People and Events

“Rodeo Drive is not really what it used to be,” complains David Spellerberg, who has an art gallery on that posh street. “It needs some glitter and glamour.” That’s why, he says, he has kept his black Rolls-Royce parked out front almost every day for six months.

You’d recognize it. There’s a chauffeur standing by to feed quarters to the parking meter. There’ll be some tourists gawking and taking pictures. And--if Spellerberg hasn’t already paid it--there may be yet another Beverly Hills police citation for keeping a car in a one-hour metered space.

You may also see some other shop owners in the area looking upset. At first, says Spellerberg, 40, “everybody thought it was a great idea. But when it started attracting crowds. . . .”

He admits he is keeping the classy car there to get attention for his National Heritage Gallery of Fine Art, adding that it costs him $50 a day to pay the tickets--in addition to the $10 to $15 a day for the parking meter.

Spellerberg says he has been notified by the Beverly Hills city attorney that it is illegal to feed the meter to tie up a parking space and that the matter has been turned over to the “litigation/prosecution department.”

Spellerberg claims his Rolls was built for the king and queen of Spain in 1954. “I’m making it a fun thing,” he says. “I’ve even got a little jar of Grey Poupon mustard on a silver tray sitting on the TV console in the back.”

It was impossible to reach the Beverly Hills city attorney’s office Friday for an official view on the matter. A taped voice at City Hall informed callers that “Friday, Sept. 7, is a legal holiday. . . .”

It was, it seems, California Admission Day.

But it wasn’t Sept. 7.

Nor was it Pearl Harbor Day.

While rummaging around in the Nobody’s Perfect Department, someone with two good eyes noted that the caption on the photograph of seven pairs of twins, which appeared in this space Thursday, read:

Seven pairs of twins with 14 eyes on stardom.

“Prices are going through the roof for movie posters,” said one collector. “Collectibles people have become a little zany.” Which may or may not explain the battle between two producers of movie collectibles shows scheduled here.

Local producer Doug Wright, who has staged movie memorabilia shows at the Glendale Civic Auditorium for a couple of years, was unhappy, to say the least, when a Phoenix show promoter hired that same hall for a movie collectible show the weekend of Sept. 24-25.

Wright has arranged a show of his own for those dates at the Pasadena Center and has taken ads in a publication called Movie Collector’s World to announce that his exhibitors show will be in Pasadena “not Glendale, California!!”

But he will put on another such show at Glendale Civic on Nov. 19-20, the notice said.

Wright didn’t really want to talk about it Friday, lest he help call attention to his competitor’s effort. “It’s a bad situation,” was about all he would say. “People do get confused. They just don’t know.”

In Phoenix, trade show producer Tom Leonard claimed he organized the Glendale show at the request of some exhibitors dissatisfied with Wright. “I ran into a real buzz saw,” he concedes. “I don’t go into an area looking to get somebody. Doug feels like I’m out to get him. It’s like he feels his territory is being violated.”

The fans, in any event, will have plenty of chances to pick up posters, scene stills, old sheet music, catalogues, film magazines and perhaps even a photograph of Helen Twelvetrees.

Rarely at a loss for words, attorney Gloria Allred said, “With this lawsuit, we seek to cause Saks to mend their ways and alter their policy.”

The occasion: The filing in Los Angeles Superior Court of a class-action suit against the Saks Fifth Avenue chain by two women who claimed they were charged more for alterations than men were charged.

Muriel Mabry and Lori Anderson said they paid more than $40 for alterations on dresses purchased at a Saks store in Costa Mesa. They said they knew men who were charged either $7 or nothing at all for suit alterations.

Martin Fisher, vice president and general manager of the Saks store in Beverly Hills, said the pricing policy is “to charge customers equally based on the sewing task performed.”