Not Exactly the Role of a Lifetime

Charlotte Salomon of North Hollywood came across an ad in a weekly newspaper that said, simply, “Massage by movie star.” (see accompanying)

She didn’t try the phone number but your reporter did (the old back’s been acting up). There was, however, no response, not even a message machine, which sounds very un-Hollywoodish to me.

Nevertheless, the odds of receiving a skillful massage from a movie star would seem to be excellent. So many have given ham-handed performances.

*

DRIBBLE WITHOUT A CAUSE: He’s the most famous basketball player in the history of Santa Monica College, even though he was a substitute guard and played for only one season. He got into about half the games, as, for instance, one against Riverside City College (see box score).

“Dean, 3,” the box score says. It was James Dean, the film-star-to-be who would die in a car crash on Sept. 30, 1955.

As a player he was not an intimidating figure on the court. He stood 5-8, weighed about 140 and frequently wore his glasses during games.

But Sanger Crumpacker, the team’s coach, told biographer Ronald Martinetti that Dean was “a tolerable good guard” and “a leader who went for the ball.”

Still, you’d think Dean would have been better suited for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas--the Runnin’ Rebels.

*

WHODUNIT EXPERTS: A local directory of some literary crime-solvers, in case you want to look one up in your imagination . . .

* Philip Marlowe: res. house on Yucca Avenue in Laurel Canyon; ofc. Rm. 615, Cahuenga Building (“my dog house on the 6th floor), Hollywood Boulevard near Ivar (“The Long Goodbye” by Raymond Chandler).

* Aaron Gunner: res. house near San Pedro and 108th Sts.; ofc. back of Mickey’s Trueblood Barber Shop (“You Can Die Trying,” by Gar Haywood).

* L.A. Police Det. Harry Bosch: res. quake-damaged house off Woodrow Wilson Drive, overlooking Cahuenga Pass; ofc. Parker Center (though he’s often suspended) (“Trunk Music,” by Michael Connelly).

* Easy Rawlins: res. house in West L.A. “not far from La Brea Boulevard”; ofc. Sojourner Truth Junior High, Watts (“A Little Yellow Dog,” by Walter Mosley).

* Maggie MacGowen: res. house in South Pasadena (shared with L.A. Police Det. Mike Flynt); ofc. Burbank (“A Hard Light,” by Wendy Hornsby).

* Moses Wine: res. Hollywood Hills, ofc. MW Investigative Services in “an industrial space in Little Tokyo [near] a trendy sushi bar” (“The Lost Coast,” by Roger Simon).

*

WESTSIDE WHODUNIT (CONT.): Guess I’d never make it as a gumshoe. I mentioned the unsolved case of the unidentified actor who complained that two teenagers with a dog named Newt were showering his Westside canyon home with rocks. I couldn’t figure how investigators would know the dog’s name and not the kids’.

Simple, said Joe Garofalo of Malibu. “He [the actor] heard the teenagers call the dog,” Garofalo said. “If he knew the kids’ name and not the dog that would mean it was a talking dog.”

A potboiler starring a talking-dog detective. Hmmm.

miscelLAny:

An ICANACT message was spotted on a license plate the other day--a logical place to advertise since you never know when you’re going to find yourself in a freeway jam next to a producer or director (see photo).

On the other hand . . . I wonder if the owner has considered that the plate might forewarn a cop about to hear a plea for mercy for a traffic violation.

Steve Harvey can serve you by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.