Waiting on Nancy Reagan : Two dozen journalists had converged in Burbank, primed to report the news--if only they could find some.

KCBS cameramen Larry Greene looked at two dozen journalists poised and fidgeting Thursday morning outside an NBC studio. “Never have so few done so little for so many,” he said.

Inside the studio, First Lady Nancy Reagan was taping two brief public-service announcements decrying the abuse of drugs and alcohol by school-age children. The first of Mrs. Reagan’s brief anti-drug messages will premiere next month during a telecast of the Saturday cartoon series “Smurfs.”

Neither the White House nor NBC had claimed that Mrs. Reagan’s appearance after the taping was anything more than a chance to take pictures of the photogenic wife of the President. But two dozen journalists had nonetheless converged in Burbank, primed to do what they do--report the news--if only they could find some.

They Found Each Other

Instead they found each other. As they waited to be beckoned into the studio for their few minutes with Mrs. Reagan, they reflexively asked each other questions. “Do you think she’ll wear red?” a radio newswoman wondered. “Is Toulouse-Lautrec short?” a radio newsman answered.

As news people do when required to wait, they talked about the memorable stories, and notable non-stories, they had covered. “Nancy Reagan is against drugs. Write that down,” quipped NBC cameraman Paul Miller.

Miller spent three years based in Tel Aviv covering the Middle East. He had been assigned to do “protective coverage” of Mrs. Reagan’s studio visit. NBC wanted to make sure, in the unlikely event anything headline-making happened during the visit, that NBC didn’t have to watch it on CBS.

Also doing protective coverage for NBC was cameraman Keith Hathaway, just back from filming tragedy and rubble in Mexico City. In Hathaway’s profession you cover a killer earthquake one day and the birth of a baby gorilla the next.

The cameraman is philosophical. “I just do what I’m told,” he said. “The assignment desk says, ‘Go to Mexico and shoot the earthquake,’ I go to Mexico. The desk says, ‘Go downstairs and shoot Nancita,’ I go downstairs and shoot Nancita.”

Hathaway recalled that, after photographing unrest in Nicaragua and El Salvador, his first stateside assignment was to videotape a man in a Donald Duck suit leaving webbed footprints in wet cement in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater.

Having gathered at 10 a.m., as advised by a White House staffer, the media representatives were still waiting at 11:30. “Let’s switch press passes,” someone proposed. Being bored reminded the group of other patience-testing assignments. “The DeLorean trial was the worst,” a TV photographer recalled.

‘Dog Weddings’

“We call these dog weddings,” said Larry Greene, referring to stories that have to be flogged into existence. “I love it when you call up the assignment desk and say, ‘There’s nothing there,’ and they say, ‘Shoot it anyway.’ ” The worst example from his own past was the time he was told to photograph a power outage at night.

Warming to the subject of dog weddings, Greene recalled, “One time I actually covered a pig wedding. Two pigs got married in Northridge.” The porcine nuptials were no dog wedding, as far as Greene was concerned. That was a good, offbeat little story. Although it failed to make

the evening news, it eventually ended up on “The David Letterman Show.”

At 12:08, the media representatives were ushered into the studio, where Mrs. Reagan sat on a stool, chatting with the three teen-agers who appeared with her in one of the spots. “Don’t you dance?” one of her young co-stars asked when she said that she preferred Cole Porter to rock music. “Not that way,” she said. “It’s more fun to dance my way.”

Although no press conference was scheduled, Mrs. Reagan graciously fielded several questions. No, her husband hadn’t given her any acting tips. “He’s a little busy,” she said. Why had she made the anti-drug spots? “I think it’s one of our most pressing problems. We’re talking about our next generation, about losing our next generation.”

By 12:45, members of the media were dashing for phones to file their stories.

Toulouse-Lautrec isn’t tall.

Nancy Reagan was wearing red.