Tony and Dora

Welcome to the season of giving, that glorious, lachrymose, soul-tugging time of year when the hearts and wallets of the guilt-ridden masses open generously to those, God keep them, mired in a swamp of misfortune.

Welcome also to the season of taking, wherein flourish those who, aware of the open wallets and disconcerting tugs of conscience, ride that wave of social vulnerability down to the bottom line of net gain.

So give till it hurts.

Give to house the homeless, feed the hungry, tend the orphans, walk the widows, sober the drunks and get the turkeys with all the trimmin’s to the guys in the slammer.

Give for the sake of Tony and Dora.

They’re two of the faces that peer out from newspaper and magazine ads imploring us, by an exquisite look of need, to fill out a coupon and send a couple o’ bucks to the old and the dispossessed.

Tony is the face of the Los Angeles Mission. Dora is the face of Meals for the Elderly.

You’ll find them every day or so tucked among the ads for fuller, more attractive breasts and how to get a body like Heather Locklear’s for only $19 a month.

Tony and Dora are real people. He’s a face on Skid Row. She’s an older woman who needs help.

They’re L.A.’s charity poster-faces and they are doing one hell of a job.

Understand, please, I am not opposed to feeding, tending, curing, housing or otherwise comforting those in need, from Skid Row to Death Row.

Everyone ought to have a turkey Thursday, with the possible exception of those whose misplaced compassions remind us each year of the pain that gobblers must endure to satisfy our urge to eat them on holidays.

I say misplaced because while sacrificing cats on Halloween might be a ritual we can do without, a dead turkey on a platter is the American Way.

At any rate, I have become more aware of advertisements that appeal to our seasonal humanity the last quarter of each year.

Ads abound for the L.A. Mission, the Union Rescue Mission, Meals for the Elderly, Covenant House and some I’ve probably overlooked. Ads as simple as “Give her a hot meal this Thanksgiving” to “For the love of God, please help.”

Ads of an impoverished woman hugging her hungry child. Ads of a black man digging for his chow in a garbage can.

Only the Midnight Mission on Skid Row doesn’t advertise. Its leader, the inimitable Clancy Imislund, growls, “We use our money for food, not ads.” Oh that Clancy.

What good does the hustle do? I asked that of the Rev. Mark Holsinger, director of the L.A. Mission.

“Not as much good as it used to,” he said the other day in an upstairs office on South Los Angeles Street. Outside, society’s human wreckage gathered at the doorway, waiting for a meal.

“We used to get a return of $3 for every $1 we spent for ads. Now it’s maybe $1.50 for every $1. It depends on their placement. They do best,” he said puckishly, “when they’re next to the lingerie ads.”

The L.A. Mission spends about $700,000 a year on all media advertising, not only to get what it can from the spontaneous givers, but to build a mailing list for the rest of the year.

“Sure it’s an emotional pitch,” Holsinger said. “It’s an emotional problem. A lot of people willing to give from Oct. 1 to Dec. 23 forget about us the rest of the year. We get it when we can.”

He disdained use of the word competition to describe the scramble for cash among L.A.’s charity organizations, but acknowledged they are all after the same dollar. That’s why ad agencies from Pasadena to Dallas are eager to grab their share of the God-and-charity buck.

The L.A. Mission, for instance, hires the Russ Reid Co. of Pasadena and pays it about $650,000 a year to keep the donations coming in.

It was that agency that came up with Tony, a stubble-bearded, uncombed, forlorn yet appealing face in the urban jungle that adorns a good many of the mission’s ads.

“We’re trying to draw people to the ad and at the same time reflect a reality on Skid Row,” agency spokesman Michael McKee said. “Tony’s face humanizes the mission.”

Tony and Dora, by the way, get no money for being poster-faces, but it’s enough to know their efforts and our contributions warm the conscience of the people this holiday season, and ease a burden of guilt from off our capricious souls.

(Next year we’ll try to work the charity ads next to the bikini panties and make a killing.)