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Honorary Mayor Of Hollywood Dies

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By JEFF WILSON, The Associated Press

Published: January 13, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Johnny Grant, the avuncular honorary mayor of Hollywood who traveled the world as Tinseltown's No. 1 cheerleader for more than a half-century, has died. He was 84.

Grant died just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, apparently of natural causes, said Officer Jason Lee. Grant was found dead on a bed in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Lee said.

Grant was perhaps best known as the jolly host alongside more than 500 celebrities he inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The lifelong bachelor lived in a 14th-floor suite at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Grant's mission in life was bringing the Tinseltown story to everyone. He hosted red carpet Oscar arrivals and Walk of Fame festivities, appeared in bit parts in movies and produced Hollywood's annual Christmas parade.

"I feel I have been the luckiest guy in the world," he often said. "It's been a pretty good ride."

Grant also joined globe-trotting Bob Hope as a USO ambassador, bringing entertainers to war zones to perform for U.S. military personnel during the Korean and Vietnam wars and battles in the Middle East.

He helped introduce homesick soldiers to Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Jane Russell, Terry Moore, Penny Singleton and Angie Dickinson, among others, leading Hope to once quip that he was "the rich man's Johnny Grant."

"You'll never find a more generous soul in your life," Dickinson told The Associated Press in 2006. "He was a ladies man. He's a Taurus. He's a doll."

Another close friend, actress Mamie Van Doren, described Grant simply as "Mr. Hollywood."

"I dated him in my teens," she recalled. "He's one of the greatest people I've ever known, so kind."

Over the years, Grant chatted with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra and Dolly Parton, and he was a friend to several presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. He counted President Reagan as one of his closest friends.

Born in Goldsboro, N.C., Grant was a cub reporter for radio station WGBR when he hitchhiked to Washington to cover President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third inauguration. The diminutive reporter sat in a tree to write down what he saw for his report.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, then after his discharge came to Hollywood, where he landed a small role playing a reporter in "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948), which starred William Bendix.

He was lured to Hollywood, he once recalled, after seeing Mickey Rooney in the 1938 film "Boys Town."

"If that little guy can do it, so can I," he remembered telling himself.

Grant also had a part in Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (1954) with Bing Crosby and played himself in 1966's "The Oscar."

Beginning in 1946, he was host of the game show "Stop the Clock," which aired alternately on Dumont Television in New York City.

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