Hollywood security guard Lillian Price marched determinedly along the Walk of Fame, anxious to investigate this missing person case personally.
She walked past William Bendix's brass star, past William Powell's, past George Sanders'. She stopped short in front of Ann Sothern's polished terrazzo sidewalk square and stared through the barricade on the Vine Street sidewalk.
"They're gone!" Price exclaimed. "The stars are gone -- they're missing in action!"
Charlton Heston, Jane Wyman, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra and 55 other Hollywood celebrities were missing Wednesday from the Walk of Fame in the 1600 block of Vine Street.
Their stars have been removed from a half-block section of sidewalk as crews began construction of a $500-million luxury project near the intersection of Vine and Hollywood Boulevard.
"Not Cary Grant! You're kidding me," said Price, who guards the entrance of the Taft Building at the famed street corner. "Don't tell me Clark Gable is missing. Every time I see 'Gone with the Wind' I love him. Now Clark Gable is gone with the wind."
Actually, Gable and the others have gone into storage. The 61 stars bracketed by those of 1940s-era radio star Ezra Stone and 1950s-era recording artist and arranger Hugo Winterhalter are under lock and key near downtown Los Angeles.
They will be returned to Vine Street in 2009, when the W Hotel, upscale retail shops, apartments and condominiums have been built to partially surround Price's landmark Taft office building.
Eight of the terrazzo star squares crumbled when workers cut them from the walkway and carefully lifted the 6-inch-thick concrete slabs out.
"We saved the brass. They'll be rebuilt," said Tim Maxwell, project manager for Webcor Builders, which is involved in the huge project being developed in conjunction with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.
"They cut outside the panels and reached under and lifted them into custom-built storage boxes," Maxwell said Wednesday.
There is no danger that the missing stars will mysteriously find their way onto EBay.
They're "in a secure warehouse," said Nathan Spencer, a manager with Corradini Corp., an 83-year-old firm that specializes in terrazzo, mosaic and marble contracting work.
The Hollywood-and-Vine redevelopment project is viewed by many as the catalyst for the resurrection of what has been called the world's most famous intersection.
