BETWEEN A PLANET AND A HARD ROCK

Planet Hollywood. New York City. Lunchtime. Arnold Schwarzenegger's two little girls are eating anonymously a few tables over. Salads, veggie burgers, and pizzas whiff by. Movie memorabilia, the restaurant's gimmick, dangle from the ceiling and creep along the walls. Billy Crystal's City Slickers saddle hovers overhead. Across the room, encased in its own glass shrine-Judy Garland's dress from The Wizard of Oz. And there by the door is Planet Hollywood's most valuable piece of kitsch-Arnold himself. Flashbulbs. Autographs. His bionic smile lights his way through the crowd. As one woman aims her Instamatic at Arnold, the bag full of Planet Hollywood merchandise dangling from her wrist bops a stern-looking black-haired woman in the head. Meanwhile, back by the door, there's a 45-minute wait for a table. It has been a year and a hince the doors of Planet Hollywood blew open, on Manhattan's West 57th Street, with a $750,000 premiere starring investors Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis, whose collective knack for promoting the place makes P.T. Barnum seem subtle. Now the principle owners, restaurant mogul Robert Earl and movie producer Keith Barish (Sophie's Choice), are ready to duplicate this miracle the world over. Planet Hollywood franchises have already opened in Orange County, Calif., and Cancun, Mexico. By year's end, Barish and Earl plan to invade Minneapolis,Washington, D.C., and London. Next stop, Hong Kong, then Singapore, maybe Indonesia. It seems that nothing can stop them. Except for one fly-a huge, Jeff Goldblum-size fly-in their ointment. In an ongoing legal battle that includes a $1.5 billion lawsuit, Peter Morton, the formidable restaurateur who owns Morton's in Los Angeles and all the Hard Rock Cafes in the western half of the U.S., could put a severe wobble in Planet Hollywood's orbit. Morton is accusing Earl of stealing trade secrets, creating a ''lower- quality knockoff'' of the Hard Rock, and conspiring to invade his Hard Rock territories-a move that will not only take a bite out of the burger business but eat into lucrative merchandise sales. Recently a California judge refused Planet Hollywood's plea to dismiss the case. Now, as the two sides await their day in court, their legal costs are soaring into the millions and Planet Hollywood's superstar spokesmen might face potentially unflattering financial disclosures. ''The whole thing is bulls -- -,'' says Earl. ''It's just a normal piece of competition-McDonald's and Burger King. It's about as close a similarity, if that!'' But the rivalry between Morton and Earl is far from normal; even under ideal circumstances these two gentlemen would never be drinking buddies. This is Robert Earl, 41: Effusive. Fond of loud silk shirts and baroque sweaters. Grew up around England's vaudeville houses and beach resorts, riding on the trunks of his pop singer father-also named Robert Earl-whom he calls the British equivalent of Eddie Fisher. Starting at age 7 he was enlisted to count heads in the theaters where his father performed, making sure Pop wasn't cheated out of his 10 percent cut of the house. Asked how many siblings he has, Earl replies, ''None. I killed them all at birth.'' ; This is Peter Morton, 45: Gentlemanly. Reserved. Hip. Favors white shirts and loafers. Following his parents' divorce, he grew up in a tony section of West L.A. with his mother and twin sister. His father, Arnold Morton, is a famous Chicago restaurateur. Known for his philanthropy, Peter adopted two slogans for Hard Rock early on: ''Love All, Serve All,'' and, rather ironically, ''Save the Planet.'' Earl has called the legal wrestling ''a real bloodbath.'' In his camp are Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis. Morton has his own legion of celebrities standing on his side of the battlefield. Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Barry Diller, and Henry Winkler are among the investors in the Los Angeles Hard Rock, the cornerstone of Morton's empire. ''It's an investment for them,'' says Bob Brown, executive vice president of Morton's Hard Rocks, ''not a platform for publicity.'' How did this fracas start? Until January, Earl served as CEO of Rank Leisure USA, which owns the East Coast Hard Rock Cafes. Barish dreamed up Planet Hollywood, but Earl made it a reality by pouring considerable Hard Rock resources into it. Earl lured away a generous helping of Hard Rock employees to staff the flagship Planet Hollywood, which opened just a block away from the New York Hard Rock, and long stretches of the Planet Hollywood employee manual seem to have been copied verbatim from the New York Hard Rock's manual. Earl contends that any Hard Rock resources he used belonged to his Hard Rocks, not Morton's (for example, Morton's side uses a different manual). He says the suit is the result of a ''personal vendetta.'' Morton says he's simply protecting his business. But the alliance between the two has been uneasy for years. ''You've got one guy who spent 20 years of his life nurturing the Hard Rock concept,'' says one of Morton's employees. ''Now Earl comes along and rips it off.'' So to truly understand Morton versus Earl, you have to know the history of the Hard Rock Cafe.