Much Ado About Cancer Benefit Event

Frani Ridder and Mary Klingensmith, co-chairs of “Much Ado About Something,” are saying please, please save Oct. 10. That’s the night of their big Long Beach Cancer League 13th annual auction. Invitations won’t be mailed until September, but it’s only because these two and their diligent band of 98 put in summer hours that the auction has become the largest single one-night fund-raiser benefiting the American Cancer Society in the United States, they say.

So far, they’ve provided $3.9 million for cancer research, education and services. In addition, they’re extremely proud of their Camp Summer Sault, the day camp for children with cancer, in Long Beach.

The affair will be limited to 650, with league members concentrating on friends for tickets costing $300 to $1,000. Guests will come for the silent auction at 6 p.m., then the seated dinner catered by Rococo, followed by the live auction.

They have auction items already, including ballooning in France; Sea Goddess trips; a two-week African safari; a day of golf with Bob Hope, another with Lee Trevino; Shar-pei puppies (expected); the use of ski homes in France, Switzerland and Aspen, and condos in Australia, Hong Kong and Mexico; lunch with Erma Bombeck; dinner with Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby); parties in private homes and on private yachts; furs and jewels; hotel stays in London, Tokyo and Paris; plus New York to France on the QE2. Is there anything else?

The Cancer League was formed in 1975, inspired by the group’s charter president, the late Bette Lee Severson, herself a victim of cancer.

WESTERN CHIC: Los Angeles Pops kicks off its summer schedule Aug. 7 in the Trillium at Warner Center in Woodland Hills. Ardent supporter Ceil Moore, chairman of the supporting Keynote 88 Committee, gathered the troops the other evening at the Regency Club to celebrate the orchestra’s new summer home. “And we’re extremely happy and proud to be able to present Roy Clark and Tammy Wynette at our benefit opening,” she said.

That means the Western Posse Committee headed by Mrs. Joseph G. Havlick and Mrs. Anthony A. Mastor, are expecting lots of turquoise and silver, a flossy denim look and Rococo cuisine. Benefit goers will pay $150, but the opening concert as well as the Pops concerts Aug. 14 and 15, featuring John Raitt in “A Salute to Broadway,” are all public and available through Ticketmaster.

Over lunch at Jimmy’s, the widow of John I. Moore, the Dallas and West Texas oil giant, said Carlo Spiga, music director, will conduct the Pops.

Others fashioning the stylish evening are Mrs. Edward F. Warde, Mrs. Bob Ray Offenhauser, Mrs. Peter Bollero, Mrs. Bert B. Malouf, Mrs. Thomas Malouf, Mrs. Ted Leaver, Mrs. Robert Sully, Mrs. Vasilios S. Lambros and Rosemary Raitt.

Only recently the Pops established an endowment of $450,000, spearheaded by Joseph Havlick, board vice president and chairman of fund raising.

The Pops’ three winter concerts will be held at the Century Plaza. Traditionally about 400 come for dinner, dancing and the concert at $80 per person.

Ceil also says Peter Duchin is booked for the Dec. 4 benefit in the Century Tower ballroom. Last year’s gala netted $96,000.

WITTY FLAMBOYANCE: The legendary jewelry designed by the late Duke Fulco di Verdura, prized in the ‘40s and ‘50s by a flamboyant clientele, lives on. Those great domed rings inspired later designers like David Webb.

The man who’s purchased the designs and continues the manufacturing is none other than New Yorker Ward Landrigan, former head of Sotheby’s on the West Coast. He was in town to seek out a location for a coming show, and the visit called, simply, for a few festivities with Sotheby’s Joan Hotchkis.

Joan and John Hotchkis honored Ward the other eve in their pretty home overlooking the Arroyo Seco--cocktails at sunset, dinner in the dining room for a coterie including George and Jane Sidney, Arthur and Julie Pizzinat, Joyce MacRae and Gephardt Durenberger, Tamara Assayev, Nancy and Tim Vreeland, Alan and Nancy Livingston, and Louise and Jay Heifetz.

The talk was stylish--art, books, design, new productions (with Durenberger noting the “World of Elsie de Wolfe--a Revolution in Style” benefit that Libros y Artes in San Juan Capistrano stages in November for its library). Joan nearly swooned earlier in the day when she failed to make contact with her caterer; the guests nearly swooned when she begged Ward to bring out those Verdura jewels, and he marched to his briefcase and produced elegant wonders that were passed around the table with coffee.

The next day Joan entertained a crowd at lunch at La Scala: Ernestine Avery, the Henry Bergers, Ruth March, Jenny Rutt, Barbro Taper, Peggy Parker, Jean Trousdale, Joan Quinn and a bunch more.

WONDER, TOO: Wonderland will be a facility where families can gather to deal with the problems faced by loss of sight--a place to help with the problems of Retinitis Pigmentosa and a place to encourage research. To raise funds, RP International will honor Stevie Wonder in a dinner and concert, “Wonder of Sight Night,” Aug. 6 at the Music Center in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Lydia and Charlton Heston are national honorary chairmen; Lod Cook and Angie Dickinson are dinner/concert chairmen; and Quincy Jones and Jerry Buss will be at the honorary helm. The black-tie affair will be $500 and $250. That evening, Wonder will be presented with the RP International Humanitarian Award for his dedication to the battle against RP, a degenerative disease of the retina.

FIRST BENEFIT: Jane Seymour hosted a cocktail reception at Four Seasons to announce “Evening of Romance,” a benefit dinner Oct. 24. It will be the first benefit for the newly formed Southern California Chapter of Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation Fighting Blindness, of which Jane is national honorary chairman. The chapter currently is concentrating on research efforts at Jules Stein Eye Institute.

SNOW WHITE: Actor Tony Danza is honorary chairman of the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California’s 50th anniversary presentation of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Connie Frank and John Golisch co-chair the party, supper and screening at Walt Disney Studios next Sunday to raise funds for research and a children’s camp. Assisting are Anne Cahill, Chuck Eastman, Rosemary Tobin and Richard B. Lippin.