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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 116 FEBRUARY 28, 2018
BALL: COURTESY OF ©A.M.P.A.S. (3). ANTHONY: PICTORIAL PARADE/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES.PartiesO
ne entertainer from the 1958
Governors Ball who’s still with
us is Ray Anthony, the dashing trum-
peter whose 18-piece Ray Anthony
Band provided the evening’s music.
Now 96 and living in the Hollywood
Hills, Anthony admits the particulars
of the night are fuzzy — “We played
so many different affairs back then”
— but says he has nothing but fond
memories of the era.
A dead ringer for Cary Grant,
Anthony was a favorite of Frank
Sinatra’s and was good pals with
Dean Martin (who danced the night
away at that first Governors Ball)
and the rest of the Rat Pack. (He
later was close with Playboy founder
Hugh Hefner and appeared regu-
larly on E!’s The Girls Next Door.)When he wasn’t performing at
A-list parties in his 1950s hey-
day, Anthony was recording music
for 20th Century Fox Pictures
(his rendition of “The Bunny Hop”
has been featured on soundtracks
from 1955’s How to Be Very, Very
Popular to TV’s Everybody Loves
Raymond). On the Fox lot, he met
a beautiful starlet named Marilyn
Monroe. “We threw this big party for
Marilyn at my house in the Valley,”
recalls Anthony. “She was pretty
happy about that. It probably helped
a little bit with her fame.” While the
two were photographed together
looking mutually enamored, Anthony
says they were “just friends” who
were “pretty busy at the time” focus-
ing on their careers. But he did woo
another blond star — Mamie Van
Doren, his wife from 1955 to 1961.
Says Anthony of the Teacher’s Pet
bombshell, “We had fun together.”→ Anthony (right) with Mickey Rooney and
Monroe at a 1952 party the bandleader threw
for the starlet. Behind them is the score
of a song Anthony wrote for her, “Marilyn.”Ray Anthony, whose big band played the Academy’s 1958 shindig, recalls
the Rat Pack glamour of the era and a party with Monroe By Seth AbramovitchThe Bandleader’s Marilyn Memories
1 Sayonara supporting actor winner Buttons (right) propped
his Oscar on the table but didn’t get it engraved that evening.
That tradition wasn’t instituted until the 2010 Oscars.
2 Ball chair Murphy sent this telegram to producers and studio
chiefs about two weeks before the Oscars to request their
RSVPs. Famous as a song-and-dance man in big-budget movie
musicals of the 1930s and ’40s, he was president of the Screen
Actors Guild from 1944 to ’46, was awarded an honorary Oscar
in 1951 and served as U.S. senator from California from 1965
to 1971 (he’s the only senator with a star on the Walk of Fame).
3 Ceremony producer Jerry Wald had two films in the
running, Peyton Place (nine nominations) and An Affair to
Remember (four). Neither scored any wins.21
3