Look Who We Found Behind Curtain No. 1

We were navigating the lobby of the Shubert Theatre the other day when a ghost from the past crossed our line of vision.

Monty Hall.

We were not alone in having our vision crossed. “Where do I find Door 30?” someone asked him.

“Door 30 is next to Door 29,” Hall replied with confidence.

Hey, when you really need to know, go right to the expert. Any kid who has ever stayed home sick from school since Sputnik knows about Hall’s devil-may-care facility with doors and boxes and curtains. Indeed, his iconic TV show “Let’s Make a Deal” was like training wheels for its interactive successor, the Home Shopping Network. Oh, yes. It also prepared us to brave the Bev Center and its ilk.

We wanted to thank Hall for helping us bloom into the accomplished shopper we’ve become. Instead, we asked him whatever happened to Carol Merrill, the game-show product demonstrator who pioneered a career path for the Vanna Whites of the world.

“Carol Merrill, the most wonderful girl. She’s living in Hawaii. She goes around the islands teaching about natural foods and holistic medicine. She’s very much into that. She lives on the big island, and she and her husband have a macadamia nut farm. So she’s very happy.”

Merrill really did do a bang-up job of demonstrating the outlines of refrigerators. Still, we wondered how she carved out her identity as the first celebrity game-show model. It turned out Hall carved it out for her.

“I never said ‘door’ without saying ‘Carol Merrill.’ ‘What Carol Merrill has behind door No. 2.’ ‘What Carol Merrill has in the box.’ So she and Jay Stewart, my announcer, became stars. Everywhere we went, people would say, ‘How’s Carol?’ ‘How’s Jay?’ ”

Why did you do that?

“Why not?”

Monty Hall. Deal breaker. Star maker. Who knew?

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For your consideration. Yet another reason why Jeffrey Katzenberg is Jeffrey Katzenberg. To the DreamWorks honcho’s list of talents, add this: He’s a romantic good-luck charm. Katzenberg lent his cupid-like presence to Linda and Jerry Bruckheimer’s first date lo those many years ago. Katzenberg happened to fly in from New York on that fated evening, so Bruckheimer suggested making it a threesome. Dinner, that is.

“It was good for me,” Katzenberg told us. “And it seems to have worked out OK for them. They’re still together.”

“It’s good for me,” Katzenberg’s wife, Marilyn, chimed in. “I got a best friend out of it.”

And how long ago was that?

“Seventeen or 18 years,” Marilyn said.

But who’s counting?

“We are,” Katzenberg said. “We count box office and years married.”

Which has higher priority?

“I’ll be diplomatic and say” (pause for effect) “box office.”

Swoon.

We did our swooning at the Katzenbergs’ recent party for Linda Bruckheimer’s new novel, “Dreaming Southern” (Dutton), which happened to coincide with their 24th anniversary. Lucque’s on Melrose Avenue ranneth over with snacking film types like co-hosts Bruckheimer and Ruth and Jake Bloom, as well as Joe Roth, Farrah Fawcett, James Caan, Jon Lovitz, Bob Daly and Carole Bayer Sager, Jim Belushi, Jim Wiatt, Ron Meyer, Steve Tisch and Jonathan Dolgen.

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Movies really do rule the world. They’ve persuaded publishers that sequels are a good idea, which is why we’re thumbing through a copy of Michael McCreary’s new coffee-table topper, “Havens II: Celebrity Lifestyles” (General Publishing). Hmmmm, looks like there are people out there with gobs of money and absolutely no taste, if you can imagine that.

OK, since book sales benefit the Motion Picture & Television Fund, we’ll play nice. There are, in fact, celebrities with style. There. We said it. We wouldn’t mind house-sitting for Julia Sweeney in her busy-looking bachelorette pad filled with no-fail Stickley furniture. And we’d happily water Swoosie Kurtz’s plants in her light-filled minimalist home designed by Harwell Hamilton Harris, a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright.