Hollywood’s Illusion and Reality

As Tinseltown’s honorary mayor unveiled a thumb’s-up figure of himself at the local wax museum, others across Hollywood were giving their own thumbs up Tuesday to the idea of having a real mayor for their town.

A day after a secessionists were successful in qualifying for a cityhood feasibility study, many locals were saying it’s about time.

Studio make-up artist Ken Horn--who helped create the wax image of Hollywood’s longtime ceremonial leader, Johnny Grant--said independence is overdue.

“It’s a good idea to be able to control what looks like yourself without having to get on a list and wait and wait,” Horn said.

“L.A.’s too big. They just haven’t treated Hollywood right,” agreed Helen Bursky, office manager for a Las Palmas Avenue photographic lab whose walls are papered with 8-by-10 glossies of its clients--actors and actresses.

“Right now, we’re too little for L.A. to notice. You try to get your city councilman on the phone and all they do is put you on hold and play music,” Bursky said, as others in the office nodded in agreement.

A few blocks away, 16-year-old Hollywood High School junior William Linares was putting up a message on the school marquee that announced a canned food drive for the needy as he endorsed community independence.

“Then we could have our own council people and they’d listen to the needs of people here, not on the other side of L.A.,” said Linares--who was among a group of teenagers that helped gather 45,294 signatures calling for the study.

Such sentiment fuels the Hollywood independence movement, launched earlier this year amid backers’ predictions that a smaller, more responsive government could boost an area whose image badly needs polishing.

Collection of signatures from 25% of the registered voters of the 19-square-mile area targeted as the future city by Hollywood Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, or VOTE, would trigger an economic study to determine whether incorporation would be “revenue neutral” for the new city and the remaining parts of Los Angeles.

With Monday’s certification of the petitions, Hollywood joins the San Fernando Valley and the Harbor area in studying independence. If economic viability is proved, the issue of cityhood for the three areas could be placed on the November 2002 ballot, according Hollywood VOTE leaders Fares Wehbe and Gene La Pietra.

Los Angeles officials oppose chopping Los Angeles into four smaller cities. Mayor Richard Riordan has compared the proposed break-up to a nasty divorce in which neither side wins.

On Tuesday, some were in agreement with him. “Why would they want to be independent when L.A. has put so much money into Hollywood?” asked limousine driver Joe Munford of Baldwin Hills as he delivered a group of New Jersey tourists to Mann’s Chinese Theatre.

But others were of the mind that Los Angeles has spent too little, too late on Hollywood.

“We don’t get any services here. L.A.’s too big” said Fred Siman, who was trimming the jasmine vine growing through the fence in front of the Franklin Place apartment house he owns.

Along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, tourists were surprised that Hollywood isn’t an independent city.

“I thought it was a city. People relate more to ‘Hollywood’ than ‘Los Angeles’ where I come from,” said visitor Karen Auld of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

At the Hollywood Wax Museum, visitor Dennis Fisher of Denver was likewise puzzled. “This isn’t L.A., is it? Isn’t Hollywood it’s own city? Everybody thinks of it as its own place,” said Fisher, a test lab safety manager.

Fisher was watching as Johnny Grant, Hollywood’s self-styled honorary mayor, unveiled a wax likeness of himself. It depicts him flashing a big smile and a hearty thumb’s up--a familiar pose for the man who presides over Walk of Fame unveilings and other events.

Grant said he is waiting for the feasibility report before taking a position on secession. He acknowledged, however, that he was the first person to sign the petitions calling for the study. If it turns out he was wrong, he’s got a fall guy.

“If I ever get in trouble in Hollywood, this is the Johnny who did it,” he joked--pointing his thumb toward the wax figure.