UCLA Honors Donors at Black-Tie Gala

Forget UCLA’s football rankings this week. The university was all cheers Tuesday evening at Chancellor Charles and Sue Young’s campus residence.

Amid black-tie and dancing, the Youngs and Provost Raymond L. Orbach and his wife honored Bobbe and William R. Pagen for their $5 million gift. It establishes graduate student fellowships in the College of Letters and Science and puts the UCLA Campaign over the $300-million private fund-raising goal more than six months before the campaign’s official conclusion.

The gift comes through the Edwin W. Pauley Foundation, of which the Pagens are trustees. Pauley, the late oilman and community leader, was Bobbe’s husband. Mr. Pagen is vice chairman of Pauley Petroleum Inc., and Bobbe is general chair of the Friends of UCLA Child Care Services and a member of its board. She’s also a leader in the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center and dedicated to the John Douglas French Foundation for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Among the 100 friends saluting the Pagens were Peter and Helen Bing, Hannah and Edward Carter, Brian and Vicki Corbell, Susan Pauley French and Anne and Franklin Johnson.

POP THE CORKS: Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America has been closed for more than a year for renovation. The Harvard-Radcliffe Club of Southern California will celebrate its reopening with its second annual “Radcliffe Cooks for the Schlesinger” dinner Nov. 13 at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Some weeks ago Erika and Robert Brunson hosted champagne with Matina Horner, who’s retiring after 17 years as president of Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass. That, too, was the chance to announce Julia Child as honorary chairman of the upcoming dinner. Barbara Haber, curator of books of the library, will discuss “America’s Romance With Food: The Importance of Food for Understanding People and their Times.”

Paula Wolfert, author of “Paula Wolfert’s World of Food,” has the honor of having her recipes extravagantly served for the party, according to dinner committee members including Helen Bing, Prof. Edward Carterette, Delene Fleming, Irving and Bonnie Fuller, Betty Leonard, Suzanne Marx and Jeffie Pike.

INDOMITABLE: Ninety-six-year-old Hal Roach, pioneer of the American film industry (producer of the hits of Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy and “Our Gang”), was center stage last week at the Bel-Air Country Club at the Loyola Marymount University dinner to benefit the newly established Hal Roach Fund in the department of communications.

The fund coincides with the new Hal Roach Entertainment Award announced by Arthur W. Bloom, LMU dean of communications and fine arts; the award will be given each year. James and Ninon DeRosa were honorary co-chairs of the $250-per-plate dinner.

OPENING NIGHT: The toasts were toasty last week at the opening night of the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s performance of “Carmina Burana.” Joyce and Fred Hameetman took over The Founders at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion post-concert for the 25th anniversary affair and honored Silver Serenade Ball benefactors, ball chairman Liz Hirsch and Chorale conductor John Currie and his wife Anna.

CIRCLE RED: The Reason Foundation, the Santa Monica-based think tank, expects 400 at the Los Angeles Sheraton Grande today for its 10th anniversary. Keynoter will be Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. Judge Alex Kozinski will be master of ceremonies.

THE CHOSEN: Sandy Duncan, Sharon Gless, Scott Valentine, Blair Underwood, Jay Thomas and Dean Stockwell have been named to present the fourth annual Nancy Susan Reynolds Awards for Sexual Responsibility in the Media at the Center for Population Options awards dinner at the Four Seasons this evening.

WOMEN AT WORK: In the spotlight at the Women at Work luncheon honoring outstanding women, keynoter Jane Pisano, president of the blue ribbon Los Angeles 2000 Committee (within the next month it will release its findings about a broad range of L.A.’s anticipated needs in the year 2000), noted that California ranks 49th among 50 states in terms of per-capita funding for schools, adding that “Southern California is a rich place . . . it’s clear we have to work together to solve the problems.”

PAST PERFECT: Judy Neveau and Janis Young co-hosted the YWCA of Los Angeles President’s Circle (co-chaired by Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson and Judith Harris Murphy) tour of Southwest Museum.