LIVING WITH ALL THE PASSION HE CAN MUSTER.

Byline: DENNIS MCCARTHY

The young Marine stood in the back of the banquet room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Wednesday watching the honorary mayor of Hollywood go table to table shaking a few hundred hands on his 84th birthday.

"I met him right after 9-11," Staff Sgt. Michael Hjelmstad said. "He's genuine. He doesn't just use us for photo opportunities. He really cares."

In a town built on tinsel, image and a ton of hubris, Johnny Grant -- the mayor of Hollywood -- is the real thing.

When the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said it wanted to throw him an 84th birthday party, Grant had only a few requests to make.

One, there would have to be a table or two reserved for young U.S. servicemen and -women who wanted to come, and two, it wouldn't be a real birthday party unless his old buddy Earl Watson was invited.

Here's a guy who's on a first-name basis with U.S. presidents, national heroes and every star in this town with a name on the Walk of Fame, and who's at the top of his list to get an invite to his birthday party?

The long retired doorman at the old Knickerbocker Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.

"Johnny doesn't forget his friends, whether they were big stars or the doorman and parking lot attendant," said Watson, who drove down from Fresno to be at his old buddy's birthday party.

Grant would tell the 200 guests -- including actresses Angie Dickinson and Rhonda Fleming, LAPD Police Chief William Bratton and former Mayor James Hahn -- about the day Watson opened the front door of the famous hotel for him.

It was 1939 and he was a young, scared kid from the Midwest looking to make a name for himself in Hollywood when he struck up a friendship with the doorman of the hottest hotel in town.

"One day Earl told me D.W. Griffith -- the father of American cinema -- was sitting in the lobby," Grant said. "He told me to go on inside and talk to him. I had nothing to lose."

Watson held the door open, and Grant walked in, introducing himself to Griffith and asking if he had any advice for a kid just starting out.

"He told me the motion picture business was demanding, challenging, rewarding and cruel," Grant said. "Then he told me something I've tried to live my life by."

Griffith told him, "Whatever you do, young Mr. Grant, do it with all the passion you can muster."

And that's exactly what the kid who turned 84 Wednesday has done with his life -- from making more than 100 trips with the USO into war zones to entertain the troops, to fighting hard to revitalize Hollywood Boulevard to the street of dreams it once was, instead of the T-shirt capital of the world it has become.

To making good on promises to GIs in World War II, Korea and Vietnam to call their families when he got home to tell them they were OK, to organizing a huge welcome-home party in Los Angeles for Desert Storm troops.

"I was one of those GIs sitting in the nosebleed section in 1967 when Johnny brought the USO Christmas show to Vietnam," Chief Bratton told the guests. "He came to a very dangerous, bleak place to brighten Christmas for us, and myself and a lot of GIs will never forget that."

Because you can't fake genuine.

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Photo:

Johnny Grant, center, is greeted by Earl Watson at Grant's 84th birthday celebration on Wednesday at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Watson used to be the doorman at the Knickerbocker Hotel. At left is actress Angie Dickinson. At right is Mamie Van Doren.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer