Parents Say Billboard for Angelyne Bedevils Students

The would-be starlet who goes by the name Angelyne has long been accused of shameless self-promotion.

Now some of her detractors have added a new criticism--they say she is corrupting children.

Angelyne, a voluptuous blond model who gives her age as between 28 and 34, has sold herself over the past decade as a show business icon by plastering her image on L.A. billboards.

The candy-colored ads have become such a Los Angeles landmark that tourists can frequently be found snapping pictures of them.

But the latest billboard--a full-length shot of Angelyne wearing a revealing swimsuit and reclining on the hood of her Corvette--has drawn fire from a group of parents at the Oaks, a grade school near Highland and Franklin avenues in Hollywood.

“I think it’s disgusting,” said Eileen McMahon, whose son is a fifth-grader at the Oaks.

McMahon said she was especially angry because one of the billboards is right across the street from the school. “I really feel it gives children the wrong message about women.”

McMahon said she has collected about 50 signatures on a petition asking the sign company to remove the billboard and has complained to the office of Los Angeles Councilman John Ferraro.

Reached through her manager, Angelyne defended the ad, which went up last month.

She said it is the parents who are sending the wrong message to their children.

“Kids adore me,” she said. “They think I look like a Barbie doll. They don’t think of me as a sex object. . . . The parents are really going off the deep end.”

Angelyne said she might try to smooth things over by paying a visit to the school in her pink Corvette.

*

ON-TIME ARRIVAL: Trailing by less than a hundred votes, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills) is hoping a count of last-minute absentee votes will put her over the top against Republican challenger Susan Brooks.

If she wins by one vote, she can thank her daughter, son and Continental Airlines.

Harman’s daughter, Hilary, a sophomore at Princeton University, was hoping to vote in her first election this year.

But she was late in submitting her application for an absentee ballot, and it did not arrive at her New Jersey residence until Tuesday--Election Day.

“This was going to be a major disaster, as far as her mother was concerned,” Harman told supporters at her campaign party.

Undaunted, Hilary marked her ballot and had it shipped to Los Angeles on a cross-country flight. Harman’s son Brian picked up the ballot at Los Angeles International Airport and, in accordance with election rules, dropped it off at a polling place at 7:47 p.m., 13 minutes before the polls closed.

Did Harman ask Hilary how she voted?

“I didn’t have to ask,” she said.