Grocers Feted as Toasts of the Town

Four California Raisins were jiving on stage at the Century Plaza. Then two new raisins--James Miscoll and John Argue--got in the act. The reason: food and grocers.

Miscoll, executive vice president of the Bank of America, is the new chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce; Argue, prominent attorney and the man who helped bring the Olympics to Los Angeles, is the retiring chairman. The event was the big tribute to the entire Southern California food industry.

Miscoll and Argue, at the behest of dinner chairwoman Betsy Sanders and co-chairman William Schulte, were looking very Hollywood in the show, “Sweet, Delicious and Marvelous.”

Later in the evening, when Marie Osmond pranced onto the stage to entertain, Miscoll was wildly cheered for his duet with Osmond--”Crazy for Lovin’ You.”

But the black-tie night, starting with veal chops, tilted toward food. Byron Allumbaugh, attending with wife Ronnie, revealed that the honored businesses--Ralphs, Hughes, Albertson’s, Lucky, Vons and Certified Grocers--had contributed $200,000 for the evening and had, moreover, agreed to fill the house. That was 1,400 people, and the crush caused 45-minute delays in getting into the Century Plaza.

What the evening pointed out was the importance the industry plays in the everyday lives of those of us who eat, as well as its history and benevolent streak. Byron Allumbaugh accepted for Ralphs, noting the company employs 17,000 people, has 143 markets, supports DARE (the L.A. Police Department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program) and has raised huge amounts for the City of Hope.

William E. Yingling III said Lucky’s efforts for San Francisco earthquake relief raised $1.1 million in a customer-matching plan. Roger E. Stangeland said Vons’ 330 stores (the first in 1906 at Seventh and Figueroa) pioneered cash and carry. Roger Hughes noted that his father started Hughes in Studio City in 1952 and pioneered in-store bakeries. John Carley of Albertson’s and Everett W. Dingwell II of Certified Grocers of California were also in the spotlight.

EMERALD ISLE: Ed McMahon was going to introduce Connie Gavin to sing the national anthem, but he had laryngitis, and so did she.

Otherwise, everyone was in fine form to see former President Ronald Reagan receive the Distinguished Leadership Award from the American Ireland Fund at the Regent Beverly Wilshire. He received an enormous Waterford crystal Stetson, put it over his head, looked up and said, “Are you watching, Dad?”

Everywhere Irish eyes smiled. In town for the affair was Gerard Collins, minister for foreign affairs of Ireland and the new president of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Community. His wife, Hilary, came with him.

There, too, were the silver-haired Ambassador of Ireland to the United States, Padraic MacKernan; Dr. Anthony T. F. O’Reilly, chairman of the American Ireland Fund, and Msgr. Miceal Ledwith, president of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, County Kildare.

Dinner chairmen Peter and Pam Mullin sprinkled shamrocks on the tables and Pam offered “100,000 welcomes.” It was the sort of night that called for Archbishop Roger M. Mahony to lead the invocation; the kind at which Nancy Reagan and Police Chief Daryl Gates sat next to each other and whispered solutions to the drug problem; the kind at which Richard Riordan was cornered on the happenings on the Coliseum Commission, which he chairs.

HERE WE GO: SHARE (Share Happily and Reap Endlessly) never sits. President Joan Kardashian invited all the new members--Barbara Davis, Patricia Bosley, Cristina Ferrare Thomopoulos, Cyndi Gossett, Charters Wilson--to tea at her Beverly Hills home.

Missing it were Fay Mancuso (in Europe), Barbara King (with a cold) and Barbara Orenstein (beginning a new film).

This week, too, Sandra Scully got SHARE’s Boomtown shebang launched with a luncheon party at the Bistro Garden for her committee. She’ll chair the party, and Abbey Leff will do the Boomtown show . . .

Those dynamic co-presidents of the Center Theatre Group Volunteers--Ellen Price and Kim Peterson--lunched, touting the good works of the ITP (Improvisational Theatre Project), the Mark Taper Forum’s multi-ethnic theater for young people. ITP tours, performs and offers developmental workshops and residencies. It’s in dire need of funds, so the duo has appointed Shirley Colby and Gail Newman to co-chair a fund-raising Angel’s Night in the spring at the home of Samuel X. Kaplan, and the meetings are rolling for a kick-off party March 7, maybe at the Regency Club . . .

More than 550 saw the “before” state of the 1990 Pasadena Showcase House of Design the other evening. Benefit chairman Shirley Goldsmith and her committee, including Kathy Martin, bustled about the Colonial American Federalist 1916 house on the east bank of the Arroyo Seco with Pasadena Junior Philharmonic Committee members revealing what will be gutted and what won’t. Shirley has chosen an American Federalist color palette for designers--Baltimore blue, cranberry red. The home was the site for the film, “Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.”

DATEBOOK: Keeping fit for the rigors of volunteer life can be a strain. The Music Center’s Club 100 brought in fitness consultant Sheila Cluff to speak at the home of Joyce Rosenblum in Beverly Hills, starting the New Year with vigor . . .

Pasadena Historical Society staged its 65th annual meeting with historian Kevin Starr discussing “Origins and Visions of California’s First Writers and Painters” at the site of a number of social events, the new Doubletree Hotel.