On an unseasonably warm Tuesday night in February, New York's Third Man, Johnny Calvani, sat at a window table at Da Silvano, the downtown Elaine's. "This is where Anna Wintour usually sits," Mr. Calvani said in his gravel-toned machine-gun voice, as his restless eyes scanned the media-friendly crowd around him. The actor and director Danny DeVito was dining in the other room, a gaggle of models was squeezed like a set of coat hangers in one corner, and a quartet of New York Times men cooled their heels on the sidewalk.

Wiry and animated, with a prominent nose and improbably flared sideburns, the 51-year-old Mr. Calvani has been many things in his life- shmatte merchant, would-be rock singer, stand-up comedian-but famous is not one of them. Yet among a certain group of hard-partying celebrities and the nightclubs and restaurants (such as Da Silvano) that cater to them, Mr. Calvani enjoys an almost regal cachet.

For decades, Mr. Calvani has been the go-to guy for any fun-starved, testosterone-charged celebrity seeking a lost weekend-or week-in The City That Never Sleeps. When Mr. Calvani's good friend, actor Jack Nicholson-or actor Warren Beatty, producer Robert Evans or aspiring lounge lizard and Dole Pineapple heir Justin Murdock-has plans on the Right Coast, he gets on the horn with Mr. Calvani to ensure that a little entertainment is waiting when he gets there.

"He's the crown prince of joie de vivre ," Mr. Nicholson told The Observer .

A talent for fun doesn't pay the bills, however, and while Mr. Calvani has repeatedly pursued careers beneath the spotlight, he has often struggled with the concept of a day job. Mr. Calvani has enjoyed flush times as well as precarious ones, and he's always kept his friends abreast of his situation by giving himself nicknames that reflect his financial status. In the 90's, friends said, he was more often "Johnny Baked Beans" than "Johnny Caviar."

Now beluga days are on the horizon, and Mr. Calvani's reputation as the spry Crypt Keeper of New York nightlife may have something to do with it. Last fall, fashion executives Larry Stemmerman and Andy Hilfiger-Mr. Calvani has known Mr. Stemmerman and Mr. Hilfiger's older brother, designer Tommy Hilfiger, for 30 years-tapped him to head up the sales division for the J. Lo clothing line, multitasking pop star Jennifer Lopez's bid to extend her diva-next-door appeal to jeans, tank tops and baby-pink velour hoodies.

Before and often during his dalliances with the performing arts, Mr. Calvani made a living-and sometimes a killing-selling fashion, and apparently he still had the touch. Andy Hilfiger credited Mr. Calvani with being a big part of the line's early success: "The buyers come in from Chicago, and Johnny says, 'You wanna go to Lotus?'" he said.

Mr. Calvani also brought a certain energy level to the J. Lo offices. "Just today, Johnny comes into my office, asks me what music I'm playing. It's an all-live Rolling Stones disc," Mr. Hilfiger said. "He jumps up and starts dancing on my desk."

The success of Ms. Lopez's line has enabled Mr. Calvani to trade in the less-than-groovy Upper West Side apartment he shared with a male buddy for a chi-chi Gramercy Park pad, complete with lead-paned windows, roof terrace and a key to the park. "Can you believe the co-op board let me in this fucking place?" he said after a tour not long ago.

And in an ironic twist, Mr. Calvani's even getting a measure of belated celebrity himself. The makers of Jones Soda-brightly colored beverages aimed at skateboarders-have resurrected Mr. Calvani's long-defunct rock-star persona, Johnny Lightning, to use on their packaging this spring.

Mr. Calvani is not given to introspection, and thus was not inclined to discuss how his recent spate of good fortune has changed his life. "I'm fortunate I didn't die going to Vietnam when I was 18" was all Mr. Calvani, a combat veteran, would say.

But Mr. Calvani's buddies, who have logged many hours trolling Fun City in his company, said his moment in the sun is overdue.

"Nobody deserves success more than Johnny," said former Barneys-scion-turned-fashion-consultant Gene Pressman, who has known Mr. Calvani since the Studio 54 era. "He's waited a long time for this."

"I love to see him do well," Mr. Nicholson said, his famous drawl several degrees mellower on the phone than it is in on screen. "Put a penny in his pocket."

At Da Silvano, Mr. Calvani was apparently feeling entitled enough to bust owner Silvano Marchetto's chops a little.

"This pizza's cold," Mr. Calvani said, gesturing disdainfully at the pizzetta the table had been offered as an amuse gueule .

"What do you expect? You never shut up since you got here," the shrewd-eyed Mr. Marchetto replied in his staccato English.

"Ah, get us a warm one, will ya?" Mr. Calvani said in a hoarse rasp that was testimony to both his Staten Island roots and countless nights spent in smoke-choked V.I.P. rooms.

Joining Mr. Calvani at the table was lithe, red-haired, 23-year-old Annabel Vartanian. To be sure, Mr. Calvani has had a colorful dating history, but in Ms. Vartanian, he said, he had found true love.

Ms. Vartanian sported a star-shaped tattoo on her bare midriff, a design chosen during an on-air consultation with the radio personality Howard Stern. She said she was named after her parents' favorite nightclub, Annabel's in London. Those same parents, Mr. Calvani said, owned an estate in New Jersey and a place on Fisher's Island in Connecticut. "The real one," he confided. "Not the one in Miami."

As Ms. Vartanian talked of her experience with Mr. Stern, Mr. Calvani looked on proudly. Then he took a bite of his sea bream and pronounced it "so good you could snort it."

Mr. Calvani looked happy, but slightly bored. For a guy with his energy, dinner at Da Silvano amounted to a slow night. To see him in his element is to see him when Mr. Nicholson or another of his high-profile friends flies into town.

"When someone comes to New York from Los Angeles, Jack tells them to call Johnny if you want to have a good time," Mr. Calvani said, referring to himself in the third person. "Because Johnny doesn't wait. If Johnny has to wait, Johnny does not go."

One of the reasons the velvet ropes always part for Mr. Calvani is that he's been a fixture at every late-night hot spot from Studio 54 to Pangaea-a longer time span than the ages of many current club owners. "He's a New York icon," said Mark Baker, a co-owner of the meatpacking-district nightclub Lotus. "In terms of street credibility, he was the don when I first got here 20 years ago, and he still is today."

When Mr. Calvani is pulling escort duty, he makes sure that the nightclub of the moment has been alerted, that the Cristal is on ice, and that the party favors have been lined up.

Occasionally, he personally sees to it that the sausage is on the grill.

One afternoon in 1995, Mr. Beatty, the actor, director and Friend of Jack, called Mr. Calvani from the Carlyle Hotel. At the time, Mr. Calvani was living in a cottage house on Greenwich Avenue and had just fired up the backyard barbecue. He persuaded Mr. Beatty to jump in a cab and join a group of friends that included former gossip columnist A.J. Benza. With any other host, there might have been a certain professional froideur between the movie star and the hack, but not with Mr. Calvani. "I think they ended up sharing the last bite of sausage from the same fork," he recalled.

Mr. Calvani met Mr. Beatty through Mr. Nicholson, whom he has known since the late 70's. He first encountered the Rayban-favoring star in the bar of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen. Mr. Calvani was with a boisterous group of friends, more après than ski, that included entrepreneur Alan Finkelstein and Esme Marshall, a model whom, Mr. Calvani recalled, was "top-shelf back in those days."

Before long, "Jack was talking to the girl we walked in with," Mr. Calvani said. "You know Jack."

The actor and the garmento hit it off right away. They have a way of cracking each other up. One day, for example, Mr. Calvani complimented Mr. Nicholson on his ability to wear a brown suit. Brown is a rough color, Mr. Calvani told him. You had to be really handsome to get away with brown. So now every time Mr. Nicholson dons a brown suit in Mr. Calvani's presence, he'll cock an eyebrow and say, "Do you know how good-looking you have to be to wear brown?"

"Only when Jacks says it, in his voice, everybody cracks up," Mr. Calvani said.

For more than two decades now, Mr. Calvani has been a member in good standing of the Jack Pack, the group of craggy, hard-living guys who congregate around the actor. The ranks include music producer Lou Adler, restaurateur Tommy Baratta (of the late, louche Marylou's) and Mr. Finkelstein.

"You heard of The Three Amigos ?" Mr. Calvani said last November when he, Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Finkelstein were talking about spending Thanksgiving together because none of them had a girlfriend. "We're the three losers."

Mr. Calvani has a simple explanation for why he gets on so well with Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Beatty. "I never asked them for anything," he said, then waited a beat. "Don't think I didn't think about it, though," he snorted.

Mr. Nicholson offered another clue to the longevity of their relationship. "He's the kind of fellow you can trust with your wife, or your girlfriend," he said.

Mr. Calvani grew up in Staten Island, the son of an Italian-American car-dealer father and an English war-bride mother. At 18, he was drafted into the Vietnam War. He said he was scared for about 10 minutes, particularly during the Tet offensive of 1968, five days of nonstop bombing during which his barracks were blown up. After that, things got calmer and weirder.

"What was the government thinking about when they gave me, at 18, a belt with morphine, liquid speed and amyl nitrate on it?" he said, referring to the emergency medical supplies that were issued to troops in combat situations. "Did they really think I wasn't going to experiment?"

After a year in Vietnam Mr. Calvani took an early out by enrolling at Staten Island Community College. In between classes, he worked part-time in a jeans store. After watching the clothing-company sales reps pull up in their Cadillacs and their Buick Electra 225's, Mr. Calvani decided that pushing fabric was the life for him.

He grabbed a book of swatches and hit the road. Soon, he was part of a group of semi-legendary garmentos who wore their hair long, drove flashy cars and made millions off clothes you couldn't light a match near. There was Stanley Buchthal, who later founded Bugle Boy, and Bobby Margoiles, who went on to start Cherokee.

Mr. Calvani's own successes were more modest, but still memorable. During the Saturday Night Fever craze, he said he made a couple million off a John Travolta knockoff pant, "even though I couldn't spell 'polyester.'"

Next came a cataclysmic event in the lives of Mr. Calvani and the men of his generation: the opening of Studio 54. Much of Mr. Calvani's notoriety stems from this era. He stayed out late. He learned to leave the polyester pants at home. He began to make famous and influential friends, such as Frank Sinatra's stepson, Bobby Marx.

At the time, Mr. Marx was living in the singer's suite at the Waldorf Towers, and when his stepfather was out of town, he'd let Mr. Calvani sleep over in the Chairman of the Board's room, where even the shower doors bore the monogram "F.A.S."

Mr. Calvani hung out with the new breed of cool cats, too. He has fond memories of Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker's Central Park West apartment, where, he said, Mr. Becker kept a synthesizer "the size of a Mack truck."

And then there was the night Tony Curtis came through the window.

Mr. Calvani recalled sitting in a friend's East 64th Street townhouse with the actress Kelly ( The Lady in Red ) LeBrock sometime in the early 80's. "This was about 6 in the morning. The sun was just coming up," Mr. Calvani recalled. "And I'll never forget: Tony Curtis had a cane and an eyepatch on, and he climbed up the drainpipe of the townhouse on 64th Street and opened the window and made his entrance."

As with many of Mr. Calvani's stories, there is a slight disconnect to the Curtis incident. He offered no explanation as to how he came to be in a townhouse with Ms. LeBrock at the crack of dawn. Though at Da Silvano Mr. Calvani inhaled nothing stronger than a steady stream of Coca-Colas and Marlboro Reds, it's perhaps worth mentioning that a certain amount of drug lore has attached itself to him over the years. As JohnnyBoy, Mr. Calvani makes several cameo appearances in Mr. Benza's memoir Fame: Ain't It a Bitch , in which he provides the former gossip columnist with various substances he calls "the shit that killed Bruce Lee."

Mr. Calvani did not care to elaborate on this subject for The Observer , even after it was pointed out that during his stint as a nightclub stand-up-more on that later-his routines were laced with references to matters pharmaceutical. "Girls, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll-what else you want a comic to talk about?" Mr. Calvani said.

Shortly after he turned 32, Mr. Calvani decided to become a rock star. He claimed that it was simply a pastime-"my golf"-but given that he had recently befriended Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Calvani had probably become enamored of fame.

He labored to write a hit, though he is typically modest about his talents. "The secret to my rock 'n' roll career was, my band was better than me-so I could just go out and be wild," he said. The fluctuating lineup included guitarists Laurence Juber, of Wings, and Jimmy Rip, who was then a regular on Mick Jagger's solo recordings.

Though the most memorable parts of Mr. Calvani's act were his lightning-shaped sideburns, he never had a problem booking gigs at such places as the China Club. The owners knew he would bring a "champagne crowd," he said. Over the years, record executives Ted Field, of Interscope fame, and Guy Oseary, who heads Madonna's Maverick Records, stopped by to catch his high-energy shows, but they weren't there to sign him. They were there because they liked him. They really liked him.

Behind the music, these were not Mr. Calvani's greatest years. He was by his own admission "singing too much and not working enough." He used to hang out in former Arista Records chief Clive Davis' office, even though the pop-music impresario had no intention of signing him. "He told me how bad I was for at least two years straight," Mr. Calvani said.

When money got tight, Mr. Calvani occasionally had to turn to his brother, Pauly Calvani, for financial help. Pauly had gone into a more stable profession: He owns a Staten Island junkyard-"the biggest foreign-car junkyard on the East Coast," Johnny said.

In the mid-80's, Mr. Calvani tried his hand at acting. He can be seen, in a bit part, alongside Mr. Nicholson in Prizzi's Honor . Mr. Calvani played Don Corrado Prizzi's bodyguard. He had one line. When the day came to film his scene, he said, Mr. Nicholson told him how much the film's much-vaunted director, John Huston, liked ad libs.

So when his moment before the cameras came, Mr. Calvani threw away the script and used a line of his own design.

There was a strangled yell of "Cut!", followed by an extended bout of coughing and emphysemic swearing by the grizzled Huston.

That was when Mr. Nicholson realized his buddy had misunderstood him.

"He likes it when I ad lib," the actor told Mr. Calvani.

Mr. Calvani never acted again, but he still yearned to perform. Next he tried stand-up comedy. At his "comedy special" at the Roxy in Los Angeles, Rebecca Broussard, the mother of Mr. Nicholson's children, introduced him to the crowd. The evening's highlights were not so much his routines as his asides to audience members, who included model Janice Dickinson and Brenda Swanson, a sometime actress who recently resurfaced as a consort of producer Steve Bing. When Ms. Swanson reacted negatively to one of Mr. Calvani's off-color jokes, he told her: "Like nobody ate you, Brenda. Give me a fucking break."

Mr. Calvani's rock concerts and stand-up appearances may not have won him broad industry recognition, but they were always heavily attended by beautiful women. They were, he said, "P.W.P.", which he translated as "packed with pussy."

One day during Fashion Week in February, Mr. Calvani was sitting at his desk in the J. Lo offices when he whipped out some snapshots. One depicted a woman that he identified as "Michael Jackson's sister-in-law." She was wearing a T-shirt that reads: "I survived Johnny Calvani, 1980-82." Another was of Milica Kastner, the socialite daughter of the movie producer Elliot Kastner. It was taken at Mr. Kastner's English estate, Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed.

Mr. Calvani has a lot of snapshots-many of them feature women he has dated and loved. Mr. Calvani has dated more women than he has snapshots. He said he had once squired the woman who gave former New Line Cinema movie chief Mike De Luca that very public blowjob at a party during Oscar week.

But Mr. Calvani wanted to make it clear that he has found his true love in Ms. Vartanian.

He's ready to settle down in other ways as well, he said. The scene isn't what it was. Some nights he feels his age. Fame by association can be a drag.

That's why he's glad the J. Lo gig came along. Mr. Calvani said he's making enough to retire in three or four years-not that he'd want to. "I love this business," he said. "It keeps me young, keeps me thin, keeps me handsome."

It was 7:30 on a cold winter evening, and Mr. Calvani had been selling hard all day. It was a good day-a $200,000 day-and Mr. Calvani was ready to go home for a quiet dinner with Ms. Vartanian.

But first he had to return a phone call. Bob Evans was in New York for a screening of the documentary about his life, The Kid Stays in the Picture . "I'm going to take care of him while he's in town," Mr. Calvani said, dialing the number.

George Hamilton was enjoying a leisurely stroll along West 125th Street when the remark, lobbed by a beefy man in a security guard's uniform, stopped the actor in his tracks. Shoulders back, head slightly cocked, Mr. Hamilton unleashed a dazzling display of tooth enamel that underscored the mahogany hue of his taut movie-star face. His inky hair gave off a jaunty purple sheen in the sunlight. He might have heard a wittier bon mot in his life, but his easy laugh suggested it was unlikely.

It was the afternoon of May 8. Mr. Hamilton, who is in town shooting the new Woody Allen movie, had the day off and had elected to spend it in Harlem. He had lunched earlier on fried chicken, collard greens and candied yams at Sylvia's, and for dessert he was relishing the accolades and good-natured ribbing of the uptown crowds.

Judging by the rapturous reception, Bill Clinton will have a hard act to follow when he takes possession of his new office later this summer. Women of every age and size screamed: "George Hamilton! I lo-o-o-ve you!" Men yelled the titles of his movies. Their firm favorite was Love at First Bite , the 1979 horror spoof in which Mr. Hamilton plays a disco-era Dracula who swiftly dispenses with a gang of muggers on these very blocks.

Since arriving in New York last month, Mr. Hamilton–who by his own admission has always been "famous for being famous"–had once again become a fixture of the local gossip columns. But as he walked the main drag of Harlem, he seemed intent on sending the message that his appeal was more than skin-deep. Those who have followed his career and remember his winning, nuanced turns in Where the Boys Are or Viva Maria have long harbored the suspicion that behind Mr. Hamilton's arched eyebrow, knowing smile and fancy mole lurked at least one paradigmatic performance.

That he has yet to provide an obvious Act III has, strangely, contributed to his quixotic, evergreen appeal. But 40 years is a long time to coast on promise and a tan and, at 61, Mr. Hamilton sounds like a man with something to prove. "I don't think I've done my best picture," he had said a few days earlier. "But I think that keeps you lean and hungry. Most actors at my age think they've done that, and they fade on out. Me, I feel like I'm just beginning."

Mr. Hamilton has chosen New York–the city where fame commingles with substance–as the stage for his latest rebirth. And he's here to do substantial things. He's attending the Actors Studio as an observer and teaching a class of his own at the Century Theater on East 15th Street. But just in case anyone misconstrues these gigs as a sign that Mr. Hamilton is acting his age, he let drop that he is the father of a 15-month-old love child (but more about that later).

The Harlem excursion felt somewhat stage-managed–his town car was idling a few blocks away–but it was difficult to think of another celebrity who would have gone to such lengths to demonstrate that he could hang as easily at the Harlem U.S.A. mall, where Mr. Hamilton surveyed the heaving crowd. "I don't feel like any part of this city is forbidden to me," he beamed.

"People have always thought I was born with money, but it's not true," said Mr. Hamilton, the son of a society bandleader turned cosmetics executive and a mother whom he described as an Auntie Mame character. "We were often broke," he elaborated in his cultured, Belgravia-meets-Bel-Air drawl. "Never poor, though. Poor is a bad thought. Broke is just a temporary weather change."

After his parents divorced when he was 6, Mr. Hamilton had a peripatetic childhood. He often begins a sentence with "When I was growing up in …", but it's anybody's guess what the concluding phrase will be: Palm Beach, Boston, Mexico, London, California, Tarrytown, or Gulfport, Miss. When he was 14, he briefly attended Browning, the Upper East Side prep school, subsidizing his education by working in Manhattan's flower district after school. "I paid my own way and my brother's way, and I signed his report card," he said. "I was fearless. I would go and sell flowers to whomever would buy them, in any district, anywhere. I realized early on in life that I wanted to cross all the boundaries. I didn't want to grow up with a Brooks Brothers shirt and lockjaw. But at the same time I didn't want to lose that, because that was part of me, too."

Suddenly, a man in a sober white shirt and a Kente-cloth-patterned tie jumped out from behind a trestle table covered with flyers. "I'm your biggest fan," he told the actor. "Now, could I interest you in a basic cable package from Time Warner?" Mr. Hamilton, who is looking for an apartment in New York but is currently enjoying the amenities at the Plaza Athénée hotel, seemed momentarily to entertain the offer before politely declining.

I had met Mr. Hamilton at the Plaza Athénée earlier that morning. He sauntered into the empty bar in a black cashmere jacket, black suede bucks, gray slacks and a white-on-gray-check Façonnable shirt. A white-gold Cartier Tank watch glinted at his wrist; every hair was in place. His fly was unzipped.

Some minutes later, when he made the discovery on his own, he explained that the same thing had happened to him the previous week, when he was talking to a style editor from People magazine and wearing button-front pants . "These things are always happening to me," he roared.

"That's the only trouble with not being married," continued Mr. Hamilton, who has been divorced from Alana Stewart since 1978. "If I want to know if my bald spot's showing, I have to walk out and ask the hall maid." He pondered this for a moment and then said, "On the other hand, the hall maid never asks you, 'Who were you with last night? And what time did you get back?'"

He has been relying on the good judgment of the Plaza Athénée's maids since before it was the Plaza Athénée. When he was 11, his mother divorced her second husband, a Boston businessman, and uprooted her two sons to this East 64th Street address, which was then known as the Alrae. "They always treat me very well here. They put on my music when I come in the bar," Mr. Hamilton said. A bossa nova played softly in the background.

He has made something of a science of hotel living. He generally travels with a specially customized Louis Vuitton trunk, which contains a fold-down desk for his laptop, a 1930's martini shaker and special compartments for his Anderson & Sheppard suits and handmade shoes. For shorter trips, he confines himself to one pair of blue jeans, a dark suit and three sets of buttons: plain, gold and satin. "That way I can wear the jacket as a tuxedo, a blazer or a suit," he explained.

The buttons come in handy, because it is in his social life that Mr. Hamilton truly fulfills his desire to "cross all boundaries." Among the whirl of engagements he had squeezed into the two weeks he'd been in Manhattan, two stand out: One night, he had found himself in a joint popular with the Russian Mafia. "Some major guys," Mr. Hamilton confided with a cocked brow. "They didn't know me at all. But I could see in their eyes that we would connect. Before I know it, they're sending cognac to my table."

On April 23, Mr. Hamilton attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala with the actress Anjelica Huston. After the event, they went to the Stanhope Hotel, only to find that the bar was closed. Mr. Hamilton sprang into action: "I said to the manager, 'Why are you closed down on a night when the Met is on? You're the kind of guy who'll give the bar business a bad name.' [The manager] said: 'This is a dead night.' And I said: 'It won't be!'" The retelling seemed to fill Mr. Hamilton with a giddy joie de vivre . "I brought in 75 people and I made everyone sing 'New York, New York,' and I served champagne to everyone," he said.

George Hamilton is clearly comfortable with his fame. "Living in the fishbowl is not a problem," he said. In the sepulchral Plaza Athénée bar, his tan seemed to exude a gentle inner glow. "People basically want to do the right thing, and you just have to let them," he continued. "They're panicked to say hello to you, so you must put them at their ease. For example, it takes a lot of guts for a man who's with a girl to come over. You have to show them in two sentences that the environment is safe … and you're going to make them look good in front of their girlfriend. You do that and they become your best friend. Plus," he added slyly, "they'll introduce you to the girl."

Mr. Allen's spring project came along at a fortuitous time. He had previously been offered a sizable salary to appear in a film opposite the rap stars Method Man and Redman as a Vice President of the United States who gets turned onto dope by the hip-hoppers. Mr. Hamilton, who has an innate understanding of the fine line between self-parody and making a fool of himself, passed. "One week later," he marveled, "I got a call saying 'Woody Allen wants you for this movie.'"

Mr. Hamilton plays a movie producer in the film, and a natural assumption was that he would base the characterization on his longtime friend, Robert Evans. "Dustin [Hoffman] played Bobby a little in Wag the Dog , so I try to steer away from that," he explained. "I'm trying to be myself, as if I were in that position, and I think that's ultimately harder to do." Besides, Mr. Allen had encouraged him to "just be you"–right down to the tan. "Sometimes they darken the leading lady," Mr. Hamilton explained, addressing the problems his complexion can cause for cinematographers. "But it doesn't bother Woody. He told me, 'There are people as dark as you. I've never met one, but ….'

"As an actor, I feel like an abused dog having been in a shelter," he said. He recounted how, as a young actor in the waning days of the studio system, he had worked "on the bell"–when the director was ready to shoot a take, a loud bell would ring out across the sound stage. "I used to freeze up," said Mr. Hamilton, looking pained, "and it's taken a lot of time to get rid of that feeling." With Mr. Allen, however, "You can do pretty much what you want, as long as your ad libs are in character. He knows the minute the rhythm isn't there."

Mr. Hamilton is even doing a bit of directing himself as an acting teacher at the Century Theater. His friend, the New York-based acting coach George Di Cenzo, had been summoned west to tape a television pilot, and Mr. Hamilton found himself supervising a disparate group of about 30 actors on everything from Shakespeare to scenes from Girl, Interrupted . "I think my innate sense of making people feel good has helped me bring the best out of them," he said.

Mr. Hamilton is full of the kind of no-nonsense tips that you rarely hear on Inside the Actors Studio . When it comes to learning lines, for example, he laboriously records all the other speaking parts at correctly timed intervals on separate tape recorders. He then plays them back and hones his own delivery.

Then, of course, there is the experience that comes from having survived so many movie sets. About Godfather III –which, among its many disappointments, reduces Mr. Hamilton to wallpaper–he said he had trouble finding the motivation for a character who didn't do anything except "follow around behind Al Pacino trying to help him out and look interested." Finally, he turned to Andy Garcia for advice. "Count the hairs on the back of Al's head," Mr. Garcia counseled. "And I did," laughed Mr. Hamilton. "I did it for weeks. I didn't look interested; I looked fascinated."

Mr. Hamilton arrived in Hollywood in 1958 at the age of 18, just as a new breed of actor was transforming the face of moviedom. For a budding matinee idol, his timing was lousy. "Somebody once said, 'George Hamilton is the only guy I know who came to Hollywood, and they asked him, "Who would you rather be, Jimmy Dean or Marlon Brando?", and George said: "David Niven,'" Mr. Hamilton said. "It's true. I didn't want that. I wanted that other thing that I'd grown up with. I liked the movie-star lifestyle as much as I liked acting. I thought movie stars were the royalty of America, and I wanted to join that group."

Cast in the very first movie he auditioned for, Crime and Punishment USA , Mr. Hamilton nevertheless found Hollywood wanting. He had already cavorted on the zebra-striped banquettes of El Morocco at 17, attended Palm Beach dinner parties where Henry Ford II, Senator Jack Kennedy and C.I.A. chief Allen Dulles sat together and smoked cigars after dinner "like a giant tribal council." So when an old school friend–Oscar Molinari, a cousin of New York-based socialite Reinaldo Herrera–invited him down to Venezuela, Mr. Hamilton hopped on the first plane south. "Everything I imagined Hollywood was going to be, Caracas was," he recalled. "I lived this Hollywood idea in Caracas, dating, partying, studying bullfighting."

But soon Mr. Hamilton had been lured back by the offer of a seven-year contract at MGM. His early films ran the gamut from Your Cheatin' Heart , in which he played a surprisingly convincing Hank Williams, to Where the Boys Are , in which he turned his early, effortless charm on full.

In the mid-60's, he gained off-screen notoriety by dating Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The affair elicited a level of public disapproval that's hard to imagine today. L.B.J.'s enemies charged that he had personally secured Mr. Hamilton's draft deferment from Vietnam. Meanwhile, when Mr. Hamilton brought the First Daughter as his date to the 1966 Oscars, the press frenzy upstaged the events onstage. "There was a presumption that I was some upstart trying to insinuate himself into the White House. Certainly, it hurt my credibility as an actor," Mr. Hamilton said. Coincidentally or not, movie offers started to dry up and he was soon headed for TV land, the Harold Robbins series The Survivors and the eventual professional nadir of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977).

At the end of the 70's, Mr. Hamilton made his comeback, taking control of his career, producing and starring in a pair of films, Love at First Bite and Zorro: The Gay Blade , in which he deftly spoofed his own reputation as an effete playboy. He became a running gag in Doonesbury , where Zonker worshipped his tan. This brief renaissance fizzled quickly, however, and after that, Mr. Hamilton survived by turning himself into a free-floating franchise. He hawked self-tanning products on QVC, hosted a TV talk show with his ex-wife and operated a chain of cigar bars. All along, though, he never lost his mysterious hold on the public.

"Why does this generation respect me? Why am I not out of date?" he mused rhetorically, a look of sudden concentration creasing his remarkably unlined face. "I think it's because I bridge the generations. I'm not like some actors my age who are frozen like moths in amber …. What was cool was I saw the end of the studio days. Commissary dinners. Dates with Marilyn Monroe. All the things guys read about, I did. We were told to date people at the studio. That was like being in a candy store."

In 1970, Mr. Hamilton married Ford model Alana Collins. The ceremony took place in Elvis' suite at the Las Vegas Hilton, and Colonel Parker was his best man. The relationship didn't last–Mr. Hamilton was inexplicably going through a fleeting domestic phase. "I wanted to stay at home and raise children," he said. She subsequently married and divorced Rod Stewart.

Today, the two are close again. "He can still make me laugh more than anyone I know," said Ms. Stewart from California. "He's a much deeper person than people give him credit for." When his ex-wife says that we don't know the real George Hamilton, she means it as a compliment.

Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Stewart had one son, Ashley, now 26 years old. Lately, Mr. Hamilton has taken a new, unexpected detour into parenting: "I have a little 15-month-old child that I had with a girl." Mr. Hamilton said this so matter-of-factly that I thought he might be putting me on. He was not: "We're not married, but I signed the birth certificate and I see the boy and I have co-custody of him," he said (although he ultimately declined to identify the child's mother). "I bought baby clothes last week and had a great time doing it. I have a responsibility to that child, and that comes built-in with me."

He said he has been giving a lot of thought recently to his last act. "It's the final turn, and most people flame out," Mr. Hamilton said, indicating that he wished to avoid that fate. And even George Hamilton, veteran of The Victors , Hollywood Squares and QVC, can become philosophical: "This is where the road starts to get interesting," he said, trying but failing to wrinkle his forehead. "Up until now, it's been a piece of cake."