People in the news for May 5, 1997

Monday, May 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Mother Teresa among the poor of Calcutta; Albert Schweitzer among the sick of Africa ... and now, Eddie Murphy among the cross-dressing prostitutes of West Hollywood. See, you shouldn't get the wrong idea about that male hooker dressed as a woman who climbed into Murphy's car at 5 a.m. the other morning. It wasn't an adventure in Hugh Grantish wild-side walking, he insists. He was merely giving the guy/gal a lift. A little prostitute-oriented humanitarianism! "It's not the first hooker that I've helped out," he explains helpfully. Apparently, early-morning prostitute-assisting is something of a philanthropic hobby of his. "I'll pull over and they'll go, 'Oh, you're Eddie Murphy, oh my god,' and I'll empty my wallet out to help." Cops pulled Murphy over after watching 20-year-old Atisone Seiuli get into his Toyota Man Cruiser ... er, Land Cruiser. Seiuli was arrested; Murphy was not. "It wasn't like we drove to some dark spot to do something," he says, shocked that you'd think otherwise. Alas, this one little misunderstanding threatens to undo his amateur social work: "I'm never giving anyone a lift again," he says.

Briefly

*When 7,000 people showed up at Ohio's Kent State University this weekend for the 27th anniversary of the student shootings there, it was inevitable that three of them would be Crosby, Stills and Nash. It was doubly inevitable that they would perform "Ohio," their anthem about the killing of four students by National Guardsmen at an anti-war rally. The shootings "really hit us hard," David Crosby says. "It's not something that the American consciousness should forget. It's a mistake we don't ever want to repeat."

*"Who's the Boss?" -- it's not something the American conscience should forget; it's a mistake we don't ever want to repeat. Yet the potential is ever with us; even now, Tony Danza is plotting his return to television. He's to star in a TV movie about a Philly garbage man given a chance to play pro football. Says Danza, "I think the film says some great things," primarily, that someone is still willing to green-light a project based on Danza's star power. You're Tony Danza, oh my god!

Card him!

There are those who say, "Oh, you're Michael Jackson, oh my god," and then there are German prison officials. The delicately whittled face, the carefully bleached pigment, the distinctive fey mannerisms -- none were identification enough for guards at Munich's Stadelheim prison, where Jackson stopped the other day to visit an imprisoned concert promoter. He had to prove he was who he said he was and not some other gender-manipulating pop sprite. "You can't come into the prison just because you claim to be Michael Jackson," an official says. After all, you never know: A day earlier, a Jackson impersonator had tried to get into the prison.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets