A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC AT THE GOVERNORS BALL

The Governors Ball that followed the Academy Awards Monday night finally got the ingredient it’s needed for years--new blood. The authentic overflow 1,300-plus crowd at the Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom featured enough fresh moments to inspire a Hollywood novelist to sit down and write. As Dith Pran, the photographer and inspiration for “The Killing Fields,” put it, “I’ve covered the ‘Night of 100 Stars’ and I’ve just been to the British Film Academy Awards . . . but this is a party.”

And that meant rules were broken. Rule 1 about Governors Balls: Losers don’t show. And yet mingling were everyone from nominated cousins Sissy Spacek and Geraldine Page to Tom Hulce, to nominated screenwriter (“Beverly Hills Cop”) Daniel Petrie Jr. “What’s wonderful right here right now,” enthused Petrie, “is to have attended knowing there was no way you could win.”

Fellow losers Sam Waterston and Jeff Bridges (accompanied by what looked like the entire Bridges clan) apparently felt the same way--and broke Rule 2 about Governors Balls: Camaraderie is only for co-workers. The two actors huddled over salmon pate, displaying private and genuine glee over being nominated. There was nothing blase (or insincere) about Dorothy (Mrs. Lloyd) Bridges remarking to Waterston, “We rooted for Jeff, but we rooted for you, too!”

Rule 3 about Governors Balls hasn’t been broken since 1978, when Barbara Stanwyck and Fred Astaire did a fox trot at the Hilton some time after midnight. The rule: Golden Era figures don’t stay up this late. Yet well after midnight, septuagenarian David Lean and Judy Davis were immersed in a tete-a-tete. Dozens of other Golden Era directors, producers and others seemed in no hurry to leave.

Simultaneously on the dance floor--which for once was not only packed but hopping--supporting actress nominee Christine Lahti broke Rule 4, the one about dancing the night away. She did a rebop jitterbug that was straight out of “Swing Shift.”

Breaking Rule 5--the one about flaunting the award--was makeup winner (for “Amadeus”) Paul LeBlanc. “Driving here, we thought ‘What do we do with Baby Oscar?’ ” confided LeBlanc. “We didn’t want to flaunt it, and we didn’t know the guidelines. So we left it in the limo.”

No such rule applied to the six “Amadeus” tables where Oscar statues were as plentiful as magnums of Mumm’s Champagne.

Last week “Amadeus” producer Saul Zaentz had been unusually pithy about his seating at the ball; the academy had suggested one “Amadeus” table down front, with the others in the back of the room. But Oscar Night was planned by the “Amadeus” clan as a reunion, with even non-nominees (like Elizabeth Berridge, who played Constanze Mozart) flying in. Win or lose, six tables were needed.

Reasoned Zaentz: “If we win, it won’t matter a damn where the tables are. And if we lose, then it really won’t matter.” (What seemed to matter among the Orion Picturesexecutives who hovered around their “Amadeus” trophies was the potential box office for the film. Dollar signs were in the executives’ eyes and minds.)

Ultimately, the ball was a mix of Hollywood at work and play, but the mix for once was in balance. Any party where punk’s Apollonia can mingle amid a crowd that includes former Atty. Gen. William French Smith is truly mixed. And the shorter telecast meant an earlier supper (of veal scallops, zucchini and swan-shaped chocolate mousse--except for Candy Spelling, the producer’s wife, who picked at a diet meal of cottage cheese and canned fruits).

The fact remains that stars who don’t have to go to the Oscar event, don’t go. (Where were you, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Debra Winger and so on?) What began in 1927 as a private industry celebration and became a public ritual is now nothing so much as an elaborate game of Careers. For those who need work (or visibility), Oscar is the place to be. It’s the most glamorous audition around.

And some things about it don’t change. Working the press while the press worked the room were such figures as the enduring Eva Gabor and Arlene Dahl. Not working the room (or the press) were such Manhattan visitors as powerhouse agent Sam Cohn (he packaged “Places in the Heart”), the David (Lindsay Crouse) Mamets and Dith Pran, who may have gotten the last word.

“In London,” reasoned Pran, “they serve dinner first and then give the awards. All in one place. Here you drive to one theater, have the awards, then drive somewhere else and have dinner. The order is reversed, no?”

“Yes, Pran,” said an onlooker, “but in Hollywood everything’s upside down. Or didn’t you know that?”