Mother’s Day Committee Is Growing

Honorary chairman Nancy Reagan’s “Mom’s Committee” is growing for the “I Remember Mama” luncheon Mother’s Day, May 8 at the Bonaventure. Notables such as Bill and Jean Smith, Marvin and Barbara Davis, Bobbe and Bill Pagen, Gene and Jackie Autry, Elizabeth Taylor and Burt Reynolds are joining with Volunteers of America of Los Angeles to turn what could be a very lonely day into a special treat for elderly mothers.

This crowd won’t all attend the luncheon; rather, they and other $2,000-a-table sponsors will make it possible for more than 500 elderly women, without family and love, to receive corsages, watch entertainment, get a Mother’s Day card and lunch. In the process VOALA will net about $60,000 for its Meals for the Elderly program, which serves more than 1,000 seniors each day.

The Volunteers of America (in L.A. since 1896) runs 10 nutrition centers; one is the Sunset Club of Long Beach that serves not only as a meal center but offers tax assistance, transportation and recreation to senior citizens.

BRILLIANT CARY GRANTS: The effervescent C. Z. (Mrs. Winston F. C.) Guest was the top bloom of the show, the flower in the garden when she breezed into town to speak at the Crittenton Garden Party chaired by Katrina Cord at David Murdock’s estate.

Everyone was collecting hints on not only how to garden, but how to look as svelte (not a trace of dirt in her trim nails) as the famous grande dame. She, in turn, was touting the new Cary Grant rose, which she has been testing (200 in a greenhouse) at her estate at Old Westbury, N.Y. It is a “big, Chinese orange-red, hybrid tea. Incredibly beautiful,” she said. She showed her Cary Grants in pots at the New York Flower Show (“the only show”), gave four to her laundress, a couple to “Calvin” (Klein) and has been replanting them in her kitchen garden.

She had some succinct advice for gardeners: “Keep your garden clean, and you won’t have snails; the only plants that get attacked are sick plants. Block out the sun; wear a hat in July and August; it’s the afternoon sun that burns; if you could see how the afternoon sun burns your plants, you would never put your face in the sun.” This all comes from a lady who has ridden thoroughbreds all her life--her stables are covered in Peace roses--and plays tennis avidly, and who almost never has lunch: “I am a constant dieter.”

Guest took up writing garden columns and garden books “for my salvation,” after her husband (whose family were the Phippses), a second cousin of the late Winston Churchill, died. Her “First Garden by C. Z. Guest” has an introduction by Truman Capote and drawings by Cecil Beaton, and she’s about to publish another book.

On her trip here (after Palm Beach), she toured the Florence Crittenton Center for Young Women and Infants under the tutelage of Katrina Cord and Tally Mingst, and talked about the need for motivation and self-reliance in lives young and old, relating how her new career has helped fill a lonely void.

She still hosts the famous sit-down dinner at her estate before the Belmont Stakes, but she’s just as enthusiastic about marketing her sweat shirts designed as a bulb-planting guide. “I have always thought a garden is like having a good friend, and like watching your children grow.” She thinks children should be taught to grow vegetables and flowers: “If you don’t look after your garden, you won’t have flowers and vegetables--and it keeps you from being selfish.”

She was off, in a trim blue and white Adolfo, to a luncheon hosted in her honor by Mary Jane Wick.

GUEST SPEAKER: President Eugene S. Mills and the Whittier College trustees have invitations out for May 3. American Ambassador to the Kremlin Arthur Hartman will be guest speaker for the John Greenleaf Whittier Society’s fifth annual dinner at the Century Plaza.

PRIMAVERA: Trustees of the Craft and Folk Art Museum as well as Designers West Magazine plan an evening of dinner, dancing and entertainment April 29, their annual Festival Primavera, to honor premiere designer Jack Lenor Larsen, president of the American Crafts Council.

Larsen, a dominant force in international fabrics and environmental design, will receive the Ray Bradbury Creativity Award at the black-tie affair in the Beverly Hills Hotel Crystal Room. Tickets are $200; proceeds will bolster exhibits and outreach art programs.

DERBY DOINGS: Watching the Santa Anita Derby is always fun because it’s one of the nation’s major prep races for the Kentucky Derby. That’s why Churchill Downs president Thomas Meeker and his wife, Carol, of Louisville, Ky., were at Santa Anita with the race track’s president Robert P. Strub and his wife, Betty.

The real winners were Joyce and Eugene Klein of Rancho Santa Fe, whose horse Winning Colors romped to victory as the third filly to win the Derby. There was partying on both sides of the track for the $500,000 affair. In the infield, 150 classic Rolls-Royces and Bentleys formed a giant horse shoe around the fountains and fields of flowers as owners spread picnics and raised umbrellas.

Dorothy and George Vernon Russell of Pasadena arrived in their deep green Bentley. Affianced Karen Christensen and Danny Howard served elaborately with china and crystal. Lucio Arce and Louis Lowell of Arcadia had aperitifs from the cooler set on a tray in a Bentley once owned by a DuPont, while Beverly and Stanley Gardner of Huntington Beach lunched on trays in the back seat.

UPCOMING: The Children’s Fashion Show and spring luncheon at the Beach Club is a must for the agenda with Tink Cheney, Jane Gosden, Joan Graves, Laurie Griff, Bonnie McClure, Nancy McCullough, Susan Miller and Tally Mingst the hostesses . . .

The English-Speaking Union and the Young Musicians Foundation Women’s Council, Los Angeles, co-host a reception Tuesday honoring Lady Susana Walton. It’s at Valerie Miller’s Italian mansion in Hancock Park, often featured on architectural tours. Lady Susana’s visit centers about her book, “William Walton: Behind the Facade” . . .

The American Field Service Alumni Assn. of Los Angeles County hosts a reception today to open the office of AFS-California at the Commons in Pasadena.

KUDOS: To Richard P. Cooley, who addressed Town Hall this week . . . To David Curtis, alumnus of the Special Children’s Center (supported by the Spastic Children’s League of Pasadena), the valedictorian at Pasadena City College . . .

To Elin Vanderlip for hosting the Auxiliary of Toberman Settlement House spring luncheon at her Villa Narcissa with president Maxine Miller and Ruth d’Arcy involved.