Party Pictures 2/13/03

Alex Hitz celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday ...

Bobby Short and Susan Fales-Hill

Peter Duchin

John Novogrod and Jill Spalding

Helen O'Hagan and Julia Reed

Alex Hitz, a producer by vocation, is well known amongst his friends for his talent for throwing a really good party, not the least of which are his birthday parties. A couple of years ago he held a black tie affair for a couple of hundred at the Metropolitan Club. This year, marking his thirty-fifth, he held a smaller bash on Monday night down in the Village at Valdino’s West, on the corner of Bank and Hudson. A cozy little spot that in another incarnation was a well-patronized place called Trattoria Alfredo.

Alex Hitz and Lee Radziwill

It was a good mix of writers, designers, performers, socialites and producers. The birthday boy who misses few (if any) details, brought his own silver (including the weighty candelabra), covered the tin ceiling with balloons and the tables with bunches of yellow tulips. When it came time for the cake, there were several – one for each of the Aquarians on the list – small, but tall, and covered with a thick white icing and the “happy birthday” and the name written in yellow on top (to match the flowers?).

The cakes (along with accompanying cupcakes) were from the Magnolia bakery across the street, and called Red Velvet cakes. And why? Sliced, they were blood red inside. Never saw that before, did you? A lot of people have. Magnolia, I’m told, is so popular for its cakes, and especially its cupcakes that people actually line up in the street to get inside to buy them.

Alex's brother, Thomas Shaw

Among the fifty-two on the gues tlist were Adolfo, Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera, Cary Brokaw, Douglas Cramer, Hugh Bush, Marti Stevens and Michael Butler (producer of the original “Hair” on Broadway), Brooke Duchin (Peter came in after finishing his gig playing for the Citizens Committee of New York Gala uptown), Peter Vaughan, Amanda Vaill (who wrote the biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy), food writer Julia Reed, Lee Radziwill, Casey Ribicoff, advertising impresario Peter Rogers, Yanna Avis, Frank and Nancy Novogrod, Elizabeth Peabody, Bobby Short, Liz Smith, Hiram Williams, Bobby Harling (screenwriter: “Steel Magnolias” and on and on), Susan Fales-Hill, Peter Bacanovic, Helen O’Hagan, Jim Reginato, Pat Patterson, Bruce Gilardi, Felicia Taylor and Mitchell Kramer, Thomas Shaw and Vanessa Reiser, Karon Cullen, Philip Wolff, Jill Spalding, Gale Hayman-Haseltine, Pierre Durand, Lynn Nesbit, Louise Grunwald, Boaz Mazor, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Margo Lion (producer of the Broadway hit “Hairspray”), Lee Thaw, et al, et al.