People and Events

Betty Boop is Emily Sandler’s “favorite character of all time . . . I’m kind of petite and have short, dark, curly hair. I do this cutsie little voice.”

That’s why the 31-year-old Santa Monica actress-singer was not surprised that she won the Betty Boop look-alike contest last June at a sports fair in Northridge. The event was a promotion for a proposed movie based on the 1930s animated cartoon figure created by the late Max Fleischer.

The winner was to get a representation contract with the Ron Smith Celebrity Look-Alikes agency and make personal appearances in connection with the film when it was produced.

What she got after paying a $15 entry fee, says Ms. Sandler in her regular voice, was a beach bag and a Betty Boop beach towel. No contract came and she maintains that her repeated phone calls to the Ron Smith agency and the sponsors brought no response.

She has now fired off letters of complaint to the district attorney, various consumer advocates and the media.

Ron Smith executive Howard Blasberg insists she was sent a one-year contract but that--because she claims she never received it--a “duplicate” has been mailed to her. It is not a guarantee of employment, he stresses--simply an agreement to represent her.

Public relations man Edward Lozzi, who was hired to promote the Great Betty Boop Talent Search, notes that at this point “there is no movie,” because everybody is suing everybody over who has the rights to Betty Boop.

Ergo: “The contract won’t mean much, because nobody needs a Betty Boop right now.”

Sandler says she isn’t very surprised at that either.

Topanga chimney sweep Jonathan Seutter, 30, was pulled over on Interstate 5 near Coalinga, at least delaying his effort to be the first to roller skate solo from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He told the California Highway Patrol he had a “blanket permit” from the state Department of Transportation to skate on the freeways, but didn’t have it on him.

Despite fog, rain and gravel on the highway, he had already completed 180 miles of the 400-mile trip. CHP spokesman Ted Eichman said the angry Seutter was last seen in a cafe, “brooding and trying to figure out what do do next.”

Four Japanese motorcyclists, however, were having better luck in their trek from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at the far tip of Chile. They are in Santa Monica for a few days. Sponsored by the Nippon Television Network, the expedition is checking out the presumed migration of Indians from Asia to South America.

Before the trail grows too cold.

They have been talking to native Americans along the way and have even detoured to Window Rock, Ariz., for a look at the Navajos. It is not clear how many Indians they are meeting in Santa Monica, from where the group plans to take off Monday to participate in the Baja 1,000 off-road race.

Jugatsu Toi, 39, a novelist, said through an interpreter that everybody the group has met along the way has been friendly. No shots have been fired at them by freeway motorists.

The deer that has been wandering down out of the Hollywood Hills with some sharpshooter’s 20-inch crossbow bolt protruding from her neck was seen again. The sighting was a pleasant one.

For a week, the doe had defied efforts of city animal regulation officers to tranquilize her for in-the-field surgery. The bolt is now gone, a Barham Boulevard apartment complex security guard reported after spotting the deer Friday morning.

“She’ll be fine,” said Michael Burns, Los Angeles City Animal Regulation Department district supervisor. “Nature is healing.”

What happened to the bolt?

“Anything might have happened. It was an irritant and she probably rubbed at it until it dropped out.”

Although her fawn was still with her, a yearling was no longer tagging along. “Off on his own now,” Burns said.

Michael Romberg, 31, and his wife, Debra, 28, got what they wanted from a Los Angeles federal court jury Friday: a verdict that Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies shouldn’t have entered their La Mirada home in 1982 when the couple were having an argument.

They also won the money damages they asked for--a dollar apiece.

“The plaintiffs didn’t bring the case to get money,” said their attorney, Stephen Yagman. “They brought it to get justice.”

The Rombergs’ conviction on a charge of disturbing the peace, incidentally, has been overturned, then reinstated on appeal to an appellate court. The state Supreme Court allowed it to stand.