Hollywood Stars - 2006

© 2007 by John Varley/Lee Emmett; all rights reserved

Walking down Hollywood Boulevard always makes me a little dizzy. It’s not that I’m overly impressed by the names of the people on the stars in the street—though you can’t help remarking on some of them you particularly like, from time to time (there’s Stan Freberg! and Ray Bradbury! and Crosby, Still, and Nash!). It’s just that I’m a compulsive reader, and no matter how I try not to, I always find that I’m reading all the names and before long my head is swimming.

For every Gene Autry or Jack Benny or Carole Lombard there’s an Al Pearce, Adele Jergens, or Lina Basquette. Who are these people? At one time, someone thought they were well enough known that no explanation would be necessary. Now they are forgotten. I remember a poignant sketch on “The Carol Burnett Show” where she was an old woman hanging around on the Boulevard, watching the tourists recognizing famous names. They’d come to one star and wonder who that was. It was her, of course, waiting to be asked for her autograph. She never was until Harvey Korman, whose star was close by, and was equally forgotten, happened along.

Harvey Korman. There’s a name I’ll bet a lot of young people have never heard of. When the Walk of Fame was first installed they did a whole lot of names at once. Now they add them one at a time, and always because this person is famous. But will they be in 50 years? In 100?

Vanna White

"Wheel of Fortune"
 

When: Thursday, April 20, 2006, at 11:30 a.m.

Location: 7018 Hollywood Blvd, near Highland

Vanna: I remember my parents telling me, at the age of 10, “You can do anything you want.” Dad, we did it!

We’d been in Hollywood four months before we realized you could attend the ceremonies when stars are installed on Hollywood Boulevard (and sometimes on Vine Street), and figured out how to find out when they were happening. These events are usually announced only about a week ahead of time, so you have to keep checking the website. We decided to attend the next one that came up, which happened to be Vanna White. It was about two blocks from the tourist madness in front of Grauman’s and the Hollywood/Highland Center. The crowd was not large, but then Vanna is an odd sort of star, isn’t she? Flippin’ those flippin’ letters for 26 years, about half of them letters that didn’t even need to be flipped, when they replaced them with TV screens … Merv Griffin was there, and Pat Sajak. So was Alex Trebek, though we didn’t get a picture of him. We decided this was sort of fun, and resolved to do it again when somebody interesting was getting a star.

Nancy Sinatra

Actress « Singer
 

When: Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 11:30 a.m.

Location: 7000 Hollywood Blvd, near Orange

Nancy: My advice to young women starting out is hang tough, don't quit — even if it takes 40 years.

Another rather odd star, like Vanna. She basically had the one hit, and never would have had that if she hadn’t had a famous father. I mean, she’s not that great a singer. And it runs in the family, too. Her brother, Frank Jr., was there, looking like a bloated version of his old man, also looking like he was angry with the world. I’d be, too, if I’d wanted to be a singer and had to somehow live up to the reputation of the greatest pop singer of the 20th Century (and one of the century’s premier assholes, too.) Frank Jr. looks like he got the asshole part right. It’s kind of a sad career when the high point of your fame is being kidnapped at the age of 19. Nancy has apparently devoted herself to Vietnam veterans, and I applaud her for that. But we were beginning to wonder just who did the selections for these stars. More about that later. Jo Anne Worley was there, too, one of those “Rowan and Martin Laugh-In” stars whose career didn’t exactly take off after the show closed.

Bruce Willis

Die Hard « Sixth Sense « Pulp Fiction
 

When: Monday, October 16, 2006, at 11:30 a.m.

Location: 6915 Hollywood Blvd, west of Highland

Bruce: I used to come down here and look at these stars and I could never quite figure out what you were supposed to do to get one…. Time has passed and now here I am doing this, and I'm still excited. I'm still excited to be an actor.

This one was held in front of Grauman’s, and was a whole different sort of affair than our previous two. These weren’t B- or C-list celebrities, these were Major Leaguers. Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck spoke, and Demi Moore, Don Johnson, and Kevin Costner were there. I wouldn’t have recognized Johnson if he hadn’t been introduced to wave to the crowd, Demi stayed in the background and we only got one shot of her, and Kevin Costner was hiding in the back under a baseball cap, and we didn’t get a pic of him at all.

Annette Bening

American Beauty « The Grifters
 

When: Friday, November 10, 2006, at 11:30 a.m.

Location: 6927 Hollywood Boulevard, near Highland

Annette: I always wanted a family so when I got to be a grown-up in the movies, I found my husband, and he's the person I'm the most grateful to, because he makes moments like this take on the proper perspective. I love my work, I love my craft, and I feel that's a journey I'm still in the midst of.

Since this was our fourth one of these, we'd learned our lesson. The real paparazzi have press credentials and get a special area, where they buzz and flutter and do their razzi thing away from the hoi polloi. Being tres polloi ourselves, we are always behind and to the side of the pros in a separate fenced-off area. The crowd is usually about five or six people deep, which is a wall of humanity for Lee. But we'd seen a couple wise guys with those folding three-step ladders that are easy to carry and have a bar on top, like you'd use in the kitchen. So we bought one for $30 and I carried it and set it up ... and we found we could easily have made our money back and maybe a small profit by charging a buck or two to let tourists climb up and snap a few shots! Not being mercenary like that, we let a few folks get up there out of the kindness of our hearts ... after we'd taken all the shots we wanted.

The ceremony was running late, and Johnny Grant, the “Unofficial Mayor of Hollywood,” who presides at all these things (fairly badly, in our opinion, as he is prone to exhort the crowd to more applause when they give some “celebrity” a lukewarm reception, just adding to the embarrassment), said that Annette and Warren were stuck in traffic. Which they were … and then they did a classy thing. Rather than keep everybody waiting, they got out of their limo a block away and walked down the street together and around the crowd barriers to the podium. They passed about five feet from me (and of course I wasn’t the one with the camera), Warren Beatty in an ice cream suit, Annette Bening in white.