HERO FOR HIRE : Merry-Making Actor Goes Through Changes Playing Birthday Party Characters

It’s about 120 degrees inside his black leotard, cape and rubber Batman mask as Tom Stewart pulls his Chrysler Le Baron to the mouth of a Mission Viejo neighborhood. But he’s still got his sense of humor for the first of three kiddie birthday parties, where he’ll be the star attraction.

“Who are you here to see?” the guard at the gated community entrance asks. “I’m Batman,” Stewart says, in a husky voice. “Here for Greg’s fifth birthday party at the clubhouse.”

The guard doesn’t seem amused, and persists with his drill. “What’s your last name?” he demands.

“Uh . . . Man,” quips Stewart, who throws his head back and, with a wacky laugh, guns the engine toward the recreation room.

Hey, it’s a job. Just when it seemed everyone in Orange County had some boring occupation--developer, census taker, realtor--meet Stewart, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for breakfast, Elvis Presley at lunch, Pee-wee Herman at cocktail hour.

“I get to see people at their best--when they’re happy and celebrating something,” says Stewart, whose been running his $90-an-hour road show for five years. “It’s a great job.”

Out of his car trunk, the 27-year-old performer transforms himself from Batman to Superman and other characters, often in the span of one day. Sometimes he changes in his car. On the freeway. Or in the restroom of the nearest fast food joint.

“I know how to find every public bathroom in Orange County,” he boasts.

Life at the Stewart’s Huntington Beach home is interesting. He is married to a woman officially recognized for making 10-foot-tall dachshunds out of balloons (she is one of seven certified master balloon artists in California). When he arrives home from work at night, his 22-month-old son nonchalantly greets him with, “Hi Big Bird. Dinner time!”

It is a business to Stewart. Although he hasn’t had a weekend off since 1985, he grossed $148,000 last year--netting $27,000.

He makes what !

“Oh sure, absolutely,” said Susan Gilbert, owner of Huntington Beach-based Animal Crackers Entertainment, a 14-year-old company that employs five full-time performers and enlists another 450 free-lancers as needed. “There’s very good money in this.”

And bashes for the kids--from one-hour performances to extravagant all-day soirees--have in the past year become the biggest part of the business, owners of many entertainment firms say.

“I would say 75% of our business is children’s parties,” said Gilbert, Stewart’s first employer. “Mickey and Minnie Mouse are always popular. The Little Mermaid is big now. Oh! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’s absolutely crazy the demand for them. We’ve done these parties that cost up to $5,000. One we did for Halloween was about $7,000. That was in Nellie Gail Ranch. We built an entire graveyard in this woman’s front yard.”

In a region where excesses quickly become passe, these extravaganzas for the pint-sized continue to grow ever more elaborate.

“We have done several big deals for kids,” said Jim Harnage, owner of St. Ives catering in Newport Beach. “(At) one they had a big tree in the back yard that was in the way of a merry-go-round they were having brought in. So they spent thousands of dollars to have it removed with a 50-foot crane. It was unbelievable.”

So keeping in mind that parents of mere kindergartners have been known to drop a sum equal to Cal State Fullerton’s tuition for party attractions such as elephants, Bengal tigers and other circus animals, $90 for Stewart’s gig seems relatively cheap.

Of the two dozen or so Orange County entertainment specialty firms, no more than 10 are considered among various owners as successful businesses. Half of those, owners say, are run out of homes, often by college students. Turnover is high because the work, which can be erratic, seems deceptively alluring at first blush: relatively inexpensive overhead and no real start-up fees beyond costumes and mileage.

For those who make money, however, there are a few drawbacks.

“The only bad part, because the parents get real up-tight, is when you’re late,” Stewart said.

Traffic is the biggest culprit. But Stewart admits to being a bit scatterbrained, which has led to some funny moments. Like the time he got a ticket dressed as Santa Claus--on his birthday. And the time he wrapped his car around a freeway berm dressed as Pee-wee Herman (a passing priest mercifully delivered him to the party only moments late). Once, he ran out of gas as Superman.

He’s driven as far as Arizona for a party gig, and he’s put 141,000 miles on his 4-year-old car. His least favorite performance was his largest: 6,000 students at a high school homecoming game, at which he hosted the half-time performance.

“I was Pee-wee Herman,” he remembers. “I had to announce the homecoming court. I hated it.”

The mishaps, however, have been relatively few and painless. Among the most memorable was the time he announced it was time to blow out the birthday candles and the 5-year-old birthday boy doused them with spittle.

“The ice cream,” he recalls with a grin, “was much more popular at that party.”

Despite the heat this Saturday, Stewart’s show must go on.

He parks his junk-filled Chrysler on a side street to put the last touches on his costume. A guy in a BMW circles suspiciously to watch. Stewart is careful to dart behind his car door when kid-filled vans approach the Canyon Crest clubhouse.

“Don’t want to spoil the effect,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead. He removes blue horn-rimmed glasses and pulls the thick rubber Batman mask over his damp brown hair and freckled face. He saves for last the long black cape, which billows out from his 6-foot-4 frame. A fetching Batman indeed.

“Last Saturday I started out as Big Bird in Cota de Caza, drove to Huntington Beach and did Superman at 1 p.m. I was in La Palma at 3 as Elvis, drove to Irvine to do Batman at 4:30 and then to Cerritos at 7 p.m. for Jim Ignatowski from (the television comedy) ‘Taxi,’ ” Stewart explained. “So today will be pretty easy.”

A year ago, he said, half his business was in singing telegrams. Now 90% of the work is children’s parties.

“I think people are spending more time at home, and yet they still want the kids to have fun but impress their friends too,” Stewart speculates. “So what I do is perfect for them.”

Stewart has for years been interested in the performing arts, although he admits he never envisioned himself doing one-hour party gigs. The son of a retired cop who worked at the legendary “Fort Apache” police division in the Bronx, Stewart took a decidedly different career path. He graduated from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana and worked as a cart boy, range boy, then golf pro at Riverview Golf Course. That paid his way through the American Academy of the Arts in Pasadena.

For now his work is satisfying, he said. Of the future?

“I imagine one day I’ll probably be famous, but I dunno,” he says with a shrug. “I just have this feeling . . . “

Inside the air-conditioned community room Batman enters the party, as two-dozen wide-eyed kindergartners whisper and giggle and point.

“What’s your name?” Batman asks one towhead. “Hamburger,” the boy giggles, showing off his missing front tooth. One boy won’t talk at all. Most of them pummel him with questions: “Where’s Robin? (He’s at the cave.) Where’s the Batmobile? (It’s being fixed at the shop.) Where’s the Joker? (Up to no good.)

Heeey, you’re not Batman; he’s Michael Keaton! (Well, sure, but who do you think did all the stunts?)

He enchants the kids with tales about the making of the movie, which most of them seem to have at home. He asks them trivia questions, and at least one of the children knows every answer, including the name of Batman’s butler (Alfred).

Pretty soon the group spills outside so that each child can be photographed in the palm of Batman’s hand. Like a waiter would hold a tray, Stewart hoists every child at his shoulder as Polaroids are taken. Eggs would fry on this sidewalk. Batman never loses his cool.

Not even after he discovers that one of the pint-sized party-goers has lifted his bag of Batman buttons and other party favors and games.

Like any self-respecting Caped Crusader, he organizes a search party and the fabric satchel is found.

An hour later, Stewart is back in his car, pulling off the drenched Batman mask. His car is a mobile comedy of its own, talking to the feckless performer like some nag, badgering him all day: Your car door is ajar. Your brake fluid is low. Please fasten your seat belts.

His Chrysler is his dressing room on wheels. Helter-skelter around the interior are disposable razors, hair spray cans, disposable arm shields and shoulder pads, white athletic socks, ratty hairbrushes, deodorant, wigs, costumes and unopened brake fluid. Oh, and a bullhorn.

“I like to use that to clear traffic,” Stewart says with a smirk, “especially when I’m dressed as Pee-wee.”

By the time he boards the San Diego Freeway he has stripped off the better part of his Batman duds. “I’d be in my underwear by now but you’re in the car,” he tells his tag-along. “I’ll just have to pull over down the street from this place.”

That would be in a Fountain Valley tract of homes where one Cody McKennon is celebrating his fourth birthday in the back yard. For this Stewart will appear as Superman.

Around the corner from the house, he orders his passenger out of the car. “Look the other way. This could get ugly,” he jokes. Between the curb and his car door he proceeds to strip to his own birthday suit, as giggling teen-age girls bicycle past. He quickly tugs on a skin-tight blue body suit with a large red “S” on the chest.

It is so hot he decides to stuff white athletic socks under his armpits as perspiration shields. They look exactly like what they are. He pulls them out. With the insertion of the disposable shoulder pads and half a can of hair spray plastering his head, he is ready to make his entrance.

He looks good leaping onto the back-yard lawn of Cody’s party, and the kids are thrilled.

He makes balloon animals, paints their faces with daisies and Batmans and stars, plays a game of hide-and-seek, orchestrates a round of duck-duck-goose, and finally leads an amusing version of Simon Says.

“If you get out,” he warns, “you have to go sit with the parents. Ewwwwww!” The children wince as though a foul odor has wafted through the party. They love this guy. So does Kim McKennon.

“I like him because I don’t have to do the games myself,” McKennon, a paralegal and single mother, said with a laugh. “I work all week and I’m tired on the weekends. Besides, I think it’s more fun for the kids to have someone else besides their parents” entertain at the party. “We almost had a Ferris wheel this year, but I was worried about the insurance because they would have to (set it up) in the street in front of the house. I think this is the smallest party we’ve had for Cody.”

Another hour and Stewart is back behind the wheel, this time bound for Del Taco. En route to another party he changes back into the Batman outfit in the fast food restaurant’s bathroom, much to the amusement of several burly men buying tacos at the drive-through window.

“Hey,” hollers one beefy teen-ager, “you forgot your keys in the head, Batman! Ha! Ha!”

Hey, it’s a job.