Party Spirit

"I have," said the auctioneer, "a man for sale for four hours or a day or a night." Someone bid $50. "But this is a man,'' pleaded the auctioneer. "You can't just bid 50--he weighs more than that." The bids went to $55, $250, $300. At the sum of $350 Auctioneer Leonard Bernstein brought his gavel down; thus was Actor Richard Burton, the star of Camelot, acquired by Elsa Maxwell.

This genteel exercise in white slavery occurred in the home of Italian Ambassador to the U.N. Egidio Ortona at an auction to raise money for Gian Carlo Menotti's Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto. Sold off with Burton and several minor works by Chagall and Tiepolo were Composer Menotti himself (for $501. to Novelist Pati Hill) and Conductor Thom as Schippers, who brought a mere $325 from Jean Feldman, ex-wife of Agent Charles Feldman. Schippers later registered a complaint with Maxwell: "Traitor, $350 for only an actor!" This week the proud owners were scheduled to feed their purchases at a champagne dinner in Manhattan, along with 125 paying guests. At $35 a head, the hosts figure on raising another $4,375.

Elsewhere, too, it was the season of peculiar parties and odd balls. Items:

P: The Friars Club of Hollywood gave a testimonial party for Gary Cooper, had everyone from Sam Goldwyn to Dean Martin and California Governor Pat Brown on hand to participate in the big salaam. Those who tried to stick to the subject very nearly drowned him in glue. "A Gary Cooper is rare, there is only one," recited Poet Audrey Hepburn, "and there will never be another under the sun." Milton Berle risked a hail of hot lead by saying: "Coop got his first Green Stamps from Polly Adler." Carl Sandburg announced that he and Sinatra had founded an organization in Cooper's honor called GADIEP (Grand Association of the Descendants of Illiterate European Peasants). Said Cooper, legs stretching contentedly from the dais to the far side of the room: "If someone were to ask me am I the luckiest man in the world, the answer would be--Yup."

P: There was never less cause for a wake, but Manhattan's El Morocco closed down (it opens again next week, in a new spot two blocks east), and the gilded popinjays of two worlds turned up to keen. Surrealist Salvador Dali was there in a vest that could have been made by Youngstown Sheet & Tube, chatting with Mrs. Hugh ("Chic Rosie") Chisholm. Toots Shor made a ground swell on the dance floor. The usual duchesses were there (Argyll, Westminster), the usual film stars (Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda), the usual sporty financiers (Serge Semenenko, Huntington Hartford). The room where Humphrey Bogart once fought a woman over a toy panda was awash with unfiltered nostalgia, as everyone had a last fond sit on the zebra-stripe upholstery. Beaming throughout was John Perona, El Morocco's owner, and Journal-American Society Columnist "Cholly Knickerbocker" (Igor Cassini) pronounced the eulogy, quoting Lucius Beebe: "El Morocco and Perona are the products of emergent evolution. Nobody foresaw that through the agency of a constantly diminishing dance floor and a miniature camera all the Wrong People were overnight going to become the Right People."

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