RSVP : They Were All Stars at 5-Course AIDS Benefit

They never got around to sending out invitations. Barry Krost, the Hollywood personal manager, called several of his girlfriends and one client about the fund-raiser he wanted to organize, and by the time they all got off the phone, 80 of the 130 tickets were sold to Sunday night’s five-course, $250-per-ticket dinner at L’Orangerie.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the client was Liza Minnelli, the girlfriends were Jackie Collins, Wendy Finerman, Kelly Lange, Carole Little and Dawn Steel, and that the cause was the AIDS ReSearch Alliance (Search), a 5-year-old, Los Angeles-based organization that conducts clinical trials on promising new drugs.

“He didn’t have to persuade me,” said Collins. “When it’s for AIDS, I just have to hear the word and I’m out.” The other key players were L’Orangerie’s Virginie and Gerard Ferry, who kicked in the dinner, and their 43-member staff--chefs to waiters--who donated their time.

It’s obvious that Krost, who co-chaired with Wes Wheadon, can be persuasive when he needs to, as when he was attempting to secure a silent-auction bid from Finerman and her husband, Mark Canton, on first-class American Airlines tickets to Paris. “Wendy, I have Polaroids of you on the beach,” said Krost. (All right, they bid.)

Rich Colbert, a producer who runs Log Cabin, a gay and lesbian Republican organization, couldn’t help but notice what a diverse group turned out. “A mix of industry, non-industry, gay and non-gay,” he said, eyeing the gathering that included Pia Zadora, Rona Jaffe, Barbara and Marvin Davis, Eva and Michael Chow, Norman Brokaw and Donna Mills.

But at the eleventh hour, Minnelli sent a fax notifying Krost that while filming a television movie, an extra bumped into her and she fell and chipped her pelvis (a post hip-replacement calamity) and she had to cancel.

Offering to make up for her absence, Minnelli donated, “my voice and a pianist to any large living room you choose” as an auction item.

City Councilman Joel Wachs pointed out that all people whose lives are affected by AIDS help in the way they can. “The most touching thing about tonight is those 43 people” working in the restaurant.

“It is the silver lining when things look hopeless how many people are participating in one way or another,” Wachs said.