Johnny Grant: star quality as the Spirit of Hollywood Past, Present and Future

I had lunch the other day with entertainer Johnny Grant, KTLA’s vice president for public affairs and honorary mayor of Hollywood in this centennial year.

He calls himself “Hollywood’s oldest cheerleader.”

He’s one of its cutest too. His curls are silver now, and thin on top; but his face is as round, pink and cherubic as ever.

Grant’s introduction to Hollywood was almost the stuff of one of those romantic comedies of the 1940s.

“I was in uniform,” he recalled. “I had a three-day pass. I went straight to Schwab’s drugstore (where the stars went to be discovered).

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She came over to me and said: ‘Good morning, sergeant. Is this your first time in Hollywood?’ ”

Grant was on the road to Oz. They went straight to the young woman’s apartment; but the Miami Herald would have been disappointed. She gave him her key and left him to enjoy the apartment while she went to March Field to see her boyfriend.

Grant spent most of his pass at the Hollywood Canteen, ogling stars who came out to entertain the servicemen.

“Orson Welles was doing his magic act in a tent next door, sawing Rita Hayworth in half every night.”

It was a glorious leave, and Grant never got over it. He’s been star-struck ever since.

“I knew I had to come back here after the war.”

He never got overseas, but later he made 44 USO trips to Korea and Vietnam to entertain the troops, and two on his own to Lebanon.

Grant believes in Hollywood.

“It’s a magic word all over the world.”

He said that when he was in Lebanon he wanted to see Jerusalem, but people warned him, “You go to Jerusalem, they’ll pick your pockets.”

“But I wanted to go. I wanted to see where it all took place. That’s the way people feel about Hollywood. Everybody knows it’s changed. They want to see where it started.”

Grant says the street weirdos of a few years ago are mostly gone from the boulevard.

“They were kids who were disenchanted with their country, with the Vietnam War, with their parents. They came here, got outfitted at the war-surplus store; they slept in burned-out houses, in boxes, in the gutter. It was a mess.

“I have no idea where they went. But I don’t feel any hostility on the street. When we put a star in the sidewalk, buses come, there’s a cheerful crowd, people throw beach balls into the crowd. It’s fun.”

On Feb. 1, Hollywood’s 100th birthday, Natalie Wood’s star was embedded in the sidewalk in front of the renovated Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

“TV crews came from all over the world to cover that,” Grant recalled. “Then everybody went into the Blossom Room (where the first Academy Awards dinner was held in 1927) and celebrated.”

Grant is aware that many young people don’t recognize the names of many old stars in the Walk of Fame. So they’re trying to add some younger ones. “We’re trying to get young people who have made it and have staying power.”

But how do you know who has staying power? Who remembers Edward Sedgwick? Olive Bordon? And who is Maurice Diller? (Some think it’s a misspelling of Mauritz Stiller, the Swedish director who brought Garbo to Hollywood.)

Recently the names of Tom Cruise and Tom Selleck have been added to the walk, and Eddie Murphy’s has been approved. (Murphy has already got his footprints in the forecourt of Mann’s Chinese Theater.)

Grant can wax nostalgic about the old days. He used to meet Eddie Bracken in the Brown Derby, and they’d walk Hollywood Boulevard from Vine to Highland on one side, then back down the other.

“You never knew who you’d meet. We ran into lots of stars. I think some are still out, but you can’t recognize them. They’re wearing Levi’s and bandannas. When Joan Crawford went out shopping she dressed like a star--24 hours a day.”

According to City Hall, Hollywood is an area of 14 1/2 square miles, with a population of 200,000. Grant knows it’s really a state of mind. Ciro’s and the Mocambo nightclubs were a part of Hollywood; so was the Cocoanut Grove; so were Gilmore Field and the Hollywood Stars.

Grant would like to see something glamorous happen to Hollywood and Vine, the world’s most famous street corner.

“It’s the greatest shame of all. They don’t even have the two street signs on every corner. One corner has a Hollywood Boulevard sign on it and the Vine Street sign is on the corner across the street. So you can’t stand under the Hollywood and Vine signs to have your picture taken.”

Sounds like a small thing for the mayor to fix.

Grant noted that a new Brown Derby will soon replace the present Howard Johnson’s on the northwest corner. It will not, however, restore the Richard Neutra structure that the Howard Johnson’s replaced.

As chairman of the centennial, Grant has to decide what to put in the time capsule to be opened in 2087. He has to think ahead.

“If you put a videocassette in it, you have to put in a machine to play it. They might not have video players 100 years from now.”

And probably nobody will be able to remember who Tom Cruise was; or Johnny Grant; or Jack Smith.