People and Events

Matters were not entirely clear when the widow of actor Peter Lawford showed up at a Westwood cemetery on Wednesday to retrieve her husband’s ashes and, she said, scatter them from a chartered boat off Marina del Rey.

Patricia Seaton Lawford, who became the 61-year-old British actor’s fourth wife several months before he died on Christmas Eve, 1984, told reporters she was taking the ashes from the Westwood Village Memorial Park crypt because a $10,000 funeral bill had not been paid by the four children Lawford had by his first wife, Patricia Kennedy, sister of the late President John F. Kennedy.

“I think it’s terrible,” she said. “Their father was always good to them.”

Richard Steinmetz, director of the mortuary-cemetery, said, however, “There is no outstanding bill at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary.”

He did not go beyond that.

A spokesman for the Lawford children in New York later issued a statement that said they had only recently learned of “financial problems in connection with their father’s funeral expenses and they have taken care of all such obligations. The children’s primary concern has always been that their father’s remains rest in peace, and they loved him.”

Mrs. Lawford, 30, arrived at the cemetery in a black limousine, accompanied by a professional photographer. She said her book on Lawford will be out this summer.

Smokey was scheduled to have impressions taken by Covina dentist Steven Marteney on Wednesday for a diamond-studded gold crown, but like many another dental patient complained of illness before going into the chair and got the session postponed for a few days.

Smokey is a 7-year-old German shepherd who belongs to Azusa pawn shop owners Bob and Patricia Fletcher. He apparently broke a fang last December before he adopted them. Mrs. Fletcher thinks he did it chewing his way out of a warehouse where he was working as a guard.

“He found us,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “We called the guy whose name was on the tag. A day or two later Smokey came back, all bloody from chewing his way out again.” She said she and her husband asked the owner if they could keep the dog and he agreed.

“We wouldn’t take a million dollars for him,” Mrs. Fletcher said. “He’s a good old pawn shop dog. He makes friends with the customers and takes his job very seriously, taking care of our family.”

Because Smokey has trouble picking up small bits of food, the Fletchers’ vet advised a crown. “We thought we would get him a gold one with a diamond in it,” said Mrs. Fletcher, noting that she and her husband are in the right business to provide such frills.

“He deserves it,” she insisted. “He’s earned it.”

Former research geologist Doug Prose is in town, having pedaled down scenic California 1 from his Palo Alto home on a recumbent bicycle shaped like a giant guitar.

Prose, who says he used to concern himself with ecology problems in the Mojave Desert for the U.S. Geological Survey, does not deny that he is looking for a little attention.

The 30-year-old Prose says he is on a guitar-bike tour of the United States to promote his one-man rock album (which he produced with borrowed money) and to talk it up for world peace.

After he finishes his swing around the U.S.A. via Florida and Montreal, he says he is going down to Central America, where “I expect it won’t be all fun and games.” He says he realizes it will be dangerous in places, but “I’m counting on the bike’s popularity to pull me through.”

People, he says, “run after me, follow me in their cars and cheer me on.”

Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President Bill Welsh probably was jesting when he described himself as an “irate reader” in complaining about an item here on the chamber’s efforts to correct spelling along the Walk of Fame.

Welsh wasn’t denying that three of the brass stars were embedded with typographical errors that need editing. ( Ernest Lubitsch instead of Ernst , for example.)

But he did feel compelled to point out that the first name of the chamber’s Ms. Martinez, quoted in the item, is Ana rather than Anna.

The National Coalition to Stamp Out Chicken Scratching, an organization that until now has maintained a low profile, plans to hold a rally for lousy hand-writers from 11 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the Farmers Market.

On hand, says a spokeswoman, will be the coalition’s “executive director and handwriting expert,” Charles Lehman. He will offer tips to better handwriting and urge folks to sign a “good penmanship pledge.” (Which presumably means most of the signatures will be illegible.)

The sponsor is an outfit big in the ballpoint pen field.