The Fire & Ice Ball Becomes a Casualty of Millennium Fever

Here, in a town that knows how to throw a party, it seems there’s only one event that can shut down the Fire & Ice Ball, and it took 1,000 years to do it. With millennium-related stories commanding the media’s attention, the organizers of the ball decided to cancel this year’s bash for fear of getting lost in the hullabaloo.

In a recent letter to supporters, ball founder Lilly Tartikoff and Revlon chairman Ronald O. Perelman said they did not want the event, which benefits the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program, to “compete with the numerous millennium celebrations taking place this December.”

Actually, said Tartikoff’s spokesman, Roman Alonso, “she didn’t mean millennium balls. For the Fire & Ice Ball, one of the biggest things it does for the charity is [generate] press and exposure. We didn’t want to be lost in that mass [of millennium coverage],” Alonso said.

No other organizers in the Los Angeles area have called off major December fund-raisers in anticipation of year 2000 fever.

Tartikoff made her decision just after last December’s event, which raised $1.8 million, and before any arrangements had been made for the next one, Alonso said. The cancellation does not mean that the cancer research program will get shortchanged, he said. Revlon still will donate $1.2 million to the program, and Revlon’s run-walk fund-raising events netted $3 million this year.

In December 2000, Tartikoff’s letter said, “the ball will return bigger and better than ever.”

And that may have to be big indeed. People magazine dubbed last year’s event the “most over-the-top charity soiree,” where the carpet was Versace and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy dazzled even the star power.

The annual party is so well-attended that area event organizers always wait to learn the Fire & Ice Ball date before scheduling their own events, said Janet Morgan, editor of the Los Angeles Masterplanner, which distributes a calendar of major benefits scheduled for the next 12 months.

“People call me a year in advance to find out the date,” Morgan said. “People are afraid to be on the same night.”

Meanwhile, a Para Los Ninos fund-raising group had a millennium scare of its own earlier this year, when organizers began looking for places to hold their annual Holiday Soiree, said Blythe Cotton, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit agency, which serves Los Angeles families and children living in poverty.

“It came close to not happening, unfortunately,” Cotton said. “Because of the holiday season and millennium, every place was booked or venue fees were astronomical.”

But Rix restaurant in Santa Monica offered its space for free, and organizers hope the Dec. 4 party will draw more than 1,000 people. They picked the date after checking the Los Angeles Masterplanner for competing events.

“There’s sort of a dual dynamic going on,” Cotton said. “There’s a lot of [millennium] competition, but people are really in the mood to celebrate, so it could cancel each other out.”