Johnny Grant, honorary mayor of Hollywood avuncular who traveled the world as Tinseltown's No. 1 cheerleader for over half a century, has died. He was 84.
Grant died just before 7 pm Wednesday, apparently of natural causes, said Officer Jason Lee. Grant was found dead on a bed in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, said Lee.
Grant was perhaps best known as host country jolly alongside more than 500 celebrities he inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The bachelor life lived in an apartment on the 14th floor at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Grant's mission in life is bringing the Tinseltown history to everyone. He received Oscar red carpet arrivals and Walk of Fame festivities, which appeared in bit parts in movies, and Hollywood has produced the annual Christmas Parade.
"I think I was the luckiest guy in the world," he often says. "It was a very good race."
Ana Martinez-Holler, a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood who has worked with grants for 20 years, said he had recently had several health problems, including a broken bone in the back.
"I dined with him today ... We had omelettes together, and he said he was not feeling well, "she said Wednesday. "I saw him walk after dinner, and it was the last time I saw him."
"Hollywood is not the same without him," she said.
Grant has also joined globetrotters Bob Hope as an ambassador for the USO, bringing to war zones entertainers to perform for military personnel from the United States during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and battles in the Middle East.
He helped introduce soldiers to the house Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Jane Russell, Terry Moore, Penny Singleton and Angie Dickinson, among others, led to the hope, once jokingly that he himself was " ' rich man's Johnny Grant. "
"You will not find a soul more generous in your life," says Dickinson The Associated Press in 2006. "He was a ladies' man. He's a Taurus. He's a doll."
Another close friend, actress Mamie Van Doren, Grant described simply as "Mr. Hollywood."
"I dated him in my adolescence," she recalled. "It is one of the greatest people I have ever known, so nice."
Over the years, Grant chatted with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra and Dolly Parton, and was a friend of several presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. He counted President Reagan as one of his closest friends.
Born in Goldsboro, NC, Grant was a cub reporter of the radio station WGBR when he hitchhiked to Washington to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt third inauguration. The diminutive journalist sitting in a tree to write what he saw in his report.
He joined the American army in 1943 and then came to Hollywood, after his release, where he landed a small role to play a reporter in "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948), starring William Bendix.
He was attracted to Hollywood, he recalled once, after seeing Mickey Rooney in the 1938 movie "Boys Town."
"If some guy who can do it, so can I," he recalled telling himself.
Grant also had a part in Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (1954) 1966 "The Oscar"
He did Lucky Strike cigarette on the radio "The Jack Benny Show" and radio interviews celebrities in the Ham & Egger restaurant at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
He also did radio interviews in the lobby of Ciro's on Sunset Boulevard, the Comedy Store Now, who was the personification of glamour and glitz in the years 1940 and 1950. His guests included Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Grable, Mel Torme and Joe DiMaggio.
"It was truly Hollywood," said Grant these days.
In 1951 he made his first trip abroad to entertain the troops.
Beginning in 1946, he was the host of the game show "Stop the Clock", which aired on alternating Dumont Television in New York City, WBGR-TV in Schenectady, NY and WPTZ-TV in Philadelphia.
He also worked for Gene Autry, the radio station KMPC as host of the "Freeway Club" from 1951 to 1959, becoming one of the nation, the first disc jockeys to mix regular traffic reports between reading Records and interviews with celebrities.
The Chamber of Commerce of Hollywood Grant named honorary mayor of Hollywood in 1980, a position he held until the end of his life.
The Associated Press Television and Radio Association honored subsidies last March in the Mark Twain Awards in Universal City with a special award for his talent.
During the dozen Walk of Fame ceremonies of the task that it is being asked to preside over each year, it would be gin with the crowd laughs, jokes, handshakes and an occasional embarrassment.
His biggest flub, according to Grant, when it was introduced inductee Joan Rivers to the cheering crowd shouting: "Here she is, Miss Joan Collins."
Rivers shook it off, telling the host asked him much worse.
At his 84th birthday last May, Grant said of all her achievements in Hollywood, he was most proud of having three things: the sign of Hollywood, the Walk of Fame in Hollywood and mailed authentic.
"We are not supposed to be because we are not our own city," he said. "But I got."
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