Quiet on This Set

If QVC Chairman Barry Diller eventually fails in his $10.6-billion hostile bid to acquire Paramount Communications, there is another, less visible studio waiting for a buyer.

Bill Randa, executor of the estate of computer executive Ted Ross, is offering in a probate sale what he calls a “top-secret” movie studio that is tucked away in Laurel Canyon.

Randa says the studio was used during World War II to make propaganda films.

The 40,000-square-foot complex has a sound stage, film vaults, screening rooms, editing rooms, a recording studio and a big parking lot. Unfortunately, the area is zoned for residential use, Randa says, so someone will have to live in the place.

As for the price, Randa is asking $895,000, a tiny fraction of the going rate for Paramount.

Return to Sender

Economic development officials in states that are trying to pick off California businesses have become so aggressive that they’re recruiting their counterparts here.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., received a form letter from the Florida Department of Commerce.

“If you’re considering relocating or expanding your business, there’s a great deal you need to know about our state,” says the letter to Kyser, whose job involves selling companies on locating in Los Angeles.

The letter is signed by Florida Commerce Secretary Greg Farmer.

We put in a call to Farmer’s office, only to find that he personally is relocating outside the state he is touting. Farmer is taking a job with the Commerce Department in Washington.

Jury Is In on Lawyer Jokes

Nolo Press, a Berkeley-based publisher of self-help legal books, has been taking some heat from attorneys for promoting lawyer jokes since the deadly shooting spree at a San Francisco law firm.

So, Nolo polled its readers on their feelings about lawyer jokes and printed the responses in its latest publication. Needless to say, lawyers won’t like the readers’ verdicts.

The results: 73% said lawyer jokes do not cross the bounds of good taste and 89% admitted having told a lawyer joke in the past. And 100% of those polled were opposed to a ban on such jokes.

In addition, 53% of the respondents said that people tell lawyer jokes out of dislike for lawyers, with 27% saying lawyers make good scapegoats.

According to Nolo’s readers, bad places for telling lawyer jokes are in open court, at a lawyer’s funeral, around lawyers one doesn’t know, when a lawyer is a customer or client or “in front of children.”

Briefly . . . .

More lawyers: An annual California Lawyer survey found the state’s top 50 law firms shrinking twice as fast as they were in the magazine’s study a year earlier. . . . A Southern California “Executive Boxing and Kickboxing” program uses the slogan “It’s better to giveth than to receiveth.” . . . A help-wanted ad from a security firm invites applicants to “join the exciting field of bounty hunting.”