The Perils of Jane--They Finally Wither Away

The queen of the bathroom cleanser commercials may be able to rescue a kitchen sink from a grimy fate, but when it came to rescuing herself, she had to rely on the Burbank Fire Department.

Jane Withers, who was known for years as Josephine the Plumber in the Comet cleanser TV commercials, got stranded early Saturday in a narrow alley behind her Burbank movie production company building. Dressed in her son’s blue velour bathrobe, she spent the day in the almost-deserted warehouse district huddled in a corrugated box with her dog.

It all started about 9 a.m. when the 58-year-old former child actress (she was the kid who made life miserable for Shirley Temple in the 1934 movie “Bright Eyes”) warmed up her dog’s (Happy April) breakfast in a microwave oven and took him outside to feed him. The door slammed shut behind her and locked--and Withers and the dog were trapped in a narrow passageway between two buildings. Both ends of the alley were blocked by tall concrete-and-iron fences.

Withers, who said she was getting desperate because she had an afternoon appointment to be fitted for her wedding dress (she is marrying her business manager Thomas Pierson next week) said she tried to pry the hinges off the door with a piece of wood. She also tried to pile old props up against the fence and climb over. But they kept toppling over.

“I kept thinking ‘Oh, God, I can’t break anything, I’m getting married Thursday,’ ” she said.

Withers, who stopped making commercials in 1975 and who has since formed her own production company, fashioned a tent out of corrugated boxes and crawled in.

Richard Castleberry, who has a business next door, heard her cries for help about 5 p.m. and called the Fire Department.

Battalion Chief Mike Davis and his crew lowered a ladder from the roof of an adjacent building into the alley and helped Withers up. Then they lowered her down the other side of the building with another piece of fire equipment.

“I didn’t recognize who she was until one of the other guys mentioned it,” said a surprised Davis, who along with the other firefighters received grateful hugs from Withers.