FIRST, THE GOVERNORS BALL . . .

There is a Cinderella at every ball. But Hollywood being a company town, the part is cast very carefully. Monday night at the Governors Ball that follows Oscar, neither best actress Geraldine Page nor best actor William Hurt played Cinderella. Both performers appeared at the ball, but both are primarily actors (and chameleons) and neither works ballrooms.

Page, perhaps on purpose, dressed more like the mid-Texas widow she portrayed in “Trip to Bountiful” than she did like a Broadway-Hollywood grande dame. She blended into the Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom almost as well as Hurt. Of recent best actors, maybe only Hurt is elusive enough to go undisturbed at a back table while engaging a visitor in a long conversation about rewards. (“There’s no honor greater than the work, and I already had that.”)

But if the best actor and best actress are not going to table hop among the crowd of 1,200--and the two major stars of the evening’s major winner (Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, “Out of Africa”) don’t appear at the ball--then what? Then, in true Hollywood style, one hedges one’s bets.

Why not bring on Elizabeth Taylor at 10 and have her exit at 11 on the arm of George Hamilton? The trim Taylor, who takes over the dance floor, keeps the paparazzi happy and brings authentic nostalgia: 30 odd years ago Oscar show producer Stanley Donen was the steady beau of La Taylor. (The buzz around the packed room was that Donen had rejuvenated the program and his own career.)

If the Joe Moshay Orchestra seemed lost in a time tunnel (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” ad nauseam), the hot-pink, neon-lit tables (designed by Jef Hackbarth) featured ginger blossoms, Oriental lilies and shell-pink anthuriums flown in from the Netherlands, Hawaii and Singapore--and raspberry and mauve cymbidiums trucked down from Santa Barbara. The hothouse atmosphere bloomed with Mumm’s Cordon Rouge and enough fresh raspberries to almost compensate for Spago’s star lure (see accompanying story).

If names like Kathleen Turner and James Stewart are at the Irving (Swifty) Lazar party, if the Brat Pack is out of town (or uninterested) and if most of “The Color Purple” people don’t show--then you call up the troupers. Just as Audrey Hepburn was the European glamour star of the telecast, Leslie Caron was the belle of the ball.

But what a little moonlight can do for the MGM golden-era stars recruited by Donen: A table smack in the center of the ballroom featured June Allyson, Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Marge Champion, Esther Williams and gave off almost enough wattage to make up for whatever else was missing.

At another table, Joan Fontaine was holding court in scarlet sequins; Georgia Frontiere, wife of Oscar’s co-musical director Dominic, took compliments on her gold-chiffon gown. Whatever the winners had to say, by this hour, was redundant--they’d been meeting the press for hours and not one of them was a hard-core Hollywood odds-on favorite.

“I wasn’t Henry Fonda,” as best supporting actor Don Ameche put it. “I didn’t spend my whole life wanting to win the Oscar.” In other words, Ameche could enjoy and not be bombarded. Likewise, some of the “losers,” such as Jon Voight, who brought his children, and Huey Lewis who took the lion’s share of the flashbulbs in the Hilton lobby.

Steven Spielberg was the good sport of “The Color Purple” crowd, one of the few to show up. He seems never to miss the Governors Ball. “Have you seen (“The Color Purple” novelist) Alice Walker?” Spielberg, seated at Table Three, asked someone at Table 5, in vain.

Seating at the ball remains mysterious, or serendipitous. Who, for example, knew to seat the “Africa” crowd at Table 2, while putting Spielberg at Table 3? One can only imagine the last-minute place-card shuffling, yet its importance cannot be underestimated. The only true studio power in the room belonged to Universal Chairman Frank Price (the studio had nine wins). In the company town, on the night of nights, the studio chief is Hollywood’s only real Cinderella.