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Hollywood’s best parties are those we press boys don’t get to. Not that they don’t want us, but even in Hollywood people like to be themselves away from cameras.

Take Sonja Henie. She gives two top jobs a year. One the press attends, the other is strictly for stars. I made this one because we’re old friends . and I took these pictures for her personal album.

Sonja knows how to get the right people together. The 200 guests received cards with table numbers. The dinner announcement, made by Sonja and Hoagy Carmichael, was a poem. So was the dinner. No wonder when someone said, “Remember the good old days?” Jack Warner replied, “My boy, these are the good old days!”

Frank Sinatra, who stagged it, plays waiter to Lana at the party held under a tent on the tennis court

Director Mervyn LeRoy with the usually camera-shy David Selznick, Sonja and Jennifer Jones in animated party mood

Richard Barthlemess gets the kiss—son Stewart gets the cue. Stewart is Sonia’s current beau

Buffet banter between two Rogerses—Ginger and Buddy

Romantically—Joan Crawford came with Greg Bautzer

Glamour of the Far East for Merle Oberon, hand in hand with Mary Livingston as husband Jack Benny stands by

Good friends got together in the well-arranged seating plan. Richard Ney smiles as Greer Garson greets Ernst Lubitsch

Sonja, with Mrs. Darryl Zanuck, had special delicacies flown from New York for dinner

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE JANUARY 1947