RSVP : A Lyrical Tribute to a Musical Partnership

It’s easy honoring songwriters. You don’t need to make speeches. You just sing their songs. So “The Way You Were” was the essence of the way it was Monday night at a Century Plaza Hotel dinner honoring lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman.

The occasion was a fund-raising celebration marking the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Music Center, an opportunity to appreciate all the art forms through the art of the American song.

“It was very troubling for someone who is a control freak not to know what was going to happen,” admitted Marilyn Bergman, as she thanked the event’s organizers for staging “an elegant and beautiful evening.”

Headed up by co-chair Anne Johnson, the evening stuck close to its “Tribute in Song” goal. Under Peter Matz’s direction, the singers--aware that the Bergmans’ songs needed little introduction--simply stepped up to the mike and got going. Among them were Joanna Gleason, James Ingram, Melissa Manchester, Nancy LaMott, Stephen Bishop and Rosemary Clooney. Michel Legrand, who composed the Bergmans’ Oscar-nominated “How Do You Keep the Music Playing,” accompanied himself at the piano, and Tyne Daly performed selections from the TV movie “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom.”

The bittersweet passions of the Bergmans’ grown-up love songs had some of the couples in the audience pulling their chairs a little closer to each other and reaching out to hold hands.

Of course there were a few speeches too. Music Center President Shelton G. Stanfill welcomed the crowd with brevity, while Quincy Jones, who made the presentation to the Bergmans, took time for reminiscence about the beginnings of their longtime friendship. They were neighbors, and the Bergmans had asked Jones to “feed their cats, bring in their newspapers and water their rhododendrons while they were out of town.”

Before all the singing, there was much kissing and hugging and time for nostalgia among the longtime supporters of the Music Center as they slowly made their way from cocktail hour to dinner tables. Tamara Asseyev recalled that she wrote her UCLA master’s thesis on the funding of the theater complex, affirming that “it would never have happened without the determination of Dorothy Chandler.”

Among the faces familiar for their longtime support and patronage of the center’s four resident companies--the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theatre, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the Los Angeles Music Center Opera--were Dona and Dwight Kendall, Wendy and Leonard Goldbert, Rosemarie and Robert Stack, Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg, and Barbara and Marvin Davis. Sharon Gless and Barney Rosenzweig were at Tyne Daly’s table along with Daly’s mother, Hope, and daughters Alyxndra and Kathryne Brown.

Others in attendance included Anita and Robert Silverstein, Liz and Charles Rosen, Dominick Dunne, Judi and Gordon Davidson, Suzann Hughes, Barbara Howar and David Niven Jr.