HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD, 1947 : Is Sean Penn the Humphrey Bogart of Today?

I’m not sure, but I think I love Hollywood.

Not today’s Hollywood, where films are made on location, stars are made in executive suites and drug deals are made at the corner of Sunset and Vine.

The old one, the one where back lots were truly out back, starlets were truly budding, publicists were truly press agents (how ya doin’) and parties were truly fun.

I’m hesitant to admit it, but that’s also why I’m a Sean Penn fan. To me, he is what Hollywood used to be.

Forget about his eccentricities--the short fuse, the arrogant attitude, the foul mouth, the fistfights, the egocentric outlook, the bad-boy image.

Or, on second thought, remember them. That’s the stuff of which legends were once made.

There was a day in Hollywood when fantasy and reality collided, when illusion was reality and reality often was illusion. Who can be sure what John Barrymore or George Raft did when they had too much to drink? Did Garbo really want to be left alone? Was Robert Mitchum always ready for a scrape? What about the celebrated tiffs between Liz and Dick? Did Errol Flynn really die with a woman in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other? Could it all have been true?

You wonder, but do you really want to know? I’d rather that the theater lights stay down and the sheet of illusion stays up.

It was an era of studio systems that created stars, cigar-smoking agents who created interest, and press agents who created news (or quashed it). It was a time when wildness not only helped make you a star, it sometimes seemed like a prerequisite.

No more. Hollywood in the 1980s is a community whose life is an open book. Illusions disappeared when “Entertainment Tonight” and the Universal Studios tour took us behind the scenes, when Wall Street began to take the Industry seriously, and when the so-called legitimate press began to cover show biz and its stars like it was legitimate news.

We live in an age when press agents can no longer manipulate the media with an 8-by-10 glossy and a night on the town to grab space in the show-biz columns--so Sean Penn creates his own headlines.

We live in an age when movie stars can’t secretly get away with a mischievous weekend rendezvous with glamorous co-stars--so Sean Penn married rock ‘n’ roll fantasy Madonna.

We live in an age when a star can’t get away with slapping a fellow actor. I don’t remember Robert Mitchum being arrested--at least for assault.

Today, we live in a more sophisticated Hollywood constantly under the scrutiny of light-weight minicams and satellite delivery. Manners count.

So Sean Penn doesn’t have any--at least he doesn’t appear to have any. So what? Without him, who would the press corps have to pick on and star-gazers read about? I like Hollywood fund-raisers, too, but they can be a little boring.

Unfortunately, ours is a more civilized, gray-suited Hollywood. It doesn’t tolerate the nonconformist behavior of a James Dean, the outbursts of a John Huston or the bouts with the bottle of a Humphrey Bogart. This made for some swell newspaper stories in their day, with images built on offscreen behavior and onscreen renegade roles.

And if that kind of behavior is no longer tolerated, where will the future Deans and Bogarts come from? If there is no legend behind the camera, how do you expect to find one in front of it?

O.K., so Sean Penn has yet to become the greatest actor in the world--but his work is rarely bad and usually quite good, and he’s still young. OK, so he sometimes seems like he’s trying to live the life of every movie bad guy he’s ever idolized--at least he’s doing a good job of it. OK, so maybe he sometimes acts like a young boxer in training--maybe that’s part of the game. Maybe he’s making his own myth.

Think about this. Maybe Penn’s behavior is calculated and not careless; maybe his apparent bouts of rage are well-orchestrated publicity stunts and not outbursts; maybe his arrogance is an act rather than a character flaw; maybe his move to L.A. County Jail was to squash cheap tabloid headlines about his being a wimp, a careful decision to preserve an image he’s worked so hard to create.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Penn really is the obnoxious loudmouth so many claim him to be. Maybe he’ll have a knuckle sandwich ready for me when he gets out of jail.

But I hope I never find out.