Fund-Raiser Helps Put MOVE Project in Gear

With Warren Beatty, Mike and Judy Ovitz, and Dustin and Lisa Hoffman creating a bottleneck at the front door, Jo Ann Belson said she had learned something striking about Hollywood:

“If you really ask for help, the people in this town respond. I mean, Hollywood is a great town, and it’s a very generous town.”

The party was a fund-raiser for a pilot therapeutic program for severly handicapped children.

Belson, the wife of producer/writer Jerry Belson (“The Tracey Ullman Show”), appreciated the generosity. Her 4-year-old daughter, Willie Anne, cannot walk, talk or sit unassisted, and, until two months ago, her prospects for improvement weren’t good.

But now Belson has discovered Jack Lollar, an educator and therapist at a public school in Bakersfield, who has created a program known as MOVE (Mobility Opportunity via Education) and special equipment to help children develop the strength and skill to stand on their own. Already, 40 children have been able to abandon their wheelchairs.

Belson told her Hollywood friends that implementing the MOVE program in Willie Anne’s school (Lokrantz, in Reseda) would take years without state funds--unless Belson came up with the money herself. So she and her best friend, Diane Levinson, wife of “Rain Man” director Barry Levinson, summoned everyone to dinner at Levinson’s Bel-Air home Saturday night.

The troops rallied: 98 people, including Paula Abdul, Amy Irving and Bruno Barreto, Jim Brooks, Larry Gordon, Martin and Wendy Mull, Albert Brooks, and Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman donated a minimum of $500 apiece. The $100,000 net, according to Belson, is enough to get MOVE going in Los Angeles when school resumes.

“We all know Willie,” said Sam Simon, executive producer of “The Simpsons,” at the party with actress Jennifer Tilly. “And any time the Belsons ask us to do anything, we respond.”