The Thin Red Line

The place is Limo Central: a narrow Hollywood side street crawling with a casting call of stretches angled helter-skelter beside loitering, cigarette smoking drivers and their disdainful smirks.

Inside the Pantages Theater, the passengers of these flashy cars are busy doling out backslaps and kudos at the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, co-hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams and other headliners.

Outside, far from the stage lights, a Los Angeles city fire inspector named Robert Gladden has a celebrity traffic jam on his hands--the madcap crush of chauffeurs vying for the best spots, ready to whisk away their emerging luminaries.

When Hollywood’s stars come out at night, the 46-year-old Gladden usually isn’t far away. Assigned to the Fire Department’s Public Assemblage Unit, he’s a veteran firefighter with the often thankless job of controlling crowds and spotting fire hazards at the entertainment world’s most stellar events.

Gladden is a regular at everything from the Academy Awards show to illegal rave bashes to backyard receptions at the Playboy mansion to crowded chic nightclubs across Hollywood. When celebrities get their star on the Walk of Fame, Gladden is there. When “Titanic” opened at Mann’s Chinese Theatre, drawing hundreds and closing down Hollywood Boulevard, Gladden was there. When Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her 65th birthday at an exclusive party that included a reserved seat for her dog, Gladden was on hand.

His bible is the fire code and, stars or no stars, he takes no grief.

“Whose limo is that?” he snaps, pointing to a spanking new black stretch that’s blocking a fire exit outside the Pantages.

“Um,” replies a suit-wearing Blockbuster Awards organizer, “that’s Mr. Schwarzenegger’s.”

“Well, get it out of here.”

“Ahem, we can’t,” the man in the suit says. “We can’t find Mr. Schwarzenegger’s bodyguard. He’s got the keys.”

“I don’t care if Arnold has to come out here and move it himself,” Gladden responds. “I want that car gone in five minutes. Or I’m gonna move it myself--with a tow truck.”

Within moments, the bodyguard is located and the offending limo is gone from sight.

Forever on Gladden’s mind--and on those of six other inspectors on public assemblage beats citywide--are horrific images of public events gone terribly wrong. Such as the night someone rolled a drum of gasoline inside a cocktail bar near USC in the 1960s and set the place on fire, killing 30 people who couldn’t escape because the back doors were locked.

But Gladden has more personal reasons to fear how fast flames can snatch the people you love.

His father, a former city firefighter, died battling a Pacific Palisades blaze in 1968. And his mother was killed in 1985 when fire swept through her Baldwin Hills neighborhood.

Today, Gladden, a 20-year veteran of the department, proudly wears his father’s old badge. And not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about his mother, a former psychiatric worker known as “Lockie,” who tried to warn residents of the blaze before dying in a neighbor’s bathtub, where she finally fled to avoid the firestorm.

At each event, Gladden says, he recalls the pain of losing his parents and reminds himself that his vigilance in spotting fire hazards and preventing overcrowding lessens the odds that his colleagues will be called in to fight a fire.

At Hollywood events, Gladden usually moves unnoticed amid the glitter. Dressed in a white shirt and black pants--portable radio, cellular phone, notebooks and keyring dangling from his beltloops and pockets--he looks more like some loopy engineer than a fire official. He even wears one of those Poindexter-looking plastic holders with four pens sprouting from his shirtpocket.

For event organizers, Gladden is the finicky detail man, the nitpicker with the white glove, moving through the underground corridors and backrooms of restaurants and concert halls, making sure fire codes are closely observed.

Consulting with roadies, chefs and bouncers, his job is to seek out such fire hazards as propane heaters lit under canvas tents. He makes sure boom-held mini cameras don’t swoop too low over a crowd and smack heads and that the paparazzi don’t fight over access to stars. He keeps a path clear for firetrucks and ensures that bulky stage equipment doesn’t block fire doors.

In his three years with the Public Assemblage Unit--formed near the turn of the century to inspect vaudeville stages--he has closed down more than 30 parties and restaurants because of overcrowding. He has told gubernatorial bodyguards to step aside, ordered rappers like Snoop Doggy Dog to cut their entourages in half and even once shut down a Hollywood AIDS benefit when the place got too packed. He has told actor Brad Pitt to put out that cigarette. And at a local event attended by President Clinton, he once closed the doors on a host of political movers and shakers when crowd numbers got out of control.

“When it comes to crowds at public events, there are times when I just won’t compromise,” he says. “I’ve got too much personal history for that.”

The job has also brought him a healthy skepticism for the elitism and arrogance of celebrities and their followers.

“I stopped being impressed with this scene a while back,” says the Vietnam veteran, an admitted holdout from the generation of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. “The stars I wanted to meet died of drug overdoses a long time ago.”

At the Blockbuster Awards, Gladden watches a succession of stars parade down a red carpet “gawk walk,” waving and chatting as the paparazzi muscle each other aside and snap away.

As longhaired radio shock-jock Howard Stern appears before a cacophony of fans screaming his name and holding up placards reading things like “Howard Stern Deserves Every Award,” Gladden shakes his head in amazement. “I don’t get it,” he says. “Do you?”

Invisible as Gladden may seem, organizers know his words carry weight. He spends weeks poring over their plans before an event.

On Blockbuster night, he and other inspectors nearly shut down a men’s-room-turned-interview-suite when more than 75 press members, celebrities and their followers crowd into an area designated for 49.

“A lot of stars and production people don’t get it--they think we bring the Fire Department in as advisors,” said Kelly Brock, an associate producer at the Blockbuster Awards. “You have to remind them: ‘You don’t tell these inspectors anything. You make a request. They call the shots around here.’ ”

The tough calls have garnered Gladden some resentment. Like the evening he closed down the trendy Shark Bar restaurant in Hollywood when it became hopelessly overcrowded.

“Gladden doesn’t bend for anything--he does everything by the book,” said Shark Bar manager Chris Hale. “That night, I had a whole lot of celebrities in this place--nearly the entire Los Angeles Laker and Miami Heat teams. But Gladden thought we were over our limit. He didn’t even hesitate. He said, ‘Let’s close this place down.’ ”

So, there was Gladden, pacing the restaurant, advising diners to finish their meals, calling for backup, herding people out through the exits. Everyone from busboys and cooks to Shaquille O’Neill.

Hale detests such closures but acknowledges, “Robert Gladden is a necessary evil. He’s looking over our shoulder and pops in when we least expect it. But I’m wise to him. I’m looking for him every Friday and Saturday night now.”

For Gladden, the real challenge comes with the star entourages--the family members, bodyguards and hangers-on who follow a celebrity like a king’s courtiers and push room capacities past their limits.

“The younger the star, the bigger the entourage,” he says. “Somebody’s mom has cancer and needs to be there. And, of course, the hairdresser can never be too far away.”

Another headache comes with fly-by-night promoters who ignore fire codes, often issuing three times as many backstage passes as a place can hold--turning Gladden and other inspectors into celebrity bouncers and people movers.

Back at the Blockbuster Awards, an overworked Gladden has fire after fire to extinguish: Without prior permission, a network film crew wants to break ranks and follow a star on her walk down the red carpet.

At one point, sequined singer Mariah Carey bolts from the carpet and rushes past the velvet ropes and across the street to greet her adoring fans. Immediately, she’s followed by a phalanx of reporters and cameramen who dash across traffic to catch the scene, making Gladden pull at his wavy salt-and-pepper hair.

“My father, if he were still alive, wouldn’t even recognize the job I do,” he says. “In his day, he fought fires and then came back to clean out the firehouse. All this celebrity business would have blown his mind.”

Finally, the awards show is over, the limos have cleared out, and the coast looks clear. Then comes Gladden’s battle with Stern’s film crew.

Stern is working a men’s bathroom interview suite already loaded to capacity. The inspectors tell the crew they can’t go inside--especially with extension cords running from their cameras, which is a fire hazard.

As Stern intervenes, the camera crew bolts inside anyway. “They were jerks,” Gladden says later. “We did our best to keep them out of there.”

And now the last emergency of a very long night: Mariah Carey’s bodyguard has lost his star.

He wanders the theater lobby, soliciting leads. Gladden cannot restrain himself.

“There’s a hot dog stand a few blocks down the street,” he tells the bodyguard, straight-faced. “And I swear I just saw her standing outside, with a dog in her hand.”