Stars Vie With City Views at Vanity Fair Bash

Whether it’s for an Oscar bash or just a cocktail party, Vanity Fair always manages to bring out the stars. Artie Shaw, Dominick Dunne, Lisa Kudrow, Sheryl Crow and George Hamilton were just a few of those who gathered at the hilltop home of screenwriter Mitch Glazer and wife, actress Kelly Lynch (“Charlie’s Angels”) Monday to celebrate “Vanity Fair’s Hollywood” (Viking Studio, $60).

The book features some of the magazine’s most memorable celebrity portraits of stars old and new by Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton and others, interspersed with prose by Dorothy Parker, Clare Boothe Luce, Walter Winchell and Dunne. Of the 292 photographs dating back to 1914, wild-haired editor Graydon Carter said his favorite was taken by Annie Leibovitz in 1995. In it, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis reprise their cross-dressing roles from the 1959 film “Some Like It Hot.” Both actors are wearing women’s makeup; Curtis is dressed in white bikini briefs, Lemmon in a woman’s slip.

Working the crowd at the party with his wife, Jill Vandenberg, a fedora-ed Curtis said that he and Lemmon posed in their underwear because they didn’t like the clothing that stylists chose for the shoot. The dinky old-lady clothes they pulled were a far cry from those created for the film by costume legend Orry-Kelly, he said.

Cross-dressing is serious business in Hollywood. “Some Like It Hot” was recently named the funniest movie of all time by the American Film Institute, and “Tootsie,” which features a cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman, was No. 2. “He was the saddest-looking woman,” Curtis joked about Hoffman. “No neck.”

Glazer and Lynch’s spectacular 1951 house came close to upstaging its famous guests. Designed by the late architect John Lautner, the one-story 6,700-square-foot structure has a circular entry (where most of the partying took place), and an office with a built-in desk that looks out over a swimming pool. “After 2 1/2 years here, we are still in awe,” said Glazer.

Constructed mostly of slate and glass, the home has floor-to-ceiling city views from nearly every room. Even the master bathroom, which faces the pool, has glass walls. Glazer said one guest who used the bathroom at a champagne-soaked New Year’s Eve party last year didn’t realize people could see her. He joked, “It was like a performance art piece!”

Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.