Oscars, Globes take party tips from the past

At the dawn of the 2003 awards season, it’s the party designers, not the actors, who are most harried, slinging silks and booking venues in the hope that their shimmering affair will be the favored backdrop for victory.

Nostalgia is the palette from which some have drawn, as both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes celebrate significant anniversaries this year -- their 75th and 60th, respectively.

Although the Oscars are still three months away, Governors Ball producer Cheryl Cecchetto has already planned the March 23 post-ceremony party down to the waiters’ white gloves, the 30-piece string orchestra and the chandeliers of orchids.

That’s no small task, considering that her every decision must be approved by the academy’s 11-member ball committee.

To mark the anniversary, Cecchetto is dressing the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood & Highland complex to resemble the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel circa 1929, the location of the first awards dinner. She has taken her cues from a black-and-white photograph from that night featuring Joan Crawford, Sid Grauman, Al Jolson and Mary Pickford, among a tuxedoed crowd.

The enormous room will be awash in tones of sepia, silver, white, ivory and black. The walls will be draped in velvet and the tables in silk. Each centerpiece of lilies, roses and dendrobiums will feature a framed replica of a memento -- a menu or ticket stub -- from an early Academy Awards dinner.

“Everything will tingle,” said Cecchetto with a party designer’s enthusiasm.

HBO’s party designer, Billy Butchkavitz, envisions “something from a Busby Berkeley movie scene” for the cable network’s Jan. 19 Golden Globes party at the Beverly Hilton. His post-Deco decor, he said, will resemble that of a cruise ship circa 1930-45.

Three days later, Butchkavitz will cast off nostalgia for a more modern affair in Park City, Utah -- HBO’s Sundance Film Festival party at the popular beer hall Harry-O’s.

“I’m doing a whole party around ice,” he said. “Trees covered with mirrored shards and huge icicles hanging from the ceiling. Lasers too, and human forms coming off the balconies that look like frozen humans. I just want to get that cold winter look.”