The Scoop on Army

I’d barely been in Army Archerd’s cozy corner office at Variety for an hour, watching him put his column together, when he interrupted an anecdote featuring his old pal Mike Wallace to sound off on a more important subject--his age. It seems that some media outlets have been publishing an inflated number, putting Archerd’s age at 83.

“My correct age happens to be 80,” Army reports, saying it again slowly and distinctly so I get it right. “Eight-O.” When I tease him that even his Variety co-workers have suggested a higher figure, he calls my bluff. “Want to see my driver’s license?” Seconds later, he tosses his license across the desk. The Archerd birth date is right there in black type: 1-13-22.

“I think people get confused because Bob Stack and I have the same birthday, which we celebrate together every year,” Army explains. “But he’s two years older and always has been. So just for accuracy, it would be nice if you could get it right.”

Getting it right is a big deal with Archerd, who’s been writing his “Just for Variety” column for nearly half a century. There are columnists who unearth juicier gossip and have better pipelines to the latest It Girl. But when it comes to getting it right, no one is in the same ballpark. The Dodgers have Vin Scully. The Lakers have Chick Hearn. And Hollywood has Army Archerd, who has his own star on Hollywood Boulevard and has served as the academy’s official Oscar night celebrity greeter for 44 years. (On the wall of his office, Archerd has a framed copy of an Entertainment Weekly illustration of this year’s Oscar red carpet layout, where a spot near the Kodak Theatre entrance is billed as “Army’s Station.”)

Archerd has known Bob Hope since Army worked in the mailroom at Paramount Pictures in the early 1940s. He was at Elizabeth Taylor’s first wedding to hotelier Nicky Hilton. He had political debates till the wee hours with John Wayne. After hearing a young Barbra Streisand sing in the ‘60s, he wrote her up in the column, declaring that “a star is born.” Madonna sat on his lap at one of Swifty Lazar’s Oscar parties. “Of course,” Archerd allows, “that’s because I was sitting next to Warren Beatty.”

“Army is one of a kind,” says longtime Hollywood publicist Stan Rosenfield, whose clients include Will Smith and George Clooney. “He has power and credibility because he’s never mean-spirited and he writes truthful stories. If something is in Army’s column, you know it happened.”

Hollywood math being what it is, Archerd is being honored Saturday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for “the start of his 50th year with Variety,” even though most statisticians would call it a 49th anniversary celebration. The industry’s old guard will be out in force for the event, a charity benefit for the Kayne-Eras Center, an educational facility for developmentally impaired children and adults. In a town that relentlessly pursues youthful trends and fresh stars, Army’s column is a cozy throwback to a bygone era.

Ben Hecht once said that Walter Winchell wrote “like a man honking in a traffic jam.” Army’s rhythms are more sedate. Reading his reassuring prose is like listening to big-band music or having a bowl of Canter’s matzo ball soup.

In an era in which gossip columnists are frequently overshadowed by the 24-hour babble of celebrity coverage on the Internet and cable TV networks like E!, Archerd’s column is a fixture, dating back to 1953, when the big movie in town was “From Here to Eternity” and the jukebox hit was Patti Page’s “Doggie in the Window.”

When Army arrived in Hollywood after serving in the Navy during World War II, America’s obsession with celebrities and gossip had been in full swing for decades. Winchell’s column debuted at the New York Graphic in 1924, at roughly the same time that Louella Parsons was emerging as the queen of gossip for the Hearst papers in Hollywood. Frankly, little has changed in the seven decades that followed.

One of Winchell’s earliest items, that John Barrymore had taken the pledge to give up drinking--and wound up drunk the next night--would fit neatly in any of today’s leading columns, be it Liz Smith, Rush & Malloy or Page Six, which reported just the other day that young actress Tara Reid had been seen “guzzling booze” at a New York club. The Internet has sped the dissemination of news and gossip, and occasionally introduced a new wrinkle like Harry Knowles’ Ain’t It Cool News, a Web site devoted to film-geek gossip about test screenings of movies.

But the rules of the gossip game are basically the same. “It’s always who’s sleeping with who, who’s getting drunk and who’s hanging out at what club,” says Marc Malkin, who writes New York magazine’s Intelligencer column. “The only difference is that the names change.” When Army was starting out, the big story was Frank Sinatra breaking up with Ava Gardner. Today it’s Britney Spears dumping Justin Timberlake.

Archerd is an old-school celebrity chronicler: no blind items or quotes from “friends” or “spies.” With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he cranks out a 75-line column four days a week, doing his own reporting and legwork, scribbling notes on yellow 5-by-7 scraps of paper. He eats lunch at his desk. “The truck goes by and they throw me a taco,” is how he puts it.

Archerd works the telephone from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., when he files the column in time to make Variety’s New York edition. He writes a classic “three dot” column, a series of generally upbeat items separated by dots, focusing on celebrities’ work and charitable activities, rarely delving into stickier personal topics. When he wants to call a celebrity, Archerd rummages through three desk drawers packed with a collection of star and publicist phone numbers that would be the envy of any CIA agent.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I still gulp when I call Army,” says Larry Solters, a veteran music business publicist. “He’s the professor. You have to be really prepared when he gets on the phone, because he always knows more about your client than you do.”

Army’s most famous scoop came in 1985, when he broke the news that Rock Hudson had AIDS. It was written in classic Archerd fashion, with Army appealing to the better instincts of the Hollywood community: “The whispering campaign on Rock Hudson can and should stop.” As with most Archerd items, it was written from the inside out, with Army explaining that Hudson’s illness “was no secret to close Hollywood friends, but its true nature was divulged to very, very few.” He concluded the item with a prescient warning: “Doctors warn that the dread disease is going to reach catastrophic proportions in all communities if a cure is not soon found.”

He rarely editorializes, but when he does it gets the industry’s attention. In 1996, Archerd gently rebuked Marlon Brando for telling Larry King that “the Jews run Hollywood, and that’s why minorities are treated the way they are.” Several years later he was openly critical of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for giving a lifetime achievement award to Elia Kazan, who’d informed on his friends during the 1950s Red Scare.

He regularly gets unique inside access. When the academy’s awards review committee recently held its first post-Oscar meeting, Archerd got everyone on the phone--and in his column--before they even met. Army didn’t voice his own opinion, but after hearing nearly everyone bluntly admit that the show went on too long, readers came away believing things will be markedly different next year.

Archerd has a suspiciously full head of neatly combed gray hair, his long, slender hands are wrinkle-free, and he has the energy of someone half his age. After Milton Berle died last month, Archerd attended the funeral, banged out a column at his home in Westwood and faxed it to Variety. Whenever he picks up the phone, people get an effusive greeting: “honey” for the women, “kiddo” for the men. When he talks to dancer Ann Miller, he wishes her a happy birthday, then asks, “Should I say how old you are?” (The next day’s column generously lists her as 79.)

“Just for Variety” is not where you go to read about phenoms. The column often reads like a travel itinerary for an AARP cruise-ship vacation, with Esther Williams going to Vegas, Red Buttons “winging in” from Toronto, Mel Brooks “on a plane” to be with his wife, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman “arriving in Lake Hughes” for one of the star’s many charity ventures.

Still, publicist Bumble Ward, who reps a stable of young filmmakers, says an Archerd plug still counts. “For a young director,” she says, “if you make his column there’s a feeling that you’ve made it.” As Army puts it: “I’m not just interested in alte kockers [Yiddish for “old people”]. I was just trying to run something down about Leo DiCaprio.”

He recently led the column with a Halle Berry interview, tracking her down in Spain where she’s filming a new James Bond film. Cradling the phone on his shoulder, Archerd expertly pumped her about the Bond film (“You don’t have to disrobe again?”) and her recent Oscar win (“What has Oscar meant to you in terms of offers or asking price?”).

Each day he worries that the phone will stop ringing and his sources will dry up. When I was in his office, I asked him at midday how much of the column he had written. He pointed to the computer screen. All it said was, “Good Morning,” his customary opener. “That’s all I got,” he said. “The rest is spelled F-E-A-R. I’m always thinking, ‘Where is the news lurking? Who can I call?’” He shrugs. “There are days where I shvitz [sweat] a lot.”

When I leave, Army says, “You didn’t ask whether I was retiring. That’s what everybody asks.” I told him it hardly seemed likely. He nodded and said, “You got that right.”

“The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.