Style
PartiesRonald Reagan
Sat at Table 218
Sixty years ago, actor George Murphy was asked to stage
a new post-Oscars dinner dance for the nominees.
Brando took one look around and left By Cari BeauchampStudio moguls Adolph Zukor and
Barney Balaban of Paramount, Sam
Goldwyn and Jack Warner were
on hand; future president Ronald
Reagan sat at table 218. The room
was almost all Hollywood: The
few exceptions included poet Rod
McKuen and controversial LAPD
Chief William Parker.
That night, agent Jay Kanter
and his wife, Judy (Balaban’s
daughter), threw what may have
been Oscar’s first afterparty at
their Rodeo Drive home. “We
invited Paul [Newman] and Joanne
[Woodward] to come over after,
win or lose,” recalls Judy. The first
to arrive was Jay’s client Marlon
Brando. The Sayonara star landed
from New York only an hour before
the ceremony, changed clothes
at the airport and sat through
his best actor loss to the absent
Alec Guinness, who won for The
Bridge on the River Kwai. At the
Hilton, Brando took one look
around and headed immediately
to the comfort of the Kanters’,
where he helped himself to a buf-
fet of fried chicken and more.
“Around 4:30 a.m.,” recalls Judy
with a laugh, “enough people
were still there that we started
scrambling eggs.”GOVERNORS BALLF
or the first dozen years, the
Academy’s Annual Awards
of Merit were handed out
over dinner at such hotels as the
Roosevelt, the Ambassador and
the Biltmore. But 1958 marked the
ninth year that the ceremony was
held at the Pantages in Holly wood
— and it was decided that after
hours in cramped theater seats,
guests wanted to stretch and cel-
ebrate. Actor and future senator
George Murphy was tasked with
chairing a dinner dance for 800
following the 30th Awards, held
Wed nesday, Ma rch 26.
The awards started at 7 p.m.;
while speakers onstage contin-
ued after the NBC cameras turned
off at 9, the audience began to
head to their limousines for the
30-minute drive to The Beverly
Hilton (Lana Turner’s car broke
down, so she took a taxi), where
200 people had gathered to
watch the proceedings on tele-
vision. Among the 600-some
ceremony attendees arriving at the
Governors Ball from the Pantages
were Cary Grant, John Wayne,
Bette Davis, Rock Hudson, Jimmy
Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Shirley
MacLaine, Kim Novak, Kirk Douglas,
Clark Gable and Sophia Loren.7814