INTO THE SPOTLIGHT: IRENE ALLEN : Radio Stations Take a Shine to an Unusual Information Source

WROK radio in Rockford, Ill., checks in on Monday and Thursday, shortly after sunrise. Seattle wants its update between 8 and 10 a.m. on most days of the week. And London--who knows when it’ll call next for its live report on the O.J. Simpson case?

Irene Allen admits that it is a strange way for radio listeners to get their information on the hottest murder trial of the century. But she is glad to oblige.

Six months ago, Allen was just a small-time businesswoman trying to make an honest buck off her shoeshine stand in the lobby of the Criminal Courts Building in Downtown Los Angeles. Now she has stepped in as the case’s quirkiest news broadcaster, offering inside wisdom to a variety of stations--usually from the courthouse pay phones near her booth.

On Friday she was in fine form, dishing out the dirt and gossip she picks up from her daily chats with reporters, security and maintenance personnel--and lawyers.

Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman, who was rushed to the hospital Wednesday after complaining of chest pains, was her first target.

“Now this is just hearsay,” she chirped to radio listeners outside Chicago, but the inside word was that Hodgman wasn’t really ill. Court watchers “are saying it’s like a football game. One of the teams is on the losing end. We are taking a time out and faking an injury.”

But she quickly added: “I think it was all this stress built up. It’s going to take a toll.”

And that incident in which prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman punched out a newspaper photographer while house hunting in the Idaho panhandle? “He was seen buying a home. It may be just a coincidence, but it’s in a white supremacist area. It really was bad timing. He should have waited until all this was over.”

The remarks are all in good fun, Allen said after the phone call. Besides, if acerbic comedian Jackie Mason can join the Simpson press corps as a commentator on BBC Radio, why not the courthouse shoeshine lady?

“I hear a lot things,” said Allen, who along with her husband owns and operates a four-seat shoeshine stand near the back door of the courthouse lobby. “I know a lot of people on a one-to-one basis.”

Indeed she does. Simpson defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey comes by maybe once a week to get his brown kid leather boots shined. “He said he is going to wear a different pair every day and get them polished,” she said.

Robert L. Shapiro stopped by for a polish awhile ago (and left a hefty $7.50 tip on a $2.50 shine). “Shapiro wears loafers and thick-and-thin socks,” Allen said. “You know, like the ones from the ‘70s and ‘80s. They’re like nylons for men. I haven’t see them for ages and all of a sudden Shapiro has them.”

This may not be news to you, but it is the kind of detail that makes Allen a favorite in places such as Vancouver, Baltimore, Sacramento and Houston.

Every time someone famous stops by, Allen whips out her camera and clicks away, making sure both feet and face are photographed. She then puts the snapshots of her famous clients in a thick picture album she keeps at the booth. “I just wanted to have the memory,” she said. “Everyone likes to look at the pictures.”

Then Allen became famous herself.

It happened by accident during the Simpson preliminary hearing.

“The radio stations started calling the courthouse pay phones just to see who would answer,” she said. “Well, I answer the pay phones because my personal calls come here. I just started talking to them.”

It did not take long for word to get out among the broadcast media, increasingly desperate for any fresh perspective, that Allen was on the scene and ready to tell all.

*

By the end of Simpson’s preliminary hearing, five stations from across the county were calling on a regular basis. Nashville even started a fan club, although Allen has yet to receive one letter. “Evidently I don’t have any fans,” she quipped.

This week, as opening statements in the trial began, she was inundated with calls from more than a dozen stations. The day that Simpson lead attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. began his remarks, two pay phones were ringing at once for Allen.

“They keep promising that they are going to send me T-shirts,” she said.

“She’s just interesting,” said Jan Thorpe of WROK talk radio in Rockford, the only station that is paying Allen for her services. “She’s just a real person observing the O.J. trial. She gets the little pieces of life around the courthouse that maybe the larger media might miss.”

Allen loves the attention, but she is trying to keep things in perspective.

“I’m a nobody,” she said. “I’m just a person who opened a shoeshine stop and just happened to answer the phones.”