"Hi There, Sagittarius"

In the neon night caves along Hollywood's Sunset Strip, the smooth-talking fellows with the gleaming teeth no longer wink and say, "Come up and see my etchings." Last week, as the sun picked up the trine of Jupiter and Uranus, the new line was "Let's compare horoscopes," and many a forthright Virgo walked away enchantedly on the arm of a leering Libra.

For the religion of the stars is the stars' religion, and astrology in Hollywood is competing with the psychoanalyst's couch. "Psychiatrists trade on human anxiety," says one high-priced chartist of the skies.

"A good astrologer relieves it." As usual last week, it was Carroll Righter, Hollywood's No. 1 self-styled "astrologian," who did most of the anxiety relieving.

Proper Piper. Righter has just about as much influence in Hollywood as a leading astrologer has in Thailand, where no top politician makes a move until the heavens are right. Dozens of stars will make no move (or movie) without calling Righter. Marlene Dietrich, whose respect for the master shot up when he correctly predicted that she would break her ankle in a studio accident, uses airplanes only when he gives the nod. Arlene Dahl, Robert Cummings, Rhonda Fleming, the Gabors, Hildegarde Neff, Adolphe Menjou, Tab Hunter, Susan Hayward, Red Skelton--all would rather pay Righter than the piper. Some use him more than others. Says Mrs. Van Johnson: "I don't ask Carroll when I should go to the bathroom, like some of our friends do."

Righter does not have all the big-name clients; Marilyn Monroe, Clifford Odets, and Susan Strasberg, for instance, seek their zodiacal advice elsewhere. When he first met Monroe, Righter made a bid to impress her and said: "I know--you're a Gemini. Did you know you were born under the same sign as Rosalind Russell, Judy Garland and Rosemary Clooney?" Marilyn looked him straight in the eye and answered: "I know nothing about those people. I was born under the same sign as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Queen Victoria and Walt Whitman."

Scorpions Too Small. Hollywood's Righter probably owes his vocation to a Philadelphia physician who in 1937 told him he had six months to live (Righter now says he had a "back ailment"). Then a pressagent for the Philadelphia Civic Opera, he moved to Hollywood. Reading about the zodiac, he soon saw that although Broadway plays were being scheduled by astrological advice, and Wall Street might be half paralyzed without readings from the stars, Hollywood could be El Dorado as a place to cast horoscopes.

Today, at 60, Righter has a staff of four secretaries, one mathematician, and two servants, produces a daily column syndicated in 253 U.S. newspapers, writes books (Astrology and You), and at his Victorian Hollywood home throws splashy parties that seem to come from a more storied era when only the screen was silent. Gouda-bodied actresses sight down their cigarette holders at producers; social climbers pretend fascination with semiliterate stars. When Taurus is the sign of the time, there is a live bull on the front lawn, and when Leo reigns, a full-grown lion. For Scorpio last week, there was a crocodile as a stand-in for the real thing. "Scorpions," explains the host, "are too small."

Drifting among his guests, Carroll Righter remembers everything but their names. "Hello, Taurus," he says, "Hi there, Sagittarius." To the inner circle, it's "Hello, March 8," or "January 27." Once he met a woman and said, "Hello, March 27," then turned to a friend and whispered, "What's her name?" He had forgotten a durable Aries: Gloria Swanson.

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