Birds of Fine Feather Flock Together at Ball

Ann Davies brought her own fork to Le Bal Masque, given Thursday at the San Diego Museum of Art for about 300 finely feathered guests.

That might be thought vaguely unusual--or even avant garde, given that the party was at an art museum--but consider that rather than bearing this implement, she wore it. She wore it, in fact, over her nose, rather like the nose guard on a Saxon helmet; it was suspended from a twisted copper frame edged in feathers, and it made the act of drinking wine an amusingly challenging task.

But rather than being outre, Davies simply was in the swing of things at this decidedly stunning masked ball, at which the motto “anything goes” was given an entirely new definition and at which some of San Diego’s most conservative souls let down their hair both for the benefit of the museum and the sake of having a very good time.

Event chairman Sally Thornton enrobed the gala in a gossamer fabric loomed from thread spun on the wheel of imagination. The idea was to create a participatory fantasy, one which the guests could help design merely by wearing masks and opening their minds to the spirit of the thing.

Party designers Jim Crawford and Michael Coleman set the mood by staging a forbidding tableau vivant at the entrance to the museum. Mysterious figures based on those of the centuries-old Carnaval of Venice watched over the fog-enshrouded entry stairs (the mist spewed from a dry-ice machine), including a pair of halberd-bearing guards in winged helmets, and a group of figures in fluorescent white costumes.

Inside, a second tableau populated the grand staircase, an Art Nouveau collection of young women in white gowns, young men in golden ram’s head masks, and a striking pair of women costumed as living poinsettias. (The stairs were flanked in poinsettias, and one did not notice immediately that some were breathing.)

Museum director Steven Brezzo, speaking from the staircase, said that he felt as if he were in the midst of a Fellini movie. The scene also looked remarkably like 1920s photographs of spectacles produced at the Folies-Bergere in Paris, when designers with seemingly immense budgets created living works of art on stage.

Brezzo also said that he felt sorry for the chairman of next year’s version of the museum’s annual Fine Arts Ball.

“This is one of those nights that will be tough to top,” he said. “You sit back and pity the next poor chairman, because how will she ever be able to put together a better party than this?”

The guests, for their part, largely echoed Brezzo’s comments. If last week’s party can be taken as reliable evidence, adults must be eager to join in the games of make-believe that seem so exclusively the province of childhood. Certainly the wild profusion of masks created a gleefulness that is rare at parties; guests were only too glad to express their wit, imagination and yearnings through fanciful creations of feathers and molded cloth and ceramic. Some guests remained anonymous behind or beneath their masks.

Al Gabbs, unmasked when the dinner bell sounded, confounded nearly everyone with his towering rooster headdress, which hid his features. Judith Harris and Robert Singer wore face-shielding “Amadeus”-style visors; Veryl and Aage Fredericksen, clad in matching tuxedoes, also sported white ceramic “Phantom of the Opera” masks exactly like those worn by the hero of the rock opera of the same name. Sportscaster Charley Jones earned kudos by bearing a Ted Leitner mask. Virginia Monday and Alice Cramer carried feathered creations that spread out almost a yard in diameter, while Ingrid Hibben crowned herself with a cocky pink flamingo.

Ingrid’s husband, museum President Joseph Hibben, wore his own bright feathers (emerald and lapis, in emulation of an exuberant peacock), but he gallantly observed that the women carried the evening.

“While I think all the men look better with their masks,” he said, “I must say that the women look better without them.”

The event offered the guests a preview of the museum’s new exhibit, “American Women Artists, 1830-1930,” which is underwritten by Sally and John Thornton and is on loan from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The president of that museum, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, attended Le Bal Masque as guest of honor.

Holladay professed herself delighted by the installation.

“It looks better here than in my own museum,” she said. In response to her compliment, quite a few guests actually strolled through the exhibit, a display of will power given the wild scene they had to leave behind under the Rotunda.

The dinner was almost an anticlimax to the reception, since guests had to unmask to taste the opening course of vegetable terrine in red bell pepper sauce. The dining rooms--both Gallery 12 and the Copley Auditorium were used--were a visual extension of the evening, since they were done totally in red, from the floor-length cloths to the towering anthurium centerpieces.

The crimson scheme served as a clue to one of the party’s more dramatic moments. Between the roast venison entree and the Montrachet cheese tart, Sally Thornton slipped away on the arm of her husband, only to return in the sheath of ruby sequins she had exchanged for her gown of sapphire beads. She also carried a flaming-red feather mask that was at least half her height. The gesture resulted in delighted applause.

The committee included Martha Culbertson, Dorothy Hummell, Jinx Ecke, Kate Adams, Betty DeBakcsy, Katy Dessent, Mary Cobb, Connie Golden, Lois Roon, Beverly Muchnic, Barbara ZoBell, Charmaine Kaplan, Monica Teyssier and Ann Jones.

Among the guests were Gordon and Karon Luce, Lou and Jane Metzger, Jacqueline Littlefield with Bill Purves, George and Kathy Pardee, Charles and Sue Edwards, George and Piret Munger, Irby and Mary Cobb, George and Martha Gafford, Georgia Borthwick with Tom Fleming, Luba Johnston, P.J. and Lee Maturo, Ben and Sheri Kelts, Danah Fayman, Jose and Helen Tasende, John and Suzanne Koch and Sam and Anne Armstrong.

Saks Fifth Avenue’s Jeannette Maxwell arrived at the La Jolla Marriott Dec. 2 bearing a generous supply of tissues and makeup pads, items not generally in enormous demand at formal functions.

She explained that her buddy Phyllis Parrish, co-chair of the surprise tribute given in honor of Sister Virginia McMonagle, the director of Constituent Relations at the University of San Diego, had requested the cosmetic aids because Parrish expected many of the women to be in tears that evening. As it turned out, quite a few men cried, too.

“You Light Up Our Life” was planned by Parrish and party chairman Linda Alessio to mark McMonagle’s departure for Haiti, where she intends to join others in building and operating an orphanage, a hospice for children dying of AIDS (a disease that affects a large percentage of the Haitian populace) and a school. The move is the result of a vacation the 66-year-old nun spent in that poverty-ridden country last summer, a vacation passed tending for abandoned and dying children.

The event was given both as a surprise party and as a fund-raiser, and in its latter guise it raised about $25,000 for McMonagle’s projects in Haiti. (A bonus came after the party, when several guests huddled and decided to chip in on the truck that will be needed to negotiate Haiti’s primitive roads.)

The 250 guests arrived well in advance of McMonagle, who came to the Marriott believing that she was attending a dinner given in honor of Parrish. When word came up that the honoree had arrived on the premises, the crowd fell silent and waited for the ballroom door to open, and the moment it did, the tears started to flow. McMonagle was one of the few who kept her composure, and she smiled only the more broadly when she spotted her sister and brother among the well wishers.

The diverse crowd included several USD deans (university President Author Hughes, called out of town on school business, was represented by his wife, Marge), as well as current students and a fair number of women who were McMonagle’s students in years gone by.

Among these were Sharon LeeMaster, who met McMonagle when she attended Seattle’s Forest Ridge academy in the 1950s, and wore her class ring in memory of that time. Another was Betsy Manchester, who first knew the nun when McMonagle served as principal of a Sacred Heart school in El Cajon.

“Sister will be our personal link to a people and country in need,” said Manchester, who nonetheless admitted that she will miss her friend. “She will take a part of all of us to Haiti.”

Chairman Alessio, who is the nun’s godchild, said, “I have such love for Sister Virginia that I had to help give this party for her. She is not the type of person who would ask you for anything, but she ‘s so wonderful that you want to help however you can.”

These and other compliments did not go unnoticed by the guest of honor, who said of the event that, “This totally blows my mind.” In a more serious vein, she admitted that the current political turmoil in Haiti concerns her but she is by no means afraid to go there (she intends to leave San Diego early in 1988.)

“Things will quiet down by February,” she said. “I’m not worried. I’m not going there for political reasons anyway--I’m going to take care of children.”

As entertainment, the Alcala Mission Choir offered up Christmas carols, as well as a specially penned rendition of “You Light Up Our Life” whose lyrics paid particular tribute to McMonagle. The Curt Stan Orchestra played during the beef tenderloin dinner, and afterward, the nun was given a round-trip ticket to Haiti. The return portion of the ticket expressly pointed to the hope of its donors that McMonagle will, in fact, return home from time to time.

Among the guests were Ruth and Jim Mulvaney, Doris and Peter Hughes, Pat and Ed Keating, Maureen and Charles King, Gloria and Charles Melville, Marilyn and Vince Benstead, Judy and John Comito, Louarn Fleet, Lynn and Doug Mooney, Anne and George Coleman, Mary and Dan Mulvihill, Betty and Ross Tharp, Alison and Jon Tibbitts, Monsignor I. Brent Eagen, Jay and Anthony Ghio, Tina and Joseph Cutri, Frank Alessio and John Parrish.