Clinton Honors Kennedy Center Winners

President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton led an audience of celebrities from the worlds of politics and entertainment on Sunday to congratulate this year’s winners of one of the nation’s highest tributes for performing artists.

A crowd of about 300 applauded playwright Edward Albee, jazz composer and instrumentalist Benny Carter, country music star Johnny Cash, actor Jack Lemmon and ballerina Maria Tallchief as the recipients of the 19th annual Kennedy Center Honors.

The gala in their honor, a fund-raiser for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is the final event in a weekend of activities that have become a Washington tradition: a series of dinners, brunches and receptions saturated with celebrity faces.

“From the start, his fellow musicians said the way he played the saxophone was amazing,” the president said of Carter at a White House reception preceding the gala.

“They say that about me too, but I don’t think they mean it in quite the same way,” Clinton joked.

Of Lemmon, Clinton said: “He has taken the kind of risks that elevate an actor’s work from the unremarkable to the unforgettable.”

Cash, he said, “has made country music, music not just for our country but for the entire world.”

Albee’s plays “have invigorated the American theater and inspired a new generation of playwrights to do the same,” Clinton said.

Clinton told of ballerina Maria Tallchief, a half Osage Indian, bringing American dance to the world “even to Moscow at the height of the Cold War.”

On Saturday evening, Secretary of State Warren Christopher hosted a cocktail party for the honorees and a select group in the State Department’s Benjamin Franklin Dining Hall and its anterooms.

Bristling with gilded cornice work, antique paintings of the early presidents, 18th-century furniture and handmade Persian rugs, the dining hall is an arena designed for ambassadors and heads of state. The party for the honorees made it a place for opera singers, ballerinas and movie stars.

“I’m having such a great time,” actress Goldie Hawn said. “It’s wonderful here.”

Opera virtuoso Leontyne Price, at Christopher’s request, sang “Happy Birthday” for actor Eli Wallach, who turned 81 that day. Mary Chapin Carpenter sang a tribute to Cash. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) spoke of the appreciation his late brother, the president, had for the arts. In all, the toasts lasted more than an hour.

“They gave [the recognition] to Balanchine and now to me. This is the absolute pinnacle,” said Tallchief, who first gained fame after marrying George Balanchine, founder of the company that became the New York City Ballet, and collaborating with him at the Paris Opera. “It’s a spectacular extravaganza. I feel like I’m in the middle of a dream.”

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Singer and songwriter Kris Kristofferson wanted to be here, he said, to thank the Kennedy Center Honors Committee for recognizing a country music singer.

“Johnny Cash had a pretty wild reputation for a while,” Kristofferson said. “For him to get the respect he deserves has been very gratifying to me as a songwriter.

Times wire services contributed to this story.