LOS ANGELES — Johnny Grant, who visited Hollywood in 1943 as a star-struck serviceman and returned to carve out a niche first as a radio and television personality and then as its honorary mayor, died Wednesday at the age of 84.
In a seven-decade career, Grant hosted an early television game show, covered Hollywood on radio and TV, worked as a disc jockey, and acted in movies and on the small screen. But it was as Tinseltown cheerleader that he became a celebrity himself.
Grant hosted hundreds of Walk of Fame inductions and was photographed alongside a succession of stars as their names were immortalized on the sidewalks of Hollywood. He had produced the Hollywood Christmas Parade since 1987 and, like his friend Bob Hope, took Hollywood to the troops, emceeing shows in Guantanamo Bay, South Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Bosnia.
In November, he made his 60th trip overseas — to entertain troops at Guantanamo.
He seemed always to remember that millions were in awe of the name Hollywood, just as he was as a boy growing up in Goldsboro, N.C.
“It’s a magic word all over the world,” he told Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith in 1987, the town’s centennial year.
Grant sought to preserve that magical image long after most of the stars and studios had moved elsewhere and the streets became the haunt of prostitutes, addicts and the homeless. His prescription was always the same: put on a show.
In 1980, when he took over as Walk of Fame chairman, “you couldn’t get anyone to come to Hollywood Boulevard,” he told a reporter in 1997. “So I said, ‘Why don’t we really put on a big show when we have a Walk of Fame ceremony?’ We had planes fly over, bands, etc.”
His 1991 Welcome Home Desert Storm Parade in Hollywood for troops who fought in the Persian Gulf War was a rolling, marching, flying extravaganza of military personnel and equipment that starred a Patriot missile.
Some criticized Grant for his P.T. Barnum tendency. But others admired the frankness that accompanied his glad-handing style.
“That’s what’s refreshing about him,” Larry Kaplan, former executive director of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, once said. “He doesn’t portray himself more seriously than he is.”
Grant’s own star is in the walk’s choicest location — outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre.
The master of self-promotion organized the 1980 ceremony and said its extravagance landed him the job as Walk of Fame chairman.
His handprints and footprints were added to the theater’s famed courtyard in a 1997 ceremony that included a flyover by World War II-era planes. Grant arrived in a rickshaw accompanied by a police motorcycle escort, a marching band and two hook-and-ladder firetrucks, their ladders raised to form an archway.
After World War II service in the Army Air Corps — where he hosted a radio show for the troops and did advance work for bandleader Glenn Miller’s troupe — Grant worked as a radio reporter in New York. But he soon returned to Hollywood, making good on his vow that “I was going to be a part of it somehow.”
Grant hosted a celebrity interview show and reported Hollywood news.
During his career, Grant received two Emmys and the Academy of Television Arts and Science’s Governors Award. His acting roles — usually as a reporter, disc jockey or TV host — included the films “White Christmas,” “The Babe Ruth Story” and “The Oscar.” He appeared on TV’s “The Lucy Show,” among others.
In 1980, the Hollywood chamber named him “mayor for life.” Grant enjoyed saying that it was “the best job in town” and that he wanted his ashes strewn under the Hollywood sign.
