Coronet Debutantes Gather for Luncheon

Coronet Debutante Ball Director Carolyn Roper welcomed debutantes and their mothers last Saturday to the Coronet Debutante Ball Board luncheon at Bel Air Country Club. Ball Board President Alice Jean White was also at the forefront.

Debutantes, to be presented Thanksgiving weekend at the Beverly Hilton, are Bronwyn Redknapp, Suzanne Moller, Amalia Ambatielos, Jill Wadsworth, Lindsey Williams, Maia Willcox, Ashley Polito, Heather Apel, Jessica Antola, Kristina Osterloh, Stacy Melcher, Allison Beckett, Carrie Bergman, Nancy-Jan Jacobsen, Carolyn Everson, Allison Bockemohle, Lindsay Brown, Amber Mazzola, Karen Lewicki, Kerry Katzenbach, Sarah Dammann, Cassandra Costa and Kelly Cochran.

ASIAN INFLUENCE: Architect Bob Ray Offenhauser is inspired by the gardens of Suzhou, Bangkok and Saudi Arabia. His garden is a labor of love and reflects the hours he toils there. Thus, he and his wife, Kathy, are naturals to host trustees of the Pacific Asia Museum at their South Pasadena residence Aug. 26 and to fete patrons of the Festival of the Autumn Moon.

The 15th annual festival dinner-dance and its fund-raising auction will be held Oct. 3 at the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington. Asian and continental art, as well as a jet ride with Chuck Yeager, will be on the auction block.

As an enticement, chairwoman Nancy Arnault has arranged to display 1992 Diamonds-International Awards designs, valued at more than $5 million. The collection will be displayed at the museum Sept. 30-Oct. 3. It includes 16 pieces designed by Pacific Rim craftsmen. A diamond brooch from 1992 award-winner C. Thomas Hunt will be auctioned at the affair.

Georgianna Erskine and Margaret Palmer head the patron committee. More involved: Cathy Tyner, Camilla Strub, Eleanor McLain, Marilyn Brumder and Marjorie Lyte.

CANCER: The Nancy Reagan Foundation has awarded $25,000 to benefit the Hoag Cancer Center’s Richard J. Flamson (he’s the former chairman of Security Pacific Bank) Hereditary Screening Program, which helps identify developing hereditary cancer, according to the Hoag Hospital Foundation in Newport Beach.

FOUR-COURSE: Chantal and John Kilroy hosted 150 for dinner at their Villa Sparviero in Bel-Air to fete President Bush, bringing in Prego Ristorante and Chianti to advise and execute. Among the guests were Gov. Pete and Gayle Wilson, Gen. William and Willa Dean Lyon, Donald Bren and Carol Hayes.

First course: buffalo mozzarella with vine-ripened tomatoes. Second course: pasta stuffed with fresh Maine lobster, served with lemon-sorrel sauce. Third course: roasted rack of veal served with green beans and baby potatoes baked with rosemary. Fourth course: almond pastry baskets with wild berries and shaved chocolate. Would you guess, more than 1,000 calories, before the wine? A Sonoma Cutrer, Les Pierres Chardonnay, 1988, went with the pasta, an Antinori Tignanello, 1987, with the veal.

TEA TIME: Between travel and summer quiet, chairwoman Joni Smith and vice chair Phyllis Hennigan gathered members of their committee for tea last week in Hennigan’s Hancock Park garden to launch plans for the Dorothy B. Chandler Performing Arts Awards weekend in late October.

The prestigious annual awards, begun in 1989 with the Music Center’s 25th anniversary, salute internationally recognized young artists. Winners receive $25,000 and a commemorative sculpture by artist Robert Graham. They will be chosen by “20th Century Masters of the Arts”--Esa-Pekka Salonen, Los Angeles Philharmonic music director-designate, and playwright Athol Fugard.

This year, awards will be presented in the areas of symphonic music and theater. Salonen and Fugard will appear before the Music Center Blue Ribbon support group at an “other-side-of-the-curtain” program Oct. 30, and a private dinner and performance for patrons will be held Oct. 31. The Dorothy B. Chandler Awards will be given Nov. 1 at a dinner at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

RADCLIFFE: A’Lelia Perry Bundles--Emmy Award-winning producer for ABC’s “World News Tonight” and a winner of the American Book Award for her biography of her great-great-grandmother, the late Madam C.J. Walker (a 20th-Century hair-care industry pioneer born to slaves on a Louisiana cotton plantation)--will be at the brunch Sunday hosted by the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College. The fund-raiser at I. Magnin in Beverly Hills is a benefit for library acquisitions.

KEEPING UP: The Los Angeles Music Center Opera supporters were in the spotlight at the Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills’ show of Badgley Mischka gala opening night evening fashions last week at the Bel Air Hotel . . . Ginny and David Sydorick hosted designer Louis Dell ‘Olio of Anne Klein at cocktails in their Beverly Hills home . . . Los Angeles Zoo director Dr. Mark Goldstein and Dr. Susan Rice, president of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., hosted Family Night at the zoo with boxed dinners for all . . . Committee leaders Helma Bloomberg, Marie Borofsky and Lynn Klinenberg are entitled to goof off a little after their hard work on the “Lost in Yonkers” benefit for the Monty Hall Diabetes Tennis Tournament and the Alfred J. Firestein Diabetes Unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center . . . The Scandinavian American Arts Foundation spent “An Evening with Bille August” after the screening of “The Best Intentions,” his film based on Ingmar Bergman’s story of his parents. The film is the winner of the 1992 Palme d’Or at Cannes.