A Fair Lady Aids the Arts High School

Audrey Hepburn is Audrey Hepburn is Audrey Hepburn.

Everyone knows that, which is why the most extraordinary gathering of Hollywood brand names turned up at Della Koenig’s home Tuesday night. Hepburn was there with designer Hubert de Givenchy, kicking off the Givenchy retrospective gala benefiting the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Foundation.

The high school, opened in 1985 on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles, was introduced to major movers and shakers via Hepburn’s and Givenchy’s involvement. Turning out were MCA’s Lew and Edie Wasserman, Marvin and Barbara Davis, the one-and-only Gene Kelly, Henry (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) and Ginny Mancini, Douglas Cramer and Shirlee Fonda, former Ambassador to Mexico John and Connie Gavin, Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson (she and Della Koenig are co-chairing the fund-raising committee), Wendy Stark, George Stevens Jr., the wonderful Roddy McDowall, Henry and Jayne Berger (Hepburn was once his tenant, renting a home from him while filming “My Fair Lady”), Barbara Rush and Eva Gabor.

The clever committee has complete underwriting for the Oct. 28 event at the Beverly Wilshire--with I. Magnin, Harry Winston, Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy picking up the tab.

Nobody was happier at the event than the hard-working Cal State chancellor, Ann Reynolds. She pointed out that for the struggling and relatively new high school, this introduction into the powerful entertainment industry was “just what we needed.”

But don’t think Hepburn stopped there. No, her trip to Los Angeles was part of a heavily booked nationwide swing in her role as UNICEF special ambassador, and she had just returned from a visit to drought-stricken Ethiopia.

Lunch at the elegant Regency Club might seem a little out of place, but Hepburn refused to let the surroundings deter her from a point-by-point explanation of her goal and her work. She had told a news conference about the need for long-term aid to the country--and she reeled off statistics with the practiced hand of a diplomat.

“Everyone should be helped,” she said, shaking her head about people questioning aid to Ethiopia because of its Marxist government. “This country has a government that takes care of its own. . . . I am doing something about a country where the government does not take care of its own.”

The enormous outpouring of help during the 1984 and 1985 drought, Hepburn said, may have to be repeated this year. “Water. The need is that simple. Water,” she said.

Hepburn pushed and shaped the conversation to return again and again to the plight of Ethiopians, especially the children. “The defeatist attitude” held by some people, she said, could quickly be wiped out, once people are given specific ways that they can help.

And that is what UNICEF is planning to do, with a heavy move on the Los Angeles community spurred by visits by Hepburn and by Lawrence E. Bruce Jr, the president of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, all part of a special $22-million appeal for Ethiopia. Of that, $8 million is needed for medicine, $5 million for water projects and more than $3.8 million for supplementary feeding and relief supplies.

Hepburn is off on other UNICEF business, this time to Turkey, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. She and Bruce made it clear that almost 90% of the money raised (last year UNICEF had a budget of $450 million) goes directly into aid.

And she was precise (in exactly the way the well-known Hepburn enunciation can be precise) that, “there is a remedy. It is this. We can help.”

KUDOS--To Ginny Mancini, the producer of the entertainment for the L.A Chamber Orchestra’s English Country Ball. For the Thursday party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, she’s lined up Michael York, Anthony Newley, John Standing, Ian Fraser and Shani Wallis. They will all be performing in honor of Sir Neville Marriner and Ronald Rosen. . . .

And many bravos to Sister Marilyn Rudy of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Eleven years ago she founded the St. Joseph Center in Venice--and ever since it has been helping the homeless and troubled, supplying food, job training, housing assistance and legal and medical advice to some 10,000 families and homeless each month.

Saturday, St. Joseph’s will get a needed assist with a fund-raiser at the Marina Beach Hotel. Kathy Lennon Daris is the co-chair of the Fabulous Fifties Event, which will include a guest appearance by Annette Funicello.