Billboard Romeo Caps Catwalk Romance
A couple of hundred people stood at a busy West Hollywood street corner Thursday to witness the wedding of Jeffrey Stuart, 25, and Penny Floyd, 21.
Photographers jostled for position, motorists driving by stood on their brakes and blew their horns and a talking robot traded bon mots with those gathered for the ceremony.
That didn’t bother Jeff and Penny, though. They were above it all. About 30 feet above it, to be precise. They were married on the catwalk of an empty billboard at Sunset Boulevard and Sweetzer Avenue.
This may seem unusual, but there is an explanation, of sorts.
Stuart was one of a dozen aspiring actors and actresses who climbed up to the catwalk last Dec. 11 and vowed not to come down--except for a daily shower and four trips to a bathroom per day--in a contest to see who could stay the longest. The winner would receive a car, some lesser prizes and the real pot at the end of the rainbow--a screen test.
The sponsor was a San Francisco electronics firm, Xtronx Inc., whose product, something called a Winkie, had graced the billboard. The Winkie, reliably reported to be a blinking computer chip and the 1980s’ answer to the Pet Rock, may or not make it.
One thing, however, is certain. Xtronx got a bundle of publicity for its modern-day version of the old flagpole sitting stunt--a barrage of media attention that reached its heights with Thursday’s nuptials.
The groom and bride were gracious enough to conduct a brief interview just before they dressed for the wedding. (For the record, he wore silver pants, with a matching silver satin jacket festooned with blue polka dots. She was radiant in a matching silver dress, though properly demure under a white veil.)
There was time for only a few quick questions, the big one being, why get married on a billboard catwalk above the Sunset Strip?
“Why not?” Stuart responded. “That’s where we found each other. It seemed like the most appropriate place.”
The groom explained that Penny had called the billboard gang (Xtronx had installed phone lines to the catwalk early on) after hearing about the stunt on a radio show.
Answered Phone
As fate would have it, Jeff answered the phone and, after a bit of small talk, Penny asked him if he needed anything. Stuart said some fresh fruit would be nice.
One thing led to another . . . very quickly. Penny showed up on Valentine’s Day with the fruit. Jeff was charmed; Penny smitten. He proposed on St. Patrick’s Day.
Picture them there amidst the diesel fume-belching buses of Sunset: In a sort of reversed, speeded-up Romeo and Juliet balcony scene (with Penny below, Jeff up high and a dozen other weird, but wonderful would-be actors in the wings) love found a way.
“We all found a lot of things,” Stuart said. Good contacts--other actors, an agent or two--a book and screenplay about the billboard-living experience that he and a fellow sitter are working on. “Obviously, I found more than anyone else. I found the woman of my life.”
Penny, a receptionist at an accounting firm, blushed slightly but recovered quickly, and said she thought that she and Jeff were made for each other.
“We have the same slightly sick sense of humor,” she said. “If he gets mad, I guess he can always go sit on a billboard and I’ll bring him some more fruit.”
The ceremony turned out to be your basic, traditional, Jewish wedding on-a-billboard-catwalk-with-a-rabbi.
On the Phone
“That was the difficult part,” Stuart explained. “I must have telephoned every rabbi in Los Angeles before one of them passed me on to a rabbi (Richard Schachet of Woodland Hills) who would do it.”
Later the happy couple drove off in a chauffeured limousine for a reception at a nearby hotel. Next it will be a round of apartment hunting and a cruise to Hawaii.
As for the prizes. Stuart said he and the three other finalists, who all agreed to come down after the wedding, would split the goodies while one of them, not Stuart, gets the screen test. Stuart said that is a fair enough arrangement, as Hollywood deals go.
