Army says 'give him a call'

The Times' Robin Abcarian sends Variety's Army Archerd into columnist retirement with a piece in today's Calendar. It opens during the Friday lunch scene on the patio at Spago.

Robert Stack's widow, Rosemary, in a necklace made of turquoise chunks as big as a baby's fist, is at her table with three age-defying girlfriends. The Improv's Budd Friedman and his wife, Alex, are one table over. Spago impresario Wolfgang Puck, in chef's whites, is table hopping. And though their schmoozing spheres don't seem to intersect, Puck's business partner and ex-wife, Barbara Lazaroff, is here too, chatting and laughing with her regulars on the patio.

And then there's Army Archerd, the longtime Daily Variety columnist who has undoubtedly written a line or two about nearly every customer in the joint. In a career that has spanned more than half a century, Archerd has been Hollywood's town crier and cheerleader, chronicling its denizens' deals, divorces, diseases, death, their marriages, remarriages and births.

For decades, reading Archerd was the first order of business for a town that thrives on knowing everyone else's business. Although the gossip trade has been taken over in recent years by the Internet, cable TV and magazines such as Us Weekly, a mention in his column could boost careers.

But now he's done. After years of eating lunch at his desk, Army Archerd has the luxury of a long lunch at Spago because he penned his final "Just for Variety" column last week.

"Mazel tov!" Lazaroff says as she embraces Archerd. She tells him about her recent trip to Shanghai to look at hotels and restaurants (at this rate, the sun may never set on the Spago empire), and at the end of the conversation, Archerd, who will continue to contribute stories to Daily Variety, says: "Well, call me and let me know."

Lazaroff laughs. "In all the years, and all the columns you've written, how many times have you uttered the words, 'Give me a call?' Can you even imagine?' "

After 10,000 columns, last Thursday's Variety carried full-page tribute ads from DreamWorks, CBS, Universal, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, the Directors Guild, Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.