Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 4, 1994                   TAG: 9411040051
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                 LENGTH: Medium

`BAYWATCH' IS HAVING ITS DAY IN THE SUN

But Hasselhoff's musings are cut short by a voice ringing out from the real lifeguard office a wall away. The real lifeguard asks Hasselhoff to move back on the deck a few steps and please not block the view: Real bathers are down there on the beach, after all, real lives are at stake and, as the ``Baywatch'' theme plainly states the lifeguard's creed, ``I won't let you out of my sight.''

``Oh, sorry,'' says Hasselhoff. Anyhow, he has to go film his next scene for the syndicated series. He can't keep a worldwide audience of 1 billion viewers in more than 140 countries waiting. (The program airs Saturdays at 7 p.m. on WSLS-Channel 10.)

So unfolds another day of ``Baywatch'' at Will Rogers Beach, where Sunset Boulevard dead-ends into the Pacific Coast Highway just up from Santa Monica, and where, most every weekday from June to December, real life co-exists with a parallel universe: the reassuring, romanticized ``Baywatch'' version, headed up by Hasselhoff.

At 42, he plays Lt. Mitch Buchannon of the Los Angeles County beach patrol and hunky den father to the buffed and full-chested younger men and women who serve in his command. Under Buchannon's leadership, they save lives, catch rays, offer moral lessons, preen and radiate unconsummated sexual vibes - much of this in arty slow-motion with a rock beat.

At the moment, Hasselhoff is costumed only in his red lifeguard trunks as he withdraws into the make-believe Baywatch office to film a scene with Pamela Anderson, who plays lifeguard C.J. Parker.

``Father Ryan told me he's thinking of leaving the priesthood,'' C.J. will confide to Mitch, ``and I'm afraid it's because he's fallen in love with me.''

Meanwhile, in the real command post, a barechested hunk in red trunks similar to Hasselhoff's curls twin 30-pound barbells, left, right, back and forth, as he scans the water and the beach.

``... I'm always here ...,'' goes the theme song, and right now that means Lorry Haddock, a 20-year, second-generation lifeguard who is at least as pretty and as pumped as his make-believe ``Baywatch'' counterparts. He is working a 10-hour, real-life shift. `` ... I won't let you out of my sight ... ''

Soon the scene next door is finished. Pamela Anderson emerges from the office out onto the deck.

``I'm so-o-o-o stiff,'' she says to no one in particular, whereupon this bodacious young actress in her red ``Baywatch'' Speedo arches her back and stretches her arms behind her in what becomes, for at least one witness, a heart-stopping spandex moment.

Catching his breath, the reporter asks Anderson to identify the hardest part of her ``Baywatch'' duties.

``It's not really hard,'' she coolly replies. ``It just - uh, takes up a lot of time.''

For her, anyway.

``One line. Rough day,'' says Yasmine Bleeth, a ``Baywatch'' newcomer who plays lifeguard Caroline Holden.

She has emerged from her trailer parked, like another dozen or so ``Baywatch'' vehicles, in the Will Rogers public lot. Having changed out of her working attire, she sports a different, civilian swimsuit.

``I'm gonna work on my tan,'' she announces before plopping herself on a yellow towel out on the beach, just a few dozen yards from the lifeguard headquarters.

Meanwhile, a scene is being shot at a beachside pay phone. In the scene, a youngster is calling her mother who, heartrendingly, is in jail.

``I need one more girl, someone not on skates,'' says the assistant director as he populates the background.

``I'm not on skates,'' one comely volunteer pipes up from behind the spectator barricade.

``You're not in a bikini, either,'' the A.D. observes.

Looking out from his command post, Lorry Haddock is asked if ``Baywatch'' is a good thing for the lifeguards it depicts with its blend of reverence and abandon.

``Wellllll,'' Haddock hedges, ``maybe showing the professional part of what we do is good. The original `Baywatch' producer was once a 'guard, so every once in while they get a pretty good storyline.

``But sometimes they have hokey episodes that we're kind of embarrassed about.''

That said, he takes a pull from his bottle of Evian water and scans the beach for someone in distress.