George Hoag Plays the Santa at Hospital’s Christmas Ball

A miracle at the Marriott?

Nothing less can be said of the happening in the ballroom of the Newport Beach hotel on Saturday night.

Right before their teary eyes, 400 guests at Hoag Memorial Hospital’s Christmas Carol Ball watched a man of the cloth turn into a rag doll of disbelief when George G. Hoag II give him the good news: “You say you need $48,000 to buy a new bus to transport your All-American Boys Chorus?” Hoag asked Father Richard Coughlin. “Well, the Hoag Foundation (founded by Hoag and his parents) will give it to you!”

Coughlin slumped into the affectionate circle of Hoag’s huge right arm. “You and I have been friends for a long time, “ Hoag said, “and when I retired (in October, after 13 years as hospital board chairman), I asked for you and the boys to be here tonight. You’re the best entertainment we’ve ever had!”

Minutes before, a bouncy Coughlin had skipped and two-stepped his way around the ballroom parquet, leading the chorus in a Christmas carol medley, which included an audience sing-along of “Jingle Bells” and “White Christmas.”

During an interlude, Coughlin had told the audience that the boys’ touring bus was dilapidated, and he mentioned the amount of money needed to purchase a new one. “And how will we have time to raise it, if we’re always on the road, singing?” he asked rhetorically. It only took a few minutes for the towering, debonair Hoag, black cigarette holder in hand, to stride onto the dance floor and make the spontaneous gesture that has become his and wife Patty’s hallmark.

The “miracle on Newport Center Drive” made the benefit candy-cane sweet for ball chairman Roger Schnapp, hospital board member and vice president of Hoag’s 552 Club, the support group sponsoring the ball. With tickets selling for $552 per couple, ball proceeds estimated at $65,000 were earmarked for the hospital’s unrestricted fund.

“Some people didn’t want the boys here tonight,” Schnapp’s strawberry-blond wife, Candice, had confided during dinner. “They thought it wasn’t right to have the boys around when alcohol was being served.” But Schnapp, an attorney specializing in labor management, had stood firm (and included a quote by the transformed Scrooge of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in the ball program: “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.”).

‘Old-Fashioned Christmas’

“I wanted this to be the best ball ever,” Schnapp said during cocktails. “And I wanted it to feel like an old-fashioned Christmas.”

Never mind that Schnapp, who is Jewish, chaired an event marking a Christian holiday. “George Hoag and I talked about calling it ‘The Hanukkah Ball’ this year!’ ” he joked. He and wife, a Presbyterian, always celebrate Christmas, he said. “A couple of years ago, I hid a diamond watch inside a toaster oven to surprise her. She opened the present, looked at the box, nodded, smiled and set it aside. I said, ‘ Pleasssssse open it. It’s a very special toaster oven.’ ”

Schnapp’s and vice chairman Barbara Roppolo’s (she’s the director of Newport Center Fashion Island) old-fashioned Christmas began with pricey first-course comestibles taken in the hotel’s new California ballroom.

Ambling among Christmas trees smothered with Mylar bows and white, twinkling lights, guests huddled at elaborate food stations to heap Sevruga caviar from a cocktail-hat-size tin onto mini-blinis, sprinkle mounds of steak tartare with de rigueur toppings and occasionally misplace their ballroom demeanor long enough to wax gaga over the sliver-thin Nova Scotia salmon, sizzling scampi and holiday-green tortellini.

“The budget (for the food) was larger than years past,” observed Hans Prager, owner of the Ritz restaurant and food consultant with the Marriott for the affair. “The hotel’s been wonderful. People used to throw little pre-parties in their homes because the atrium (where appetizers were proffered in the past) was so crowded.

Silk Stole Over Tux

“But this year, the Marriott gave us this second, new ballroom along with the new Pacific ballroom for dinner.” Prager sported a white silk stole over his tux. His wife, Charlene, wore a cocoon of white fox--purchased on a trip to Canada, of course.

The formal, sit-down dinner featured lobster salad, grilled veal chop with puff pastry and chocolate raspberry truffle along with melt-in-your-mouth petits fours frosted to resemble Christmas gifts for dessert. Accompanying wines included a Chardonnay served with the salad course, a Merlot with the veal and a Bouvet rose brut with the dessert.

Schnapp bought audiotapes of Coughlin’s Christmas carols for his table guests.

And, as has been her tradition, Betty Grazer, wife of plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Frederick Grazer, gave her table partners wrapped Waterford crystal Christmas ornaments. Sitting with Graver were hospital board treasurer Charles Hester and wife, Nora--in black with shoulder splashes of red bugle beads, and Marisa and Jim Shea, former president and chairman of the board of the Milton Bradley Co.

Shea, a resident of Linda Isle, said he wasn’t a member of the 552 Club “yet. But Charles (Hester) is working on me.” New hospital board chairman Guy Claire, a retired attorney, attended with his wife, Colleen. Claire hopes to keep Hoag Hospital on the cutting edge of medical services and to “continue to move ahead the way we’ve been doing the past few years. We’re not going to make any changes. I’m content with our progress. I just want to continue it.”

John Rohrer is president of the 552 Club. Also serving on the ball committee were Harry Babbitt (unable to attend because he was on a cruise), Judith Brower, Michael Gering, Gene Baum, Barbara Glabman, Vin Jorgensen, Chris Lindsay (floral designer for the affair), Leland Oliver, Dennis Parrott, Charles Pennavaria and Prager.

W. D. Milliken was master of ceremonies. Ansel Hill’s orchestra played for dancing.

Talk about being on your toes. Members and guests of Orange County’s Center Dance Alliance braved a wine-sipping, appetizer-popping, disco-dancing crush in the bar of Costa Mesa’s Copa de Oro restaurant on Sunday night for one singular sensation: the sight of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the danseur noble of their pas de deux dreams.

Well, they searched. Tippy-toed into crannies. Craned their necks into nooks--even went so far as to ask Dance Alliance president Stewart Woodard if he was the Russian dancer turned artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre.

But the choreographer of “The Nutcracker,” opening tonight at the Performing Arts Center, was a no-show. “We tried, “ wailed Patty Brennan, co-host of the reception arranged to fete Baryshnikov and his troupe. (About 80 members of the ballet troupe did attend the affair.) “We talked to his secretary in New York, told her how important it was for us to have him here. But, he’s a superstar. I don’t think we really appreciated the proportion of that superstardom. The last word I had was he would come in on Tuesday.”

Brennan confided that members of the Dance Alliance--created this year to raise funds for and support dance in Orange County--would probably get to see Baryshnikov on Thursday at a closed ballet rehearsal. “It’s by invitation--for members only,” Brennan said. “He will be directing. We hope to see him then.”

Easter Celebration

John Taras, associate director of the American Ballet Theatre, said Baryshnikov is “very brilliant. So talented.”

Saying they are good friends, Taras said that traditionally he has Baryshnikov over for a Russian Easter celebration. “First we go to midnight Mass,” he said, “and then to my house for a feast. I love to cook. One of Mikhail’s favorites is a Russian pashka that I make. It has cream, thick cream and vanilla bean, candied fruit, eggs, butter in it, very high in cholesterol!”

Taras said the troupe was “thrilled” to be in Orange County for the very first time. “Next we go to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to do ‘The Nutcracker’ and then it’s back to New York for three weeks of rehearsal before we go on tour.”