A Party Night for New Author De Cordova

Swifty Lazar and his very tall and stylish wife, Mary, were doing the second-best thing they are probably known for doing, the first being his penchant for making literary deals for large amounts of money. Monday night, the Lazars were giving a book party at Spago.

The dozens of people circulating through the back room of the Sunset Strip restaurant were celebrating the publication of Fred de Cordova’s autobiography, “Johnny Came Lately.” De Cordova is the executive producer of “The Tonight Show,” and so lots of show-biz personalities were dishing over platters of pizzas.

Lazar has known De Cordova for 40 years--and has the legendary raconteur changed much? “No. Forty years ago, he looked younger. He looks older now. I like him anyway. I like older men,” Lazar said straight-faced as Angie Dickinson entered the party, as flashbulbs popped, and stopped for a quick kiss.

“You got Jay Leno. You got the Newharts. You got Don Rickles. You got Ed McMahon,” Lazar listed, looking around the room.

The book, De Cordova’s wife, Janet, explained, might have taken him a couple of years, but he seemed to write it effortlessly. “In longhand. We went to Hawaii, to the Mauna Lani. There was no desk. So he wrote it in longhand on the cocktail table.” (The book carries a lovely dedication: “To Janet--who has made my life such a happy one.”)

There were many other blondes at the party besides Janet de Cordova and Dickinson--like TV Guide’s Mary Murphy telling anchorwoman Kelly Lange and Gale Hayman how “20/20” did a piece on her overcoming severe back pain. Dani Janssen chatting it up with Alexander Godunov, with his steady, Jackie Bisset, nearby. Also author Jackie Collins, producer Pierre Cossett, hair stylist Yuki Takei and and film producer Freddie Field (Corrina was home after a hard day at the SHARE rehearsals).

“This is like the best cocktail party I’ve ever been to,” De Cordova admitted, probably with just a touch of kidding. Better than “The Tonight Show”? he was asked. “Nothing is better than ‘The Tonight Show.’ ”

The beautiful Alex Carson admitted that she could be one of the few people in Hollywood enjoying the writers’ strike, which was keeping everything but reruns of her husband’s show off the air.

“Johnny is hating it. But I love his being home,” she said.

WORKING THE ROOM--”I’m sitting here shuddering. Every hand you shake belongs to someone who will call you up tomorrow--and ask for something,” Toni Corwin told her husband, Bruce.

Barbara Jordan became the first recipient of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee’s Barbara Jordan Award for Political Courage and Commitment Friday night at a dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Whether most people ate the dinner was questionable--since there was a considerable amount of “working the room.”

State Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara) didn’t have to move. He was seated beside Barbra Streisand at a table hosted by songwriter Marilyn Bergman that included writer Judith Krantz. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), the evening’s keynoter, sat with financier Alfred and Kathy Checchi. Lynne Wasserman with her daughter, Carol Lief; Orange County developer David Stein with his steady, Kerry Kennedy; Steve and Kitty Moses, Peg Yorkin, Roz Wyman, Dr. Paul and Marcia Herman, former Sen. John and Kathinka Tunney, Lynda Palevsky, and the ACLU’s Ramona Ripston were among the political types.

Morgan Fairchild, Ted Danson, and Sidney and Joanna Poitier helped fill out the star ranks. Norman and Lynn Lear, Bud Yorkin and Cynthia Sykes, Tony Thomopoulos and Cristina Ferrare and Barbara Corday were among the industry heavies. (Yes, some of these people fall into two or three categories, but then the adjectives would outnumber the names.) Elected folks like Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), State Controller Gray and Sharon Davis, San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos and congressional hopeful Anna Eshoo (down from Marin County) were in the crowd.

The speeches were good. Robin Williams did send a shiver through the crowd when he grabbed Kennedy’s text from the hand of an aide and seemed as though he would read the entire thing. And he did bring down the crowd when he said that Jimmy Swaggart was starting a new magazine, “Repenthouse.”

The evening netted $150,000 for the committee. And there was grist for conversation on the way home--Jordan’s suggestion that the Democratic presidential field was crowded, but that there was room for Ted Kennedy.