Bejeweled Fine Arts Ball Is Worth Remembering
Ann Jones watched JoBobbie MacConnell make an especially graceful glide across the dance floor at the U.S. Grant Hotel and said admiringly, “You know, JoBobbie is everybody’s Auntie Mame.”
And, truth be told, if the chairman of the annual Fine Arts Ball suddenly had borrowed a trumpet from the orchestra and given it a few blasts, the action would have seemed quite in character.
MacConnell, who dreamed up Saturday’s “Another Evening to Remember” as a particularly piquant entertainment for 250 patrons of the San Diego Museum of Art, did seem rather in the Mame mood that night. After having welcomed one guest by informing him, “You will feel exhilarated at the end of the evening,” she turned to another and mentioned that she had worked out with weights for a few weeks so that her strapless, jet-and-ivory gown would fit just so.
The evening was exhilarating, and perhaps even intoxicating, the action starting with a cheerful romp through an adult kind of candy store, and continuing in a ballroom turned into the kind of nightclub that they just don’t build anymore.
The hospitality began with champagne in the hotel lobby. Bubbly in hand, guests passed through an abbreviated receiving line that included MacConnell and her escort and co-chairman, John Siglow, and museum President Gordon Luce and his wife, Karon. The destination was the Garden Room, which the Grant exempted from its usual function as a restaurant so that the noted Sotheby’s auction house might set up a monumental display of antique and heirloom jewelry.
The cases filled with rare and extravagant bangles (what better appetizer could be offered to patrons of the fine arts than such a glittering visual buffet?) had the effect of exotic blooms upon the guests, especially the sort that delight in jewels, and drew them as surely as nectar does bees. In most cases, husbands followed wives at a safe distance. Nothing was for sale, however, since the collection will be put up for auction in New York at the end of the month.
According to Sotheby’s West Coast agent, Lisa Hubbard, the appraised value of the display exceeded $12 million, with a single ruby and a single diamond (the latter weighing a mere 31.47 carats) each valued at more than $1 million. The fun of it all was that guests were allowed to model the gems and imagine they owned these splashy works of nature.
“This is so glamorous, like an early Christmas,” remarked an enthusiastic Joy Owen, who admitted that she would not decline if her husband, Oren, deigned to offer her one of the sparkling ornaments. Other women were too busy slipping rings on and off their fingers to make any comment at all. But it may have been a man, California Western School of Law Dean Michael Dessent, who best summed up the impact the stones made on the crowd. “If they put four wheels on some of these rocks, you could drive them,” he said. His wife, Katie, chimed in that for her part, she would rather wear them.
Had the guests known what awaited them upstairs in the ballroom, it might have been easier to pry them away from the bejeweled Garden Room. Beverly Hills party planner Arthur Simon (his credits include several Emmy and Academy awards banquets) had been given but one instruction when he was invited to design the decor, and that was to let his fancy run wild. He did.
The room’s own lighting system had been shut down so that Simon could create a fantasy of lights and flowers on the tables. Using orchids and other snowy blossoms with abandon, Simon set the centerpieces atop black moire cloths, and strung them with tubes filled with tiny flashing lights that, when activated, twinkled like so many miniature movie marquees. To draw the room together, the designer added a multicolored, twinkling fan of lights, rather like an immense peacock’s tail, as a backdrop to the orchestra. The effect was dazzling.
The Michael Carney Orchestra seemed right at home amid the glitter and glitz. Ranked as one of New York’s top society bands, the group swung easily through both 1920s jazz and the Big Band sounds that remain de rigueur at big parties today, making it all most danceable, and thus ensuring that the party bounced merrily right up to its 1 a.m. closing time.
The menu put a bounce in more than a few steps, too, owing especially to the surprise inclusion in the middle of the meal of an innocent-looking sorbet that turned out to be heated with red pepper. An elegant opener of foie gras and salmon preceded this whimsical sorbet, a pair of filets matched with veal sweetbreads followed, and for dessert, guests dug into cylindrical mousses prettily gift-wrapped in solid chocolate. To put a sparkling cap on the evening, each guest was given a bottle of champagne to carry home as a reminder of “Another Evening to Remember.”
Museum Director Steven Brezzo attended with his wife, Dagmar, and among other guests were Lois and Don Roon, Elinor Oatman with Legler Benbough, Harriett and Dick Levi, Carolyn and Art Hooper, Barbara Woodbury with Bill Black, Sally and John Thornton, Kathy and George Pardee, Virginia and Jack Monday, Ingrid and Joe Hibben, Joanne Hutchinson with Robert Faust, Patsy and Forrest Shumway, Barbara and Karl ZoBell, and Joan Palmer with Walter Fitch.
Others attending were Linda and Neal Hooberman, Linda and Ballard Smith, Mary and Irby Cobb, Nancy and Hap Chandler, Beverly Hills gallery owner Gregg Juarez, Pauline and Stanley Foster, Mary and Dallas Clark, Loraine and Jack McDonald, Ilene and Herbert Solomon, Jackie and Paul Richey, Lee and Peter Maturo, and Dorene and John Whitney. Dorene Whitney’s own little gala, for the benefit of the San Diego Opera and to be given on the opening night of “Tosca,” comes up Oct. 11.
San Diego Yacht Club Vice Commodore Fred Frye gave the public its first glimpse Friday of the battle flag that will fly above the Stars & Stripes when it attempts, beginning later this month, to win back the America’s Cup racing trophy in the blue but treacherous waters off Perth, Australia.
The flag, designed to give pause to the Aussie defenders of yachting’s most treasured trophy, was greeted by cheers, and chants of “Bring back the Cup!” It bears the San Diego Yacht Club insignia in one corner, but in the center it shows a coiled snake striking at a rather befuddled-looking kangaroo in boxing gloves. Writ large across the top is the motto, “Don’t Tread on Me.”
The yacht club hosted “A Toast to Sail America” as a benefit for the city’s Sail America Foundation for International Understanding. (One suspects that part of the international understanding Sail America wishes to foster is that the America’s Cup will arrive in San Diego no later than February.) Some 600 guests attended, mostly from the younger set, although there were a few members of the defending Royal Perth Yacht Club in attendance. These chaps, it must be mentioned, looked rather cocky even in the face of this vigorous show of enthusiasm, but as one observer remarked, “Pride goeth before a fall.”
Other than the presentation of the flag (which guests were invited to sign for a small donation, since this was a fund-raiser), the evening included little enough formality. Club Commodore Michael O’Bryan led a toast to the Stars & Stripes, promising to assemble the same crowd for a second toast when the America’s Cup is safely harbored in the club’s trophy case. After that, the crowd dispersed to dance, and to sample the various nibbles donated by a squadron of local caterers and restaurants.
Vera Moldt chaired the party, with assistance from a crew that included Jackie Gladfelter, Lori Dawson, Steve Parker, Vivian Thystrup, Shuri Rosiak, Steve Gray, Gisele Albrecht, Richard Doering and Harv Rubin.
Earlier the same day, the La Jolla League of the American Cancer Society gathered together nearly 800 members and friends for “Flights of Fashion,” its 10th annual luncheon and fashion show.
Held in the Champagne Ballroom of the Sheraton Harbor Island East hotel, the day began with the group’s signature raffle scheme, the “tombola,” in which more than 100 choice prizes were given away. The event continued with a luncheon of chicken piccata and berries in creme anglaise, and concluded with a presentation of fashions from La Jolla’s Capriccio shop.
Chairman Alice Coyne assembled a committee that included Carol Dickinson, Norma O’Callaghan, Chris McLean, Sybbie and Ed Schantz, Dorothy Lord, Ivonne Egan, Jean Morse, Marion Wrench, Phyllis Whitney, Grace Malloy, Pat Williams, Loretta Johnson, Charles Merz and Carol Stark.
