Bob Hope to Emcee Annenberg Tribute

It’s publisher Walter Annenberg, former ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, who’s been chosen by the Beverly Hills Education Foundation as the honoree at a tribute dinner March 20 in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Bob Hope will be master of ceremonies so you know there will be quite a few laughs during the evening.

Keeping it all in the family, Wallis Annenberg, the ambassador’s daughter who writes for his TV Guide, will chair the dinner committee. And working with her will be Mrs. Bruce Hochman, foundation president; Mrs. Dudley Pepp and Max Factor III, dinner co-chairman; and William Morris’ Norman Brokaw, honorary chairman.

The foundation, founded in 1977 as the Hawthorne Fund, works to maintain the high quality of public education in Beverly Hills’ four elementary schools and its high school.

With her magnolia skin and pale blonde hair, heiress Christophe de Menil is one of those women who turns heads. She was doing just that the other day when she lunched with American Vogue’s Eleanore Phillips and English Vogue’s (and her hostess in L.A.) Jill Spalding at the Bistro Garden. Christophe, who grew up around great works of art (her mother, Dominique Schlumberger de Menil of Houston, is a major collector and patron), is following in the footsteps of the Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes and Carolina Herrera and moving into trade, specifically the fashion business.

She and Jill were wearing one outfit from the collection that will be in the stores beginning in February and March, a chiffon T-shirt which, Christophe says, was inspired by Bettina Graziani, the late Aly Khan’s last love, and a wraparound culotte skirt. Later that afternoon she was staging a fashion show at Trumps to which she’d invited such chums as Jennifer Jones Simon, Joan Didion, Wendy Stark, Mary Lazar, Wallis Annenberg, Connie Wald, Anjelica Huston, June and Helmut Newton and Tina Chow. The next day she was back at Trumps having lunch with art gallery owner James Corcoran, Dagney Corcoran and Joan and Jack Quinn.

Christophe, who has homes in New York, Paris and East Hampton, has a passion for sea life (to admire and to eat--she adores lunching on sea urchins) and will be using marine motifs in some of her fabric designs. Originally she had planned to call the collection Excess, but is now settling for her own name on the label. It should do nicely.

The Rev. James N. Loughran SJ, president of Loyola Marymount University, and the school’s Fine Arts Council are the hosts for pianist Jorge Bolet’s inaugural concert in Murphy Recital Hall. Mrs. John I. Moore and Mrs. Charles Snodgrass are co-chairing this evening, which will include a pre-concert reception at the Laband Art Gallery and a reception later honoring the pianist. For such a special event, the guest list is special, too--Mayor and Mrs. Tom Bradley, Barbara and Frank Sinatra, the L.A. Philharmonic’s Ernest Fleischmann, Anna Bing Arnold, Mariana Herman, Catherine Hearst, Guadalupe Hank, the Irvine Foundation’s Doris Jones, the Keck Foundation’s Sandra Glass, Mr. and Mrs. Warren Brooks Williamson, Mrs. Jack Wrather, Mr. and Mrs. King Yan Wu, Mr. and Mrs. George Jagels, Marion and Earle Jorgensen, Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson Ross, Mrs. Thomas Leavey, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Meehan and more.

The Social Scramble: Lunching at the Bistro Garden’s table numero uno, Bill Frye and Greer Garson looking splendid in a teal blue suit and signing a few autographs; Wallis Annenberg with her mother, Ronnie Gladstone, a top-drawer Washington hostess, Cora Sue Nace and Robin Brown; Arthur Spitzer with Robert Pascal; Verita Thompson; Grace Robbins; Robert Six out in the patio; Suzanne Marx with Carol Kaye and Sachi Irwin.

Age has nothing to do with it. Dr. Armand Hammer is brushing up on his Russian with language instructor Michel Thomas. And blue-eyed and still a gorgeous hunk Paul Newman turns 60 over the weekend and has celebrated the milestone with a birthday party at his Malibu pad. We’re told that Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward looked great with her newly pale shade of ash blonde hair and that Newman entertained his racing pals by sitting on the floor and showing them how to pop his latest business venture--Paul Newman popcorn.

Having tired of the “In” and “Out” game (so many no-talents boring us with their yawn nominations) W, a fashion publication, has turned to the matter of “style” and who has it and who doesn’t, a subject they’ve tackled a few times before. This time the stiletto is out. “You can argue for hours,” the W pundits carry on, “and still not agree why Gianni Agnelli (Fiat) has much more style than he needs while Gordon Getty (the San Francisco-based Getty) doesn’t have enough for either himself or Ann.” Ouch. Lucky for Darren Ramirez, Gloria Vanderbilt has it. And so do, according to W, our own Gloria and Jimmy Stewart, Rosemarie and Robert Stack, Carol Matthau, Fred Astaire, Jack Nicholson and David Hockney. Happily, the Bistro Garden, Chasen’s and the Beverly Wilshire (the BW is W editor-associate publisher Michael Coady’s favorite L.A. hotel), all have style. We’ve always thought Prentis and Denise Hale, Thomas Wolfe and C. Z. Guest had style aplenty. Sadly, W doesn’t agree. At least not right now.