2 Ordeals for Marty Ingels: on the Street and at Home

It’s hard to find good help these days . . . Fear and loathing in the green room.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. If you’re Marty Ingels, actor, comedian and host of radio’s “Talk to Marty” show, it’s definitely funnier.

Ingels, who starred with John Astin in the 1960s sitcom “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster,” recently was the star prosecution witness in Beverly Hills Municipal Court at a preliminary hearing for a case involving a high-speed chase.

Our story begins at 6 a.m. on June 13, with Ingels in his red checkered pajamas, pulling his Chevrolet Suburban out the driveway of Century City Hospital, where he had undergone tests for a sleep disorder. As he drove down Santa Monica Boulevard, he noticed an older, bearded man dressed in a suit driving a brown Toyota--and not well. First the car sped toward a pedestrian, who dove into the bushes, the radio host recalled. Then it turned and came after Ingels, tires screeching, he said.

“I went into a strange New York Man mode,” Ingels said. “I guess I wanted to be the Jewish Batman.”

Ingels gave chase and called 911 from his car phone. Soon, his wife, actress Shirley Jones, also was on the phone, having been tipped to the televised chase by a friend.

“What are you doing, you crazy maniac?” Jones shouted to her husband. “Get back here with my truck.”

The chase ended with one Richard Alan Deeter handcuffed and lying on the ground, and Ingels standing in the street in his pajamas. “I’m sure the officer said to himself, ‘Did we shackle the right guy?’ ” Ingels said.

The authorities thanked Ingels. The wife did not.

“The full force of the law is one thing. The full force of Shirley Jones when you get home is another,” Ingels said.

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NANNYGATE 2: Seems harder and harder to find good help these days in Hollywood. No sooner had the former nanny for Bruce Willis and Demi Moore seen her case packed off to the Idaho courts than a sequel emerged from the domicile of soap star Diedre Hall.

Hall, who plays Marlena Evans on the sudser “Days of Our Lives,” is seeking damages of at least $100,000 from former nanny Leslie Suzanne O’Neill. Hall charges that her former employee broke the no-dish clause in her contract by writing the tell-all book “My Nanny.”

In the book, O’Neill (no relation to yours truly) describes the home that Hall shares with TV producer husband Steve Sohmer, their possessions, their children and gifts given to relatives. O’Neill had been the nanny for the couple since August 1993 and had signed an agreement promising not to “disseminate, publish, state or in any other manner disclose any information of any kind dealing with the business or personal affairs” of Hall and Sohmer, the couple charged in their Los Angeles Superior Court suit.

“No legitimate public concern was served by revealing these facts,” court papers said. The couple is seeking a preliminary injunction against O’Neill and Crown Point Publishing to limit distribution of the book, which was published in November. The couple state in their lawsuit that they did not become aware of the book until May.

The author and her publisher could not be reached.

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GREEN ROOM GOSSIP: “Lost in Space” actress Mimi Rogers is suing the Home Shopping Network for $10 million in U.S. District Court, charging that HSN execs libeled her by planting a story in a supermarket tabloid that she had trashed a studio waiting room.

The former wife of actor Tom Cruise says the allegations in a June 2 National Enquirer article are false and could damage her career. The article, under the headline “Mimi Rogers Goes Berserk & Trashes TV Studio Room,” claimed that the actress threw a tantrum after her deal to peddle “Mimi Rogers’ Stretch and Flex” was canceled because of poor sales.

The TV shopping network scheduled Rogers for two shows on Mother’s Day, hoping to sell at least 3,000 of the $29.95 exercise devices, according to the tabloid report.

But an unidentified “insider” told the tabloid that the stretch-and-flex was “basically a piece of surgical hose with two plastic handles attached” and didn’t sell.

After subsequent shows were canceled, the tabloid reported, Rogers “cursed like a sailor” and trashed the green room at the network’s Florida studio.