Star Analyst Gets the Star Treatment

“I’m assuming some people are here tonight who are not his patients,” was the opening line in what sounded like an Elaine May routine.

It was Elaine May--but it was tribute not tribulation Saturday night, a double celebration honoring the 80th birthday of psychoanalyst/author Milton Wexler and the 20th anniversary of his founding of the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

Carol Burnett, Julie Andrews and her husband, Blake Edwards (Wexler co-wrote his film, “That’s Life”), Sally Kellerman, director Sydney and Claire Pollack, Wexler’s attorney Mickey and Mary Carol Rudin, Peter Falk, Quincy Jones with Vera Harrah, First Daughter Patti Davis with husband Paul Grilley, still newlyweds Jodie Evans and Max Palevsky, Henry and Ginny Mancini, architect Frank Gehry and advertising exec Jay Chiat, who had turned over the headquarters of advertising firm Chiat/Day in Venice for the celebration.

‘We All Love Milton’

May kidded Wexler about his ventures into the show-biz world that so many of his patients and friends inhabit, teasing him about “That’s Life” and “The Man Who Loved Women,” a May film that he also co-authored. In his 30 years of Southern California practice, Wexler has managed to become an integral part of his patients’ lives. “We all love Milton,” was the constant refrain throughout the evening.

All the kidding was just preliminary: “Everybody who knows him and has been a patient has gone away better,” May concluded, bringing about both applause and the appearance of Wexler on the slightly raised platform.

“This whole evening is a reflection of Milton,” Jodie Evans said, as Palevsky sat beside her, his son Jonathan on his lap. “Have a great time, eat some fun food, enjoy.”

Wexler is legendary for fueling the creativity of his patients and friends (and, not as in the case of most psychoanalysts, one frequently becomes the other). Jackson Browne had taken off a couple minutes from a rehearsal for his upcoming tour, benefiting the Christic Institute and opening in Philadelphia next week. And Patti Davis has a second novel coming out from Crown, still untitled, concentrating on the “secret war in Nicaragua.”

The mixed-media crowd all seemed at home in the giant avant-garde indoor space. It had been turned into a park--with vendors passing out brown bags with popcorn, peanuts and soft pretzels, along with more substantial fare such as hot dogs, chili and hamburgers. In a touch of isn’t-there-anybody-Milton-doesn’t-know, Claes Oldenburg had done the invitation cover drawing of a fat, ice cream-filled profiterole and that’s exactly what was served up as the birthday dessert.

As it was a birthday, surprises were in order. Wexler’s two daughters, Nancy (the president of the Hereditary Disease Foundation) and Alice (author of the 1984 “Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life”) flanked their father for his short speech.

Wexler, who is recovering from a serious illness he suffered several months ago, said he was “enormously proud and fulfilled” that the Hereditary Disease Foundation was supported by his friends even from the first moment that “I went out with this abstract message. . . . I celebrate all of you guys, all of you people.”

Genetic Disease Research

The foundation, established after Wexler’s wife was diagnosed with a fatal hereditary illness, Huntington’s disease, now stimulates and supports research on the methods and techniques of eradicating genetic disease, using Huntington’s disease as a prototype. Among the couple of hundred guests were top scientists from around the country, including Dr. Lewis Judd, director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the guest of board member Jennifer Jones Simon.

Then daughter Nancy took the stage, saying that her father’s genius “lies in his ability to see something extraordinary in the everyday.” She talked about the work done by the foundation, about the workshops that allow for brainstorming new ideas--and the new tests now developed that can predict whether the child of a person with Huntington’s disease will develop the illness. This advance, though, has produced a “quandary,” she said, because there is no magic pill to take once a person knows he or she will eventually fall victim.

$1.5 Million Raised

Now the “same strategies” will be employed in the workshops in an effort to achieve a cure. And, “in honor of this occasion, more than $1.5 million” had been raised to continue the workshops.

Nancy Wexler took a minute to point out that, as always, “100% raised goes to science” and that generous board members had picked up the cost of the “popcorn and peanuts.” After a kiss of his daughter’s hand, Wexler quipped that “it was really worth going through the science lecture and getting to the meat of the matter.”

Then Burnett, Andrews and Kellerman finally got to sing “Happy Birthday,” and everybody got to eat hot dogs and feel both creative and happy.