of Palmer Green sounds like a jumped-up golf school, Palmers Green is a real place, in Enfield, London’s northernmost borough, which made guns (the Lee Enfield rifle, enforcer of Empire) and lays claim to the country’s first ATM machine. No university, though.

* Ten years after former President Nixon died, the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda is staging a special exhibit of his state funeral, with videos of the complete service and the eulogies, the flag that covered Nixon’s coffin, blowups of newspaper clippings and cards sent to him in the hospital before he died. Also on display is coverage of Pat Nixon’s funeral. The exhibit is titled “How American! A Nation’s Farewell to Pat and Richard Nixon.”

* Jason Kinney, speechwriter to Gray Davis, has been hired as a director at Burson-Marsteller, working on public affairs matters at the PR firm’s Sacramento office. He began his political career at age 13, helping his mother’s campaign for Indiana’s state Senate.

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You Can Quote Me

“I’m not much of a speeder myself. It’s my husband it will catch.”

Joanne Brewer of Pleasanton, Calif., speaking about the city’s new traffic signal, which can “sense” when a speeding driver is approaching and sneakily changes the light from green to yellow to red. Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Previous columns can be read at www.latimes.com/morrison. Contributing this week was Patrick McGreevy.