Live ‘Today’ at Mann’s Draws Gawkers : Television: Despite the pre-dawn hour, the NBC show, shot at the Chinese Theatre, draws a crowd.

Like moths to the flame, certain people are drawn to the glare of stage lights. It doesn’t matter that it’s 4 a.m., that thugs may be roaming the streets, or that location shootings are as common as gang shootings in Los Angeles. What matters is an opportunity to touch the stuff of celebrity, show business stars like . . . Willard Scott?

Such was the pre-dawn refrain on Hollywood Boulevard Monday, as more than two dozen vacationers and vagrants attended a live broadcast of NBC’s Today Show from the courtyard of Mann’s Chinese Theatre. A bright yellow security rope separated the talkers from the gawkers.

Judy Lee was visiting all the way from Australia, where the program comes on at midnight.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m here,” she spouted. “It’s surreal.”

Some would say Hollywood Boulevard is always surreal, Judy, although Monday morning did seem to offer a peak performance on the surreality chart: clean-cut tourists toting video cameras competing with puzzled street people for space; the Chinese, perhaps the world’s best-known movie theatre, entangled by television cables for its conversion to a talk show studio, and all the while, Bryant Gumbel, Deborah Norville and Scott chattering on and on about everything from a tragic New York fire to the weather around Chicago.

Like the scheduled guests, the spectators seemed to arrive on cue.

Joining the Perry family from Indiana and others like them was a homeless man who had no use for the lights, the cameras and the Today Show personalities. “Where’s the boss man?” he loudly demanded. “I don’t like these people and I don’t want ‘em around.”

Nick Rosas of Compton dropped by to see what all the commotion was about. He said that he and his buddies are often on the boulevard at 4 a.m.

Another onlooker spent the entire two hours whispering into the microphone of a recording device strapped to his waist--a man with a future in weather? A third onlooker, recently arrived from Mexico, asked how he could obtain an autograph from local news anchor John Beard. Most, however, angled for a good view of Scott, Gumbel and Norville as the program was beamed live to the Eastern Time Zone.

The Perrys, along with their daughters Robin, Jackie and Misty, walked over from the nearby Holiday Inn. “This is a big thing,” said Jean Perry, “just seeing all this excitement.”

Today Show executives apparently were excited, too, since the program’s ratings have jumped by about 25% locally since the show started emanating from Los Angeles last week. The broadcasts began at Venice Beach. The show Friday came from Olvera Street. It then moved to Hollywood to capitalize on the Academy Award ceremonies. The morning program will return to New York Wednesday after taping one more show today at the Chinese Theatre.