Vanity Affair : Editor Tina Brown Throws a Party to Aid Phoenix House and Stars Answer the Call

No matter that Nancy Reagan just said no. Tout Hollywood just said yes.

Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown pulled together an eclectic, star-filled A-list party Thursday night at Culver Studios to drum up support for Phoenix House, the substance-abuse program headed by Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal.

Phoenix House used to have a strong cheerleader in the former First Lady until she yanked her support.

No matter; $400,000 was netted from the evening, which featured Robert Morse as Truman Capote doing a segment from “Tru,” his current one-man New York hit stage show; plus Kid Creole and the Coconuts (who served as inspiration for a conga line), and plenty of loud dance music.

The frivolity was tempered earlier in the evening when a Phoenix House teen-ager recounted her harrowing escape into drugs and alcohol and subsequent recovery.

This was a “very special involvement” for Tina Brown, whose magazine recounted the Phoenix House tale in a previous issue.

“I’m editor of a magazine,” she said. “I had no idea what it took to do a party like this. I appreciate what all these ladies do. It’s really a full-time job.”

Celebrity-spotting at this event wasn’t difficult; one merely had to gaze in any direction to see Elton John, Denzel Washington, Paula Abdul, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Bacall, Anjelica Huston, Bruce Willis, Daryl Hannah, Vanity Fair photographers Annie Leibovitz, Herb Ritts and Helmut Newton, Joan Rivers, Charlton Heston, Judy and Michael Ovitz, Berry Gordy, Jerry Brown, Pat Riley, Ted and Susie Field, Carrie Fisher, Maury Povich, Douglas Cramer, David Geffen, Irving Lazar, Daphne and Tim Reid, Grant Tinker, Lili and Darryl Zanuck, Lilly and Brandon Tartikoff, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eunice Shriver, Theresa Russell, Carolina Herrera, Barry Diller, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Karole Armitage, Roger Corman, Dean Stockwell, Kathleen Sullivan, Phyllis McGuire and benefit committee vice chairman Jane Nathanson, with husband Marc.

(Fans of the magazine will recognize many names as former profile subjects; the rest, profile wanna-be’s?)

White bags stocked with party favors were handed out at the end, as guests walked away with sunglasses, lipstick, Donna Karan panty hose and Gap black T-shirts and white baseball caps with nothing written on them .

How very ‘90s.