B.W. COOK -- The Crowd

It is amazing what a few women with good connections and the right

attitude can accomplish. The Sound of Music Chapter of the Guilds

supporting the Orange County Performing Arts Center, led by a few

powerful women, managed to raise in excess of $150,000 for the Center

from just one party last week held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Newport

Beach.

Now you may say, so what? I say that’s a major accomplishment. Given

the cost of throwing a Saturday night bash anywhere these days, raising

net proceeds of that magnitude is impressive, and more importantly it is

of considerable value to our community via the Center.

The evening, billed as a return to New York’s legendary disco club

Studio 54 was a sell out for the 64 member guild. Guild president Kathie

Porter led the charge with able assistance from co-chairs of the evening

Sally Crockett and Eve Kornyei.

Bringing in the big bucks were underwriting chairs Kelly Hague and

Patsy Marshall. Word on the street has it that the Bush White House may

be recruiting these gals to help balance the federal deficit. Of course,

with financial help from the very generous Donna and John Crean, who

served as honorary chairs of the wild evening, Marshall and Hague had a

secret weapon in their financial pocket.

Four hundred guests poured into the Four Seasons Ballroom wearing

anything-goes attire in keeping with the irreverent tone of the 1970s New

York club, Studio 54, that Vanity Fair magazine labeled “the greatest

club of all time.”

In its day, “54” attracted high society men in tuxedos and their women

in diamonds and fur, mixing with men in jock straps and naked women

sprayed golden spinning on the dance floor. Stars crowded the space with

street people. Public sex and drugs mixed with the latest rock and roll.

It was something of a giant coming out party every night. Not just coming

out from the sexual point of view we associate with the present use of

the terminology, but rather a coming out of society in general as the old

world literally collapsed under the pressure of a new age.

Studio 54, was in some respects, a sociologists lab extraordinaire. It

was a place where freedom of expression was pushed to the max,

inhibitions were left at the door. Some came to look. Others came to live

on the wild side. It was decadent, abusive, indulgent and electrifying.

The Newport crowd, many of whom were too young to know the real “54,”

tried to recapture the spirit of the ‘70s revolution in a decidedly tamer

milieu.

The music at The Four Seasons affair came from the Wayne Foster

Orchestra, not Mick Jagger or The Village People as might have been the

case in New York some 20-plus years ago. The ghost of Andy Warhol was

nowhere in sight. Neither was Paloma Picasso, Liza Minelli or Halston,

the very talented American fashion designer who died of AIDS some years

ago.

All of them were regulars at “54” along with the likes of a young John

Travolta riding the crest of the disco craze he helped to launch with the

film “Saturday Night Fever.” Al Pacino, Sly Stallone, mixed with New York

society including the leader of the pack (then and now) Nan Kempner and

her Park Avenue crowd. The late Truman Capote once said, “I sometimes

think of all the dead people like Toulouse-Lautrec, Baudelaire, and Oscar

Wilde who would have loved this club.”

And while Wilde never got the opportunity to party with Capote, our

very own local crowd including Ron and Linda Beale, Mike and Ann Howard,

Paul and Cyndie Lingenfelte, Dan and Judy Pederson, Vince and Collette

Taorimin, Sandy and Harriet Sandhu, Jeff and Diane Palumbo, John and Lori

Loftus, Adrienne Brennan, Scott Fontana, Nasrin Ansari, Larry and Joy

Horowitz and Jay and Barbara Magness were all among the people partying

for the Sound of Music.

* THE CROWD appears Thursdays and Saturdays.