Waiting for Viggo

“Roadblock,” a man in a black roll-neck sweater cried out from the thick of the crowd trying to get into Track 16 Saturday evening.

The reception at the Bergamot Station gallery, celebrating the opening of “Signlanguage” with works by actor-painter-photographer Viggo Mortensen, had attracted a big and varied crowd.

Teenage boys clutching “Lord of the Rings” movie posters wandered through the gallery, looking for the artist along with women in fake fur and big jewelry who, in turn, clutched plastic cups with red wine. (The gallery ramped up security after receiving a deluge of calls from women who wanted to see the handsome star up close.)

But at 7:15 p.m., more than an hour into the opening, Mortensen, a.k.a. Lord Aragorn “Strider” Elessar of “Fellowship of the Ring,” was nowhere to be found.

Alan Rath’s installation “Oakland, Portable,” a sound system embedded in a couple of fiberglass suitcases, blared as a couple of women stood in front of Mortensen’s glossy photos and paintings, looking furtively for the star. 7:30 p.m. Still no Mortensen, but Dominic Monaghan, a.k.a. Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck, posed for photos with guests as fellow “Ring” star Elijah Wood appeased them. “He’s fashionably late,” Wood told a woman who’d cornered him. “Fashionably late?” the woman shot back. “The show ends in 15 minutes.”

Shortly before 8 p.m., Mortensen arrived through the back door, wearing a green suit, his trademark jade pendant, brown leather shoes (stained with yellow paint) and a brown Burger King name tag that read: “Viggo.”

Soon, the crowd of women around him was impenetrable.

“He doesn’t look like Strider, but it’s him,” a woman said to her two daughters, who watched from the periphery of the group. “This is so exciting for you guys.”

“Who’s that up there?” a blond woman in the back asked, loudly. “Oh, that’s the artist? He’s cute,” she said, before elbowing her way toward Mortensen.

“I don’t object to people coming here because of the movie if they see the art,” Mortensen said. But, he joked, “maybe some people will think I need painting lessons.”

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One Last Goodbye

There were roses on every flat surface. Swinging tunes from a five-piece jazz band filled the place. White-coated waiters passed hors d’oeuvres to guests who wore diamonds and furs. This was Peggy Lee’s last party.

On a 70-degree Saturday morning at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, about 300 of the jazz singer’s fans, family and oldest friends gathered to say goodbye at a special memorial service. Lee, known for hits such as “Fever” and “Is That All There Is?”, died of a heart attack on Jan. 21 at her home in Bel-Air, three years after a debilitating stroke.

Phoebe Jacobs and jazz singer Cy Coleman flew in from New York, and their memories of Lee reveal a woman who favored tight satin gowns, feather boas and 3-inch heels, a mercurial woman who was charming with a wicked sense of humor. When Quincy Jones once complained of exhaustion, she told him: “Quincy, even a mink has to lay down sometime.”

“When she was good, she was very good, but when she was bad .... “ Jacobs told the crowd.

Jacobs met Lee in 1954 while working as a secretary at Lee’s label, Decca Records, in New York. “She was the star, and I was the office girl,” said Jacobs, 83. The two women became close friends years later after Jacobs’ uncle opened a Manhattan jazz club, a place on 48th and Lexington called Basin Street East, named after a Louie Armstrong song.

As she spoke of her old friend, Jacobs pulled from her handbag a pair of sunglasses that once belonged to Lee. They were round, tinted frames surrounded by rhinestones. Jacob handled them delicately as she told the story. “I had an allergy,” she said, that caused her eyes to swell. When Lee saw her friend’s puffy eyes, she handed over the Elton John-style glasses.

She put the glasses away and announced that it was time to sample the food. Jacobs led a new acquaintance by the hand to a table of chocolate-covered strawberries, tangerine tarts, mini pecan pies and marshmallow-filled cookies and stopped. “This,” she said, “is where Peggy Lee would have started.”

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Political Star Power

Robert Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary who is running for governor of Massachusetts, will join Arianna Huffington and Tom Hayden onstage Feb. 17 at USC’s Boward Auditorium to weigh in on “Our Democracy after 9-11; Can We Save It?” The conference, presented by Southern California Americans for Democratic Action, will also include presentations by Jim Hightower and Antonio Villaraigosa.

Barbra Streisand, Annette Bening, Warren Beatty and Rob Reiner are expected to attend a private cocktail party after the conference.

Sightings

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Leo DiCaprio buying lemons Friday night in West Hollywood before heading to Las Vegas, where he was spotted Saturday afternoon, playing blackjack with Tobey Maguire, before the opening of Light, a new nightclub at the Bellagio hotel.