COLUMN ONE : Hounding Stars All Over Town : A brazen breed of entrepreneur has emerged in Hollywood; the professional autograph hunter. Some resort to disguises, spies and freeway pursuits to get the precious scribbles.

And then there’s the one about the two guys who landed in the Disneyland hoosegow.

It happened one February night in 1992, after Alfie Pettit and Duggan Wendeborn sneaked into Elizabeth Taylor’s private 60th birthday bash there.

Pettit and Wendeborn had crawled under some bushes near It’s a Small World and covered themselves with leaves, then waited for the park to be cleared of visitors. When horns began to blare, announcing the arrival of Taylor and her star-studded entourage, Pettit and Wendeborn ventured out to mingle with the celebrities.

Then, Pettit made a mistake common to criminals: He talked too much. In this case, he walked up to a pretzel wagon and asked the vendor how much they were. That was the giveaway. Everybody knew Elizabeth Taylor’s guests did not have to pay for their pretzels.

“Can you believe it?” Pettit recalled. “They surrounded me, and the next thing you know, they put me in this Cadillac and took me to the Disneyland jail and booked me. The lengths we go to to get an autograph.”

Another tale from the autograph underground.

Each day, from the posh hotels of Beverly Hills to trendy nightclubs on the Sunset Strip, from the back gates of television studios to sedate Westside restaurants, celebrities are being hounded for their signatures.

A brazen breed of entrepreneur has emerged in Hollywood: the professional autograph hunter.

Because the scribble of a Taylor, Julia Roberts or Marlon Brando can command hundreds of dollars on the open market, these pen-in-hand hustlers have become an inescapable, and sometimes disturbing, aspect of celebrity.

In pursuit of valuable signed photographs, some autograph hounds have piled into cars and chased Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez around Los Angeles; followed Mel Gibson onto the Warner Bros. lot; cornered Jack Nicholson at the golf course, and staked out Madonna at her Hollywood Hills home.

“In the old days, (autograph seekers) were very nice and friendly and truly collectors,” said Pat Kingsley, whose public relations firm represents some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Cruise and Robert Redford. “Now it’s a business. You see some of the same ones all the time, not with a piece of paper and pen, but with books that include six or eight pictures from different movies. They get very antagonistic if the celebrities don’t accommodate them. These are not fans at all.”

The autograph hunters argue that some celebrities are annoyed because they do not make any money off the sale of their signatures.

“Most celebrities feel you’re making money off of them and they aren’t getting part of it,” Wendeborn said. “I have a philosophy. I’m providing a service. How are people in Michigan and Alaska guaranteed to get the autographs they want?”

Collectors contend that they should not be criticized for making money off the stars.

“Even though we are out there selling it, so what?” said Joe Kraus, owner of Celebrity Galleries in Stockton. “The artist has made money off the public, so the public, in some ways, is making money off them too.”

As celebrity has become, arguably, the dominant feature of American culture in the 1990s, the public’s zeal for owning anything linked to celebrities has exploded. O.J. Simpson signs football cards from his jail cell. His attorneys sign autographs outside court. A judge who recently lowered alimony payments for Barry Bonds then asked the San Francisco Giants outfielder for his autograph.

The value of celebrity autographs varies depending on who they are and how often they sign. Kraus said one of the hardest autographs to get is Taylor’s because collectors believe that many of her signatures are really done by secretaries and mailed out.

Another difficult one to obtain is Harrison Ford’s. “I’ve heard that people in a movie with him can’t get his autograph,” Kraus said.

“Madonna will sign, but you have to catch her in the right moment,” Kraus said. “Sometimes she will cuss at you for a long time.”

Although the demand for celebrity signatures is high, Kraus and other collectors disapprove of the tactics of some autograph hunters. Grabbing celebrity autographs, they say, has evolved into a daunting cat-and-mouse game.

Some of the most successful autograph hunters are “chasers,” who stake out stars at hotels, restaurants and nightclubs and then, if the stars refuse to sign, chase them by car until they pull over or escape in traffic.

There is even a mysterious group of youths who hang out together and wear baseball caps while collecting autographs. Their competitors complain that the youths, called the Baseballers, are overly aggressive and rude to celebrities who refuse to sign.

Angela Bassett got a taste of this belligerence at this year’s Academy Awards luncheon. The best actress nominee arrived just before the meal was served, leaving no time for autograph hunters. As she walked past a group of them, some who were present recalled, Bassett was unmercifully booed and cursed until she dissolved into tears.

Even veteran collectors say it has gone too far.

“It’s too hairy out there, too dangerous,” said Jan Schray, 58, of North Hollywood, a collector of about 20,000 celebrity autographs. She worries about the frequency of car chases.

“I don’t chase. I don’t lurk. I don’t follow people home and into their houses,” she said. “But it’s just a matter of time before they kill somebody running red lights.”

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Perhaps nowhere are the tales of the autograph hunters so tinged with high drama and low comedy as in Hollywood.

Often, they revolve around Pettit, who runs Alfie’s Autographs of Hollywood.

Pettit cruises Hollywood in a big black Cadillac, his trunk filled with hundreds of celebrity photos arranged alphabetically--for retrieval at a moment’s notice.

He’s 25, and hails from Vancouver, Wash. (His car still sports Washington plates, which read SIGN4ME). And he lives a block behind Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in an aging apartment building whose main hallway is decorated with old movie posters. His apartment has only a few signed celebrity photos on the walls: Cindy Crawford in a golden swimsuit, singer George Michael, and one signed “To Alfie. Love, Tina Turner.”

Like most autograph hunters, Pettit has a system of finding celebrities. The Hollywood trades tell him which stars are cast in movies and TV shows. For a nominal fee, the city provides a list of street closures for filming productions. And there is the daily Hollywood News Calendar, listing times and locations for celebrity events such as benefits or premieres.

But Pettit also has his tipsters--often parking valets at trendy nightspots--whom he pays to alert him when celebrities arrive.

One night at the House of Blues, Pettit learned of a party for singer Patti LaBelle. His tipster was “Robert,” a homeless man who hangs out on the sidewalk and watches limos pull in.

That night, Pettit tried but failed to get the signature of Wesley Snipes. The actor ignored the autograph hunter in a burgundy beret as he popped up in his face without warning. “Nope, can’t do it,” Snipes said. “You got enough of me.”

Pettit is a master of disguise. He can look like a college student fresh off an Omaha bus and reappear moments later beside the unsuspecting celebrity outfitted like a denizen of Montmartre.

After getting Julia Roberts to sign a photo during the filming of “I Love Trouble,” Pettit shaved his goatee, removed his earrings and put on glasses and a beret. “I went back and got three more,” he said.

Sometimes, Pettit’s best plans have not panned out, like the night of the Taylor party at Disneyland. For his efforts, Pettit said, he was fined and suspended from the park for three years.

Another time, a freeway pursuit of “MacGyver” actor Richard Dean Anderson ended in failure. Pettit and some friends began chasing Anderson after he left the “Tonight Show” studio in Burbank one afternoon.

“Alfie was driving and (my son) Jeffrey and I were with him,” said Yvonne Wolfe, 41, of Riverside. “The limo driver wouldn’t stop. Alfie jumped out at a stoplight and showed him a picture and said, ‘We just want an autograph.’ ”

Wolfe said the limo driver roared off and the chase resumed until the limo “stopped right in the middle of the 405 Freeway. . . . Can you believe this? Richard Dean Anderson was slumped down in the seat. He said he’s not signing. He’s late getting somewhere. Come on! ‘MacGyver’ is canceled!”

Pettit takes pride in outsmarting celebrities or wearing them down. Take Madonna, who he learned was at the Monkey Bar in Hollywood one night.

“(Alfie) barged through the door, and ran in and out in 30 seconds,” recalled Richard Kappler of Glendale, an autograph collector who was at the bar. “He didn’t get (the autograph). Madonna was in a room. But he was able to scope it out and came outside bragging about it.”

The next day, Pettit was staking out Madonna’s house when a big truck pulled up and, on a hunch, he followed the truck to Venice Boulevard. Suddenly, the truck screeched to a halt and out jumped Madonna.

“She has a bandanna on her head and she tells me to (expletive) off,” Pettit recalled. “And she starts walking on the sidewalk. Madonna on Venice Boulevard! I started following her. I went, ‘Madonna, are you OK? Do you need a ride?’ And she says, ‘I’m fine, just leave me alone.’ So I went around the block.”

When he returned, Pettit said, Madonna had been joined by a friend who was trying to console her. “Get the hell out of here or I’m gonna break your neck!” the man yelled.

“The next thing you know, (Madonna and her friend) come down the street and I get my camera up and I clicked off a picture of them; and he came running after me, threw me over this fence, got the camera out of my hand and threw it. I never could find the camera.”

Another day, Pettit spotted Madonna and San Antonio Spurs forward Dennis Rodman walking along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and asked Madonna for her autograph. When she refused, he waited and followed them to Sunset Boulevard, where she ducked into Book Soup.

Pettit walked up to a stranger on the street and said he would pay him $20 an autograph if he would go inside and approach Madonna. “He went (into the bookstore) and got two autographs, so I paid him $40,” Pettit said. He also asked a girl sitting on a bus bench to go in, but Madonna turned her down.

Actors and rock singers are not the only celebrities who find themselves approached by autograph hunters. Anyone in the public eye is fair game, even the President.

This summer a 15-year-old boy from New York named Blake Le Vine chased President Clinton’s motorcade for miles trying to secure the President’s signature on a photo of the White House. Le Vine was treated very sympathetically. But then a New York tabloid discovered that he was a professional autograph hunter who had previously sold signed pictures of Clinton for as much as $450.

Le Vine said he was upset to be portrayed as sleazy.

“I’m a kid,” he said. “I’m 15 years old, which they didn’t realize.”

But kid or not, Le Vine, according to one of his competitors, employs some questionable tactics.

“We were waiting for Goldie Hawn one day in New York,” recalled Wendeborn, who is 25, “and she comes out and signs 40 photos for (Le Vine). Nobody else got anything. She and Kurt Russell then got into the car and as they went up Park Avenue, Blake runs alongside them pounding on the car window saying, ‘Please, Goldie, I only have five more!’ ”

Pettit said he once spotted Barbra Streisand leaving the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard after promoting her film “The Prince of Tides.” He and other autograph hunters followed her to the Bel-Age Hotel, then took a shortcut through the hotel and met her as she walked in.

“She said, ‘How did you know I was coming here?’ She was really scared about people following her,” Pettit recalled.

“We said: ‘We really know you don’t like to be followed, Barbra, but we never see you.’ So she signed for us. She tried to just do a ‘Barbra’ and we asked her for a last name, which is an ‘S-T . . . scribble, scribble.’ If you get a ‘Bar,’ it’s worth about $200. A ‘Barbra’ is worth $300. And, a ‘Barbra Streisand’ is worth $450 to $500.”

Streisand then went into the hotel restaurant, but the autograph hunters waited around until she came out, then asked for more.

“She goes, ‘I’m going to tell you something,’ ” Pettit said. “ ‘For one thing, I don’t like being followed. For another thing, I don’t like being waited for. And for a third thing, I don’t like my picture being taken. You guys have struck out and I’ve been real nice and signed autographs for you. Have a nice day.’ ”

Pettit shrugged.

“That’s what happens in this business,” he said. “Sometimes you get told.”