FEINSTEIN SHINES AS NEWEST BOND HEROINE

Ask MGM/UA chairman Frank Rothman or producer Albert (Cubby) Broccoli or any of the teen-age girls who got gussied up and rented limos here Wednesday night for the world premiere of “A View to a Kill” and they’ll tell you the same thing: The real hero of the new James Bond film is Mayor Dianne Feinstein.

After all, how many people have allowed a City Hall to be set on fire for a movie shoot and thrown a wingding that lured two members of Duran Duran to town?

Yes, this City by the Bay, this Athens of the West, has gone Hollywood, and Her Honor the Mayor takes the credit or blame, depending on your point of “View.” Roughly one-third of “A View to a Kill,” which opened Friday, was shot here, including a fire engine chase through city streets, the aforementioned City Hall-burning and a death-defying climax atop the Golden Gate Bridge.

Bondmania culminated this week with two days of press activities that included all the film’s stars and the world premiere, the first for this Bond series to be held outside of London.

At a time when the trend toward filming movies and TV shows outside of Hollywood is being portrayed as the scourge of the film business--second only to videotape piracy--”A View to a Kill” is an example of how the film industry responds to a cooperative environment.

“Any big city is difficult (to shoot in) but this was one of the easiest,” said Michael G. Wilson, stepson of Bond-producer Broccoli and co-writer and co-producer of the last three 007 extravaganzas.

The city’s role included facilitating cooperation between the Fire Department and the film’s special effects crew, which fitted gas jets and asbestos shielding to the balcony of City Hall and retrofitted a fire engine for stuntwork. The city also petitioned the directors of the Golden Gate Bridge to reroute traffic for filming there, said Robin Eickman, who works directly out of the mayor’s office as the city’s first full-time motion picture coordinator.

“I don’t think anybody could have been as helpful as this mayor,” MGM/UA Chairman Rothman said Wednesday night at the Palace of Fine Arts, a stroll away from the famed Golden Gate. “We would not have come to San Francisco except for Mayor Feinstein.” Preferably, Rothman said, “you want to open your film in a big city”--like London, Los Angeles or New York--for maximum press coverage.

San Franciscans would find it hard to believe that coverage of “A View to a Kill” could possibly be greater. The San Francisco Chronicle ran its account of the premiere on its front page under the headline “Rockers Outdraw 007,” a reference to the deafening response to John Taylor and Andy Taylor (no relation) of Duran Duran, which performs the theme song.

The San Francisco Examiner published an article detailing how B. J. Worth, a 33-year-old sky diver from Whitefish, Mont., dove off the Eiffel Tower for one of “View’s” more spectacular stunts. The next day, a striking photo of Grace Jones as the film’s villainess dominated the front page accompanied by the headline “If views could kill.”

Entertainment news crews from as far away as Philadelphia’s KYW-TV lined the front of City Hall Wednesday as Worth dove out of a helicopter, parachuted into a crowd of onlookers and slid under a guard railing. In best Bond style, Worth, in a perfectly pressed tuxedo, recovered instantly from the spill and hand-delivered Feinstein a check for $100, 007 , advance proceeds from the $150-a-head premiere. (The funds will benefit the Mayor’s Youth Fund and, specifically, two new child care centers in the Tenderloin district.)

It all capped several weeks of nonstop references to “A View to a Kill” on radio stations KMEL, KITS, KWOD in Sacramento and KKOY in Stockton, all of which ran promotional contests.

But Broccoli, who has produced all 14 of the Bond films in the UA series confirmed that “we didn’t hold the premiere here because we thought it would help us promotion-wise. We came back here because they were cooperative, and we promised to give them an opening that would help raise funds for the mayor’s favorite charity.”

The object of all this praise seemed perfectly at ease mingling with film stars Tanya Roberts, Christopher Walken, Patrick Macnee and Roger Moore, now making his seventh appearance as Bond. In fact, Feinstein now counts Moore and his wife, Luisa, among her personal friends.

On the City Hall steps, seeming like a cross between a politician and a game-show host, Feinstein proclaimed Wednesday “James Bond Day” then belted out introductions like, “ . . . one of the great stars of motion pictures today, Roger Moore! “ and “Ladies and gentlemen . . . Grace Jones .”

Only at the evening affair, when Andy Taylor and John Taylor appeared onstage--and screams from the dozens of teen-age girls who bought premiere tickets drowned her out--did Feinstein appear nonplussed.

“This was easy, this was fun,” she remarked during the cocktail party that preceded the film.

“A View to a Kill” may be “the biggest project we’ve had,” according to Eickman, but it won’t be the last. Filmed but not yet released are Columbia’s “Jagged Edge,” starring Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges and Orion’s “Free Spirit,” which stars Mandy Patinkin and Close. The TV show “Crazy Like a Fox” also is “in and out of here,” Eickman said.

“We would like to encourage production here,” Feinstein said. “Having the world premiere here is a spectacular thing.”