Reagan Crowd Celebrates Special Event

The heavy fog that had engulfed Nancy Reagan’s much-delayed birthday party and the surrounding Santa Ynez hills at Rancho del Cielo lifted just as her husband, the President of the United States, began a graceful little speech about his wife, which included a few lines of poetry. All the Reagan Regulars, about 70 of them, were a happy lot.

Chasen’s took care of the vittles (barbecued ribs, chicken, corn on the cob, an ice cream trolley and a chocolate birthday cake) for the alfresco lunch during the weekend. The First Lady showed up in one of her favorite combinations--patriotic red, white and blue. Mrs. Earle Jorgensen and Mrs. William A. Wilson, who co-hosted the Western style wingding with their husbands, wore pink. It was a good chance for the Reagan crowd to live out their Western fantasies.

Mrs. Ray Stark, wife of the producer (they have a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley), wore a cowboy outfit with an embroidered jacket; Mrs. Prentis Cobb Hale of San Francisco wore a red straw hat and pigtails (she received quite a few compliments) and Betsy Bloomingdale wore jeans with the Valentino label. Like the birthday girl, Mrs. Armand Deutsch sported red, white and blue and Mrs. Gwynn Robinson was outfitted for a safari.

It was quite a day. And quite a reunion for longtime Reagan supporters like Grace and Henry Salvatori, Holmes and Virginia Tuttle who now spend most of their time in Santa Barbara, Ruth and Tom Jones, Lee and Walter Annenberg (they flew in from London for the barbecue), Giney Milner who arrived with actor Macdonald Carey; for the Reagan children who were out in force--Maureen, Michael with his wife and children, Patti Davis and her husband Paul Grilley, Ron, the new ABC correspondent, and his wife Doria; plus a raft of good pals--Erlenne and Dr. Norman Sprague Jr., Caroline and Henry Singleton, Mignon and Bill Winans, Tuck and Chardee Trainer, the Wilsons’ daughter Marcia Hobbs, Marion Jorgensen’s son Peter Bren and his wife who live in Paris, and everybody’s favorites from Mexico, Norma and Diego Redo, who are always around when it’s a special event for the Reagans.

For one reason or another Henry and Sedge Plitt weren’t able to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary last year in any kind of big way. They made up for it this year with a double whammy, a black-tie dinner at Jimmy’s marking their 30th and 31st anniversaries. Plitt also used the occasion for his big announcement that he’d sold his Plitt Theatres to Toronto-based Cineplex Odeon. Gasps. Followed by cheers.

The Plitts hadn’t planned any formal entertainment. But with friends like theirs they didn’t have to. After dinner the lineup at the mike included such big time headliners as Danny Thomas, Rose Marie Thomas singing a love ballad for the hosts, Red Buttons, Monty Hall, Morey Amsterdam and Jan Murray. Not a bad little lineup.

Also savoring the evening were Mickey and Mary Carol Rudin, Kati and Arpad Domyan, the Martin Sterns, Dr. and Mrs. Morey Parkes, Sybil Brand, Happy and Frances Franklin, Mike and Binnie Frankovich, Contessa Cohn, Ellen and Berny Byrens, the S. J. Gaidos, Sid and Frances Klein, the Harry Romans, Pascal and James Regan, Grace and Merrill Lowell, the Walter Harrises, Alice and Sol Laykin, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kurt and Betty Niklas, Anne and Jimmy Murphy, Ron Leif, Betty Wagner, Guadalupe and Darwin Shannon, Dr. Karen Fritts, Nat Dumont and at least a dozen more, all wishing the Plitts many more happy anniversaries.

Wallis Annenberg and Sidney Poitier are co-hosting the Chasen’s cocktail party Sept. 11 as a kickoff for the United Negro College Fund’s 1985 Telethon. And the guests, as of this moment, will include Charlton Heston, Diahann Carroll, Jerry Buss, Marilyn McCoo, Smokey Robinson, and a lot more. Last year’s telethon helped send more than 40,000 students to 43 of the fund’s private colleges.

The Scopus Society, the upwardly mobile young branch of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, is planning big things for the evening of Sept. 19. Coming up at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a champagne reception followed by the Los Angeles premiere of “War and Love” with a screenplay by Abby Mann and a score by Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic. Vidal Sassoon is host for the evening, which will benefit the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism on the campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Attorneys Joan Isaacs and Dale Gribow are co-

chairing the event and the Sponsor Committee includes Gregory Peck, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Rod Steiger, Jane Fonda, Irwin Winkler, producers Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Rosalind Wyman, Sen. Alan Cranston, Theodore Bikel, Ed Asner, Fred Diament (he’s president of the 1939 Club whose members came to the United States from Germany in 1939), Assemblyman Gray Davis and quite a few more.

The Social Scramble: Dining at Trumps--John DeLorean with his young daughter and one of her friends (they played cards at the table between courses); Helen Chaplin with advertising whiz Martin Mandelblatt.

They’re regulars in the Friday lunch bunch at the Beverly Wilshire’s Hernando’s Hideaway (where they like to remain anonymous): John Good, Bob Clark, Roger Converse, Grover Asmus and Eric Skipsey.

Walter Coombs, chairman of the Council for International Visitors, introduced new Canadian Consul General Joan Price Winser to one of our native rituals--lunch at the Bistro Garden. Joining them was Edwin Ridgway, a director on the national board of the English-Speaking Union.

Georgette Klinger stopped off in Los Angeles for a quick visit with her grandson en route from a stay with writer M. F. K. Fisher at her Northern California ranch to Europe where she’s hoping to combine business with pleasure.

Beauty maven Tova Borgnine and her actor husband Ernie played hosts to French singing heartthrob Charles Aznavour at their home the other night. And in the group were Aznavour’s daughter Seda and her husband Sam Stockfish, Jayne Meadows and Steve Allen, Sidney Sheldon and his daughter Mary Dastin, Joanne Dru and C. V. Wood, Sheila and Irwin Allen, Sandy and Shel Ausman, Muriel and Abe Lipsey, June and Fred MacMurray, Grace Robbins and a few more Francophiles.

Love Notes: Barbara McHenry Pauley, widow of Edwin W. Pauley, founder of Pauley Petroleum, and William R. Pagen, chairman of the board, president and CEO of the oil company, were married by U.S. District Judge Thomas McBride at the judge’s home in Lake Tahoe. The bride, a graduate of UC Berkeley, serves as a director of Pauley Petroleum, is a trustee of the County Museum of Art, a charter member of the Music Center’s Blue Ribbon 400 and a past president of the L.A. Council for International Visitors. Pagen is a UCLA graduate, a past chairman and president of the UCLA Foundation Board of Trustees and serves on the Los Angeles County Harbor Commission. He is also on the board of trustees of Orthopaedic Hospital and staff commodore of the California Yacht Club. Last year the Boy’s Club gave him its Citizen of the Year Award.

After a honeymoon on Mrs. Pagen’s island in Hawaii, the couple will settle down to a busy life in Beverly Hills.