‘Bedside Follies’ Stars Shine for Rehab Center

An opening night sense of anticipation raised the voltage at Saturday’s performance of “Bedside Follies” at the Carlsbad Community Cultural Arts Center, even though this combined vaudeville, variety show and spoof on the foibles of the medical world played for just one evening.

An audience of more than 300, including many at the Golden Circle patron level, turned out for this fund-raiser for the Rehabilitation Center at Scripps Memorial Hospital-Encinitas. The cast, a special one, included not only actor Tom Bosley and media personalities Bree Walker and Pat Brown, but members of PATH, the Performing Arts Theatre of the Handicapped, who largely carried the show--in both comic and sentimental directions.

Sponsored by the Community Advisory Board of Directors of the Encinitas hospital, the event raised funds for a proposed therapeutic treatment swimming pool, to be dedicated to the use of all disabled North County residents, at Scripps’ rehabilitation center. Laura Benvenuto, chairman of “Bedside Follies,” said that net proceeds would exceed $25,000.

The upper-ticket Golden Circle patrons arrived early for an open-air buffet, catered by Piret’s, of Caesar salad and conchiglie pomarola , followed after the production by a cast-cum-dessert party given in a cheerfully chocolate mood. A classic guitar-flute duo played quietly while the group downed its pasta under skies that cleared obligingly to display a perfect half moon.

“This is our first event, and I think we’ve had a real success,” said Benvenuto, a graduate and now a community advisory director of the rehabilitation center, during the dinner. “The therapeutic swimming pool is so needed. We haven’t had anything like this in North County, and we plan it to be state of the art.”

“Tonight is all about giving people the opportunity to be as independent as possible, to return to their communities and lead full lives,” said Dr. Edward Chaplin, medical director of the rehab center. “At the center, we talk about paraplegics walking and amputees dancing. Part of tonight is a demonstration that these things are possible and part is to raise funds to bring these possibilities to those who need them. I may be biased, but I think North County is a better place because we’re here.” Chaplin added that his hospital is one of just eight in the country to be chosen to participate in a program that equips paraplegics with belt-worn mini-computers that help them walk, through the magic of microchips.

PATH operates programs in Los Angeles (on the premises of several major motion picture studios) and in Carlsbad, and founder, President and show biz figure Robert Cole was on hand for Saturday’s show. The actors’ workshop he founded in New York in the early 1950s includes among its graduates Academy Award-winners Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. The announced purpose of the program is to assist talented handicapped individuals who seek careers in all venues of the performing arts, and to assist in developing and displaying their talents. The PATH board includes a number of well-known entertainment figures, among them Norman Lear, Burt Reynolds and Sidney Sheldon.

Actor Tom Bosley attended with his wife, Patricia Carr Bosley, who said that the pair met and married when Cole invited them to join PATH at its founding in 1980.

“This show is about ability, not disability,” said Patricia Bosley. Her husband, perhaps best known for his role on the “Happy Days” television series, said, “What happens on this stage is one step beyond what goes on at a rehab center. These people are rehabilitated by their own aspirations, by their own self-expression. It helps open to them an industry that is difficult for anyone to enter.”

The show opened with a Charlie Chaplin routine and continued with skits, singing and dance numbers. Bree Walker, formerly an anchor on the local Channel 10 news and now co-anchor--with her husband, Jim Lampley--on KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, appeared on-stage for a brief interview conducted by former PM Magazine host Pat Brown. Hugely pregnant, Walker responded wittily to Walker’s query of what it might be like to work with one’s spouse by saying, “You certainly do take your work to bed!”

Benvenuto’s committee included Joely Beatty, David Gardner, Nancy Hamzey, Sue Mitchell, John Alexander, Ginger Hoffman, Marvin Gamza, Peggy Chaplin, Atoosa Tagdiri, Margaret Muench, Laura Blaney, Elinore King, Nancy Perry-Sheridan, Pam Nagata, Bill Koretke, Cyd Shaw, Jaleh Brunst, June Broido and Jean Bradley.

SAN DIEGO--The early August calendar was so jammed that it was necessary to wait until now to report on things that happened then. It nevertheless was a matter of pure serendipity that the “Oscar in Autumn” fashion luncheon, given earlier this month to benefit the Old Globe Theatre, occurred during the record-breaking run of the theater’s production of “Forever Plaid.”

It seems that Oscar--leading designer Oscar de la Renta, to be precise--is devoted to plaid this year, and the committee headed by chairman Annette Ford and co-chair Katherine Black played this haute couture predilection to the hilt. The table centerpieces, cleverly constructed from coat hangers and rolls of “ice” paper, were tied with plaid ribbons; the 30 men (Globe Guilder husbands, mostly) recruited by Dick Ford to sell raffle tickets wore plaid money aprons, and the interesting interpretation of chicken piccata cooked by the Sheraton Harbor Island hotel even seemed to have a sort of plaid flavor, almost as if it were Scot woodcock.

A thoroughly sold-out attendance of 700 jammed the Sheraton’s Champagne Ballroom (“How could anyone stay away, given the Globe and Oscar de la Renta?” asked chairman Ford), which considerably gladdened the heart of Irene Cooper, president of the sponsoring Globe Guilders auxiliary. “We’re elated, we sold out weeks ago and had to turn people away,” she said.

Co-chair Black explained the phenomenon with the comment, “The Old Globe Theatre is our most precious arts group, and any funds we raise for it siphon out into the community in so many ways.”

During the lunch, theater executive producer Craig Noel took the podium to warn guests to always be in the vanguard of those purchasing tickets to Globe benefits.

“I understand there are ladies at home, with their hats on, waiting for a phone call saying that there’s a cancellation today. So I want to remind you not to let that happen to you on October 19.”

On that date, the Globe will hold its annual gala; Darlene Davies, chairman of the upcoming event, attended the luncheon.

The show itself, of the complete de la Renta fall line and presented by Saks Fifth Avenue-La Jolla, opened to the music of “La Vie en Rose”--which one perhaps need live to be able to afford Oscar’s newest efforts. The plaid effect extended even to beaded evening suits, which did cause a certain sensation among the audience.

The sizeable committee included Ellen Ballew, Ginny Whitby, Patti Vars, Linda Basquez, Merle Wahl, Dorothy Brown, Dotty Turner, Karin Camp, Carol Stark, Lois Dechant, Anne Smith, Katy Dessent, Ann Pund, Rachel Grosvenor, Dolly Poet, Carol Hanson, Rosemary Pierce, Barbara Iredale, La Rayne Penny, Yvonne Lindroth, Billie McKnight and Kathy Newton.