People and Events

Movie buffs undoubtedly remember when Jimmy Stewart, a.k.a. Mr. Smith, went to Washington. Here’s the modern version: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yogi Bear, Woody Woodpecker, Conan the Barbarian, Frankenstein’s Monster and Top Cat are going to Sacramento, not via the silver screen, but in person.

The cartoon characters representing their various studios and a group called Californians for Tourism, were picketing in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Wednesday to protest the Legislature’s recent axing of funds for the state Office of Tourism. The office was among the $400 million in trims in the state’s $45-billion budget.

The cartoon characters will carry protest signs in front of the state Capitol on Monday when the Senate reappropriations committee is scheduled to reconsider funding for the tourism office. Also planning to picket are Bill Welsh, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Joan McClellan, president of the California Travel Industry Assn., and J. Phillip Keene, executive director of the California Tourism Corp., a trade group.

The pickets say the Office of Tourism, with a budget of $8.15 million, is vital to the promotion of not only Hollywood’s image, but all of California. The tourist industry statewide was worth $33.8 billion last year, up 7.6% over 1986. The 4-year-old office received more than 10,000 requests monthly for information from prospective visitors.

Elsewhere in Hollywood, collectors took two of three Oscars for sale off the hands of memorabilia dealer Malcolm Willits. The third one, you may recall, was confiscated by the former owners, 20th Century Fox, who came to his shop Tuesday armed with a court order.

Former 20th Century Fox studio head Daryl F. Zanuck gave the Oscar in question--awarded to the studio in 1954 for its development of CinemaScope--to his longtime executive secretary, Esther Roberts, when she found it in a storage room. She recently turned it over to Willits to sell on consignment. The studio got it back under a temporary court order, and the matter will come before a judge Aug. 24.

Meanwhile, the other two Oscars were sold at auction by Willits, with a Brooklyn collector paying $7,617 for the 1961 “best cartoon” statuette awarded for the Yugoslavian cartoon “Ersatz.” The other Oscar, awarded in 1938 to Farciot Edouart for outstanding transparency special effects in “Spawn of the North,” sold for $10,648. The movie, about salmon fishing in Alaska, starred George Raft, Henry Fonda, Dorothy Lamour and John Barrymore.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, which awards the Oscars, frowns on the selling of them. Said Willits, who has no other Oscars on consignment, “People are weird. Some think its like selling your children, others don’t want it known because it might seem like they’ve fallen on hard times if they have to sell. The academy doesn’t like it. It’s been a real headache.”

A Beverly Hills teen-ager, who was barred from Disneyland because she had pink and purple hair, is getting her day in court after suing the amusement park for allegedly violating her civil rights. Tonya Slobod, 16, told Superior Court Judge Tully Seymour during a non-jury trial Thursday that she went to Disneyland with her grandmother in 1986 when a security guard told her she couldn’t enter unless she covered her hair with a cap.

James Rettier, security supervisor for the park, testified that Disneyland has a policy of excluding guests so garish in appearance that they detract from shows.

Slobod is asking the court to impose the maximum $250 fine under state civil rights laws, plus $2,200 in legal fees and punitive damages. The judge did not immediately rule on the case. By the way, Slobod showed up in court with brown hair--her natural color.