Confirming that it is a country unto...

Confirming that it is a country unto itself, Hollywood unveiled the design for its own flag at a party at the Hollywood Roosevelt.

It was the culmination of a competition among art students to determine what elements to highlight in an area that’s been called everything from the “Film Capital of the World” (Chamber of Commerce) to “$10 million worth of intricate and ingenious machinery functioning to put skin on baloney” (drama critic George Jean Nathan).

The chosen entry omitted some famous attractions. The Hollywood Flag will feature no stars of either type. Nor will it be made of lingerie from Frederick’s of Hollywood.

Instead, winning artist Jennifer Taylor, a 12th-grader at Immaculuate Heart High, incorporated into the flag Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the Capitol Records Tower, the Hollywood Bowl and a palm tree, all bathed in klieg lights.

Taylor, who will receive a $2,000 scholarship to the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design, was chosen over 39 other contestants. The team of judges included artist David Hockney, who painted the famous swimming parentheses on the bottom of the Roosevelt’s pool.

Special guest stars at the party included Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda and actor Vincent Price, as well as dummies of Judy Garland and Bruce Springsteen, which were taking the night off from the Hollywood Wax Museum. Price, you may recall, once starred as the embalmer/killer in the movie “House of Wax.”

If there ever was any doubt about his complete fidelity to the Republican cause, Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum dispelled it a few years ago when he ordered his lieutenants to swoop onto the stage of the Music Center and carry off a chair that President Reagan had just vacated during a visit. The otherwise-ordinary gray chair was given an honored place in Schabarum’s office.

Now, rumor has it that the supervisor might move his furniture to Washington to join the Administration of President-elect George Bush, perhaps as Secretary of Transportation. Schabarum, who heads the county Transportation Commission, will not comment on the reports. But his house in Covina is up for sale.

A 7-packs-at-one-time habit? To call attention to the Great American Smokeout, a man who calls himself Jim Mouth stuffed 143 cigarettes into his mouth at a Hollywood pipe shop.

Now that Los Angeles’ version of Metro Hoof has been approved by the Board of Public Works, three horse-drawn carriages will begin plodding down Broadway on Fridays and weekends beginning Nov. 26.

Shoppers who spend $25 or more at Broadway stores will receive a horse-pass entitling them to one free ride for up to four people.

“Carriages were very much a part of Broadway at the turn of the century,” noted a spokesman for the sponsoring merchants group, Miracle on Broadway.

True, though city officials of that period didn’t approve of some of the uses of carriage traffic in the rowdy pueblo.

In “Tarnished Angels,” historian W. W. Robinson wrote that “a familiar sight to the inhabitants of the courthouse world was that of (brothel proprietor Pearl) Morton and a group of her girls carrying tilted parasols and parading through the streets of the area in an open carriage.

“Sometimes . . . wearing a gaudy ostrich-plume hat, she would herself drive a team of horses, harness tandem. Behind her in the cab sat a man blowing a trumpet.”

When Ms. Morton wasn’t in such a flamboyant mood, Robinson noted, she gave the trumpeter the day off and rode about “accompanied by a white bulldog.”

The Billionaire Boys Club is listed on Page 202 of the “Investments” section of the 1989 Encyclopedia of Associations. Just in case would-be investors are unaware that BBC founder Joe Hunt is serving time for murder, an asterisk accompanies the listing. The asterisk means the BBC’s out of business.