THE OSCAR PLUNGE : The Town Crier of Hollywood : His column is required reading, but the rest of the world knows him as Oscar’s best friend.

B ULLETIN, VARIETY, SEPT. 6, 1933: “Late report from New York has it as open season for Walter Winchell. Billy Seeman, husband of Phyllis Haver, is reported to have taken a sock at Winchell . . . Reason: ‘Gabby Walter’ is said to have made an unethical crack about Mrs. Seeman.”

That bulletin about Winchell--once New York’s premiere gossip columnist--is one of the first things to catch the eye of visitors in the lobby of Hollywood’s venerable daily trade paper, Variety. But to get a fix on the state of show-biz columnists today, to understand what Hollywood reads about itself, it’s necessary to keep walking--through swinging doors, past the rows of computers and gleaming new offices that line Wilshire Boulevard and into Army Archerd’s tiny, white-walled den.

There he sits, eyeglasses on, blue-striped sleeves rolled up, phone stuck in the ear like some kind of plastic headgear, pen wildly scribbling. Between roughly 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., colleagues report, Archerd sits inside his cubicle, mining Hollywood for the morsels of news that make up his 600-word column on Variety’s Page 2 each day.

In between, he might be spotted at the water cooler, but no one expects him to drop by for idle chitchat. This man has got white space to fill--lots of it. “I have nightmares that I won’t have enough news to fill the column,” he says.

Archerd does not have a secretary, or an assistant. Callers get Army himself--clipped, professional, but always polite. Diligent and down-to-earth, cool and meticulous, this is not a man who would make an “unethical crack about Mrs. Seeman.”

Not too long ago, Los Angeles Magazine complained in a headline, “Doesn’t Anybody in L.A. Gossip Anymore?” Indeed, the days when colorful characters such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper ruled Hollywood with their barbed pens are long gone. (Sheilah Graham, whom Archerd replaced at Variety, once got into hot water when she reported on a radio broadcast that Jane Wyman was “antisocial and wore high-collar blouses to disguise a rash.”) “All of the columnists are more fair, less scandal-hungry than they used to be,” says Warren Cowan, chairman of the public relations firm Rogers and Cowan.

There are plenty of show-business columnists still around, though most of them eschew the term gossip and claim to check their facts. But none of them has the impact inside Hollywood that Archerd does. Hollywood folks don’t always see Marilyn Beck’s syndicated column in L.A.’s Daily News or Liz Smith, which appears in New York’s Daily News, among many others. The Hollywood Reporter’s Robert Osborne is popular, but insiders say he doesn’t enjoy Archerd’s prominence. The nasty and wicked humor in New York’s Spy magazine is gobbled up by Hollywood insiders each month; but that magazine hides behind its anonymous columnists.

Archerd’s 38-year-old column remains the standard-bearer in Hollywood. And, he insists, his reporting hardly qualifies as gossip. “Please!” says Archerd, who looks more like the Associated Press reporter he used to be than a glittery Hollywood columnist. “I’m not a gossip. Don’t call me that. I’m a news columnist.”

Outside Hollywood, Archerd is best known for his role as the man who introduces the stars to the crowd as they make their way down the red carpet and into the Shrine Auditorium for the Academy Awards. He’ll be there Monday too, his head brimming with tidbits of information about each of the nominees so he can ask them relevant questions during their 30 seconds in his spotlight.

The public also knows Archerd from his role as associate producer and co-host of the “People’s Choice Awards.” (This year, he was the one who engaged in witty banter with Burt Reynolds before walking off the stage with Miss U.S.A. on his arm.) Older audiences may even remember “The Movie Game,” which he co-hosted on TV in 1969, bringing big-name stars and fans into a studio to compete on movie trivia questions. Going back even further, Archerd was one of the first entertainment reporters on TV, appearing on Channel 2 news during the 1950s.

Critics of Archerd’s column wish it was a bit racier, a bit more charged, even a bit more naughty. Readers of Archerd don’t expect tough criticism, or smart turns of phrase. “Our audience is probably the highest intelligence quotient of any possible readership,” Archerd says. “I’m not going to try to impress them with any brilliance in prose. What I can do is provide news.”

He also provides a peek into the attitudes and happenings in mainstream Hollywood. As Variety editorial director Peter Bart put it: “At any given time there is an interior monologue that goes on in the industry, and he’s an integral part of that.”

“You always hear from people at least a couple times a week, ‘I read in Army that . . . , ‘ “ says John De Simio, vice president at Castle Rock Entertainment. “(His column) is extremely well-read. He’s like the town crier for Hollywood.”

That makes Archerd a broad target for the town’s multitude of press agents seeking favorable publicity for their clients. Archerd spends much of his time fielding calls from publicists who covet spots in his column.

“I have always felt that in public relations in Hollywood, people read three things--the L.A. Times, the front page of the two trades (Variety and the Hollywood Reporter), and Army Archerd,” says Murray Weissman, a partner in the public relations firm Weissman/Angellotti. “They read that column from top to bottom religiously. It’s a ritual.”

While Archerd does not frequently criticize the business he covers, his supporters note that he is very good at breaking news. “He doesn’t do fluff,” says colleague and veteran Variety writer Jim Harwood. “He has an enormous amount of information that does not appear elsewhere.”

Archerd’s focus on the internal workings of Hollywood has enabled him to remain relevant at a time when TV talk shows have stolen the thunder from celebrity columns. Notes Harwood: “The influence of the newspaperman in Hollywood has diminished greatly because press agents court TV, which can sell tickets and promote careers at the same time.”

Archerd is also a source of constancy in an industry known for its tumultuous changes. Even Variety, which for years was family-owned, finally fell into the hands of corporate owners in 1987 when it was sold to Cahner’s Publishing Co., a unit of London’s Reed International PLC.

Two weeks ago, the Daily Variety staff was shaken up by news that Bart, editor of the weekly Variety, would also be given editorial control of the daily. But it appears that Archerd will survive that change as well. “I wouldn’t want to change his role,” Bart says.

While Archerd’s column appears in Daily Variety only, its influence is much wider: Out-of-town and foreign reporters frequently crib from him. One legend has it that Archerd and some friends once planted a false item to see how many papers would pick it up without checking it out--and 50 clippings came back. Archerd insists that story is apocryphal.

On this March morning, Archerd has arrived at his office, his pockets stuffed with notes. Sometimes he’ll wake up in the middle of the night and jot down names of people or film projects he wants to check in with. On this day, though, the desk is covered with notes on the people he saw dining at Spago the previous night.

He was there with his wife, Selma, to celebrate her birthday. But that didn’t stop him from working. “Restaurants are a very good place to get tips,” he says as he picks up the phone.

Archerd’s curiosity was particularly piqued by a group at the restaurant that included Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and producers Irwin Winkler and David Geffen. He has phoned each of them, and now the call-backs are starting to come in.

“Good to see you last night,” he cheerfully pipes to a talent agent who had been sitting with the group. “Your lady looked quite nice. . . . What was the occasion? That was quite a mixed group. Uh-huh, Uh-huh. You’re not going to work at Disney? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Archerd strikes out. But he’ll keep trying.

Brrrng . The phone rings again. This time it’s producer Dan Melnick returning Archerd’s call. Archerd actually had called to thank him: Last night the freeway sign next to Spago that advertises Melnick’s movie, “L.A. Story” blinked with Happy Birthday greetings to Selma. But it can’t hurt to pump a little information out of him once the amenities are over.

“What’s your next picture?” he asks, his felt pen filling up the lines on a yellow note pad. “Uh-huh. Where will you shoot that? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And what’s the period?”

Archerd’s Rolodex consists of two entire desk drawers of 3x5 cards. He’s got office numbers, home numbers, vacation home numbers, even girlfriend/boyfriend phone numbers listed so he can get people on the phone when he needs them.

That diligence has paid off. In 1985, Archerd broke the news that Rock Hudson was dying of AIDS, a scoop that he is particularly proud of because it finally helped focus public attention on the disease.

More recently, his column alerted Paramount Pictures--much to the studio’s dismay--to the fact that director Francis Coppola might not have “Godfather III” ready in time for Christmas. Archerd was the first reporter to talk to Brandon Tartikoff after his car accident and to Kirk Douglas after his helicopter crashed. In January, he printed Lynn Redgrave’s comments distancing herself from her sister, Vanessa, who had made pro-Iraqi comments to the press.

“I always say to people that you might as well tell me because it’s going to be printed somewhere,” he says. “Over the years I’ve tried to let people know that it’s better to tell me the truth, or if they cannot, tell me they can’t rather than try to deceive me. ‘You only do that once (deceive me) and I never call again.”

Mostly, Archerd’s column items are gentle fare, though he insists he has angered people like Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis in the past. And his decision to print the news that Hudson was battling AIDS caused a rift with his old friend Liz Taylor.

Some of his professional colleagues criticize Archerd for his practices of permitting the studios to pay for his travel costs when he visits movie sets and accepting fees for acting as the emcee at their premieres. Other journalists, including Variety staffers, are subject to stricter conflict-of-interest rules. “There is definitely a double standard,” said one insider.

Archerd insists that none of this clouds his judgment on the news items he runs. “I’ve never been compromised,” he maintains.

Archerd’s wife, Selma, is a part-time actress who has landed small parts in movies such as “Lethal Weapon” and “New York, New York,” and TV shows such as “Cagney & Lacey” and “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill.” She says Archerd’s influential role in the community is both a help and a hindrance to her vocation.

“I feel I get parts because people like us and are friends. They’re doing me a favor,” she says. “But at the same time, (because it’s a favor) I don’t get the good parts.”

Through the years, Archerd has managed to maintain a reputation for accuracy. “He checks every item he gets,” says publicist Dick Brooks. “I’ve never seen anyone more thorough in my life.”

Archerd says he has never had to print a correction. Director Sam Peckinpah once demanded a retraction when Archerd reported that one of his movies was over-schedule and over-budget. But Archerd stood by his facts and refused to grant it.

That diligence can drive Hollywood’s publicity seekers crazy. Weissman recently tried to pitch him an item about the film “Hamlet.” “I calculated that more people saw the film in the first week than through all the years (on stage) at the Globe Theater in England. Would you believe he called England to check on the seating in the Globe Theater?” Then he didn’t use the item.

Selma Archerd says there are things that her husband considers off-limits. He would never, for example, use information he picked up from a guest in his house unless he asked. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have a social life,” she says. (Dinner parties at Archerd’s Westwood home are likely to include such people as agent Freddie Fields, producer David Begelman and publicist Warren Cowan.)

Archerd regularly prints divorce items but won’t stoop to revealing a marriage on the rocks, Selma says. And she adds: “He might write about vulgar people, but he never writes about them in vulgar terms.”

Born Armand Archer, the Variety columnist grew up in the Bronx and attended Townsend Harris, a prep school reserved for some of New York’s brightest boys. He fell in love with show business while watching extravagant theater productions that his uncle staged in Manhattan.

Archerd graduated from UCLA, did a stint in the Navy during World War II and in 1945 landed a job at the Associated Press covering Hollywood. Two years later he joined the Herald Express as an assistant to gossip columnist Harrison Carroll and filled in by writing the column when his boss went on vacation. In 1953, Variety hired Archerd to replace Graham. He has been writing his column ever since, taking only two sick days during his entire career there and spending many of his vacations near film sets so he can get some reporting in at the same time.

Archerd views himself as a newspaper reporter first, and part of the Hollywood community only as a distant second. “So many people use journalism as a stepping stone into Hollywood,” he says. “It’s a personal decision, but I’ve always viewed (journalism) as my goal.”

Still, his life is very much interwined with the lives of those he covers. “He loves celebrities and they love him,” says Variety’s Harwood.

Once when Liz Taylor was on location during a Richard Burton film in Yugoslavia, she asked Archerd--who planned a visit to the same country--to bring her a doctor’s report on her ailing mother. When Taylor came off the stage of the Academy Awards in 1961, after winning an Oscar for “Butterfield 8,” Archerd recalls, she fell into his arms gasping and crying from the shock.

In 1959, he clued MGM executives into the fact that they had a potential blockbuster on their hands with “Ben Hur.” Archerd had been on the set in Rome and filmed the famous chariot race scene with his 8-millimeter home movie camera. When he returned to Hollywood, he called up the MGM executives and let them view his film, even dragging a screen and projector into the company’s boardroom while the secretaries pinned the outside drapes together. Inside youth-oriented Hollywood, Archerd is sensitive about his age, which he prefers not to reveal. But the question of when and if he will retire is certain to become an issue in the coming years.

If that day should come, Archerd will put aside the blurbs and the ellipses--and get started on the great American novel. Hollywood-style.

* HEYDAY OF THE PRESS

See Sean Mitchell’s article, Page 8.