Everything Came Up Roses for ‘Snake’ Benefit

The Veranda Room at La Valencia Hotel was jammed nearly to the ceiling with roses last Friday, all for the benefit of a snake in the grass.

Emmy Cote and her fellow Colleagues of the Stuart Collection, a group that supports the collection of outdoor sculptures on the campus of UC San Diego, hosted La Vee en Rose to raise funds for the next big Stuart Collection acquisition, a commissioned, meandering work to be called “Snake Walk.”

Artist Alexis Smith--who will execute the piece and who assumed her name after fulfilling a commission from actress Alexis Smith--was among the 120 benefactors who gathered to dine and dance in a room filled with a sensuous, astonishing and nearly unreasonable number of roses of every size and hue.

The Veranda Room boasted vast bouquets sprouting out of urns on every table and heaps of petals on the floor that sent up soft aromas when crushed underfoot. Candles helped to cast a roseate glow over the room, but it was the simple profusion of buds that set the mood.

The party’s name involved a rather complicated play on words that, to be deciphered, required familiarity both with “La Vie en Rose,” the theme song of the great French singer Edith Piaf, and with La V (or La Vee ), the nickname used by habitues to describe the hotel. The event, while primarily a bow to gracious living, also took the unusual step of introducing and honoring some of the longtime La Valencia staffers who have encouraged local guests to regard the establishment as a private club.

The thrust of the evening, however, was put in sum by a guest who calmly offered an impromptu line: “Roses are red, violets are blue, the Stuart Collection will get a new statue.”

Marne DeSilva (whose husband, James Stuart DeSilva, founded the Stuart Collection in 1982) helped event chair Cote greet a roster of guests that included collection curator Mary Beebe, La Jolla art dealers Jose and Helen Tasende, Los Angeles dealer Margo Leavin and UCSD Vice Chancellor Pat Ledden and his wife, Sally.

“It’s a country garden,” said Cote of the room in which she served a menu that included lobster salad and veal chops--but no edible flowers. “I’ve never seen so many roses, and they’re even hanging upside-down,” she added, as indeed they were. Designers Gene De Filippi and Richard Triplett lined the chandeliers with so many roses that they seemed to drip from the ceiling like so many petaled stalactites.

Cote also said that the country garden motif merely hinted at the theme of the Stuart Collection, which she called the only one of its kind in the world. “The collection is not in a little garden with a gate, it wanders over the whole campus,” she said. “We’re furthering the purchase of more sculptures tonight and getting bucks for the ‘Snake Walk,’ which will meander from ‘Paradise’ (referring to John Milton’s lost heaven) to the new wing of the library.”

Two musical groups--Hot Pursuit and The Special Event Band--alternated through the dinner and dance, but neither, oddly enough, played “La Vie en Rose;” rock-and-roll standards such as “Under the Boardwalk” seemed to get the most play. At least they skipped “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.”

The attendance included co-chair Luba Johnston; Jacque and Roger Stewart; Mary and Irby Cobb; Connie and David Golden; Bud Cote; Maddy and Peter DeSilva; sculptor Italo Scanga; Emma Lee and Jack Powell; Lee and P.J. Maturo; Vicki and Haley Rogers; Misako and Jack Boos; Liz and Chris McCullah; B.J. and Hal Williams; Susan Crutchfield with Tom Alexander; Jeanne Jones with Don Breitenberg; Allyson and George Goudy; Evelyn Truitt; Sue Teasdel with Don Allison Sr., and Martha and George Gafford with a titled guest from Saudi Arabia, Sheik Faiz Al-Abideen.

SAN DIEGO--There was more bread than breadfruit involved in Saturday’s “Bawdy Bounty Bash,” a fund-raiser for Children’s Hospital and Health Center that netted more than $30,000 and was given aboard media magnate Ted Turner’s ship, HMS Bounty.

The ship, built by MGM for the 1962 remake of “Mutiny on the Bounty,” stopped in town for a week en route to Seattle and the Goodwill Games. Joy Frye, who chaired Saturday’s event for the La Playa Unit of the Children’s Hospital Auxiliary, said she called Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta last December as soon as she learned that the ship would dock at the Embarcadero.

“We felt lucky to get the Bounty, because we’re the only large event to be held aboard while she’s here,” said Frye, who added that the ship’s power of attraction should not to be underestimated. “Our little La Playa party usually is held in somebody’s home for 200 guests, but tonight we sold out at 360.

The Bounty looked relatively small compared to the neighboring Star of India, but the 360 managed to crowd aboard (it was spacious enough to hold Marlon Brando, after all) for cocktails, chanteys performed by a group called Shiver Me Timbers, and below-deck tours conducted by the Bounty’s traveling complement of actors, variously costumed as Captain Bligh, Fletcher Christian and other officers and seamen.

Many guests also donned costumes and attended in the guises of Blackbeard, Sadie Thompson and J. Thurston Howell III. Many seemed fully conscious of how silly they looked and seemed delighted by the effect. Co-chair Windie Knoth wore a lace cap and laced-up red velvet and described herself not only as a “wench,” but as the “good wench of the West.”

The party moved to the Cruise Ship Terminal for the dinner and auction. The space had been outfitted to look like Tahiti for the meal of beef Wellington and plum pudding. A large and rather chatty hyacinth macaw named Max held forth on the bandstand.

The guest list included Dianna and Ray Broady, Joanne Stevenson, Lauren and Norman Root, Robin and Chris Bitterlin, Margaret and George Schwab, Grace and Dick Allen, Margie and Phil Ward, Nita and Mark Bitterlin, Tillie and Chuck Cheyney, Judy Hodges, DeeGee and Val Farrell, Ruth and Jim Robinson and Cathy and Bruce Frost.