People and Events

It has been more than a year since two men swiped Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s county car from outside the spiffy Spago restaurant, briefly kidnaping in the process his driver, district attorney’s investigator Henry Grayson.

On Friday, however, Grayson apparently was taking no chances. He did not wait in the car while Reiner had lunch at the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo. Instead, he sat on a wall in the shade.

Reiner’s dark blue, four-door Buick was parked at a DASH minibus curb area where the sign read TOW AWAY. NO STOPPING AT ANY TIME. The minibus had to angle in to pick up passengers.

Of all the luck, a couple of reporters happened to walk by. “Where should I have parked?” Grayson wanted to know when they asked him about it.

Reiner emerged from the hotel. “ I didn’t park the car,” the prosecutor said. “There’s nothing I can say to you. Obviously, he should have parked over there .” (Pointing to a sign that directed drivers to a nearby public parking area.)

Reiner said he would speak to Grayson about it.

Pasadena’s Ethel Sherard did not win top place at the national Scrabble championship tournament in Reno on Friday, finishing 67th in her division of 120 players. But she hung in there for the whole week.

At 92, Sherard was the oldest contestant in the tournament. She is a great grandmother who figures Scrabble is a terrific way to keep the old mind active.

She has always been nutty about words. She won a lot of spelling bees as a schoolchild in Atlanta and began working crossword puzzles from the moment she first saw one. She started playing Scrabble with her four children when someone gave them a set for Christmas. She has competed in tournaments since 1977.

She is the author of “The Double-List Word Book,” which was published in 1980 and lists more than 100,000 words, arranged both by the letters they start with and end with. “At my age,” she said at the time (when she was a mere 84), “there’s nothing else you have to do.”

Her reference book also contains words with unusual beginnings (OO, for instance) and endings (EE). It also lists those high-point words that contain J, X, Q and Z.

The youngest player at the Reno tournament, incidentally, was also from the Los Angeles area. He was Brian Cappelletto, 18, a UCLA freshman who took 15th place.

More than 50 friends and fans of Marilyn Monroe gathered at Westwood Village Memorial Park on Friday, the 26th anniversary of her death.

Actor Tom Ewell, his voice breaking, said that of all his films, the most memorable was “Seven-Year Itch,” in which he appeared with Monroe.

One of her neighbors, Jeannie Carmen, said tearfully, “Marilyn, wherever you are, I hope you have found the peace you searched hard for.”

Another speaker at the annual event was Robert Slatzer, who says he was married to the star briefly in 1952. She was, he said, “the smartest dumb blonde I ever met.” He said a foundation was being formed to establish a library and museum in her honor.

Everybody put a red rose on her crypt.

It’s hard to say how many of those who tried out will make it to college.

The auditions were held Thursday afternoon at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, where Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus bosses were looking for new clowns and dancers.

About 15 would-be funnymen showed up, a circus representative said. Regular clowns were on hand to hit them in the face with cream pies and see if they could get laughs.

If it’s decided that any of them have talent, they will be offered tuition-free, 10-week courses at the circus’s clown college in Venice, Fla.

Once a student has graduated from that, he must audition again before being hired by the circus.

Thursday’s crop, said Kathi Sharpe, appeared to be mostly people “from the performing arts.”

It is possible she meant actors looking for work.