Musical Fund-Raiser for L.A. Pops Group

Jimmy’s new room wasn’t quite finished, but party chairman Mrs. John I. Moore and her L.A. Pops Keynote 88 Committee made the best of it. And their best was pretty good. Jammed into the Malabar Room and the bar during the cocktail hour, the more than 300 guests spread out for dinner into the main dining room, the private-party room and the newly glass-enclosed patio which now looks as if it’s in the midst of a Parisian forest. Peter Duchin and his group played practically all night, occasionally spelled by Jimmy’s regular pianist-singer, Bob Millard. And with two dance floors in place there was plenty of room to twirl and dip.

Ceil Moore was showing Texas grit Monday night. A little over two weeks ago she fell and broke her hip. But determined the fund-raiser was going to be a hit, she made it to the party looking glamorous in a black-and-white beaded off-the-shoulder gown. Ambassador to the Vatican William A. Wilson and his wife Betty were honorary chairmen, but were in Rome on party night. They were going to be represented by their daughter Marcia Wilson Hobbs, but the night before the dinner-dance she fell and broke her ankle.

The L.A. Pops Orchestra wants national recognition and that’s what the party was all about. Looking happy at the big turnout were board chairman James Morrison and board president James Foster. Ceil did the thank yous from the table she shared with John Wiegman, Mrs. William Bettingen, Mike Morrison, the Henry Bergers and Norman and Pat Trenton. A lot of people got a lot of credit. And a lot of people applauded the big effort. Carlo Spiga, Pops musical director, and Victor Wong, the orchestra’s business manager were taking it all in.

The Pops supporters that night included George Page, Bob Ray and Kathy Offenhauser and their son Madison, Father Maurice Chase, Betty and Rodney Williams, Harriet and Charles Luckman, the Vin Scullys, Jean Sully, the Anthony Mastors, Lucy Zahran Bonorris, Dale and Charles Snodgrass who arrived with Robert Kramer (Kramer’s wife had the flu), Mrs. Willard Lewis, Happy and Frances Franklin, Justice Mildred Lillie and her husband A.V. Falcone, the Doyle Cottons, Doris Fields with Jacques Camus, Celia Petkin, Diane Ruth Downey, Lucille Taylor. And also Virginia and Jerry Oppenheimer, Sue and Tom Sommermeier, the Eric Skipseys, the Richard Coyles, Paquita Machris with Bill Miles, Alice Hartfield with Gregg Juarez, Merle Kingsley with the Baron Herbert Hischemoeller, Mary and Bradley Jones who are now Westsiders, Ann Jardine with the Sam Golds, Frances and Sid Klein, Francine Maroney with Carlo Celoni, Ellen and Berny Byrens, the Henry Plitts.

David Jones did stunning centerpieces--amaryllis in beds of kumquats and tangerines--and dinner started with shrimp salad and ended with chocolate-covered pears in zabaglione sauce with fresh raspberries.

As the party started to wind down, Anne and Jimmy Murphy picked up the action by pouring Dom Perignon and exchanging Irish jokes with Bill and Mary Anne Gould, Doris and Jim Bacon and anybody who stopped by for a chat in their corner of the party room.

The papers have been signed and it’s now official. Mrs. Dennis Stanfill is the new West Coast representative for Christie’s, the aristocratic London-based auction house. Christie’s President Christopher Burge and the auction house’s directors are celebrating this bit of news with a dinner party on April 16, at the Bistro Garden Pavilion, for a lot of Terry Stanfill’s chums and colleagues.

Two days later Terry will be in New York where she’ll co-host with Mrs. Deane Johnson (Anne McDonald Ford Johnson was Christie’s lady on the West Coast and, now that she’s moved back to New York, is a consultant for decorative arts) and Mrs. Thomas Kempner a reception and preview of the exhibition, “Cartier, Masterpieces of 20th-Century Decorative Arts.” During the evening Hans Nadelhoffer, president of Christie’s, Geneva, and author of the book, “Cartier, Jewellers Extraordinary,” will lecture (and show slides) on “Cartier, Art and History.” The exhibition consists of 40 pieces of jewelry and art objects on loan from private collectors and will be on view that night only. The reception is a benefit for Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian’s museum of design.

“I’ll be maintaining my same life style,” Terry Stanfill insists. Before joining Christie’s, that meant a lot of travel to Europe and the East Coast with her husband, the former head of 20th Century Fox studio and now a private investor, trips to New York to visit daughter Francesca Stanfill Tufo, the author, and her baby granddaughter, and involvements with the Music Center, the Joffrey Ballet, the County Museum of Art and other projects. What the new job will add is more travel and more entertaining “for visitors to Los Angeles.”

The Social Scramble: The trustees of the County Museum of Art host a cocktail reception Monday night for the “Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries,” an exhibition of posters of the belle epoque from the Wagner Collection.

There were small clear-glass swans with tiny pink roses (the work of Flower Fashions) at each place setting at Jimmy’s where Frances Klein, who deals in antique jewelry, was giving a bridal luncheon for Guadalupe Hank. The luncheon guests at the romantic little get-together included Dale Snodgrass, Grace Lowell, Frances Franklin, Ellen Byrens, Mary Carol Rudin, Sedge Plitt, Victoria Bolker, Suzanne Marx and Marilyn Gussman.

Gucci’s Carlo Celoni is back at the store after a week of operagoing in New York. One of the highlights of the trip for music-loving Carlo was “Tosca” with Placido Domingo.

There was a lot of scrambling going on at the Beverly Wilshire as the staff tried to locate two cribs the day “Today” show’s Jane Pauley checked in with her twins. Dad is Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau.