Here’s . . . Johnny?It’s always standing-room-only...

Here’s . . . Johnny?

It’s always standing-room-only at the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, so new inductees mean demotions for others. Some former stars are sent into storage--or cannibalized. “We have a big room full of them,” says the museum’s Rodney Fong. “Sometimes their parts are recycled.” For instance, he said, Johnny Carson now sports a different hairdo for his new role as an extra in the “Spartacus” set.

We don’t hear Ed McMahon laughing.

WHAT’S THE DEAL?: The 71-year-old Culver Hotel has a colorful history--it was, among other things, the temporary home of 124 little people who appeared in the 1938 MGM film “The Wizard of Oz.”

But the Culver City Historical Society is trying to unravel another hotel story for a documentary it is making about the city’s film history, “Reel Life in Culver City.”

“There’s a rumor that Red Skelton won the hotel from John Wayne in a poker game,” says Hal Horne, president of the historical society. “We know both had ownership in the hotel, but the records aren’t clear.”

In fact, Horne added, the story has another version: “We’ve also heard that Skelton lost it to Wayne in a poker game.”

DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCIES DEPT.: Sal Lombardo of West L.A. found a couple of non-dueling street signs but, just to be sure, we’d like a third opinion about parking on Monday mornings.

THE UNIVERSITY OF HOLLYWOOD: USC, which is one of the most versatile performers in the movie industry, has played the part of these rival schools in various films, Trojan Family magazine points out:

* University of Alabama (“Forrest Gump”)

* UC Berkeley (“The Graduate”)

* Loyola Marymount (“Final Shot: The Hank Gathers Story”)

* UCLA (“Big Man on Campus”)

* Harvard (“Paper Chase”)

The magazine forgot to note that USC also impersonated an English university in the 1938 film “A Yank at Oxford.” (We know this because Marie Harvey, a.k.a. Only in L.A. Mom, snapped a photo of the star--and her heartthrob--Robert Taylor, on the USC track.) And speaking of ‘30s movies, USC also provided the bell tower for the Charles Laughton classic about the Midwestern football player who overindulges in steroids--”The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

IDENTITY CRISIS: Perhaps USC’s many roles as other universities is partly responsible for a puzzling note in the school’s 1995 football guide. It advises the media that “in abbreviated references to athletic teams of the University of Southern California, the following are preferred: USC, Southern California, So. California, Troy, Trojans and Women of Troy.”

Why would the football players want to be called the Women of Troy?

miscelLAny Westways, the Auto Club magazine, points out that in the 1920s wooden-sided Fords were often used to drive passengers to and from train stations. Hence, the term station wagon .