Star Power Illuminates Fund-Raisers

When is a star not a star?

When there is a bigger star in the room.

Take tonight, for example, when international personality Lee Radziwill celebrates her set-for-earlier-in-the-day wedding to film director Herb Ross. The 50 or so guests invited for dinner will be almost all top names in fashion and film--but the real star of the night will no doubt be Radziwill’s sister, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who is hosting the event at her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York.

(Flying up for the wedding from the Louisiana shoot of “Steel Magnolias” is producer Ray Stark and flying from the West Coast is producer Douglas Cramer. Ross and Radziwill have purchased hundreds of acres in the Santa Ynez Valley area, near the ranches of Stark and Cramer. Cramer introduced the happy couple early last spring at a dinner party for Donald and Catie Marron.)

In the world of publicity, only a few stars are “untoppable.” That’s an Onassis, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and whoever is living in the White House. (And only a couple of these are actually in show business.)

It’s not just on-screen stars who are important. Certainly the Reagan Kitchen Cabinet, film moguls, mega agents, chefs--and anyone who has an outstanding amount of money and power and throws it around--that’s a star.

In the absence of such stellar names, though, even long established charities have to get by with simply sparkly. Sunday’s Friends of the Rape Treatment Center’s annual brunch will once again feature Norman Lear as the guest auctioneer--this year adding in the cast of “thirtysomething” as attractions sure to show up. The sponsor and advisory board list on the invitation contains dozens and dozens of Hollywood’s biggest names--but the only top names confirmed a few days before were Valerie Harper, Marsha Mason, Quincy Jones, Richard Crenna and Victoria Principal. Good, longtime supporters of a good cause--but unlike swallows returning to Capistrano, stars coming back to an annual event don’t make news.

Important people lending their names and support might make money for the charity (certainly a commendable pursuit), but they don’t make an event and they don’t make publicity for the event. Coverage of charity parties and big bashes is directly connected not to the money raised, but to the people who have banded together to raise money. A studio head can buy a table and lend his name to a committee--but if he and others like him give their tables to faithful retainers, the evening has a chance of being a financial success and a social failure.

And social power is what packs people in the following year.

Like it or not, in a city where charities live and die on their annual or twice-a-year benefits, important people who have lent their names must now also begin again to put their black-tied bodies on the line.

Invitations keep getting filled with too many “qualifiers.” What, for example, does “honorary committee” mean? That the important person thinks the charity is doing good work--but doesn’t want to take the time to show up? That the important person believes that other people should buy a ticket or a table--but doesn’t want to spend his or her own money?

Benefit committees used to be people who put together an event--and then showed up, brought their friends and enjoyed the party. That happens less and less with VIPs--who practically will lend their influence to the opening of an envelope.

One upcoming exception is Saturday night’s benefit honoring Milton Wexler and fund raising for his Hereditary Disease Foundation. The invitation is crammed with dozens of famous names--plus a plan and a promise to make many of those stars part of the party.

One highlight of the evening: Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett and Sally Kellerman are set to sing “Happy Birthday” to the 80-year-old psychoanalyst. Lending their definite presence are Candice Bergen and Louis Malle, Jackson Browne and Daryl Hannah, Peter Falk, Walter and Carol Matthau, first daughter Patti Davis, directors Blake Edwards and Sydney Pollack, plus a retinue of artistic types like Chuck Arnoldi, Frank Gehry and Ed Moses.

This--and on the same weekend that the singing California Raisins show up to benefit Ear International.

Now that’s show business.