L.A. Party Night in N.Y.: Charities Take Manhattan

On a night when Los Angeles broke New York’s heart with a Dodger victory over the Mets, some Los Angeles folks were in the Big Apple breaking the bank, making off with a few million bucks for charity.

At a $2,500-a-person concert and dinner Wednesday night, industrialist Armand Hammer raised $2 million in his quest to amass $500 million for cancer research.

Across town, a City of Hope fund-raiser honoring Broadway department store chairman H. Michael Hecht raised $1 million for the sprawling nonprofit medical facility in Duarte.

$500 Million to Match

Hammer’s “Stop Cancer” inaugural gala, which opened the palm-laden Winter Garden atrium at the World Financial Center, gathered among a glitzy crowd of 800 such notables as New York Gov. Mario Cuomo; Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief surgeon at the National Cancer Institute; Merv Griffin; Barbara Walters; Randolph Hearst; Rhonda Fleming; Abigail Van Buren; and John Kluge, head of Metromedia.

As chairman of the Reagan Administration’s cancer panel, Hammer is trying to raise $500 million in private money, with the plan that it would be matched by the federal government to create a $1-billion fund to be administered by the National Cancer Institute. That sum would be used to focus on a most promising new development, a treatment called adoptive immunotherapy.

Rosenberg, who operated on Reagan’s cancerous colon, is at the forefront of this research, which would use biological agents to stimulate the patient’s immune system to eliminate the cancer.

“I just wish things went faster,” said Rosenberg, who attended the black-tie event with his wife, Alice. Asked if he thought the $1 billion would be raised, Rosenberg refused to engage in fortunetelling, saying, “I’m a scientist. But if anyone can do it, Dr. Hammer can.”

Cuomo presented Hammer with a proclamation declaring Oct. 12 “Stop Cancer Day” in New York state, saying, “If any person can lead this effort, it’s Dr. Hammer. It takes vision and dreaming and drive. When I first heard how much money he was trying to raise, $500 million, I thought Dr. Hammer had finally decided to run for President. That’s about how much it takes.”

$10 Million So Far

Hammer, who hopes to raise the $1 billion by 1992, said he has raised $10 million so far. He got into an amusing talk about this with Canadian real estate magnate Albert Reichmann, who owns the Winter Garden and picked up the check for the party.

“He said that if I raised $25 million, he would donate another $1 million, and I said if he would donate another $1 million, I would donate another $1 million,” Hammer said, making it all sound like dollar bets on the back nine of a golf course.

Guests were treated to a concert with National Symphony Orchestra conductor Mstislav Rostropovich directing the Philadelphia Orchestra. Violinist Isaac Stern performed a selection by Max Bruch, and baritone Sherrill Milnes sang an aria from Umberto Giordano’s opera, “Andrea Chenier.”

Meanwhile, at the Waldorf-Astoria, things got really hot at the City of Hope fund-raiser when a rubrum lily centerpiece caught fire shortly after the candles were lit. The air took on “a murky quality, much like central Los Angeles in September,” one party-goer quipped. On stage, the Jerry Kravat orchestra struck up “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

There was no real danger, only a bit of embarrassment. “We change them, we change them,” a harried headwaiter said.

In the “A-list” reception area, where major donors to the City of Hope mingled with Hecht, chairman and CEO of the Broadway Southern California and guest of honor at the $5,000-per-table event, conversation centered on the equally incendiary topic of the Dodgers vs. the Mets.

“Believe me, I wish I had one of those wristwatch televisions,” said Waldo Burnside, chairman of Carter Hawley Hale in Los Angeles. He grimaced at the thought of missing the crucial seventh playoff game.

“It’s agonizing,” Burnside said, then gestured toward his friend Hecht--”and he better have somebody coming in with the scores.”

With L.A.-N.Y. rivalry thick in the air, Hecht’s 23-year-old daughter, Betsy, could not have been overly charmed when, walking through Times Square with her mother earlier in the week, she had her gold necklace removed from her person by “a guy who ran away so fast I don’t think I could recognize him. My mom was screaming.”

Mostly those in attendance were “big hitters” in the garment and cosmetics industries, said Thomas Dokter, the Broadway’s executive vice president. They included: Mervin Mandelbaum, head of a necktie company; the City of Hope’s Dr. Sanford Shapero; Leonard Rabinowitz, a women’s wear manufacturer; developer Henry Segerstrom; Bernard Levy, a women’s wear manufacturer; Simon Critchell, a cosmetics executive; and John and Laura Pomerantz, women’s clothing manufacturers.

Dokter, chairman of the fund-raiser, said, “We will have raised a million bucks tonight, which is double what any other City of Hope function has raised.”

Hecht, greeting old friends from the industry who had converged on New York for market week, focused his attention on the City of Hope, his favorite charity.

The “1988 fashion gala,” featuring a Southern California medical institution, a Southern California guest of honor and many guests from Southern California, was taking place in New York, Hecht explained, because “the City of Hope is a California institution that treats 120,000 people a year from 50 states and many foreign countries, without charge.”

He said he had been involved in raising money for the organization for as long as he has been in Southern California, 13 years; he hopes that it will be as well recognized nationally as Sloan-Kettering in New York.

“Because it is an institution that has worldwide implications,” Hecht continued, “it’s appropriate that we come to the second most important city in the country” to raise funds and awareness.