Affairs to Remember

The first 50 years of the Academy Awards were, by Hollywood standards, unusual: They were modest. How exactly did they grow from a quiet 1929 banquet with 36 tables to the most overhyped evening of the year, a multi-party extravaganza with Prada, Versace and Armani as renowned as the celebrities wearing their clothes?

What began sedately at the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel had, by 1943, turned into 1,500 attendees at the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove squeezed in so tightly at $10-a-plate banquet tables that they could barely stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The next year, at Bette Davis’ suggestion, a ban on banquets went into effect and the presentation was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, with post-Oscar parties by invitation only.

Which is not to say the soirees weren’t lively affairs. There was Joan Crawford dancing the Charleston at Romanoff’s, Sammy Davis Jr. doing impressions at Ciro’s, Pearl Bailey belting a parody of the “High Noon” theme song at the Mocambo. In 1958, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted the first official post-ceremony Governors Ball at the Beverly Hills Hilton. These festivities were unglamorous gatherings--teenage winner Patti Duke once released her good-luck chihuahua from a bowling ball bag. The menus, the gossip columnists agreed, were forgettable.

In 1978, when producer Allan Carr presided over the ball, it was he who shouted: “The Monday Night Fever disco will be open all night!” Carr had Bee Gees tunes piped into a room set to resemble his own Benedict Canyon den. Richard Burton’s wife showed up in gold lame and Diane Keaton appeared in her signature Annie Hall look. Ultima II and Chaz by Revlon provided party favors.

Then in 1982, something happened that would prove dangerous to the health of the Governors Ball--and fatal for whole generations of salmon: A gap-toothed Austrian emigre named Wolfgang Puck opened a swank bistro called Spago above the Sunset Strip. The Academy Awards party would never be the same.

With the alacrity that earned him his nickname, literary agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar, who had hosted private Oscar parties with his wife, Mary, since the early ‘60s, began throwing his bashes at Spago. In his trademark black-rimmed glasses, Swifty greeted Liz, who was usually decked out in diamonds, Liza, who shimmied in sequins, and Madonna, who upstaged everyone. Swarms of fans--and paparazzi--gathered outside the restaurant to congratulate those on the guest list and to chant “na-na-na-na, hey-hey-hey, goodbye” to those turned away at the door. Swifty died in 1993, and with him went his party. After that, the academy got wise and hired Puck to cook for the Governors Ball. Smoked salmon and matzo crackers molded into bite-size Oscars soon followed.

Now the winners--and losers--no longer blow off the official ball, and also hit, in amazingly quick fashion, all the parties that have emerged in Swifty’s wake, including the Vanity Fair gala at Mortons, Elton John’s roving fund-raiser, and the standing-room-only Miramax bashes that fire marshals and security guards have been known to shut down. But Oscar revelry can’t last all night. In 1997, the Mondrian staff switched on the lights at 2 a.m. and snatched cocktail glasses from Miramax guests, which led British actress Brenda Blethyn, on Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, to quip: “Where can you get a drink in this town?”