I just got off the phone with Lorenzo Lamas

[Monte Smith]

Kee-rist, people are sad:



Faded Celebrities Get a Gig Greeting Fans on the Phone


By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page C01



If you ever find yourself wondering, perhaps while watching late-night television reruns or idly clipping your toenails, whatever happened to former Hulk Lou Ferrigno or former child actor Todd Bridges, puzzle no longer. It turns out they're waiting to hear from you.



That's right! At HollywoodIsCalling.com, a scrappy-looking two-month-old Web site, all that's required is your credit card number or electronic check in the amount of $19.95, and within seven days you can expect to hear from one bona fide, if slightly faded, celebrity wishing you Happy Halloween, get well soon, or congratulations on your retirement. The 15-second phone call works out to over a dollar a second, which is, if you think about it, a small price to pay for the privilege of knowing that, for example, hunky Lorenzo Lamas is incredibly excited that you're turning 40.



"I say happy birthday a lot," says Lamas, formerly of the television shows "Renegade" and "Falcon Crest." "I congratulate people at work for achieving employee of the month."



Careers rise and fall in Hollywood, and it just so happens that there is a certain altitude at which celebrities are willing to make personal calls to strangers. They get to hear from admirers again and supplement their incomes. You get to share a moment with someone who once almost approached something sort of like greatness -- someone like "Survivor" champion Richard Hatch, best known for being naked and pudgy on television. Everybody wins.



Hollywood Is Calling has the look of a Web site designed in 1996, with lots of text, poor punctuation and few graphics. Scrolling down the list of 23 celebrities is like viewing a lineup for VH1's "Where Are They Now?" Many of the photographs are decades old. A few look more like Polaroids than professional head shots. Beneath each picture are the words PLACE YOUR ORDER.



You can order up Fred "Rerun" Berry, who sounds, by the way, extremely eager to talk to you.



"I bet you that I've made more calls than anyone on this service," Berry says, explaining that he'd rather phone his fans than meet them in person, because some of them are rather odd.



On the '70s television show "What's Happening!" Berry used to play that funny, heavy-set, dancing character named Rerun in a red beret and suspenders. In his real life over the years, Berry has experienced drug and alcohol problems, gone through recovery, gone through six marriages to four women and become an ordained minister. But he seems happiest being thought of as lovable old Rerun. He legally adopted the nickname as his middle name, and even now, at 52, he wears his trademark beret and suspenders when he makes public appearances. When he calls his fans through Hollywood Is Calling, he tells them it's Rerun and says a line from the show, "Hey-hey-hey." Sometimes they scream.



"I'm not doing it for the money," Berry says. "Hearing the excitement in people's voices -- I think I would pay them if I really had the money." Indeed, he considers making people laugh over the phone a sort of ministry. "This is like curing the world," he says.



That's one way of putting it. Here's another:



"Well, obviously it's a way to make some extra money," says Lamas. "I mean, why else would I take time out of my day to call perfect strangers?"



Lamas, 45, who appeared this year as a judge on the cruel television show "Are You Hot?," says things have "been a little slow" in recent years. He's not worried, he says, because this is natural in Hollywood, but nonetheless he has children to feed.



"All of the money that I'm making for this is going to my own personal charity, the Lamas children's fund," he says. "I've got six lovely recipients."



A spokesman for Hollywood Is Calling, Michael Stevens, won't say how much the celebrities make, and he says the Web site's creator, a freelance television producer named John Surowy, is too busy to be interviewed. (Among Surowy's budding projects are two reality television shows involving ex-cons.)



In recent years, as celebrity has become cheaper, an industry of second chances has grown around B-listers. Thus, Hatch got to write a self-help book and Berry did an episode on the cable show "Star Dates," in which celebrities try to find romance with ordinary people. Former child actor Corey Feldman whined his way through a reality show called "The Surreal Life," and Bridges (formerly of "Diff'rent Strokes") fought rapper Vanilla Ice on "Celebrity Boxing." These are all devil's bargains: income and exposure in exchange for a certain degree of indignity. It's no wonder, then, that Bridges seems a tad defensive about his gig making happy birthday calls.



"Entertainment is entertainment," says Bridges, 38, who struggled in the past with drug problems and is now trying to sell a script about his life. "The phone call is like going to the movies, the same principle. . . . We're all actors and we're going to do entertaining things." It is entertaining, as Andy Freeman discovered some days ago. Freeman, 36, a real estate developer in Greensboro, N.C., got a call from his girlfriend, who -- for no apparent reason -- started reading him a long list of names. Freeman thought she was giving him some sort of compatibility test from Cosmopolitan.



"They were kind of obscure but I recognized a few of them, and one of them was David Naughton," the actor from "An American Werewolf in London," Freeman says. "Next thing I know, about a week later I get a call from this guy."



Naughton left a message, which Freeman saved because it was so cool. "Hey, Andy, this is David Naughton. You probably haven't heard this voice in a while.'"



Fame is fickle, and the has-been's fate is cruel. The world sneers at the fallen. Their public appearances seem somehow tawdry; their autographs sell for $7.50 on eBay. Strangers recognize them on the street but don't know their names. Their identities get confused with the characters they once played.



Berry, for example, refers to one of his fellow actors on Hollywood Is Calling as Brother Man, a character the actor played on the television show "Martin." "He used to come in the window off the fire escape and eat up Martin's food," says Fred Berry. "His name is Reginald something."



That would be Reginald Ballard, whose smiling face is located some names below Berry's on Hollywood Is Calling, and right above the words "Celebrity Status: Available."

[Pete C]

I'm still waiting for my call from Donna Douglas.

[Jazzooo]

"The world sneers at the fallen. "

Starting with this sneering writer.

[blawless]

These are all devil's bargains: income and exposure in exchange for a certain degree of indignity.

It's not like Rerun or the rest had that much dignity to lose.

[al j]

I wonder if they do conference calls. Imagine a shoot-the-shit with Rerun, Willis and Epstein!

[Chris D]

Wow.

Funny ting is, I still say "hey, hey, hey" all the time. In the right crowd, it's a surefire crack-'em'up.

[Enforcer]

I still say, "Do *not* insult the dead!" Unfortunately, none of the people I say it to knew my high school friend Ken or the joke behind it, so they don't laugh or anything.

Eccentric but a monster cook,
Larry

[hornplayer]

On a billboard near Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan, there's an ad asking the public to watch music videos... and the "asler" is billed as "International Famous Person" Sally Struthers.

(for those too young to know, she played Archie Bunker's daughter Gloria on "All in the Family.")

[clinthopson]

I s Lorenzo Fernando's kid?

Stories abound that Fernando, back in the 50's, got more ass than a toilet seat.

[Chris D]

Yep, clint, he's from the same pack of Lamas.

[Pete C]

I wonder if Paul Peterson & Billy Gray are available.

[Valerie]

I find it doubly pathetic that both the ex-Mrs. Lamas and Mr. Lamas are both signed up - to help keep shoes on their three young kids, I guess. And then he has kids from elsewhere! Oy! He's a young dude and I think he's already had three wives. Guess he's following in the footsteps....

[Monte Smith]

Poor Lorenzo Lamas! Going from celebrity judge on television's Are Your Hot? to this!

[Tom Storer]

"I'm not doing it for the money," Berry says. "Hearing the excitement in people's voices -- I think I would pay them if I really had the money."

We believe you, Rerun.

[Ron Thorne]

This is hysterically funny and sad, all at once.

Pete, as a token of my esteem for you, I've arranged a call to you from ...

[Jazzzoline]

How do I know it's Denzel Washington calling me? I mean.. all the black guys from every movies have their voice doubled by the same guy speaking french. Last week, I watched a movie in english and fell down from my lazyboy when i heard Di Caprio's real voice.
watta turn off

[Jazzzoline]

Do they offer morning wake up calls too??
or... bed time stories... GRINS

[steve(thelil)]

I just got a call from Liberace's palimony plaintiff Scott Thornson. I was surprised at his depth.

[Monte Smith]

Personally, I'd like to catch up with actor Gil Gerard. Did you know that previous to his starring role in television's Buck Rogers, Gil was an industrial chemist?



"Beety beety beety, hey Buck get your hand off my ass."

[steve(thelil)]

I hear you. After all Gil Gerard DOES look alot like Scott Thornson.

[Monte Smith]

Screw you, Saint! Gil Gerard is all man.

[Monte Smith]

Not all man, on the other hand:



Col. Wilma Deering! Oh yes, the adolescent fantasies. They are all coming back to me.

[Monte Smith]

Uh oh. Now wait a second.



I'm not saying anything, but isn't that the gay flag on Buck's arm there? And yet it's the insignia of 25th-century Earth. Is Gil Gerard insinuating that in the 25th century, we're all going to be gay? I'd believe it.