On a night when may opted to stay home, these intrepid partyers rang in 2000 across the Southland
The millennium extravaganza held on the Paramount lot as part of Los Angeles’ grandiose LA 2000 celebration was one for the books--literally. The glamorous bash, “Made in Hollywood,” was a whopping windfall for the Los Angeles Library Foundation. Before the first of more than 500 guests arrived, proceeds from the event ($1,250 per person; $350 for children) exceeded $1 million to aid children’s literacy programs in Los Angeles.
“This is the place to be tonight,” said gala chairwoman Joni Smith as she surveyed the swanky black-tie crowd, which included LA 2000 event co-chairwomen Janet Karatz and Nancy Daly Riordan, her husband Mayor Richard Riordan, and Gov. Gray Davis and his wife, Sharon.
The drizzles had mercifully stopped by 8:30 when the first stretch limos rolled through the studio’s historic iron gates past a battery of Klieg lights and flashbulbs to the red-carpet entrance. There, dancing stilt walkers and the L.A. Gospel Choir heralded the guests before they walked through a “time tunnel” of moving images of memorable film stars into a humongous tent transformed into a “nitery” from Tinseltown’s Golden Age.
Smith and party maven Carl Bendix took their inspiration from L.A.’s venerable Cocoanut Grove, complete with soaring palm trees, cabaret lamps and black and white dance floor, beneath a midnight-blue painted canopy of celestial constellations.
Frank Sinatra Jr.’s orchestra provided the mood music, along with entertainment by the Hollywood Jazz Trio, Salsa with Son Major and the Kennedy tap-dancers.
Wolfgang Puck’s Spago supplied mountains of fresh seafood, designer pizzas, spring rolls, crab cakes, pot-stickers, tempura and steak tartare. And that was just for starters.
Then came baked potatoes topped with caviar and creme frai^che, pumpkin squash soup, rack of veal and--groan--a chocolate architectural wonder created by Spago’s pastry ace, Sherry.
Before Hizzoner left to join Jay Leno in flipping the switch on the Hollywood sign, he paid tribute to the gala’s Man of the Century, Lew Wasserman, Universal Studios chairman emeritus, and announced Wasserman’s contribution of an additional $1 million to the library foundation, bringing the tote to $2 million “to leave the legacy of literacy to the children of Los Angeles,” he said.
Sharon and Gray Davis stayed on to lead the countdown to midnight, when a deluge of balloons, streamers and confetti fell on the crowd. Most grooved well past midnight to the beat of the Temptations. And all took home commemorative 2000 medallions, champagne flutes, chocolates and those silly party hats. Some night.
