Tony Award night in LA: Chita Rivera honored

It really has gotta be the next best thing to actually being at Radio City Music Hall: the 13th Annual Los Angeles Tony Awards Party was the only place in town to watch the Tonys live on a giant screen. To do it with legends of stage and screen made for an even more dazzling affair.

Dick Van Dyke hosted the dinner at Skirball Center – which benefited the Actors Fund – and reunited with his Broadway Bye Bye Birdie leading lady Chita Rivera who was honored withe the Julie Harris Lifetime Achievement Award. Other stars at the event included Jason Alexander, George Chakiris, Valarie Petiford, Mitzi Gaynor, Marg Helgenberger, Stefanie Powers, Marc Cherry, Tippi Hedren, Carol Lawrence, Joanne Worley, Charlotte Rae, Carole Cook and Lee Meriwether, among others.

The event seemed not unlike what the actual Tonys probably used to be like when they were a far more modest affair.

“Fifty years ago, the Tonys were just a small dinner at the Waldorf Astoria,” Van Dyke said during a commercial break. “I won a Tony and didn’t know it for three days! There was just a message underneath my welcome mat.”

The legendary Chita Rivera -Tony winner for The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman and star of the original Broadway productions of West Side Story, Chicago, Bye Bye Birdie, Can-Can and many more shows – received her award from her daughter, performer Lisa Mordente, after the telecast ended. Lisa called her mom “the true embodiment of what you call a force of nature.”

“I’m a lucky gal. I’m a lucky gal and I know it,” Chita said. “I was there at the right time and I gave it all that I had.”

She was down-to-Earth and funny in her speech: “Thank you for all the years and for today. I’m going to put this [award] right next to my two Tonys – actually I have four Tonys: Bernadette Peters is holding one and Lauren Bacall is holding the other.”

The crowd roared at the jokingly bitchy comment. Chita may have two Tony wins but she lost the award on seven other occasions.

“This is the best time I’ve ever had at a Tony awards,” she told the crowd. “No nerves, no camera up my nose, no saying nice things when we don’t mean them!”

I will post my pre-show interviews with Chita and her daughter later today.

Jason Alexander shared how he was just starting out on Broadway and got to co-star with Chita every night in The Rink and sing her a song in which he asks her to marry him. Then he dazzled the star – and the crowd – by singing the song to her once again in one of the evening’s most moving moments and left Miss Rivera in tears.

“The first time I sang this to you, I had hair,” the famously balding Seinfeld star joked. “It was glued on, but it was there!”

Van Dyke threatened to tell “Chita stories that would curl your hair” but in the end only had the kindest of words for his longtime friend who he called “a fabulous co-star and a lifelong friend who made me look look Fred Astair on stage.”

Carol Lawrence talked about performing with Chita in West Side Story more than 50 years ago: “I never had a sister so Chita has always filled that hole in my heart … Just to [perform] on stage with her is a thrill but to know her and to love her as family is an honor.”

Lawrence also told a funny story about when Rock Hudson came to visit them in their joint dressing rooms and how Chita was very composed in front of the movie star but once she went into Carol’s room, she shut the door and excitedly said: “It’s ROCK HUDSON!”

Video tributes shown at the dinner included a message from John Kander who described the star as “very real with her feet on the ground. She’s not a diva, she’s a wonderful professional. She takes her profession very seriously, she does not take stardom very seriously.”

Hal Prince also weighed in via video, reminding Chita that while he did not endure “a six hour flight” to make it to LA for the occasion, he had been there to present her with her Kennedy Center Honor a few years back: “There’s no one like you. You are a marvelous actor, a sensational beauty, and, I guess you can dance.”

And how.