Fielding a Party for the Sundance Gang

“A lot of composers were there,” Henry Mancini quipped, as he arrived at the post-performance party from the “Night of Great Movie Music” on Tuesday night. “Of course, some couldn’t make it because they were dead.”

Of course.

Top-price tickets for the performance at Royce Hall, the first-ever benefit for the Sundance Institute, included a lavish supper party after the show at the home of Ted and Susie Field. The house is the old Harold Lloyd Estate, where a just-completed remodeling has brought new meaning to the words glamour and style, terms usually overworked in this town.

“This is very, very nice,” Charlton Heston said, surveying the Renaissance art lining the walls, including a sizable Bellini. Most of the talk was indeed about pictures--only it was motion pictures, no surprise because the Utah-based Sundance is in the business of providing support for younger, developing film makers.

Sundance board member and film producer Sarah Pillsbury and her writer-husband Richard Klutter made for the giant table with fresh-shucked oysters and mounds of shrimp. Pillsbury’s getting ready for the release of her “Eight Men Out,” a film about the Black Sox scandal. “I love it, and I don’t like baseball that much,” she said. They are also ready for the debut in June of their second child, a son.

Other works in progress--producer Freddie Fields’ “Walking Papers” and “One Gallant Rush” starring Matthew Broderick (“not a drug picture,” Fields kidded). Fields’ wife, Corinna, chatted with the hostess, Susie Field, telling her that the Malibu hardware store both patronize keeps mixing up their bills.

Also sighted--Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Interscope’s Bob and Sally Burkett, agent Mike and Judy Ovitz, agent Jeff Berg, Orion’s Mike and Patrica Medavoy (insiders say she’s up for a job helping Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion with production at the Democratic National Convention), Weintraub Entertainment’s Ken and Helen Kleinberg and Kirk Douglas.

The host, felled by a virus, didn’t make it downstairs to the party, but the hostess (who said she was suffering the same fate) looked very perky and pretty. Robert Redford, the founder of Sundance, looked like Robert Redford, so really, how bad can that be.

TRAVEL TALK--His old friend, Willie Bauer, of London’s Savoy Hotel, was in town--so the Westwood Marquis’ Jacques Camus put together a little dinner Wednesday night.

The talk, of course, was of traveling. British Consul General Donald and Elizabeth Ballentyne (beginning their fourth and last year in that job here) talked about plans to drive up the West Coast in an RV late this spring, interrupting their trip only to jet back to Los Angeles for the queen’s birthday, June 11.

They need the break, Ballentyne said, because UK/LA was still going on strong. “We’re still doing openings,” he said. He confessed that he couldn’t share experiences in London hotels with those raving about Bauer’s Savoy--”When we are in London, we are home.” Bauer said he was seeing “regular guests” during his stay here--no small number, since more than 15% of his hotel’s business comes from California.

Sitting with the Ballentynes, the Westwood Marquis president George Rosenthal and his bride-to-be Karen Sharp. They’ll be off to Italy after their May nuptials. Rosenthal had had a preview of the bride in her wedding dress, because she’s wearing a family gown that her great-aunt, mother and sisters wore. When Sharp tried it on, even though she is very tiny, she couldn’t get it off. Rosenthal related that he showed up to rescue her, and there she was, seated in mounds of white satin.

Doris Fields Heller, wearing an extraordinary Pascal crystal cat necklace, chatted with Penny von Kalinowski, who was relating the problems of getting tickets to hit London shows for her travel clients. For example, she told Heller, tickets for the last night with the original cast of “Phantom of the Opera” went for $2,500.

The star of the evening turned out to be an astounding dessert. Individual spun sugar bird cages covered plates filled with goodies, including large envelopes of white chocolate filled with chocolate mousse and creme brulee that Elizabeth Ballentyne pronounced perfection. What to do with the spun sugar bird cage? Penny von Kalinowski broke hers in half--”Look it’s the Hollywood Bowl.” You could eat it--or, as Camus suggested, “put it on your head, it’s very chic.”

Those opting to consume their bird cages were Travelways’ Stan Rosen and Helen Richman, attorney Julian von Kalinowski and composer David Rose.