R.S.V.P. : Lawn Circus Nets $100,000 for Homeless

Saturday will mark a national march on Washington in support of America’s homeless, but Los Angeles supported the event Sunday in true L.A. style.

When the money was counted up, $100,000 was netted for Housing Now! (the group that is sponsoring the march). The place was Holmby Hills, on the grounds of Jean and Casey Kasem’s new $6.5-million estate. The fund-raiser, an elaborate lawn circus.

Of the Third World ambiance of parts of America, although not Holmby Hills, Jean Kasem said, “This is not America any more. This is Kuala Lampur. I mean, wake me up and tell me that I am not dreaming.”

She wasn’t dreaming, even if the enormity of the lawn circus at times seemed like a cotton-candy hallucination. Five-thousand invitations had been sent out (the general public was not invited), and guests, dressed in everything from suits to shorts, clutched bags of popcorn and balloons as their children tried the dunk tank, bounced in a moon bounce and had their pictures taken with Yogi Bear and Dino.

A guest or two expressed a slight spiritual queasiness about raising money for the homeless among such L.A. affluents. Although the Kasems’ new home has only three bedrooms, it does have a few Beverly Hills-style amenities, such as a nine-hole golf course, a tennis court and a heart-shaped swimming pool with bare-breasted mosaic mermaids on the bottom.

A Silly Question

Actress Valerie Harper, who helped the Kasems organize the event, would have none of this school of thought. “Someone just asked me about that,” she told Jean Kasem, “and I said, ‘What better way to use opulence.’ It’s such a silly question.”

Not so silly was the cash flowing into the Housing Now! coffers. Before the event, $50,000 worth of tickets were sold and another $30,000 was raised during the afternoon at the game and food booths (all vegetarian at the Kasems’ insistence). There was also a midway set up over the mini golf course, with sword swallowers, fire eaters and a snake charmer wandering among the guests who were trying their hands at games of skill. All the game booths were sponsored and underwritten by television shows, enabling players to win “Alf” mugs and “Newhart” cast albums with all the proceeds going to the charity. The Kasems paid for the party.

Rhythm-and-blues standards boomed through the neighborhood, thanks to the fabulous Thunderbirds and a fabulous speaker system, which was playing for several hundred appreciative fans on the front lawn. Shuttle buses were kept busy all afternoon, ferrying guests from a parking lot at UCLA and back again.

Among those who turned out to lend their names to the affair were David Hasselhoff, Rita Coolidge, Dennis Christopher, Mitchell Laurance, Dinah Manoff, John Ratzenberger, Katey Sagal, Beverly Sassoon, John Schneider, Joanne Carson, Joyce DeWitt and Kasem’s replacement on the “American Top 40,” announcer Shadoe Stevens.

Later, the stage became an auction block for sculpture and oil paintings provided for the occasion by Victor Salmones Galleries and the Makk Galleries of Beverly Hills. The art auction raised more, which eventually put the afternoon’s net profit at over the $100,000 mark.