Parties Are Blossoming in the Desert

In the desert, one dazzling social event follows another this year (was it any different in ‘84?). To keep up you have to run--if you walk you won’t make them all--with checkbook open and pen at the ready.

Right on the heels of the giant Eisenhower Medical Center fund-raiser (it brought in well over $2 million) comes the Palm Springs Desert Museum’s “A Night of Tribute” on Saturday. This one is being hosted by the museum’s Women’s Committee and its board of trustees and it honors museum benefactors former Ambassador and Mrs. Walter Annenberg. A great number of the Springs’ most prominent residents are getting into this act.

The evening will go like this: At 7 p.m. there’s the concert featuring Roberta Peters and Robert Merrill in the museum’s Annenberg Theater; then it’s cocktail time in the Hibbert Orientation Center and finally starting at 8:45 p.m. dinner and dancing in the Annenberg Wing.

Former President Gerald Ford and Frank Sinatra, who have handsome digs in the desert, have both said they’ll participate in the program. And, of course, museum board president Robert L. Lynch and his wife, Sharon; museum director Morton J. Golden and Women’s Committee president Mrs. Walter I. Tenney are taking active parts in the celebration. (The Lynches are one of many hosting cocktail parties around the museum’s fete.)

Carl D. Pearl is chairing the “Night of Tribute” with co-chairmen Mrs. Kirk Douglas, Mrs. Ernest Hahn, Eugene Klein, Mrs. Frank Sinatra and Mrs. Ralph Waycott. And among those on the party committee are Mrs. Walter N. Marks, Harold C. Broderick, Mrs. Carleton E. Coveny, Mrs. Paul W. Elmquist, Calvin R. Vander Woude, Mrs. Tony Rose, Pat Hope, Mrs. Robert French and so on.

Who says Southern California is a cultural wasteland? In the current issue of Arts & Antiques there’s an impressive list of “The Top 100 American Collectors.” And guess what? A nice percentage are local residents. Like television producer (“Love Boat,” “Dynasty,” “Hotel”) Douglas Schoolfield Cramer, who collects contemporary art; Hannah and Edward Carter, whose area is 17th-Century Dutch paintings; Dr. Armand Hammer (Old Masters, drawings, Impressionist and contemporary art); Arthur and Rosalinde Gilbert (English silver and mosaics); Eli and Edye Broad (modern and contemporary art); Lee and Robert Woods (contemporary); Jennifer (Jones) and Norton Simon (Old Masters, Impressionists and modern art); actors Jack Nicholson (19th-Century French art) and Steve Martin (contemporary); Max Palevsky (Old Masters and contemporary); Marcia Weisman (contemporary art and antiquities); Frederick Weisman (contemporary); Barbra Streisand (Art Nouveau and Art Deco); David L. Wolper (Picasso sculpture) and Robert Gore Rifkind (German expressionist art), who recently married County Museum of Art curator Stephanie Barron, a world-renowned expert on the period.

Love Notes: Wedding bells rang on Valentine’s Day for Lud Renick, owner of Pasadena’s La Couronne and the Chronicle (he’s also a partner in Santa Monica’s Chronicle and the Mandarin in Beverly Hills and San Francisco), and Shirley Ebbert, director of recruiting and training and sales associate for the Dippell Realty Co. Shirley, a past president of Las Floristas, is handling reservations for the April 26 Headdress Ball. After a brief honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas they’ll make their home in Hancock Park. The real honeymoon comes later. In May the Renicks will be off to London and Milan via the Orient Express and a wine and food tour of Northern Italy.

Ben Deane, Southern California real estate developer, and San Francisco artist Robilee Frederick have plans for a small, family-only wedding ceremony early this summer. Then the newlyweds will spend several months in Europe where she will paint and he’ll sculpt.

The Social Scramble: Lunching at Jimmy’s earlier this week: Greg Bautzer with associate Jonathan Bloch; Madame Sylvia Wu with Pat Devine (here on vacation) who is moving back to the White House from the Department of the Interior; Coca-Cola Bottling Co. executive Lucille Boswell, who’s planning a holiday in Ireland (Jimmy Murphy will help plan the trip); former Sen. John Tunney; Arpad Domyan; Dick Ferry; Kirk Kerkorian with former wife, Jean, and their daughter Tracy; Rogers & Cowan executive Dale Olsen; and Sheldon Wilson. And later in the night Feliza and Elliott Plowe were dining there with Hollywood Park’s Marje Everett.

The other day the Bistro Garden Lunch Bunch included Sue Cummings and Marion Jorgensen; Dana and Cubby Broccoli (filming on the latest James Bond thriller is fini ); Buddy and Greer (Garson) Fogelson with Herbert and Juli Hutner; Sherry Lansing with her parents; Lucy Zahran Bonorris with Geri Brawerman and Edie Waxenberg; redheaded Arlene Dahl with Margaret Pereira, Jarma Bensinger, Doris Mendenhall and Rosemarie Stack; Time magazine’s editor-in-chief Henry Grunwald with actor-producer Robert Evans; Norman and Eileen Kreiss; Beverly Hills Mayor Annabelle Heiferman; and Janet De Cordova.

In the crowd at Morton’s on a very recent evening: Essem (Adnan’s brother) Khashoggi and his wife; Sylvester Stallone; Johnny Carson; Diahann Carroll with Motown’s Suzanne de Passe and Suzanne’s husband, actor Paul LeMat; the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Burton Slatkin with son Eddie; Meshulam and Pia (Zadora) Riklis; Kirk Kerkorian with Yvette Mimieux; Wendy and Leonard Goldberg; Michael and Pat York with Steve Martin; Diane Keaton; and First Hairdresser Julius Bengtsson.

David Narva, who owns the Yves Saint Laurent boutiques in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, hosted a tiny dinner party at Palette for Houston hair stylist Lyndon Johnson (he does the coiffures for everyone who counts in that Texas metropolis) and his new associate, David Chase, formerly of the Aida Grey Salon.

Faces in the crowd at last weekend’s World Corporate Tennis Championship at La Quinta Hotel and Tennis Club: Barbara Sinatra, Barbara Luna, Dinah Shore, Ed Ames, Cameron Mitchell, Natalie and Danny Schwartz, Vienna’s Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Haussmann, and John Shields.