Hebrew Union College to Celebrate

The Hebrew Union College has great plans for the HUC Cultural Center for American Jewish Life to be built on a 15-acre plot in Sepulveda Pass midway between West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Monday night, to celebrate this ambitious undertaking, the college will host a dinner dance at the Century Plaza Hotel. That same evening, HUC will honor Dr. Franklin D. Murphy, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Times Mirror, and former UCLA chancellor.

The Hebrew Union College’s president, Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, will present Dr. Murphy with the college’s Rabbi Mayerberg Award, because “like the Kansas City rabbi, he (Dr. Murphy) is an exemplar of social consciousness and has devoted his lifetime to religio-ethnic understanding and the advancement of education and the arts.” Dr. Murphy and the late rabbi were good friends when Mayerberg was with Congregation B’nai Jehuda in Kansas City and Murphy was chancellor of the University of Kansas.

Michael B. Eisner, chairman and CEO of Walt Disney Productions, and Frank Wells, Disney’s president and chief operating officer, are dinner co-chairmen and Mrs. William Louchheim Jr. is handling the dinner arrangements. The Disney Studios will provide the evening’s entertainment. And among those who’ll be attending the black-tie affair will be Richard J. Scheuer, chairman of the college’s national board of governors, Dr. Uri D. Herscher, the college’s executive vice president, and Rabbi Michael Zedek of Rabbi Mayerberg’s former Kansas City congregation.

“An Evening With Anthony Newley,” starring the irrepressible entertainer, will be the highlight of the American Heart Assn.’s eighth annual Heart Ball. The time is tonight and the place is the Beverly Hilton Hotel. And Dickinson C. Ross, the association’s Greater Los Angeles Affiliate chairman, says it’s one of several events that will help raise $1.3 million for heart research at UCLA and USC.

Chairing the evening, which will include a silent auction before dinner, is Mrs. Charles D. Miller, wife of the chairman and CEO of Avery Intl. Owen H. Harper, executive vice president of Crocker National Bank, and Phillip L. Williams, senior vice president of Times Mirror Co., are her co-chairs.

The Social Scramble: Jane Kramer is giving a luncheon Saturday afternoon at the Bistro Garden to welcome Dale Snodgrass back from a Hawaiian interlude. Then Jane and her husband Robert, the auto dealer, head for Rio and carnival time.

The parties celebrating the engagement of Geri Firks and attorney Richard Brawerman finally came to an end. And now the parties celebrating the popular pair’s marriage have begun. Among the first--Ruth and Harry Roman’s dinner party this weekend at Touch, the private club where Flower Fashions will be using all white spring flowers (narcissuses, tulips, freesias, etc.) for the decor.

The most romantic among us are celebrating Valentine’s Day with little fetes. Irene Dunne has been doing it for quite a few years and she does it up beautifully with all her women guests asked to wear red and the gentlemen sporting red kerchiefs in the pockets of their dinner jackets. Jimmy Stewart always arrives leading a silver balloon (the message is “I Love You”) on a long ribbon. The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the publisher and editors of Time magazine (and you thought they weren’t sentimental) host a reception to mark the opening of the exhibition “Time Covers Hollywood” at the Academy on Valentine’s Day. Out in the desert, the Vintage Club is waiting until Feb. 16 to stage its Valentine’s Day celebrating. It will be a Bal de Rouge and it will feature the music of Tony Roma and his orchestra. Suzanne Marx is giving a luncheon for all her favorite people. And Helen Chaplin, now a vice president at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, is having photographer Max Eckert as the heartthrob of her Valentine’s luncheon.

It was Suzanne Pleshette’s birthday and, eyes tearing from new contact lenses, she was camping it up for the other teary-eyed patients in Dr. Stuart Grant’s Beverly Hills waiting room. “It’s my birthday and would you believe it, Tommy (husband Tommy Gallagher) came home with a new Rolls--for him,” she carried on. Seconds later, she admitted that maybe the car was for her. Laughing at Suzanne’s antics were Eleanor Hoover, who was thinking of changing the color of her blue-gray eyes, and actress-model Heather Ettinger whose eyes, via contacts, have turned a gorgeous turquoise.

In Washington, Rose Narva has resigned as general manager of David Murdock’s Hay-Adams Hotel. She’ll stay on for a few more weeks, “at least,” she says, “through a few state visits.”

More on Washington--Pat Devine, who is leaving the Department of Interior (as did her boss, Bill Clark), for greener pastures (the White House perhaps?) celebrated her birthday in grand style. Alexander Braune, who runs Washington’s Vista Hotel, invited a bunch of Pat’s pals to a surprise birthday party. In that bunch were Elaine Crispin, the First Lady’s personal assistant; Jane Erkenbeck, who is assistant to James Rosebush, the First Lady’s chief of staff; Barbara Hayward, who is in the White House personnel department; Kathy Osborn, the President’s secretary; AT&T;’s Lina Ellis; Lindy St. Cyr, director of public affairs for Citizens for America; Patricia Ellis, a software executive, and Donna Shaffer of Pride Airlines. It started with drinks in the Presidential Suite and moved down to the American Harvest Room for dinner. And Pat was properly surprised by it all.

Terry Herst opens her new counseling service, Survive Divorce, in Westwood next week.

Lunching at Ma Maison--Norman and Eileen Kreiss, back from a San Francisco working trip; Joan Collins and Peter Holm who, they say, will marry in June; David Begelman; Freddie Fields.