Poor David Hasselhoff. He was there to plug “Knight Rider,” the television series in which he starred as a sleek crime buster partnered with an intelligent car. Hite, meanwhile, was fearless in her candor and disarming in her person: soft-spoken, strikingly beautiful, with a cascade of strawberry-blond curls, a penchant for scarlet lipstick, and an elegant, overtly feminine wardrobe. On this occasion, she wore a lacy black cocktail dress and smoked a cigarette with the languid assurance of Marlene Dietrich in “Shanghai Express.” (Hite loved the films of the nineteen-thirties and forties and the commandingly glamorous women who anchored them.) Hasselhoff looked as if he had wandered into one of those bad dreams in which you have skipped class all term and must now sit for the final. He cleared his throat. He tugged at his tie. His leather jacket creaked audibly. “I know a lot of women, though, that, that . . .” He trailed off, but Douglas pressed him to complete the thought. “That don’t, uh, uh—how do you talk about this stuff?”