TV MOVIE PLANNED ON CAPERS OF DICK TUCK

Dick Tuck, the legendary leg-puller famed for political pranks that bedeviled Richard M. Nixon as far back as 1950, has been prowling Hollywood, hawking a movie idea he wrote. No sale yet, he reports, but he will be involved in a movie project anyway.

He says that it is tentatively called “The Dick Tuck Story,” a television movie about his life and capers. It will be developed by 20th Century Fox Television and will star John Ritter, late of ABC’s “Three’s Company,” as Tuck.

Peter Grad, senior vice president for development at the studio, confirms that the portable anarchist of American political life is not speaking in jest. “It promises to be the highlight of my career, developing this one,” he says.

Tuck, proud of his ability to get around Hollywood by bus instead of BMW, said he took a bus to a meeting last week at 20th with Grad and Ritter’s business partner, Robert Myman--who Grad said first suggested the idea of a film about Tuck.

A deal was struck then, Tuck says, and contracts now are being drawn up. “I think it’s wonderful,” he adds. He declined to say how much he’ll earn.

But “they gave me a decent amount of money,” says Tuck, now temporarily based in Brentwood. He said he will serve as a consultant on the program.

He said he understands that the docudrama--or docu-comedy, as it more likely will be--”will probably have me as 90% irreverent and 10% idealistic, which is twice as much idealism as I had.” But he doesn’t object, he added.

Grad, in an interview last week, cautioned that the project is still a long way from production. A scriptwriter must still be hired and networks asked whether they’d be interested in buying rights to this dramatization of the highlights of Tuck’s career.

But he said he was sold on the merry prankster the moment Tuck walked into his office: “I looked at him and I started to laugh, just knowing what goes on in that mind of his.”

That mind, in addition to foaling pranks against Nixon during most of the latter’s political career, even impelled Tuck to seek election in 1966 to the California Senate with a campaign slogan of “the job needs Tuck and Tuck needs the job.”