The Glamour Beat

The audience at Los Angeles' Encino Theater was just settling back to watchShelley Winters sin in South Sea Sinner when a tuxedoed headwaiter from Ciro's marched down the center aisle. Behind him came two red-coated flunkies, ceremoniously bearing aloft a jumbo-sized shrimp cocktail. They halted and served it to a hefty customer three seats off the aisle. Then came Squab under Glass, Caesar Salad, Cherries Jubilee (in flaming brandy). By the time Erskine Johnson had eaten his way to the check ($12.65), the audience was also fed up; it chorused, "Throw the bum out!"

Last week, in his Hollywood column, which the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicates to 400 newspapers, Showoff Johnson gave a rave review to his tasteless performance. Old Johnson fans needed no explanation of such zany didos; Johnson was simply dramatizing his crusade against folks who eat popcorn In theaters.

Columnist Johnson, a professional funnyman, has also interviewed mind-readers to get a line on prospective Academy Award winners (it was a wobbly line), examined Greer Carson's knees after an Eastern stocking designer called her knock-kneed (no knock), inspected the redecorated ladies' room at Romanoff's restaurant (Hedy Lamarr was surprised to meet him there) and played bit parts in six movies. For his brash, brisk reporting about these unlikely activities and more consequential news of Hollywood, 39-yearold Erskine Johnson has become one of Hollywood's most widely read male columnists, earns about $35,000 a year (including radio and TV appearances).

"Skinny" (he used to weigh 205 Ibs.) was 26, and making $20 a week on the Los Angeles News, when William Randolph Hearst spotted his byline. He telephoned Johnson and hired him for $100 a week on the Los Angeles Examiner. Young Johnson's new column was called "Behind the Makeup," until a Hearst lin0-typist garbled the title: "Makeup the Behind." Recalls Skinny :"That day I became famous."

After Hearst fired Johnson as abruptly as he had hired him (one guess: Hearstling Louella Parsons thought him too smart for her own good), Skinny signed up with N.E.A. Skinny knew that he was no match for the catty, gossipy coverage of Hollywood's boudoirs, salons and saloons by Columnists Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Instead, he started covering Hollywood like any good, workaday reporter, still makes a daily round of the studios. Explains Johnson: "Hollywood is a City Hall beat, with bosoms."

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