In the Southland, a Power Christmas : Urban scene: The skyscraper ‘tree’ is a fixture in Los Angeles. Here, Santa’s helpers are not elves, they’re electricians.

Dennis Hooper didn’t take his assignment lightly.

He had strung 36,000 tiny white electric bulbs around the six-story lobby of the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles as the centerpiece of the hotel’s Christmas display. Now, as 1,000 onlookers stood by, it was time to throw the switch and dramatically turn them on.

This presented a technical challenge: The lights were hooked up to 1,200 plugs that Hooper had wired into eight electrical breaker panels scattered around the South Figueroa Street hotel. The oversized “switch” that two child actors were about to press was a fake.

As the crowd counted down from 10 for actors Danny Pintauro, 13, and Alex Burrall, 6, Hooper, who is house electrician for the hotel, whispered his own countdown into a walkie-talkie.

On Hooper’s cue, eight hidden hotel engineering workers secretly tripped the circuit box switches in unison Thursday night and all 36,000 lights blinked to life. A cheer went up from the crowd. A sigh of relief went up from Hooper.

Suddenly, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Los Angeles.

In a city where palms are more common than pines, electric Christmas trees herald the season from office rooftops and shopping center plazas. Santa’s helpers in Los Angeles are electricians, not elves.

Their enemies are bulb-snatchers, Santa Ana winds and those irritating strands of Christmas lights that go out when one bulb comes loose or burns out.

Some of the huge light displays have become local traditions.

The 99-foot-tall star-topped electric tree atop the Capitol Records building has been a fixture in Hollywood since 1957. Its 4,374 lights blaze with 109,235 watts that can be seen on clear nights throughout much of the Los Angeles Basin.

The tree’s location atop the 13-story circular Vine Street building is so precarious that 65-year-old steeplejack Paul Gavlak of Woodland Hills is hired annually to put it up and take it down.

Replacing burned-out bulbs is all but impossible once the lights go up. So Capitol’s building engineer Jerry Rodiger spends about 40 hours each November screwing brand-new bulbs into each of the 4,374 sockets.

To keep wind whipping through the nearby Cahuenga Pass from breaking the bulbs, springs have been attached to the bottom of each of the 36 light strands. That holds them taut and prevents them from slapping into each other, said John Piro, Capitol’s chief building engineer.

“The Capitol tree is one of the few things to see in Hollywood at Christmastime,” said Mark Willoughby, manager of bookshop off Hollywood Boulevard. “I look forward to it every year helping put me in the Christmas spirit.”

Glendale residents feel the same way about their tree--a 97-foot electric conifer atop Glendale Federal that also dates to 1957.

“It does a lot for Glendale. People here look forward to it every year,” said Alice Olney, who has lived in the city since 1935.

Bank building engineer Bob Brady said the tree is lit from Thanksgiving to Jan. 2. Each of its 125 strands uses 150 bulbs. The whole thing is attached to a helicopter landing pad 390 feet above Brand Boulevard.

Last year, Santa Ana winds virtually stripped the tree bare before Christmas Day, Brady said. “We used up 15 cases of replacements”--a total of 1,125 spare bulbs.

“The tree has to be lit promptly at 5 p.m. every day,” Brady said. “If it’s late, we’ll have gotten 100 phone calls by 5:15 from people wanting to know what’s wrong.”

The tree is “the pride and joy” of Glendale Federal Chairman Raymond Edwards, who has ordered similar displays at the firm’s 36 other branches in Southern California, Brady said. The one on the Beverly Hills branch towers 137 feet; a highly visible tree atop the Sherman Oaks branch next to the Ventura Freeway is 85 feet tall, he said.

In Woodland Hills, a 1,000-bulb tree has been anchored for six Christmas holidays atop the 20-story Warner Plaza One building on Oxnard Street. The 40-foot display can be seen throughout much of the San Fernando Valley.

The building’s nine engineers are paid $4,000 to come in on a weekend each November to install the tree, said engineering staff member Michelle Fornshell. This year, however, the workers voted to donate the overtime fee for toys for under-privileged children who have written Santa Claus through the Van Nuys Post Office, she said.

Downtown Los Angeles is brightened by a 117-foot-tall electric atop the Unocal Center. It uses 2,600 bulbs and has been attached to a microwave tower above the building every year except one since 1968.

“I don’t think they lighted it in 1973 during the energy crisis,” said Barry Lane, a spokesman for the oil company. Lane said he can see the tree’s 40-watt orange-and-white bulbs from his home in La Crescenta.

You won’t see a Christmas tree in City Hall this year, however, officials said.

A new City Council policy prohibits displays in the ornate City Hall rotunda unless the decorations relate to municipal functions, said Greg Wilkins, director of special projects for the Department of General Services.

As a result, this year’s “official city Christmas tree” is located in a downtown shopping mall about a mile from City Hall. It is a $5,000, 75-foot white-tip fir that stands outside a 53-story office building at Citicorp Plaza on South Figueroa Street.

Paul Sowa, the plaza’s chief engineer, watched nervously last week as Mayor Tom Bradley stepped forward to press a button to light the tree’s 5,000 bulbs. Bradley joked to a crowd of about 1,000 that the lights refused to come on four years ago when he threw the switch. Happily for Sowa, who supervised the installation and wiring of the tree, the switch worked this time.

For his own Anaheim home, Sowa said he plans to decorate the same tree he always does--a 20-year-old artificial one. “It has the same effect,” he explained.

Hooper, who installed the 36,000 white lights at the Bonaventure, will hang only a few strands of lights on the Christmas tree at his Tarzana home. And they won’t be white lights.

His wife feels colored lights are more festive. And she should know, Hooper said.

“Her name is Mary Noel,” he said. “She was born on Christmas Eve.”