HOLLYWOOD — Robert Nudelman is a gadfly. Not the kind that bites livestock but a person who annoys others or rouses them from complacency, all in the interest of preserving gritty old Hollywood.

When not on the phone at his tiny but historico-politically correct apartment ($600 a month, built in 1927), he is buzzing around city offices or casting a quizzical eye on Hollywood Boulevard's bums, punks and tourists from the ticket booth at the Guinness World of Records Museum.

Single and carless, a 36-year-old film fan and free-lance activist with few visible means of support, Nudelman has bulldog tenacity, elephantlike memory and mockingbird wit to any number of more or less successful causes--mostly the less successful kind.

But one of his more unlikely ventures paid off earlier this month when Procter & Gamble's corporate historian announced the fate of the Max Factor Museum of Beauty, complete with color-coded rooms for women of different hair tones.

In the presence of notables including City Councilman Mike Woo, a one-time political ally with whom he has been feuding since 1986, Nudelman's proposal for a History of Hollywood Museum at the Highland Avenue site won the day.

Never mind that the other two finalists dropped out of the competition or that Woo failed to join in the cheers and applause when Nudelman's name was mentioned.

"We worked to convince them of what was best, and they listened," Nudelman said of a committee that included city officials, company representatives and KCET personality Huell Howser. "My job from now on is putting the museum together."

Is it a paying job? "I hope so," he said.

The plan conceived by Nudelman with developer Gerry Schneiderman is to convert the four-story building into a museum-restaurant-theater-shopping complex. The Factor collection of motion picture makeup through the decades is to remain in place for at least three years. Then it is to go to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, which has been under development since the mid-1980s.

Nudelman has been living in Hollywood since 1977, when he graduated from the University of Arizona with a theater degree. While there, he put on 33 theatrical productions in three years and gained a reputation for being able to find the perfect prop.

That was often a challenge, he said. "In Tucson, when you ask for an \o7 art nouveau \f7 chair they say, 'Who's Art?' "