Not Your Usual Celebrity Sighting

Gary Sherwin read it in the Palm Springs Desert Sun the other day: “Jesus Christ, 58, of Beverly Hills was detained at the Palm Springs City Jail on suspicion of public intoxication and trespassing.”

Christ, police said, had a disagreement with a bus driver, then lay down in front of the vehicle to block it from leaving.

And how did police know they were dealing with Jesus Christ?

From his California identification card.

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FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE: I wasn’t really surprised to hear there was a Jesus Christ in the Southland. After all, the last time I checked, the Department of Motor Vehicles listed an individual in Hollywood who called himself or herself simply God.

God was also a registered voter--a Republican, in case you were wondering.

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YOU THOUGHT SAM DONALDSON WAS TOUGH. . . . Getting back to Sherwin, my Palm Springs correspondent, this is the first item he has given me about Jesus Christ. But, in 1981, he did tell me about a never-to-be forgotten encounter he had with the president of the United States.

Sherwin, who is now vice president of the Palm Springs Desert Resorts Convention and Visitors Authority, was then part of a group of student journalists invited to the Oval Office to meet Ronald Reagan.

The president wasn’t there when they were ushered in. Thirty minutes later, he still hadn’t appeared. Finally, Sherwin, then an impatient 19, muttered, “Where the hell is the guy anyway?”

“I’m right here,” Reagan said, walking into the room, smiling.

It was a cold November day. Hearing that Sherwin was from Fullerton, Reagan quipped, “Can I go back with you?”

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A TOWN BY ANY OTHER NAME: Steve Morgan read in a trade publication about a used car store setting up in “Durante, Calif.” Good night, Mrs. Calabash! It’s actually Duarte.

No city in California is named after Jimmy Durante, though Del Mar should have re-christened itself in the comic’s honor in view of how famous he helped make the racetrack with his visits.

Others in my collection of mangled area names (see accompanying) include “Toppamga,” (spotted by D.W. Jacobsen) and “Ervine” (an electronics store’s business card, later corrected).

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HOLLYWOOD EXPERTS: The Oscar nominations are out, and there’s one story after another about this and that star. But how about a little sympathy for all the hopefuls who found out that they didn’t have what it took?

Listen to some of these harsh rejections of these unknowns:

* “It’s awful--take it away.” (Irving Thalberg’s reaction to the first MGM screen test of someone named Clark Gable).

* “What can you do with a guy with ears like that?” (Jack Warner, after viewing another screen test by Gable, 1930)

* “You better learn secretarial work or else get married.” (A modeling agency director to Marilyn Monroe, 1944)

“You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam’s apple sticks out too far, and you talk too slow.” (A Universal Pictures executive to Clint Eastwood, 1959)

* “Reagan doesn’t have the presidential look.” (United Artists executive turning down the idea of Reagan starring in the 1964 movie, “The Best Man”)

These, by the way, are from the book “The Experts Speak,” by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.

miscelLAny:

Joshua Rabinowitz of Santa Monica points out that Trojan Avenue and Bruin Street meet (or should I say collide) in L.A. near the corner of Western Avenue and Imperial Boulevard. Oddly, the intersection is closer to the Forum than to the Coliseum.