The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 340

JOVER STORY MOVIES Ghosts Keaton A Tribute Fit for a 'General' Continued from Page 9 'Why don't they just give me five minutes to do something by But he had no choice. He didn't own his own company; it was either do that or not work." One of Keaton's few pleasures of those years was his passion for bridge. It was through her own desire to learn the game that a teen-age Eleanor Norris, a dancer at MGM in 1938, met Keaton, the veteran of a pair of unhappy marriages and several serious battles with alcoholism. Not until some months later, when she "lashed out at" someone who was rude to her at the table, did Keaton notice her, she says; "before that I was just a pair of hands holding cards to him." In 1940, when Norris was 21 and Keaton was 44, they decided to get married. "A lot of his friends worked me over pretty good about that," Eleanor Keaton remembers.

"His doctor, an Army colonel, worked on me for about an hour one day, telling me Buster didn't need to go through anything more, he'd had enough. "I listened politely and ignored them. I knew Buster's temperament and his character by then. son's doing, it's just a drafty old building." "If my dad's at the old Reporter, I'm glad he's there," Wilkerson says. "But I'm not sure I want to go there with candles and stay up all night and have a conversation." Wilkerson's legacy does not end there Wilkerson used to own Giro's in the '40s, and was in cahoots with Ben "Bugsy" Siegelj no one takes issue with the possibility that a few out-of-favor gangsters might have been popped within its walls.

Today, Ciro's is the Comedy Store, a building with a myriad of hallways that go nowhere and secret rooms; it is one of the most famously and, by author Jacobson's estimation, one of the most fright-eningly haunted buildings in Los Angeles. "In the Main Room the Comedy Store has three different performance areas, we have seen ghosts of mobsters, men in wide lapel suits standing watching the action," Ja-cobson reports. "These spirits hated Sam Kinison's act. That scream he did drove them nuts, so something would always go wrong when he went on. To my mind, Sam is the only comedian who was heckled from beyond." And it doesn't stop there.

Mike Becker, vice president of business affairs for the club, recalls his encounter with the beyond. "I was in my office with another person; we were talking to someone on the speaker phone. I left the office to make another call, and out of the corner of my eye, saw this guy, six feet tall, in a tweed jacket with big shoulders. I turned to the switchboard operator who also saw him and said, 'Who's that guy? Get him out of He went in, there was no one in there, the guy in my office hadn't seen him and he couldn't have walked out without our seeing it. "It didn't really scare me, I just felt very weird.

To realize that it wasn't a physical person was a strange feeling." Becker has also heard his share of stories from other employees-bouncers have seen ashtrays and candles hurled across empty rooms, one bouncer routinely had the door to the upstairs Belly Room slammed in his face, drinks materialize out of nowhere and move around empty rooms. Comedy clubs, for some esoteric reason fathomable only to those in another spiritual realm, seem to be a favorite haunt for ghosts. The Laugh Factory is ostensibly visited occasionally by Groucho Marx, who once used the Sunset Boulevard edifice to do his writing. Jamie Masada, owner of the Laugh Factory, recalls one night: "I locked the doors, turned out the lights and left I went home, and realized I had forgotten my house key, so I came back to the club, opened the door and was in shock. There were candles on the tables that had been relit and the spotlight of the club was on.

Cigar smoke was in the air. I grabbed my keys and left." Masada can do The L.A. County Museum of Art's Buster Keaton series will take place at the museum's Bing Theater, 5905 Wil-shire just east of Fairfax Avenue. Tickets are $6 and $4. For information, call (213) 857-6010.

The schedule: Saturday: "Steamboat Bill, "The Scarecrow," "Convict 13," "My Wife's Relations." Nov. 11: "Seven Chances," "College," "The Haunted House." Nov. 18: "Our Hospitality," "Neighbors," "The Black And when you love somebody, you forget what other people say." Now a vibrant, energetic 77, Eleanor Keaton still has the forthrightness and agreeably no-nonsense personality that must have attracted Buster. "I'm a yammerer and a gabber and he was quiet," she says. "He hated confrontation.

He would just walk away from it." The couple were a good fit in other ways. "I was never young," PLATTCOLLEGE VttSai prsseiMuTi, 3-D team ib compose Gtcse farlous PlndBBniaiilL (310)278-7800 lc(W33-2300 7470 M. Flpfflnn SL, E1EB Rod, CA pounds and went from size 10. Besides losing and totally improving fabulous. I'm self for a new the weight off- Thurmond's I (213)258-8050 (818)500-8331 TV 1 i 1 'i a 7 Continued from Page 3 been moved from the living room to the kitchen.

'Get I think, is what they were being told." We'll all agree that that's creepy enough, but what about being told that your own father is a ghost? That was the special fate that befell Willie Wilkerson III, whose father, Willie Wilkerson created and owned the Hollywood Reporter, discovered Lana Turner and conceived the Las Vegas Flamingo hotel notwithstanding). He died in 1962; a decade later, an employee of the Reporter reported to Wilkerson that his father was still residing in the trade paper's offices on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. "I thought it was a joke," the younger Wilkerson says. "But here was a guy who was a shop foreman. He was very right-wing, very conservative, and when he told it to me, he told it in a very gruff voice.

For this story to come from this very conservative man added more credibility to what he told me. He had no interest before that in anything paranormal." The Reporter moved in 1993, and the L.A. Weekly made plans to move in. Wilkerson says that his father was angry "that his residence was being remodeled. During remodeling apparitions occurred that caused builders to flee and not work anymore." They saw things disappearing into the wall, and a radio kept dialing back to a classical music station whenever a worker would try to tune in any other kind of music, Wilkerson says.

"I met with one of the construction contractors," he says. "He had guys who ran off the construction site and said, 'I'm not going to work here "His office is still intact, the original wood and the fireplace is still there. It's now a conference room. I feel that as long as certain things are familiar to him, he'll still be there." Mike Sigmund, publisher of the Weekly, recalls an incident in Wilkerson's former office. "The strangest moment was about a year ago.

We were having a board of directors meeting. It was this very intense moment, someone had just made a proposal, and then everyone was silent At that mo ment, this wonderful clock above the fireplace, which was solidly secured to the wall, came crashing to the floor. We took pause at that "I'm from New York, and never believed in ghosts, but now. Judith Lewis, the Weekly's arts editor, remains skeptical. "I don't think there are any spooky things that prevented the move from happening, there were just logistical problems," she says, but apologizes for raining on our parade.

"I will say, though, that there are a lot of strange temperature changes. It gets hot and cold really fast. But I don't think it's Willie Wilker smith," "Day Dreams." Nov. 25: "Three Ages," "Sherlock "The Playhouse." Dec. 2: "The Navigator," "The Boat," "The Balloonatic," "The Love Nest." Dec.

9: "Go West," "Cops," "Hard Luck," "The Frozen North." Dec. 16: "Battling Butler," "One Week," "The Paleface," "The Electric House." Dec. 23: "The General," "The High Sign," "The Goat." Dec. 30: "The Cameraman," "Spite Marriage." Eleanor Keaton says matter-of-factly. "My father was killed when I was 10 and I went to work when I was 14.

1 never went through that giggly, teen-age thing; I went from child to adult overnight." Keaton, by contrast, "ever since he became a star, liked to have a flock of people take care of him. He was never ever alone, never forced to deal with things. When we lived in Woodland Hills, which was just a town of 15,000 then, he'd walk out of stores without paying; the owners knew I'd be following along. "He'd come to me once a year, the week before Christmas and say, 'Give me a I'd give him one and he'd tell me to sign it. 'You can sign I'd say.

'You're on the account' He didn't even want to get that involved. Money didn't interest him. If he had enough to buy what he wanted, he didn't care." Keaton's marriage to Eleanor Norris, which had lasted more than 25 years by the time he died at age 70 in 1966, was by all accounts the key factor in changing his life for the better. When TV and its live audiences became popular, Keaton, who viewed the medium as vaudeville reborn, became a frequent guest on comedy shows. He also worked consistently in commer--cials, had parts of varying sizes in everything from "Sunset Boulevard" to "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" and lived long enough to get a special Academy Award and have a forgettable biopic made about his life.

Buster Keaton was buried with a rosary in one pocket and, at Eleanor Keaton's suggestion, a deck of cards in the other. "He had to have a deck, he was never without one," she says with her usual matter-of-factness. "That way, wherever he was going, he was ready." Academy Tribute to Buster Keaton" vM take place Thursday at 8 p.m. at the film academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wikhire Beverly HiUs. Tickets are $6.

(310) 278-5673. Kenneth Turan is The Times' film critic. COMPUTER TRADE SHOW WHOLESALE PRICES OPEN TO THE PUBLIC CONSIGNMENT TABLE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 FREE ADMISSION RESEDA-SHERMAN SQUARE ENTERTAINMENT OR. From 101 Fwy: take ttie Reseda off ramp. Go north on Reseda ana.

to werman way, turn ngm, go one am to unoy si 18430 Sherman Way SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 ADMISSION BUENA PARK-SEQUOIA CONFERENCE CENTER Take the Beach Boulevard Exit off the 91 Freeway and go 1 block north to 7530 Orangethorpe, 1-800-800-5600 done. I lost 50 a size 20 to a all the weight my figure I feel I confident, more energetic and happy. I strongly recommend this program." Gail Grant M.D., age 38 Are vou ready look? To take -S fast and keep it off! Call Thurmond's 6-Week Body MakeOver today. 1-800-639-2639 A t.Bi rimniiniirat Z'i M0utel BODY MAKEOVER Gall Before As seen in People magazine. C3 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1995 LOS ANGELES TIMES CALENDAR.