Grizzly or Call Girl, $1,000 : L.A.’s the Place for the Most, Best, Farthest Out

The people of Los Angeles own more poodles, eat more fish, spend more of their money on cars, consult more psychiatrists and mediums and rob more banks than the people of any other city in the nation.

But wait, there’s more. Los Angeles is the home of the world’s first kaleidoscope store, stand-up roller coaster, water bar (51 varieties and don’t dare ask for ice) and dogramat (that’s a public dog wash).

And the world’s largest egg ranch, glass building, rose garden, comic book collection and artificial earthquake chamber.

And, of course, the world’s most expensive store (Bijan’s in Beverly Hills) and the world’s busiest freeway (the Ventura).

Treasury of Offbeat Facts

These and other watersheds are served up in a new book, “L.A. Superlatives,” which bills itself as “a treasury of bizarre, offbeat and record-breaking facts about the entertainment capital of the world.”

Author Roy Kammerman, who has written the book as the first in a series (a “N.Y. Superlatives” will follow), says this was a labor of love, a tribute to the great and the near-great who have made Los Angeles the city it is.

“I have a weakness for people who do eccentric things,” says Kammerman, a veteran TV comedy writer. “I think it’s the eccentrics who lead the world in everything, and eccentrics flourish here better than anywhere else.

Mecca for Eccentrics

“We put them on our shows and in our newspapers. L.A. is a mecca for them.”

Naturally, some of the eccentrics who pepper this 240-page book are celebrities and their accomplishments can be somewhat predictable. The richest man in show business is TV mogul Mark Goodson; the richest show biz woman is Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon (and she only lives in L.A. part of the time).

The celebrity whose home is most sought-after by sightseers is Lucille Ball. The most oft-wed celebrities, with eight wives each, are Artie Shaw and Mickey Rooney. Stan Laurel also was married eight times, but only to four women--he married two of his wives three times each, so Kammerman doesn’t count him.

Mae West Longest Tenant

Some of the book’s celebrity listings are more exotic. Mae West holds the Hollywood record for the longest tenancy in the same apartment (48 years) and Judy Garland has the lifetime record for number of residences (25). And Humphrey Bogart turns out to have been a distant cousin of Diana, Princess of Wales.

But the real stars of “L.A. Superlatives” are obscure people who, says Kammerman, “got out there and pursued their dreams. Like the man who flew the highest in a lawn chair, or the guy who changed his name to God, or the person with the most sex-change operations.”

Sometimes the dreams went bust. For example, the Inglewood woman/man/woman became estranged from her/his daughter after the third operation and the former Terrill Williams of Palm Springs couldn’t get anybody to hire him after he changed his name to God.

Three Miles Up in Chair

Larry Walters of Los Angeles fared better. After rising to a height of three miles in a lawn chair attached to 24 helium-filled balloons--the culmination of 20 years of planning--he came perilously close to a jumbo jet but returned to earth unscathed.

“He was later asked by a San Diego businessman to repeat the stunt,” says Kammerman, “and he said he’d do it for $100,000. But nobody took him up on it.”

Kammerman has the right pedigree for compiling “L.A. Superlatives.” The former producer of an old Johnny Carson show, “Who Do You Trust?”, he got the idea for his book while working on a CBS-TV summer replacement show, “The Book of Lists,” based on the Irving Wallace-David Wallechinsky best-seller.

‘I Knew Every Weirdo’

“I’m a collector of eccentrics,” he boasts. “At one time, I knew every weirdo in the United States.”

Kammerman set out to write what he calls “a Guinness Book of World Record for Los Angeles.” What he wound up with, after extensive research and painstaking verification, was a mosaic portrait of the city’s mores and spirit.

Like the creatures-for-hire listings. “The most expensive animal you can rent in Los Angeles is a grizzly bear for $1,000 a day,” he reports. “The most expensive call girl in the city--actually in Beverly Hills--is also $1,000. She gets the same as the grizzly.”

Some of the superlatives serve as testimonies to the city’s better qualities, like openness and humaneness, says Kammerman.

Minorities Doing Well

“L.A. should be proud of the fact that there are more minority-owned and women-owned businesses here than anywhere else. It shows how well we’ve integrated our society and demonstrates that, underneath the flamboyant surface, commerce is taking place at a very high level.”

Other superlatives are evidence that, in everything they do, Los Angelenos exhibit elan.

“This is the bank robbery capital of the world,” says Kammerman, “and the only city in the United States where more banks are robbed than liquor stores. I think that’s because when you rob a bank, you meet a nicer class of people.”