Bowl Opening Will Be Music to Their Ears

By MARY LOU LOPER

July 1, 1993 12 AM PT

Hollywood Bowl Patronesses are the busy type. Most rushed back from one place or another Sunday evening to kick off their traditional opening party for the Hollywood Bowl, which starts its season Tuesday night.

Party chairwoman Jeanne Johnson flew from her Morgantown High School reunion in West Virginia to introduce Patroness honoree John Williams, the Boston Pops Orchestra conductor who composed the score for “Jurassic Park.” He had just arrived from Japan. Clifford and Virginia Lord were back from China and about to leave for Jerusalem. Chuck and Barbara Schneider had been in Atlanta for Christa Johnson’s gala wedding weekend and marriage to William Leland Shaffer. (She’s the daughter of Cable News Network President and former Los Angeles Times Publisher Tom Johnson and his wife, Edwina.) Jo and Bob Kroger were talking about their 40th wedding anniversary and Sea Island, Georgia and the Cloisters. Mary Ann and Jack Heidt had been golfing in Palm Springs. Ginger and Dave Ludwick had traveled up Sunset from Steve Bilheimer’s 90th birthday party in a cabana at the Bel-Air Bay Club.

They were ready for the garden partying in Ragnar and Mollie Qvale’s Fremont Place estate behind the gigantic white hibiscus hedge that surrounds what once was Mary Pickford’s big white Palladian house.

“You are the backbone of everything the Hollywood Bowl stands for,” Mollie Qvale told the crowd, seated around pink-clothed tables after cocktails on the lawn.

“I love the Bowl. In a way, it is a sister institution to the Boston Pops, and these things have become more precious in our lives,” said Williams, accompanied by his wife, Samantha, who was wearing a white wrap-around silk top with flowing black silk pants.

This party started early--6 o’clock. It ended promptly at 10. It has for 45 years. Joe Moshay’s orchestra played for dancing--it has for 43 years.

Among the happy crowd of Bowl supporters: Sid and Bev Adair, John and Mary Carpenter, Bobbie Galpin, Luigi and Lorna Gentile, Larry and Beverly Thrall, Bitsy and Richard Hotaling, Larry and Karen Livingstone, Angus and Lucy McBain, Robert and Barbara Meyler, Mary Evans Morton and Dick Leonard, Howard and Vera Panosian, Alyce Williamson, Tad and Cici Williamson and Heather and Jim Schuemaker.

They walked out munching brownies as Moshay called it a night with “I’ll See You in My Dreams.”

GOLDEN GIRL: Connie Frank did it again--1% expenses and a $275,000 net for the Kidney Foundation of Southern California. Of course, she had Walt Disney’s new color version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to screen with the help of husband Rich Frank, president of Walt Disney Studios, and lots of support from her committee of Verna Harrah, Leonard Rabinowitz, Kathy Speer, Terry Grossman and Evan C. Thompson.

Hits for the kids (about 450), we hear, were the talk-back mirror and a crawl-through mine filled with prizes. Miss White was very big with the 650 adults.

ELEGANT: More than 4,000 perfect roses were massed on green garlands across the stage at the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington when the Pasadena Guild of Childrens Hospital presented its 32nd June Debutante Ball. In a courtly setting with palm fronds, President Rary Simmons greeted guests, ball chairwoman Patty Burschinger set the mood and Joan Bolton tended the debutantes, who entered the ballroom in white gowns carrying clusters of roses.

Curtsying: Ann Cheney, Lisa Giuntini, Julie Angeloff, Margaret Cook, Jennifer Popovich, Melinda Baker, Jennifer Rogers, Katharine Boultinghouse, Cherie Copare, Margaret Judy, Jennifer Barnum, Katie Bolton and Carrie Engemann. They were presented by Lawrence Harry Forsch. The Bob Gail Orchestra kept the dance floor packed.

HISTORICAL HUMOR: The humor was historical and hysterical. But the Pasadena Historical Society asked for it at its “Return to Elegance” shindig Friday. The dress choice was black tie or 1940s, and the adventurous donned carnations, Windsors, argyles, seamed hose, wedgies and zoot suits and plopped a 1941 Lincoln Zephyr and a burgundy Chrysler sedan of similar vintage at the entrance.

Said Judi Hunter, executive director: “When a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found . . . they’ve forgotten where they come from.”

Pasadena won’t forget. The society is about to move into Phase I of its building program, is raising $1 million for Phase II, and will launch a $10-million campaign for an endowment. Among stalwart fund-raisers are Dick and Mary Lois Nivens, John Watkins, Jane Roe, Larry Gould, Jane Auerbach, Alice Butler, Ned and Dorrie Barnes and Hugh Smith.

Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows came to be honored. Allen created “a ripple of exotic excitement” (his term) when he sang El Torito’s Spanish menu.

STARRY SUMMER: UCLA Chancellor Charles Young and his wife, Sue, hosted dinner at the Chancellors Residence to honor recipients of the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor. Honorees: actor James Earl Jones, author-diplomat Carlos Fuentes, AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser, UCLA professor of chemistry Donald Cram (1987 Nobelist in chemistry) and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson . . . .

Thalians Presidents Club staged its “Summer Musical Extravaganza,” starring Anne Jeffreys, Pam Dawber, Davis Gaines, June Allyson, Arlene Dahl, June Haver and Jane Wyatt and all planned by chair Frances Allen and orchestrated by David Gest. The night’s tribute went to Irwin Lehrhoff . . . .

The Pasadena Symphony benefited from the J. Crew opening at One Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.