Bob Hope to Emcee EarInstitute Benefit

Bob Hope will be the master of ceremonies. Roger Williams will play the piano. And the Lennon Sisters (remember?) will sing.

It’s part of the program for the annual benefit dinner hosted by the Associates of the House Ear Institute. At this year’s annual event, March 12 in the Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom, the Humanitarian Award will go to business tycoon (Grace Lines and more) and philanthropist J. Peter Grace.

Mrs. Clement Hirsch is benefit chairman for the Associates’ black-tie affair and Mrs. Stafford R. Grady is general chairman.

Karen Baynard Gould, wife of Michael Gould, chairman of Robinson’s department stores, is chairing the Venice Family Clinic’s Silver Circle celebration Saturday night. The party, a thank-you to patrons who have given the clinic $1,000 or more, starts at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home of Joel Silver where Tony Bill’s 72 Market Street restaurant will provide the munchies. And then the party moves on to Le Bel Age Hotel for dinner and dancing.

The group helping Mrs. Gould with these elaborate plans includes, among others, Irma Colen, Marj Fasman, Shelli Sieroty, Mona Colman and Ruth Bloom. The clinic gives free medical care to the unemployed, the working poor and the homeless in West Los Angeles.

France’s Duke du Mouchy and his American-born wife Joan (she’s the daughter of C. Douglas Dillon, former secretary of the Treasury and owner of Chateau Haut-Brion, producer of one of the Bordeaux region’s five grand crus ) were in San Francisco and Los Angeles participating in wine tastings and searching for native American cuisine.

Up to dinner time Monday at Marcia and Larry Israel’s home, they were still talking about the elusive typical American fare. The duchess said someone had suggested trying Gooie Louie’s, but Charles Fawcett, the actor and the duke’s longtime friend and the couple’s guide in Los Angeles, refused to have anything to do with a restaurant with that name. And so they never found out if Gooie Louie’s really served authentic American food.

The Israels’ menu was Chinese (chicken with walnuts, spring rolls, sweet and sour pork, etc.) all the way to the fortune cookies. And that was fine with the chic (the duchess wore a navy suit with a bare white satin blouse) and very charming visitors (it was the duke’s first visit to California) who shared the multi-course banquet with Fawcett, Rosemarie and Bob Stack, Jayne and Henry Berger, Bob and Midge Clark and Keith Keiffer. Stack sat on the duchess’ right and she told him how much she had enjoyed “The Untouchables,” the television series in which he played Eliott Ness. Although while filming in France, Stack had joined the Israels for one of the duke’s Sunday brunches at his ancestral estate outside of Paris, the actor had never met the duchess. Neither had the host and hostess, who have known the duke for years. When last seen they were all getting along famously.

Giorgio’s co-owner Gale Hayman has a nice flair for entertaining. (She must have picked up some useful pointers from ex-husband and business associate Fred Hayman, host par excellence.)

The other night she gathered a good mix for cocktails and dinner (prepared by the chef from the West Beach Cafe in Venice) and lots of bright talk. The setting was Gale’s white-walled apartment in one of those never-to-be-reproduced-again ‘20s Spanish Colonial-style buildings. The group that night included Marcia Weisman (she’s going to advise Gale on where to place her latest art acquisitions) with Sy Stuart, Greg and Niki Bautzer (Gale presented him with a bottle of the new Giorgio men’s fragrance), Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and his wife, Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne, Terry (she tucked a pretty red silk rose into the neckline of her black Ossie Clark dress) and Dennis Stanfill and Igor Stalew, who helped Gale host the party. (Terry Stanfill and Gale’s friendship dates back to a New York flight on Regent Air.)

A few days earlier while on a New York buying trip, Gale gave another little dinner party, this one at Mortimer’s, and among her guests were Andy Warhol, Interview magazine president Fred Hughes, fashion designer Carolina Herrera and her husband Reinaldo, Polly Bergen and her husband Jeff Endervelt, jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane and photographer Francesco Scavullo.

The Social Scramble: Pilar Wayne Stewart drove up from Newport to lunch with pals Frances Bergen and Lee Minnelli. And while here she caught them up on her latest news--she has filed for an annulment of her November marriage to former Orange County Judge Stephen Stewart. Once the annulment is granted, Pilar goes back to being Mrs. John Wayne.

Now that they’ve had a chance to settle in, Britain’s new Consul General Donald F. Ballentyne and his wife are plunging into the social swim. On Tuesday they host an after-the-performance reception at their residence for members of the Royal Philharmonic. Walter Coombs and Edwin Ridgway think it’s high time the Ballentynes were welcomed to Los Angeles, so they’re doing it with a luncheon at the Bistro Garden.

The American Cinematheque welcomed its new support group, the Premier Patrons, at a Sunday brunch at the Excelsior restaurant. Cinematheque chief Gary Essert and actor Michael York spoke movingly about the Cinematheque’s goals. And the 200 guests--the younger ones brunched in the bar--had a smashing afternoon. In the group were Elisabeth Pollon and daughter Ellen, Marj Fasman (just over the flu), Jackie Applebaum, Larry Dobkin, Gary Abrahams, the Peter Choates, Joe Danford, Robert and Joan Easton, Marilyn Gilfenbain, Steven Gethers, Patrons chairman Lois Howard, Connie Martinson, Jackie Monash and more.

Louise and John Good, Midge and Bob Clark, Donna (Reed) and Grover Asmus, all dined the other night with Jacques Camus in the Westwood Marquis’ Dynasty Room. And strolling through the hotel’s lobby were Ava Gardner; Putnam Editor Ellis Amburn and Priscilla Presley (he’s editing her book on her life with Elvis); Monique Van Vooren; Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Connors and Prince, whose motorbike was parked in front of the hotel.

After a few other people have had a try at it, Gloria Vanderbilt, the New York socialite, poet and fashion designer, has decided to tell her own story. Alfred A. Knopf will publish “Once Upon a Time” on May 1. “Little Gloria” dedicates her autobiography to her late husband, Wyatt Cooper, her four sons and to the memory of her mother, the gloriously glamorous “Big Gloria.”

Guadalupe Hank and Darwin Shannon, a nuclear physicist with TRW, plan to marry April 19 at the Church of the Good Shepherd. Ruben Panis has already begun working on the bridal gown.