No Foundation to Cosmetics Lawsuit, Actress Stevens Says

A friendship breaks up over makeup. . . . George Clinton’s sound man claims funk music made him deaf. . . . and Charlie Sheen says he got stiffed for his Lamborghini.

The role of Cricket in the 1960s television show “Hawaiian Eye” made Connie Stevens famous, but cosmetics made her fabulously wealthy after she reached a certain age and the offers for dramatic roles stopped coming.

The 59-year-old entertainer, who starred in the 1960s in “77 Sunset Strip” and has more recently been seen hawking her skin care products on the Home Shopping Network, is scheduled to testify this week in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Stevens is being sued by her former manager, who says she cheated him out of his share of the millions she made off her Forever Spring cosmetics line.

Lawyer Barry Langberg says his client, Norton Styne, had a verbal agreement with Stevens for 10% of the line’s profits.

But Stevens’ lawyer, Howard Rosoff, told a jury as the trial started last week that she never promised to include Styne in the cosmetics deal. Stevens maintains that their arrangement covered only her entertainment ventures, which were in a slump when she launched the skin care line in 1989.

Styne, who also was a personal friend and named Stevens the godmother of one of his children, is the son of Broadway composer Jule Styne, who wrote the score to “Funny Girl” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

But the friendship has grown strained since Norton Styne sued Stevens in 1994. Her lawyer told jurors that Styne did not contribute a nickel to the venture at a time when Stevens was having trouble making her mortgage payments.

“Forever Spring is blood and guts and hard work and risk and jeopardy,” Rosoff said to the jury.

But can it get rid of crow’s feet?

PUMP UP THE VOLUME: Funk-meister George Clinton’s former sound engineer says in a lawsuit that he suffered permanent hearing loss after working briefly with Clinton’s band, the P-Funk Allstars.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks damages of $2 million. The documents accuse Clinton and his management company, We B Funkin’, of negligence and allege that they failed to provide workers’ compensation insurance as required by the federal labor code.

“They kept telling him, ‘Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up,’ ” said Jason Matison, attorney for John Schumacher, the sound engineer. Matison said his 38-year-old client is “almost completely deaf.”

Schumacher repeatedly complained about the noise level and how it was affecting his hearing, Matison added. But his bosses with the band told him: “You’re going to turn it up or you’re fired,” the lawyer said.

Donald K. Wilson Jr., an attorney at legal celebrity Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s offices in Los Angeles, is asking the court to dismiss the suit against Clinton at a hearing in two weeks. In court papers, Wilson says Schumacher has failed to establish a relationship between funk music and his hearing loss.

THE AD THAT KEEPS ON GIVING: A model is suing a Los Angeles photographer and talent agency, charging that they duped her into posing for a magazine advertisement that makes it appear she is endorsing a treatment for genital herpes.

Jacqueline Meyer seeks $50,000 in damages in her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit. It says the “manipulative deeds” of photographer Jay Silverman and the agency, Sunset West, cost her other modeling jobs and gave the false impression that she suffered from “an infectious, contagious and loathsome disease.”

The ad, for a product called FAMVIR, made by SmithKline Beecham, features a worried-looking woman and copy that states: “I’ll tell you about the shame, the pain and a hundred broken dates. That’s what genital herpes did to me.”

Silverman declined to comment.

OH LORD, WON’T YOU BUY ME A MERCEDES-BENZ? Charlie Sheen is suing an Arizona luxury car dealer for $45,000--money the actor says is due him after he returned a Mercedes-Benz S600 that he had acquired for his mother.

According to the lawsuit filed by lawyer Marty Singer in Santa Monica Superior Court, Sheen returned the car after his mother told him she really didn’t need it.

The deal began when Sheen offered to sell his 1992 Lamborghini Diablo for $110,000 to Verdone Motor Sports Ltd. However, the transaction became more complicated when the Mercedes caught Sheen’s eye.

Later, when his mother told Sheen that she didn’t need such a fancy car, he returned it. The suit says the dealer turned over $45,000--and agreed to provide another $45,000 if the Mercedes passed muster with a mechanic and could be leased to someone else. Although he returned the car more than a year ago and it has since been leased to someone else, he hasn’t seen the second $45,000 payment, Sheen alleges. Dealer Gino Verdone could not be reached for comment.

DOC HOLLYWOOD PROBE CONTINUES: A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has ordered four former employees of Steven Hoeff-

lin, better known as the plastic surgeon to the stars, to testify during an inquiry by the Medical Board of California into allegations that the surgeon fondled and ridiculed sedated celebrity patients.

Hoefflin, also known as “Doc Hollywood” because his patients have included Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, has vehemently denied the charges. He says he is the victim of a smear campaign by two former associates, whom he is suing for slander, and other disgruntled former employees.

Judge Ronald Sohigian ordered the four former staffers to testify before the medical board or face being held in contempt of court. The women--operating room assistants Kim Moore-Mestas and Lidia Benjamin and office workers Barbara Maywood and Donna Burton--had been reluctant to testify because they feared violating a confidentiality clause of a 1996 settlement, according to their attorney, Richard Garrigues. The settlement resolved a sexual harassment suit they brought against Hoefflin but immediately withdrew. Hoefflin said in a statement that the women signed a letter of apology saying the lawsuit was filed by mistake “without sufficient fact or legal basis.”

Medical board inquiries are typically confidential until the board makes a finding.

MAKE LOVE NOT LAW: A jury in Los Angeles Superior Court has returned a verdict in favor of a former call girl who wrote the kiss-and-sell tome “You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again.”

Liza Greer, who co-wrote the best-selling book, sued Dove Entertainment over a royalty dispute. She contended that she was forced to sign an additional clause to her contract that cut her share of the royalties from the standard 10% to a paltry 2.5%.

Last month, a jury agreed that Dove had exerted undue influence on Greer by refusing to give her time to review the legal papers or discuss them with her lawyer.

Greer and Dove return to court in two weeks for a hearing at which damages will be discussed. Her lawyer, Richard M. Rosenthal, said the difference between 2.5% and 10% of the royalties approaches $100,000, including interest.

ROCKY’S REBUTTAL: Sylvester Stallone doesn’t really litigate with dead people, his lawyer says. It just looked that way because the court clerk’s office in Santa Monica apparently misfiled the actor’s request to dismiss a lawsuit.

Stallone brought the suit in April in Santa Monica Superior Court against Gianni Versace--several months before the fashion designer was shot to death July 14 outside his mansion in Miami Beach. The suit involved Versace’s allegedly unauthorized use of a fashion photo featuring the “Rocky” star with model Claudia Schiffer.

According to court records, the lawsuit was served about two weeks before Versace was gunned down.

But the public court file did not reveal that Stallone asked the court to dismiss his lawsuit in September--about two months after Versace’s death.

The motion provided by Stallone’s lawyer, Marty Singer, is dated Sept. 2 and bears a court seal dated Sept. 5, but is not signed by a court official.