A Clean Act

If you want to get a glimpse of celebrity, forget about hanging around those swank Beverly Hills restaurants and bars.

In the next few weeks you can spot a variety of Hollywood actors pulling weeds, stocking shelves and painting bathrooms at your local schools.

Under a program launched Wednesday, scores of Screen Actors Guild members are teaming up with local carpenters, teachers and labor unions to make long-needed repairs at dilapidated schools throughout the city.

The effort--called L.A. Leads the Way--is starting at Breed Street Elementary School in East Los Angeles and at Sepulveda Middle School in North Hills and is expected to deploy its army of actors to at least 10 more schools throughout Los Angeles.

Voters in the Los Angeles Unified School District passed a $2.4-billion repair and construction bond last year, but authorities say the money is reserved for large projects, rather than the smaller maintenance jobs that have often been deferred because of tight school budgets.

Most Hollywood charities ask celebrities to do little more than open a checkbook. This one requires that actors actually get their hands dirty.

Pamela Reed, who played Arnold Schwarzenegger’s undercover partner in the movie “Kindergarten Cop,” showed up at Breed Street Elementary to become the kindergarten custodian.

“I brought my rubber gloves,” she said holding up her white-and-pink kitchen gloves. “I expect to do some cleaning.”

Barbara Bain, best known for her role in the television series “Mission Impossible,” arrived at the school wearing a painter’s hat.

“I brought my bucket,” she said.

By the end of the day, Bain, Reed and a few other actors, carpenters and volunteers were put to work sorting and preparing new books for the school’s library.

“I think the kids deserve a good start,” said actress Kelly Wilson as she opened a box of books and stamped them with the school’s name and address.

Other actors used masking tape and paper to prepare a classroom for painting.

At Sepulveda Middle School, where work will begin Saturday, Principal Robert Reimann said he has plenty of tasks to keep the actors busy.

The volunteers will organize new textbooks and library books, paint interior eaves and till flower beds where students grow squash, string beans, onions and other vegetables.

“We have a whole laundry list of things we’d like to do,” Reimann said. “We like it.”

Organizers chose Breed Street and Sepulveda middle schools in the hope that both will become national models of volunteer work; both have already benefited from substantial community support.

“I think it will snowball,” said Breed Street Principal Katy Iriarte. “I’m just very excited that it’s here.”

The idea for the repair program began as an offshoot of another Screen Actors Guild effort called Book PALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools), which employs actors to read to 6,000 children at 55 schools each week.

Bain, who founded Book PALS, said actors became disgusted by the condition of many of the schools where they volunteered and offered to help make some repairs.

While the actors will provide the unskilled labor, the heavy construction will be provided by the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Los Angeles and Orange counties and the Southern California District Council of Carpenters.

“It seems the best we can do for the kids,” Bain said.

At a news conference to kick off the program, Mayor Richard Riordan and Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ruben Zacarias lauded the effort as an important partnership between the entertainment industry and the schools.

While introducing several of the celebrities, however, the mayor referred to actor Mitchell Ryan of ABC’s “Dharma and Greg” as “the father on the Dharmaget Show.”

“That’s Dharma and Greg,” Ryan politely told Riordan.

“Yeah, I know,” the mayor said. “I watch it every week.”

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Times staff writer Duke Helfand contributed to this story.