Fame Is Not So Fleeting for One Former Nobody

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard a single thing about a woman by the name of Erin Brockovich. I didn’t even know that Erin Brockovich was a woman, although it’s considerably easier to tell after you see her picture.

I remember running across a magazine ad, with very large letters reading: “Julia Roberts” “Erin Brockovich” “Coming in April.”

My first impression was that this Brockovich must be Roberts’ co-star--probably her hunky new romantic interest. I wondered how this guy had gotten so hot as to get a billing big as Julia’s.

“Who the heck is Erin Brockovich?” I asked a friend.

My friend was no help. He said that he did know of a John Malkovich and a Dmitri Shostakovich and a Todd Marinovich, if that was of any use to me.

“The guy is co-starring in a big new Julia Roberts movie, and I’ve never even heard of him,” I said.

My friend said it might be one of those attractive young actors from “Dawson’s Creek.”

I considered this.

“What the heck is ‘Dawson’s Creek?’ ” I asked, knowing nothing.

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Anyway, by the time Roberts’ new movie came out, I had come to realize that Erin Brockovich was not the co-star . . .

. . . she was the title.

It seems that in her real life before her reel life, Brockovich was a beauty queen turned file clerk who helped the people of a California town called Hinkley to sue the Pacific Gas & Electric utility company in an environmental case.

I wasn’t sure that this sounded like a thrilling subject for a movie, watching a gas and electric company get sued.

But guess what? “Erin Brockovich” has turned out to be the “Citizen Kane” of beauty queen-turned-file clerk movies.

It has already made more than $100 million at the box office, and might eventually make as much as that movie about the kid who sees dead people.

Erin Brockovich on film is a memorable protagonist. She helps contaminated little Hinkley win a cool $333 million from the big corporation. And she does so while showing more cleavage than a Folies Bergere floor show. I haven’t seen this many push-up brassieres since I interviewed Dennis Rodman at his locker.

So, the success of “Erin Brockovich” is such that it shouldn’t have been a shock to pick up the newspapers Thursday and see her face and figure splashed all over them.

Except it wasn’t the movie version . . . it was Brockovich herself, the real one, who was in the news.

“BLACKMAIL!” cried the huge Page 1 headline of one Los Angeles paper, above a photograph of Brockovich dressed in her usual no-turtlenecks-for-me way.

And what a story this was.

Arrests had just gone down of Brockovich’s ex-husband, her ex-boyfriend and a lawyer--now there’s a jazzy trio for you--for allegedly trying to squeeze more than $300,000 out of Brockovich and the lawyer she worked with in suing that gas and electric company.

Hmmm. I smell sequel.

Personally, I thought the “BLACKMAIL!” coverage was a bit much, although I am generally in favor of any story in which a lawyer gets arrested.

But I can’t deny that this is pretty wild stuff.

FBI agents and the Ventura County district attorney’s office were on the case. A hidden camera rolled as Brockovich and attorney Albert Finney--oops, I mean Edward Masry--reportedly met with the ex-husband, ex-boyfriend and their attorney.

Met over what? Over how much it was supposedly worth to Brockovich and Masry not to have it blabbed by the tabloids that: (a) They once were lovers! and (b) Erin was a poor mother to her kids.

Neither (a) nor (b) is true, Brockovich and Masry insist.

But wait, it gets wilder. Authorities may aim to prove that Brockovich’s ex-husband was planning to take $100,000 of the hush-hush “blackmail” money . . . and give it to her, as the back child support he owes.

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Why would the first of her three husbands be part of such a plot?

One theory is that he didn’t get a cut of the movie pie, for the rights to his part of the story. Now there’s a Hollywood motive for you. You don’t read a defendant his rights; you buy his rights.

Brockovich, who lives in Agoura Hills, must be amazed at the way her life has come to fame from obscurity this way. Rather than her 15 minutes being up already, she’s at 16 now and counting.

All that remains is for Julia Roberts to win an Oscar, then have it stolen and held for ransom. Look for that next April, in “Brockovich II.”

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com