Clooney picks up ball for film promo

To promote his period football comedy "Leatherheads," George Clooney is making tracks.

While Universal was oddly disinviting critics to the film's screenings in L.A. last week, Clooney was busy tubthumping his pic directly to the regular Joes likely to make up the film's aud.

Much like an old-fashioned presidential candidate stumping in the heartland, the actor-director embarked last week on a whistle-stop tour of small towns that either had ties to his 1920s-set film or a personal connection to him. At the first stop in Duluth and the third in Salisbury, N.C., he and co-star Renee Zellweger even arrived via train, natch. The film was shot in the Carolinas; Clooney plays a member of a Duluth professional football team.

The tour's second stop held particular appeal for Clooney: Maysville, Ky, a town about 50 miles southeast of Cincinnati where a marker outside the old Russell Theater honors a moment in 1953 when native daughter Rosemary Clooney premiered her movie, "The Stars Are Singing."

"That event was a big part of our family's history -- and it was a big part of the town's, too," George Clooney said last week outside the city's 471-seat Washington Opera House ahead of the film's premiere there. (The Russell, closed for renovation, was unavailable.)

Some 2,000 people stood in the street outside the opera house for hours to see Clooney and Zellweger. Some held signs that read "Thanks for doing this," "George Clooney for President" and "We Graduated With George -- AHS Class of 1979." One woman brought her pillowcase to be signed; Clooney obliged.

Clooney grew up nearby in the riverfront hamlet of Augusta, where his parents Nick (Rosemary's brother and newsman) and Nina still reside.

"I have wanted to bring a film here for quite a while, but needed the right film. I couldn't do ‘Syriana,' " quipped George. Nor, he joked, "From Dusk Till Dawn."

The short promotional tour additionally went to Greenville, S.C., where the film also was shot.