THE STARS CAME OUT THIS NIGHT : The American Cinema Awards Benefit Banquet Provides a Gathering That Mixes the Old and the New With Heavy Doses of Nostalgia

“Who are all these people, and what are we doing here?” a well-known actress inquired amidst the crush of a pre-banquet cocktail party at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel Saturday night.

The partial answer was that the people were movie stars of yesterday and today, engulfed by movie fans of yesterday and today, the whole lot in black tie and splendid gowns.

In its four years, the American Cinema Awards banquet has become the premier attendable fan event in the country. At a top of $500 a plate for those not on the comp list, it does not qualify as a come-one, come-all picnic. But for those whose pulses quicken to glimpse Ann Blythe, James Stewart and Donald O’Connor plain, the price is agreeable.

The “What are we doing here?” is not quite so simple to answer. But partial explanations must be that a little accolade never hurt anybody and the large accolade the banquet represents is even easier to take. Then, too, the luminaries of film and television are as widely dispersed across Southern California as the rest of us are. It was evident Saturday night that the stars were terribly pleased to see each other again and do some catching up.

And at the heart of the matter, I expect, was an understanding that the mutually enriching relationship of star and fan is still a matter of importance, even if we are now well beyond the (relatively) innocent days when the stars were not just legends, but were living and working legends.

In those golden days, platoons of agile publicists schemed ceaselessly to advance their players toward legendhood. It was like backgammon with flesh, and each movie was a roll of the dice. What the tumult of the Saturday banquet demonstrated was how strong the lure of stars for their fans remains, and how it passes intact to generations who hadn’t been born when the senior legends were taking shape.

The banquet is the brainchild of a young entrepreneur named David Gest, at once brash and retiring (he sat at a side table and took a reluctant bow but did not speak), who is evidently a fan to end all fans, with memorabilia to prove it.

Gest recruited Joel McCrea and Frances Dee, Joseph Cotten and Patricia Medina as founding patrons and gave the banquet an overlay of good works. This year a donation of $50,000 to the Motion Picture and Television Fund was announced. There are also hopes of a traveling museum of movie artifacts. The Cottens chair the event.

The awards are simply annual honors for superstars, this time for Kirk Douglas, who was introduced at affectionate length by son Michael Douglas, and Sophia Loren, introduced with affectionate brevity by Sylvester Stallone. Loren’s entourage included not only husband Carlo Ponti and her mother, but singer Michael Jackson, a later legend.

For star-watchers, it was indubitably a night out to remember and if Gest did not make his announced quota of 250 stars, there were more than 100, from Francis Lederer and Petula Clark (who sang) to Joan Rivers and Donna Sommer (who also sang). Robert Wagner introduced the celebrities in the audience and Robert Mitchum also did a turn at the podium.

The actors represented five or six decades of film, from Spanky McFarland and Lew Ayres of an earlier time, to Jane Seymour and Joan Van Ark from an age when movies arm-wrestle with television for survival. Some of the celebrities on hand--Eve Arden, Jackie Cooper, Robert Cummings, Karl Malden, Jane Wyatt and Cesar Romero among several others--have graced both mediums.

For all the pleasure of spotting familiar faces, it’s not hard to know what made the actress wonder what she was doing in the throng. Fame as such is a peculiarly mottled commodity, pleasurable but not in the long run satisfying in itself. It may not necessarily even measure talent or achievement, but only celebrity and durability.

Then, too, there must be a certain uncomfortable sense for some of those at the banquet of having been brought out of the past for another hurrah, heroes at a parade. The difference is that the achievements live on and continue to be born anew for new audiences. Still, there is something unsettling and memorial about the nature of the event, and I’d have thought that the more of the present generation Gest can recruit the better all the generations might feel.

A subtler trouble with fan enthusiasm is that it tends to use the movies, particularly those of the past, as a refuge from the realities of the present--and as a permanent escape rather than a temporary respite.

Then, too, the fan enthusiasm finally sees all movies as created equal: What was was wonderful, whether it was or not. This has the unintended effect of diminishing the real achievements of film history. As even the clips from the careers of Kirk Douglas and Sophia Loren made evident the other night, all movies are not created equal, and some are even less equal than others.

Nostalgia is wonderful stuff, but it is like pecan pie: You can get too much of it.