Kicking Up Heels for ‘Chorus Line’ Bow

We’ve been waiting for the film version of “Chorus Line” for what seems to be forever. But our patience has been rewarded, and Sir Richard Attenborough’s celluloid effort makes its bicoastal debut in December. Hurrah.

The East Coast premiere on Dec. 9 at the Radio City Music Hall is a benefit for the Actors Fund and is followed by a gala supper party for casts of both the theatrical and film “Chorus Lines” at some still undecided rendezvous. President and Mrs. Reagan are the honorary chairmen and Nedda Harrigan Logan, president of Actors Fund, is the chairwoman.

Locally no one can beat the Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at staging premieres. And, naturally enough, it’s the Women’s Guild that has “Chorus Line,” the movie, for its Dec. 11 fund-raiser. Co-chairing the big event are Anne Douglas and Joanna Carson. You’ve never met two more enthusiastic party planners.

The evening, guild president Carolyn Blywise says, is expected to raise “at least $400,000,” a record for the guild, which has already hosted 27 previous movie premieres and will have, after “Chorus Line,” contributed $6 million to Cedars-Sinai for its patient care, research and educational programs.

The record-breaking evening will start at Plitt’s Century Plaza Theatre and then move across the Avenue of the Stars to the Century Plaza Hotel for a gala supper party. “Everyone wants to be there that night,” reports Douglas, who quickly reels off a list of those who’ve already confirmed their reservations--Earle and Marion Jorgensen, Burt Lancaster, Dr. and Mrs. Armand Hammer, Billie and Roger Converse, Frances and Eric Skipsey, Dee and Stuart Cramer, Audrey and Bob Six, Lee Rich, Dinah Shore, George Burns, and active Guilders Harriet Deutsch and Fran Stark and their husbands.

This is a really big event (theater capacity is 1,400), and it takes a big and experienced committee to put it together. And that’s just what the guild has. Marcia Koch is chairing the supper party with co-chairs Adrienne Horwitch and Victoria McMahon. . . . Mimi Meltzer has Caryl Golden and Ellen Steinbaum as her back-ups on the hostess committee. Cookie Kates is in charge of gifts with Nancy Rosenbloom as her assistant. Ruth Fox, who is in charge of publicity, is working with Wallis Annenberg. And finally Sara Edwards is coordinating the whole premiere with the help of Sue Wilstein.

The Social Scramble: Monsignor Peter Mimmagh of St. Vincent de Paul’s Church in San Diego recently commissioned sculptor Pascal to create two steel and crystal angels in memory of his mother and father, Peter and Bridget Mimmagh. The angels were finally finished, and last weekend Pascal and her husband, James Regan, and some pals like Virginia and Jerry Oppenheimer, Paul Bruggemans and Doris Fields Heller drove down for the dedication ceremony and for Monsignor Mimmagh’s dinner party celebrating the event.

Brooke Pettingill, the artist, has lately turned to photography, and on Thursday she’ll be showing some of the results at a preview-reception at the Little Poster Gallery in Sherman Oaks. Of course, Brooke has not put away her pots of paint and brushes. And currently she’s all aglow about doing a new painting for UCLA’s pediatric program.

Mrs. Philip Gershon and the Friends of Reconstructive Surgery are planning a theater party Oct. 22. The lures are irresistible--that eternal charmer Claudette Colbert and the fascinating Rex Harrison in “Aren’t We All?” (straight from Broadway) at the Wilshire Theatre followed by desserts and a Ward Furs fashion show at the Bistro Garden. It’s all neatly packaged at $100 per person. Proceeds go to the Stanford University Medical Center for its research into reconstructive surgery.

Morocco’s 22-year-old Princess Lalla Jumala, the daughter of King Hassan’s sister, Princess Fatima Zohra, and Prince Moulay Ali, came to California to visit her godmother, Marcia and Larry Israel. Over the weekend she’ll also represent her family at the wedding in San Francisco of the Israels’ daughter Jane to John Siegel, son of Chris Craft chief and Mrs. Herb Siegel. While here the Israels entertained for the young princess with a Chinese buffet where the chopstick wielders included Ted and Rhonda (Fleming) Mann, Bob and Anne Jeffreys Sterling (she was filming “General Hospital” and arrived late), Carolyn Whitman, Mary and Bradley Jones, Marcia’s sister Irene Satz in from New York and Shahya Pahlabod, the son of Princess Shams and the nephew of the late Shah of Iran.

Making the Ma Maison lunch scene this past week--Joan Collins; Janet Leigh; Burt Reynolds with Orson Welles; Jacques Camus; and MM’s Patrick Terrail wringing his hands over the 46 ladies who call themselves “The Impossibles,” who were lunching upstairs.

Dining serenely at the Westwood Marquis’ Dynasty

Room--Charlton Heston; Gene and Betty Barry; David Jones with Jean-Francois Herbert.

In New York last week Mr. and Mrs. William Buckley Jr. gave a cocktail party at Mortimer’s for Estee Lauder and her autobiography: “Estee: A Success Story.”

San Francisco’s Clift Hotel has been the current favorite stopping-off spot for the likes of Martina Navratilova, Arthur Ashe, Prince, Madonna, actors Bill Murray and Richard Thomas.

After a lot of traveling Ginny Mancini is back home being the gracious hostess at quite a few affairs. Last week she gave a launch party at home for Stuart Jacobson’s “Only the Best: A Celebration of Gift Giving,” just the best book to give your best friends. The guests of honor were all featured in the book, and all were busily autographing copies. Vincente Minnelli, ever the smart one, did his book signing at home. On Thursday Ginny, who’s president of UCLA’s Royce Two-Seventy, will be in the Two-Seventy Lounge at Royce Hall pouring tea and announcing plans for the group’s Birthday Tribute to Carol Burnett next year. And on Oct. 22 Ginny will be at Sak’s hosting yet another party for Jacobson’s coffee table book and talking some more about the party for Carol.

The celebration at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts packed a double whammy. It was Roger L. Stevens’ 75th birthday and the 14th anniversary of the Center under his leadership. In the Terrace Room that night the program included Isaac Stern accompanied by Leonard Bernstein playing a Mozart sonata; Mstislav Rostropovich and his famous cello; and Kitty Carlisle Hart as mistress of ceremonies introducing a group of original cast members singing songs from the Stevens productions that never made it to Broadway. That was the way the man wanted it. Among Stevens’ many friends in the audience that night were Herbert L. Hutner, chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee for the Kennedy Center, and his wife Juli; Arco Chairman and Mrs. Robert O. Anderson and incoming Arco President Lod Cook, Lew Wasserman, Sargent Shriver, Sen. Charles Percy, CBS Broadcast Group President Gene Jankowski, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Gordon and June Walker.