When Hollywood police began getting calls from...

When Hollywood police began getting calls from television stations, wire services and newspapers asking whether a crazed gunman really was holding reporters hostage at a press conference, “we figured something was wrong,” said Detective Ron Venneman.

Two police cars sped to a Cahuenga Boulevard address, he said, where officers found Leslie William Bell, 31, standing at the podium in an otherwise empty room holding what appeared to be a semi-automatic pistol to his head. Bell was ordered to drop it. He did. It turned out to be a prop.

In the meantime, officers grabbed a second man, Michael Jeffrey Feldman, 27, as he ran out of the building. Feldman turned out to be the manager and bass guitarist for Bell’s rock band, Venneman said.

Officers said the pair had a list of media office phone numbers and concluded that they had tipped the news organizations that Bell was holding several reporters prisoner. “He’s crazy,” the caller told news desks.

Bell and Feldman finally owned up to plotting the stunt to publicize the band and an upcoming album, Venneman said. “I think they caused themselves a little more grief than they anticipated,” he said.

They were booked on suspicion of falsely reporting an emergency.

There was an interesting sidelight, by the way, to another Hollywood arrest. Detectives said there was more in the luxurious Hollywood Hills home of alleged madam Elizabeth Adams, 55, than “trick books” containing the code names of high-class clients worldwide.

A $50,000 Joan Miro painting and several expensive pieces of jade sculpture were discovered during last week’s pandering arrest, they said, and were believed stolen.

Adams, also known as Alex Fleming and previously arrested six years ago on suspicion of pimping, “is, or was, in the antique business and knows a lot about those things,” said Detective Dominic Farchione.

In addition to being St. Patrick’s Day, Thursday was the 60th birthday of Sy Zimmerman of Torrance. To help impress her husband with how long it’s been since he was born, Myrna Zimmerman obtained a copy of the New York Times’ front page for March 17, 1928.

A headline read:

1,000 More Marines Go to Nicaragua.

The story noted that the total number of U.S. Marines in Nicaragua would then be 3,700 and that the Coolidge Administration felt they would “assure” a fair vote in that country’s 1928 presidential election.

“Nothing’s ever been resolved,” Myrna Zimmerman concluded.

Persistent Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eileen Anderson, who go-go danced outside the federal courthouse almost every afternoon for 15 years to protest the fact that foreign-born folks are prohibited from running for President, staged her farewell performance Thursday.

Anderson, who was born in London and is of Irish descent, said she was hanging up the old leotards because she was tired of being followed by “a bunch of bums” several blocks from her car to the corner of Main and Temple streets, where she was a familiar sight to homebound motorists.

She said, however, that she might consider a return engagement next St. Patrick’s Day if the city will give her a parking spot closer to her stage.

No hard feelings, chef Wolfgang Puck said in effect after the City Council approved his plans to open a brewery restaurant in West Los Angeles. Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the area, was opposed.

Puck said he will not stick Braude with a bad table if the councilman decides to drop in for dinner and, in fact, “I’ll even have a beer with him.”

Braude thought about it for a moment, then responded, “I guess the answer is I’ve never asked for a special table and I don’t expect I will in the future.”

He did not say whether he expects to go to the brewery in the first place.