Kennedy Center Gala: A Five-Star Tribute for Living Legends

In the ornate halls of the State Department reception rooms, even the rich and famous were in awe as this year’s Kennedy Center honorees were feted Saturday night with a black-tie tribute attended by the center’s board of trustees and star-studded guests.

Actress Cicely Tyson worked the room with her camera, asking guests to photograph her with this year’s honorees: singer Harry Belafonte, actresses Claudette Colbert and Mary Martin, ballerina Alexandra Danilova and composer William Schuman.

Perhaps none was more enraptured than Bernadette Peters, who never seemed more than five yards from Martin.

“Mary is so wonderful, so graceful, so full of life,” Peters whispered to another admirer. After the dinner and formal presentation, when Peters finally approached the stage legend, she was tentative and almost withdrawn.

Peters, and others like her, bore testament to the prestige and honor of the Kennedy Center award, now in its 12th year.

“This is not an industry award and it’s not how successful you’ve been,” said Belafonte, who at 62 is the self-described baby of the honorees. “It’s how people perceive you as a person. In that sense, it’s one of the greatest honors I could have received.”

The weekend salute also included a White House reception Sunday afternoon with Barbara Bush. It was wrapped up late Sunday with the 12th annual Kennedy Center Honors extravaganza, to be televised Dec. 29 on CBS.

It was Saturday’s intimate board of trustees fete, though, that captured the essence of the prestigious award, bestowed for performing arts achievements that have made a lasting impact on American culture.

“It is a rare privilege to be graced with such talent,” said Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger at Saturday night’s gala. He cited the honorees as “diplomats who bear witness of the United States all over the world and the vitality of its culture.”

In introducing Colbert, 84, Gregory Peck noted her stylish portrayals in a series of movies, including her Academy Award-winning performance in the 1934 comedy “It Happened One Night,” co-starring Clark Gable, who also won an Oscar.

“She always seemed fresh, always herself and always the character,” said Peck. “She was the first Cleopatra (in movies), the first torch singer. She makes us laugh with her sophistication.”

Delivering the toast to Colbert, television personality Kitty Carlisle Hart called her “the best thing France has sent us since the Statue of Liberty.”

Danilova, 85, is “the model of a ballerina. Grace, dignity and genius are the gifts of Alexandra Danilova,” said Peck. Danilova, who began her career in the Soviet Union, was later a choreographer for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and played a ballet teacher in the 1977 movie “The Turning Point.”

Peck described Belafonte as “an actor, a singer, a director, a producer . . . truly a Renaissance man. He has labored for the cause of human rights and has lived the words he once sang, ‘We Are the World.’ ”

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), offering the toast to Belafonte, said the entertainer “has given nobly and unselfishly to the cause of making our country a better place and our planet a better world. Many great artists have a conscience too, but none greater than his. He has two qualities that describe the brilliance of his life: courage and excellence.”

In introducing Martin, Peck said: “She was, and is and always will be Peter Pan,” noting the 1955 Broadway and television role for which Martin is perhaps best known. “If we didn’t have musicals, we’d have to invent them for her.”

Composer Betty Comden, who helped write the songs for “Peter Pan,” toasted Martin as a “great artist and a great star who has that rarest of qualities--bundles of charm.”

Schuman, 79, who served as president of the Juilliard School of Music and won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1943, was hailed by Peck as “a giant of the performing arts.”

“Composer Aaron Copland once said of Schuman’s pieces that only an American could have written them,” Peck added. “He’s set to music the poetry of Walt Whitman, done a baseball opera . . . and written madrigals from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.”

Past recipients include comedian George Burns, actress Myrna Loy, actors Jimmy Stewart and James Cagney, and composers Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.