Pioneer Aviator Fete at Museum of Flying

It’s not often that an invitation comes with the option for aviation attire. It will be more de rigueur than black-tie (also acceptable) for the Museum of Flying’s special evening Saturday on the grounds of the Santa Monica Airport. The invitations are slick with a photo of a DT Torpedo Bomber, 1923 vintage, surrounded by the original Douglas Aircraft employees.

Joan Stewart, the museum’s executive director, is putting the dinner and dancing together honoring a host of aviation pioneers who have written their names across the skies. (Stewart was a mover and shaker in the original Pasadena Showcase House of Design, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary the same night).

They’ll all cocktail amidst Spitfires and P-51 Mustangs. The museum’s board of governors will lend pizazz--Donald Douglas Jr., chairman; David G. Price, president; and board members including actor/producer Tony Bill; Walter J. Boyne, former director of the Smithsonian; William P. Clark; Charles Knapp; Lois Hamilton Knapp; Dr. Paul MacCready; John Marin; Bruce W. Orriss; actor Cliff Robertson; Edwin M. Stanley and Madine Pulaski.

BIGGER, BETTER: The pride of UCLA was evident the other evening in gargantuan proportions as the powers plopped a big white tent over the Royce Hall Quad--site of the campus’s original four buildings--to host 1,000 friends (UCLA has 180,000 alums in the Southern California area) for a black-tie sit-down dinner and then a stage salute from Gregory Peck, Mel Torme and Henry Mancini at Royce.

The white chocolate cornucopias filled with spring berries and sabayon sauce were planned by John and Marion Anderson, UCLA campaign celebration co-chairs, to be symbolic of the university’s successful conclusion of its UCLA Campaign--$375 million raised privately over the past six years for academic programs campuswide.

“This is one of the proudest and happiest moments in UCLA history,” Anderson, who went to UCLA on an ice hockey scholarship, told the crowd. “Please raise your glasses--here’s to UCLA, here’s to the Bruins, here’s to the Blue and the Gold--to all of you and to all of us--to UCLA, our beloved university. Let the feast begin.”

Anderson truly could say us . He and Marion (wearing Bulgari cabachon rubies and diamonds) have given $15 million to UCLA. There were other colossal givers, though. And the Andersons shared the stage with UCLA Campaign National Chairman James A. Collins and Chancellor Charles Young, both praised profusely for their dedication to the drive. They, in turn, praised their wives--Carol Collins and Sue Young--and the city’s prominent. As Raymond L. Orbach, College of Letters and Science provost, pointed out, Young was also celebrating his 20th year with the university. “He has coaxed, cajoled us to the heights of excellence.”

Present were at least 17 of the 30 faculty members who are the recipients of endowed chairs from the campaign. Among the others, gazing up through the clear tent to the turquoise and apricot illumination of Royce and the library, was a crowd including prominent donors Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld, former Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Lester and Carolbeth Korn, Leonard and Dorothy Straus, Richard and Eileen Eamer, Edgardo and Francesca Acosta, Roy and Carol Doumani, Robert and Lois Erburu, Dr. Peter and Helen Bing, Phillip and Helen Fowler, Gordon and Virginia MacDonald, Henry and Ginny Mancini, Edward and Hannah Carter, David and Dallas Price, Yvonne Lenart, Stephen and Kitty Moses.

The evening ended romantically with Mancini at the piano and Torme’s velvet warbles of “The Days of Wine and Roses” and, of course, “Moon River” for a finale.

KUDOS: To Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson, who blew out the candle on each birthday cake in a cake parade for 256 guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel Crystal Ballroom. Not only did His Excellency Han Xu, Ambassador to the U.S. from China, attend, but China also sent its first ambassador to the United States, Chai Zemin, to present Caroline with the American Marco Polo award for her achievements in developing relations between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China. The Los Angeles-Guangzhou Sister City Assn. hosted . . .

To Henry Droz of Beverly Hills, president of Warner/Electra/Atlantic Distributing Company, honored by the T. J. Martel Foundation in New York. Paul Cooper was West Coast dinner chairman . . .

To Rodney Peete, receiving applause from the Ebonics Scholarship Fund-Raising Dinner hosted by USC Black Alumni Assn. at Town and Gown.

PAST PERFECT: A starlight crowd for the Ahmanson Theatre “Hapgood” opening party at the Brown Derby--Barbara Bain, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Carol Channing, Robert Fryer, Harry Hamlin, Katherine Helmond, John Lithgow . . .