PORT ANGELES — Marilyn Monroe and “The Dark Knight’s” Joker — both in snowy white — shone brightly in Port Angeles on Sunday night.
They were among the stars who came out to celebrate at “Hollywood Nights,” the first — and fabulously successful — party and fundraiser for the Olympic Medical Center Foundation that coincided with the televised announcement of the Academy Awards.
The party started with a red carpet ascending the front stairs of the Masonic Temple, and played out with a series of commanding performances.
Among the most eye-catching was Blake McCabe, a 16-year-old Port Angeles High School student who made himself over as the Joker, that “Dark Knight” villain portrayed by the late Heath Ledger.
Ledger landed the posthumous Oscar for best supporting actor, 13 months after his death from a drug overdose.
And McCabe, in tribute, turned a Goodwill-purchased outfit into the nurse disguise the Joker wore, and did his own makeup to look an awful lot like Ledger did.
“The smile feels weird. It’s toilet paper and glue,” the teen said of his painted-crimson grin.
Waterboy Joker
McCabe, a volunteer who worked most of the evening keeping 305 guests’ water glasses filled, said he wants to become a costume designer one day.
His mother, Susan McCabe, taught him to sew; last fall for his homecoming dance, he made a dress for his date, Jordan MacIntosh.
McCabe won second place in the Hollywood Nights costume contest, and took home a goody bag and a bottle of wine, which he gave to his father.
The first-place winners were Port Angeles’ Eric Apablasa and his wife, Mary Hunchberger, who wore a white dress a la “The Seven Year Itch,” the 1955 movie in which Marilyn Monroe revels in the breeze from the subway grate.
Apablasa looked cool in a black jacket, white scarf and rakish Clark Gable smile.
The mood inside the Masonic Temple was festive — and generous.
Auctioneer Brady Hamm¬Ârich, brought in from Port Orchard, worked the crowd like a popcorn popper, raising thousands as he auctioned donated dinners, parties and a trip to the Seattle Mariners’ spring training camp in Arizona.
He capped it all by selling a dinner for six with actress Lindsay Wagner for $700.
Wagner, the Emmy-winning performer who found fame as “The Bionic Woman,” lives part of the year in Dungeness.
As Hollywood Nights’ honorary co-chairwoman, she praised the guests for supporting Olympic Medical Center.
$31,600 netted
Hollywood Nights’ tickets, auction and “guess the winners” contest netted $31,600 — more than expected, said Bruce Skinner, executive director of the OMC Foundation.
Each guest received a ballot on which he or she could enter guesses for each Oscar, and during the event, additional ballots were available for $10 apiece.
Three people guessed every category correctly, so Skinner and event organizer Casi Fors drew one name from a hat: Doug Parrish of Sequim, aka the boa guy.
Neck swathed in a black feather boa, Parrish took as his prize an all-expenses-paid trip for two to California’s Universal Studios.
Parrish was humble about his win. He’s seen only one of the nominated movies — “Slumdog Millionaire,” which took eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score and Best Song — and read a bit about the other nominees. He filled out his ballot while driving in to Port Angeles on Sunday afternoon.
During the 3¬½-hour Academy Awards broadcast, most members of the Port Angeles crowd seemed more interested in one another than in the begowned stars swooning around Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.
They turned their attention to the video screens, however, when Sean Penn accepted his Best Actor Oscar for “Milk.”
In it, Penn portrays Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco County supervisor who fought for civil rights for gays and lesbians throughout the 1970s.
“We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone,” Penn said, to waves of applause in Hollywood and in Port Angeles.
Rags to riches
A moment later the crowd here cheered again as “Slumdog Millionaire” took the Best Picture trophy.
Joe Marvelle, Hollywood Nights’ master of ceremonies, joined in, after admitting that the Oscar show didn’t excite him nearly as much as “Slumdog” did, with its story of steadfast love and hope.
With that last golden guy handed out, the Port Angeles party kept on.
As soon as Academy Awards host Hugh Jackman said good night, Hamm¬Ârich leaped back up on the stage to auction off “outright giving” to the OMC Foundation, at levels of $500, $250, $100 and $50.
In minutes, he tallied a total of $5,000 in donations.
Those proceeds, with the rest from Sunday’s event, will help the hospital purchase equipment for its emergency room, cardiac services, radiology department and obstetrics unit, where 500 babies are born each year.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
