Music Center Gets ‘Couple’ of Good Ideas

Some of the city’s most influential couples got together for dinner and dancing Thursday night, the official kickoff of a new group that will combine pleasure with business--the business of the Music Center.

Most of the members of the Music Center’s new Board of Overseers met at the Bel-Air home of John and Marion Anderson for an informally formal black-tie dinner, the first time the group was together for a social event before it rolls up its collective sleeves: Long-range planning for the Music Center will be the function of the powerful new board.

The two dozen or so couples at this dinner aren’t exactly strangers to one another, some having known each other for some time via the Music Center and other civic organizations; there’s even a dedicated bridge team among the group.

“I remember when (Music Center president) Esther Wachtell approached Marion and me about a new organization,” said John Anderson, chairman of the group with his wife, “and I said, ‘Yes, we really need another fund-raising organization that we can impose upon our friends.’ I’m sure you can understand that reaction. But I think with the Board of Overseers we can make (many) contributions. This is not a fund-raising organization, but it’s time for us to do something for the Music Center, and with this we can learn a lot about it and its goals.”

Wachtell and Ron Arnault, chairman of the Music Center’s Board of Governors, decided the center needed a new board when they realized that the Board of Governors was too preoccupied with immediate concerns to think of long-range planning and goals. The Board of Overseers, made up of 35 couples who have already contributed considerable time and money to the center, will be involved with arts education and audience development. And while its main purpose is not to raise money, down the road the board might require dues from its members.

Wachtell said she’s looking to the group “to bring us into the next millennium, and we look to you to make probably the biggest difference to the Music Center.”

The new board has pulled in entertainment industry heavy-hitters such as ICM chairman Jeffrey Berg and wife Denny, producer-turned-businessman Burt Sugarman (married to “Entertainment Tonight’s” Mary Hart) and producers Richard and Lili Zanuck--people with whom the Music Center has wanted to ally for some time, since they may hold to the key to broadening audiences through mass media.

The couples will work together as couples, with none of the usual splitting up to be on different committees. Some meetings will be held in the evenings over drinks and dinner, so both husbands and wives can attend.

“One of the delightful things about the board is that everything is going to be done as a husband-and-wife team,” Anderson said. “And we want to keep this a small group--we think that’s very special.”

“There aren’t a lot of things that involve couples,” said Keith Kieschnick, former president of the Music Center’s Blue Ribbon. “And sometimes I have to go out at night to a meeting, when I’d really just rather stay at home with my husband.”

Among the new board members at the dinner were Ron Arnault with Nancy Davis, Peggy and Walter Grauman, Pam and Peter Mullin, Elaine and Bram Goldsmith, Sally and Robert Hunt, Dona and Dwight Kendall, Arianna and Michael Huffington, Maxine and Eugene Rosenfeld, Joni and Clark Smith and Jerve and Alice Jones. Among the absent was the board’s honorary chairman David Murdock.