ARTIST'S CARICATURES COME BACK TO LIFE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Jack Lane can still hear the scream.

Silent film star Mae Murray was having lunch one day at the legendary Brown Derby on Vine Street in Hollywood when she looked up on the restaurant's Wall of Fame where her caricature had hung for over 20 years in a place of prominence.

It was gone. Replaced by a new face. Some floozy from the talkies.

``I was in the restaurant putting up some of my drawings when she let out this incredible, piercing scream,'' said Lane, who spent 40 years drawing more than 500 caricatures of famous movie stars and entertainers as they ate lunch or dinner at the Derby.

``Mae ordered the waiters to find her drawing immediately,'' Lane laughed. ``They found it hanging over a bar in the back of the restaurant. She wouldn't quiet down until they put it back on the front wall.''

It was the golden age of Hollywood, and Lane - who has lived in the same hilltop Woodland Hills home for 47 years - was there to chronicle it all with his grease pencil from 1947 to 1987, when the original Derby closed for good.

``My first drawing was Bob Burns, an old bazooka player on the Rudy Vallee radio show, and my last was actor Lloyd Bridges,'' Lane said. ``In between I drew just about everyone who was anyone in Hollywood.''

Anyone who walked into the Derby. Some stars never did.

``Jimmy Stewart never came in,'' Lane said. ``Burt Lancaster came in once, and said I could draw him the next time he came in, but he never came back.

``No one ever refused me. The only trouble I had was with the actress Margaret Rutherford. After I finished, she said, 'Young man, that's the picture of an older woman, not me.' She didn't like it and came unglued.''

Lane is the ``Rembrandt of caricaturists,'' says Johnny Grant, the honorary mayor of Hollywood, whose caricature hung on the Derby wall between Ronald Reagan and Bette Davis.

``Everybody in Hollywood wanted to be up on that wall, and it was Jack who put them up there,'' Grant said. ``He carved his own unique niche of Hollywood history.''

All of the drawings were done at the Derby, except two - Burt Reynolds and Johnny Carson.

``Burt was doing 'The Merv Griffin Show' down the street, and was supposed to walk over during a break so I could draw him,'' he said. ``It was during that time when he was the No. 1 box office star.

``Burt couldn't get a half-block before fans started to attack him. They tore his tie and shirt off, and the ushers at the Griffin show had to rescue him. He couldn't get to the Derby alive.

``I went over to the Paramount lot to draw him because he was afraid to come out in public,'' Lane said. ``Johnny Carson was the same way. He wouldn't come out in public if it killed him. I drew him in his NBC studio.''

They're all there, in the files in his home studio where the walls are covered with his drawings, including the Jimmy Durante caricature using two frames - one for the comedian's face, the other for his famous schnozzle.

``I always drew in grease pencil so I could erase if I saw a better expression,'' Lane said. ``I'd take them home, and do it over in ink to hang on the Derby's walls.''

When the Derby closed, the ink drawings went with owner Walter Scharfe, who had bought the eatery from its original owner, Bob Cobb, for whom the Cobb salad is named.

The grease pencil drawings stayed with Lane.

There's a young movie starlet named Lucille Ball, who wouldn't let Lane draw her unless he also drew her Latin boyfriend - a guy named Desi Arnaz.

There's Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Red Skelton and actor Peter Lawford, who was sitting in a booth with a couple of young guys Lane had never seen before.

``One of them had ordered oysters on the half shell and was putting them in his hair,'' Lane laughed. ``I found out later the guy's name was Jerry Lewis. The other guy was Dean Martin.''

Lane's unique drawings have had a resurgence lately, but not on restaurant walls.

``I went around to a few of the more bigger, upscale restaurants in town thinking there might be some interest in hanging a few of my drawings on their walls, but no one wanted them,'' Lane said.

They were languishing in his files until about six months ago when a friend of Lane's called to tell him there were people interested in starting a Web site of Lane's famous grease pencil drawings.

``Each week, I do three or four new drawings of a star from the original grease pencil drawing, and make it available for people to bid on through e-Bay,'' Lane said.

In the coming weeks, caricatures of Skelton and Hope will be available from the artist who originally drew them for the Brown Derby. For more information on the auction, go to www.venturablvd.com/jacklane/.

Also, from April 14 through June 6, there will be a retrospective of Lane's work at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, 7021 Hollywood Blvd. For more information, call [phone].

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Jack Lane maintains a gallery of the celebrity caricatures he did for the Brown Derby in the studio of his hilltop Woodland Hills home.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer