A Calendar to SHARE and SHARE Alike

“When did SHARE start its lucrative Day-by-Day book?” an innocent bystander asked Monday.

“I wasn’t born yet,” shouted back chairman Delores Nemiro, Maxine Smith, Pat Crowley and Neile McQueen Toffel, sounding as though they had rehearsed the line. (They hadn’t.) They were crowded around folding tables set up in the still-under-construction manse of Verna Harrah, packing up 8,000 copies of the fund-raising calendar.

OK, maybe a little fudge on the age, but it does seem like SHARE (Share Happily and Reap Endlessly) has been around forever. Especially since, as Ruth Berle pointed out, it had raised more than $10 million since it was started in 1953.

Back then, she and Miriam Nelson Meyers laughed, tickets for the first Boomtown show went for $35 a couple. “And we thought nobody would show up,” said Berle, a longtime SHARE member.

The calendar--this year put together by VPs Marilyn Katleman and Pam Korman--will bring in more than $100,000. That’s nice piece of change, which will get handed over to SHARE’s special charities, like the Exceptional Children’s Foundation.

But wait--add that to the $1.2 million they made earlier this year at the SHARE Boomtown party. And take into consideration, as board member Sandra Moss and president Judy Feder will tell you, that it’s all done with no staff. Everything is volunteer--including the gentle arm-twisting that allows them to get everything underwritten.

An example--an insider, telling us how it’s done, said that Niki Dantine Bautzer was packing up books, but she’s also arranged for her attorney-husband Greg to meet next week with Arco chief Lod Cook and isn’t that more underwriting coming SHARE’s way?

And even the SHARE ladies who--like Bonnie Parker and Corinna Fields are only married to show-biz types (like actor Jameson Parker and producer Freddie Fields)--keep up the reputation that SHARE is L.A.’s most attractive and biggest money-making group.

POLI SIGH--KABC-TV pollster Steve Teichner tonight releases his figures on the Supreme Court election . . . For $65 per party-goer, supporters of Proposition 65 tonight get to mingle with the likes of Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Harrison Ford, Pam Dawber, Georg Stanford Brown, the one-and-only Jack Nicholson and Linda Evans. It’s at the Beverly Hills Nipper’s--and to make sure that no one has to drink the water, they are serving champagne. Nipper’s’ owner Arthur von Wiesenberger said he was a supporter of the Toxics’ Initiative because, as a child in Italy, he got sick from drinking contaminated water. Stick to champagne, OK?

UPCOMING--Developer Ray Watt gets honored Thurday night by the Anti-Defamation League of of B’nai B’rith at the Century Plaza. Arthur B. Birtcher and Maxwell Starkman are honorary chairs of the event . . . Vital Options, the support group for Young Adults with Cancer, holds its second “Dance for Life” benefit Nov. 8 at the Beverly Theater. Top local dance companies--like SHALE, Sarah Elgart and Co. and the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater--perform. But look at the stars headlining--Yakov Smirnoff, Rita Moreno, Gene Anthony Ray, Jesse Borrego and Marine Jahan . . . Sunday, the Support Group of the Robert Kennedy Medical Center hosts its Book Affaire at the Beverly Wilshire. Authors and autographs . . . Nov. 8 is when the Associates for Troubled Children hosts its 12th annual Grand Auction and Ball. Jack Valenti and the Motion Picture Assn. of America, are co-sponsors. But wait--who’s entertaining? None other than Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. At the Century Plaza.

KUDOS--The May Co., which keeps coming up with innovative ways to do good, has published a “Just Say No” brochure as part of the anti-drug campaign. In October, 92,000 copies will reach school kids. And on Saturday, celebs like Ed Asner, William Daniels, and George Peppard will appear at various May Co. stores to show kids it’s cool to say no to drugs.

DOES IT WITH MIRRORS?--Puleeze. Is Wolfgang Puck his own cottage industry? Just weeks after the world was introduced to his devilishly delicious frozen deserts, the unflappable chef now next week brings out his cookbook “ . . . Recipes from Spago, Chinois and Points East and West.”