Scribblings of the Stars : Head of theater never draws the line in seeking doodles for benefit

Allan Miller has become a doodle messiah. Sure, he still finds time to run Van Nuys’ Back Alley Theatre, direct many of its plays and maintain an acting career. But what really gets his blood pumping these days is doodles. Celebrity doodles. “There’s nobody I won’t approach,” Miller said. “I’m absolutely shameless.”

The result of that fervor is the Back Alley’s fifth annual Doodle Auction, taking place this afternoon at a private home in Sherman Oaks. The lawn party and auction has become the theater’s most successful fund-raiser, with tickets going for $50. Miller and wife Laura Zucker, who helps run the Back Alley, got the idea from a smaller-scale Bay Area theater event that they attended several years ago. But for a long time, they had difficulty persuading their board of directors to try it out.

“They kept saying, ‘Doodles?’ ”

Last year, more than $36,000 was raised from the auction, with a $30,000 gross going to the nonprofit theater. Guests (attendance usually fluctuates from 175 to 250 people) can stroll on a shaded lawn, listen to chamber music, nibble on hors d’oeuvres and enjoy a sip from the open bar while checking out the art gallery. From 50 doodles the first year, Miller has upped his booty to more than 175--all signed, plexiglass-framed original works.

Walter Matthau and Paul Newman (“People I know personally to some degree”) were early recruits. So was Gregory Peck, with whom Miller had worked on the film “MacArthur.” He knew Arthur Miller’s sister Joan Copeland and used that as his entree to the playwright. “I’d also worked with Olympia Dukakis. We both taught at the same university; we both ran small theaters. So when Michael Dukakis was running last year, I sent him a letter stressing I was a friend of his cousin’s.”

Dukakis’ reply doodle was a drawing of the White House, captioned, “Not a bad place to live.” A bidder, anticipating a Democratic win in November, paid $2,200, the auction’s all-time highest price. The year before, then-Vice President George Bush had sent in a doodle. “The person who bought it was hoping he’d be running for President in ‘88,” Miller said. “He got it for a very modest price.” The second-highest price, $2,000, was for a John Huston drawing, done just before he died.

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“This year, we have a gorgeous sketch by Anne Tyler,” Miller added. “She also signed the book ‘Breathing Lessons’ that she won the Pulitzer Prize for. We also have some historical autographs--like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Miller.”

Other literary doodlers who will be represented include Edward Albee, Saul Bellow, Athol Fugard, John Le Carre, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Simon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Garry Trudeau, Leon Uris, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut and Wendy Wasserstein.

Others represented in the collection include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lauren Bacall, Jeff Bridges, Carol Burnett, Bob Dylan, Peter Falk, Jodie Foster, Katharine Hepburn, David Hockney, Ron Howard, Jack Lemmon, John Lithgow, Jay Leno, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, LeRoy Neiman, Jack Nicholson, Oscar Peterson, Tom Selleck, Brooke Shields, James Stewart, Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams. Sports are well-represented, too, with tennis player Chris Evert, boxers Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, and Olympians Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis.

“I don’t want to give any of these up for auction, but I have to,” Miller said, sighing. “Sometimes I do bid on them. Last year, we ended up with Bob Hoskins’ and the year before that we got a devastating self-portrait by Joan Collins.

“Some of them are really telling. Arnold Palmer did a golf ball coming out to eat him. A year ago, Arthur Miller sent two peanut-shaped figures facing each other with the title ‘Gossip.’ This year, Norman Mailer did a self-portrait and on top of it he put ‘Thoughtful Drunk.’ ”

Pleased though he is with his lineup, Miller never resists the opportunity to angle for more doodles: “Whenever we’re invited places as representatives of the theater, I carry a little doodle kit with me which has clippings of past years--and pieces of blank paper. As soon as a friend of mine’s in a movie, I say, ‘Who’s in it besides you? Will you give them a packet for me?’ ” Recently, “I went in to read for Mike Nichols for his latest film and before I did the reading, I asked him for a doodle.”

The result? Miller chuckled. “I didn’t get the part--but I got the doodle.”

For ticket information, call the Back Alley at (818) 780-2240.