Alexis Smith

The Academy Awards provided the main entertainment--and brought some celebrities together in Orange County--Monday night at a $125-a-person fund-raising dinner at Ron's in Laguna Beach. The Oscars presentation was shown on eight TV screens while such celebrities as Gale Storm, Ned Beatty and Alexis Smith dined, danced and socialized at the event to raise money for CHIP-IN (Community of Hollywood Investing in People in Need) and St. Mary's Care Program of Laguna Beach.

Alexis Smith does not consider herself a furniture collector--though she does collect picture frames for her collages. But, for two years, she and her husband, artist Scott Grieger, flirted with buying an Eames chair, debating whether to go old or new. Recently, in honor of her 50th birthday, the couple bought two chairs from manufacturer Herman Miller. For her, a lipstick-red Eames "potato chip" chair. "The only modern thing in the house," Smith says.

Margo Leavin Gallery, one of the most significant and enduring galleries of contemporary art in Los Angeles, has announced it plans to close after 42 years.  The gallery's reputation for championing serious artists with integrity made it a respected player in the years that Los Angeles art was gaining international prominence. Among the artists the gallery has shown are John Baldessari, Alexis Smith, William Leavitt, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Dowell and Lynda Benglis. Margo Leavin opened the gallery on Robertson Boulevard in 1970 and through the years has expanded to additional spaces, with the original building remodeled to accommodate large exhibition galleries along with private viewing areas, storage and offices.

Cliff and Mandy Einstein are the kind of couple you can't imagine apart. They finish each other's sentences. They savor the same coffees and wines. They treat each other with great affection and yet are quick to quibble over a forgotten fact in the stories they love to tell. Married 42 years, they're the definition of how a relationship can grow within the aura of stability.

Jerry Blunt, who helped create the drama department at Los Angeles City College, has died. He was 85. Blunt died Friday night at his home in Los Angeles of complications after open-heart surgery, said his wife, writer Betty (Andy) Andrews Blunt. A former chairman of the LACC drama department, Blunt was a popular teacher for 42 years.

With the gift, announced Wednesday, of nine major artworks valued at $8 million, UC San Diego now owns the entire 15-piece collection commissioned by the Stuart Foundation and installed on the university's sprawling campus over the last 22 years. The foundation donated six of the works to the university upon their completion, in compliance with funding arrangements, but retained possession of the other works.

Leonard Fredrick Doss, 88, a color consultant for more than 100 motion pictures from 1945 to the epic "Cleopatra" in 1963, died Thursday in Palm Springs of causes associated with aging. A native of Chicago, Doss graduated from Northwestern University and then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for Technicolor Inc. as a color consultant at 20th Century Fox. He earned his first credit on the 1945 film "San Antonio," starring Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith.

Lydia Lane, a syndicated beauty columnist also known for her aid to war veterans, has died at the age of 90. Miss Lane, the widow of Austin W. Young, died Sunday night in her sleep in her Bel-Air home. A columnist for the Los Angeles Times and its now-defunct sister paper, the Los Angeles Mirror, from 1938 to 1980, Miss Lane characteristically interviewed Hollywood film stars and other beautiful women and wrote about their secrets for controlling weight or enhancing their hair, skin or makeup.

It probably would have been more accurate to call it "The Men's Art Issue" as only two women artists were included in your Art Issue (June 11). When you think of artists, both emerging and established, who make L.A. sing, why not Meg Cranston, Alexis Smith, Lita Albuquerque, Margaret Honda, Erika Rothenberg, Liz Young, Rachel Rosenthal, Ruth Weisberg or Takako Yamaguchi? Kudos on writing so well about artists, their homes and lives, but your short list of women artists who seem to be of interest because they are either married to the son of a famous male artist or married to another artist makes me think you are still in the early 20th century, where marriage was a woman's real "job."