The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 82

E4 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1995 LOS ANGELES Dealing With the Ugly: Realities of Prison Life Good and Plentiful RSVP THE SOCIAL CITY DEAR ABSY ABIGAIL VAN BUREN Rape is a reprehensible act $nd cannot be tolerated in any settkjg. Those of us professionals who with inmates do "give a damn," ahd we do everything we can to safe- -guard society. -PLYMOUTH, WIST; DEAR PLYMOUTH: Too bad: there aren't more professional' who have your lofty principle! I ALAN BERLINER Berliner Studio At home at the Getty House Restoration gala are Mayor Richard Riordan, left, Nancy Daly, Juli Reding Hutner and Tom Bradley. DEAR ANN: I know you've already covered this topic, but I hope you have room for one more letter about prison rape. My brother was raped while in prison serving a three-year sentence for arson.

He called for help but no one came. When he told a guard what had happened, the reply was, "Welcome to prison life." He tried other avenues to get assistance but was ignored. Someone must have tipped off the other prisoners because later a "blanket party" was thrown. He was raped again and beaten and told to keep his mouth shut. My brother was 19 years old.

He is now 42. 1 heard this story for the first time just two years ago. As he told it, he was shaking and crying his eyes out, 21 years later. Where is the American justice we hear so much about? -PERMANENTLY DISILLUSIONED IN ARIZONA DEAR ARIZONA: After reading a ton of mail on this subject, I'm still as baffled as you are. Maybe your brother would have gotten a better deal in Wisconsin.

Keep reading: DEAR ANN: I have worked for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for 18 years. During that time, I cannot recall one instance of prison rape being tolerated. Every allegation of sexual assault in the facility I work in is investigated internally, and often, outside authorities are called in to pursue further criminal charges against the perpetrator. After the internal investigation is completed, the assailant, if found guilty, can receive an administrative punishment of 368 days of segregation and a 20-day delay of the mandatory release date. 'A .4 At the "Carriage Days" show, Linda Dickason, right, view a dress i v.

'--si 11 I it (mwiii. 1 1 i all I 1 The next night, Music Center Blue Ribbon and Fraternity of Friends members got similar treatment Carriage Days: The wonderful exhibitions of the "Carriage Days" show at Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising at 919 S. Grand Ave. is a must-see. Again, Alyce and Warren Williamson were honorary chairs, this time of the California Historical Society's opening night Maggie Pexton Murray had put months of loving care into the show.

Thus, the continuing collection includes rare fashions (bustled gowns, 1920s dresses, button shoes, dinner caps and fans, some dating to 1830) from prominent Southlanders such as Alice Avery, Ann Longyear, Polly Goodan, Janice Carpenter, Bit-sy Hotaling and Kay Onderdonk. The dress Avery wore on her third birthday is in the show. Sally Wenzlau wore her grandmother's crocheted dress. Linda and Dennis Vaughn were among those who took the elevator to the institute's fourth floor to admire the Larry Halprin gardens below. Kudos to gala chairwoman Linda Dickason and a committee including Jan Clayton, Betsy Link, Ginie Braun, George Erskine and Jackie Leisure.

Among San Franciscans attending were Mike McCone, Edith Piness, Stephen Taber (in his father's tuxedo) and Southland trustees including Joe Coulombe. Elsewhere on the Social Circuit Linda Marie Daly, daughter of Nancy Daly and Robert Daly, both of Bel-Air, married Edward James Yablans, ICM talent agent and Georgetown graduate, at her mother's home. He is the son of Frank Yablans of East Hampton and Ruth Yablans of Beverly Hills. The bride teaches children with learning difficulties at Landmark West School. She is a graduate of Marlborough and American University.

Universal Studios brought Dracula to Escada for Ann Book-out, Lynn Brengel and Nancy McCullough's "Haute Halloween" for Childrens Hospital This year marked the diamond jubilee of the Jack-o-Lantern Ball for the League for Crippled Children Manhattan Beach schools will receive $35,000 from Bristol Farms' Spooky Farms Halloween costume party and Jack Mack and the Heart Attack headlined City of Hope's "Halloween for Hope." More in a busy month: Piero Selvaggio and Restaurant Associates' opening of Impresario restaurant at the Music Center Huntington Memorial Hospital and Parkway Grill's Fall Food Wine Festival today Associates of Cedars-Sinai's opening night at the newest Wolfgang Puck Cafe on Sunset The Boys and Girls Clubs of America's annual "Heroes and High Hopes" gala. i Mary Lou Loper's column is 1 published Sundays. By MARY LOU LOPER TIMES STAFF WRITER It's been a whirl of extraordinary benefits: one, the Getty House Restoration Foundation gala in Hancock Park; two, the elegant Los Angeles Garden Show at the Arboretum; three, Sotheby's opening of its vast new headquarters on Sunset Boulevard, and four, the "Carriage Days" alfresco dinner at the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising, following a historic and fabulous exhibition of fabled California fashions. All in one week. "Gracie Mansion in the future will be known as Getty House East," joked Mayor Richard Riordan as he cut the ribbon to the mayor's official residence.

Friend Nancy Daly and former resident and former Mayor Tom Bradley looked on. Daly is the one who has tirelessly dedicated herself and a band of 1,000 volunteers, workers and donors to the restoration. Said the mayor: "I am very proud of what Nancy's angels have done for this house." Five hundred could hardly wait to get by the front boxwood hedge, iceberg roses, pansies and French lavender to tour the English-style house. They were so lured by pretty interiors that the rococo feast of salmon and filet mignon was somewhat delayed, which, in turn, delayed Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger's comedy and Mel Torme's finale of songs such as "Stardust" Said Daly of the house: "We live in a city where ideas are plentiful, but this is beyond our wildest expectations." She called the 19 designers, the 17 committee chiefs, the 300 volunteers and the hundreds of tradespeople heroes. The first-nighters included Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who were presented "The Angels Brad Dickason, project director; Adele Yellin, head of interior design, and Shirlee Fonda, Marcia Israel, Alice Avery, Ann Miller and John Gavin.

Gala co-chairs Juli Reding Hutner and Julia Sanchez admired the big white dinner tent Clarise Ellis had shadowed with leaves. When he has late-night meetings, Riordan says, he'll stay over instead of driving to Brentwood. The house really is for the city and a place to entertain foreign dignitaries. "Isn't it wonderful," said Nancy Call. Everyone agreed.

Spectacular Show: Some 400 first-nighters took in the Los Angeles Garden Show at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. C.Z. Guest, "America's First Lady of Gardening," headlined one of 40 seminars and proclaimed the show the best she had seen. Smelling the roses and dining alfresco to a pretty sunset were opening night honorary chairwoman Aiyce Williamson and DATEBOOK ANACLETO RAPPING Los Angeles Times Sotheby's new location brings together Frank Symons, left, Janet iKaratz, Diana D. Brooks, Dick Oldenburg, Andrea Van de Kamp.

Read on: DEAR ANN: I have years of corrections experierjee-including corrections internal af- fairs and headquarters tion. Sexual assaults are considered ao "indicator" of the management' health and order of a prison! well-run prison has few sexual! assaults because the employees are constantly intermingling with the! inmates and supervising them. "A-poorly run prison will have many sexual assaults. Budget cuts result in an insufficient number of corrections officers, which means the inmates are often allowed to run the prison. The smart ones rise to the top.

Prison officials want to look good, so very few sexual assaults are reported. In the worst cases, there are prison administrators who use inmate gangs to help manage the prison. Sex and human bodies become the coin of the realm. Is inmate writing letters la the editor of the local newspaper and filing lawsuits? Or perhaps Jl threw urine or feces on an employ ee? "Well, Joe, you and Willie and Hank work him over, but be sure' you don't break any bones and send him to the hospital. If you dti a' good job, I'll see that you get the'-.

blondest boy in the next ship'-' ment." LOUISIANA' CORRECTIONS OFFICER-DEAR READERS: Your candor left me speechless. Thank you extraordinary letters. Tc, morrow, I'll print one more. Kit Museum will benefit from a and preview of fine jewels to be auctioned Thursday rtoy Christie's Los Angeles. The tea will be held at the Peninsula Hotel 4n Beverly Hills.

Tickets are $150. Information: (310) 858-8890. Spirit Of Life: The Entertain-, ment Industry for the City of Hope will honor Allen J. Grubman on, Wednesday evening at the 1995-Spirit of Life Award dinner at the, Century Plaza Hotel. Arthur Indursky is the dinner and honorary committee include Marvin Davis and Dayid, Geffen.

Tickets are $500. Information: (213) 626-4611. Datebook is compiled by Los Angeles Masterplanner, a monthly newsletter listing the upcoming year of benefits and special events-. To subscribe, call (310) To request a listing in Datebook, fax the information three weeks in advance to (310) 888-1866. Date-book is published on Sundays.

"We tell our readers that shntilrl they want the best fashion coverage, music coverage and writing. aV opposed to a one-pointed focuson-the gay community, they're better' off reading us." Dolce does see a place, for a national gay news weekly, a. sort of gay Village Voice, perhaps with zoned editions for the gay urban centers. "New York hasr no gay newspaper," he said. "Vet there a viable national market just waiting to be tapped." There may be a price for recent successes.

Richard Rouilard, ior-w mer editor of the Advocate now with Buzz magazine, believes that as gay magazines continue gaining national advertising, "They are transitioning from a more activist stance to increased complacency." The resultant slack, he said, has been taken up by the more than 1,00 regional gay newspapers. The stakes are. high. Karen Steele, advertising manager 'for Apple Computers, said Apple started placing ads in Out "becavisej' we've become increasingly ested in research indicating that, not only is 6 to 10 of; 4he American market gay, that mar'ket is also very affluent." Further research indicated that those in the gay market hqjd.ia college degree and that gays are "very brand loyal to companies that advertise first in the gay I press." Advertisers are inrreasinfflv" waking up to the value of particular market," added Allen Banks, director of North American media for Saatchi Saatchi. our view, the gay media represents an excellent, if still limited, growths opportunity." jhusband Warren, Judy Morse, Patty and Roger Burschinger, James Watterson, Susan Seidel (party chairwoman), Marilyn Brumder, Catherine Cheney and Charlene Vert.

The Los Angeles Times and Robinsons-May were sponsors of the six-day project-teas, brunches, seminars, style gardens and style pavilions. All the Gold: Andrea Van de Kamp, managing director, West Coast Sotheby's, brought the brass or, shall we say, "the gold" of Sotheby's to town for the opening of its spacious new CAROL CHEETHAM For The Times Maggie Pexton Murray, left, and worn by Alice Avery as a child Southern California location at 9665 Wilshire Blvd. Chairman Dick Oldenburg, president and CEO Diana D. Brooks and Stuart N. Siegel, president of Sotheby's International Realty, were on hand for the opening benefiting the California Institute of the Arts and chaired by Lawrence J.

Ramer. Viewing the impressionist and contemporary American paintings was a joy before the chow-down at the buffet on the terrace overlooking Wilshire. This is where future auctions of jewels, art and real estate will be held. GAINS Continued from El Editor Sarah Pettit, dismissing what seems to be a natural rivalry, said she does not see other gay magazines as Out's primary competition. "My question is not how are we doing vis-d-vis the Advocate," she said.

"It's where are all the gay readers and why are they still not reading us?" Part of the answer may be inferred from the fact that 60 of Out's 100,000 subscribers request delivery in black plastic wrappers. So promising has the market become that even though the existing national magazines are all privately held, the larger media conglomerates are sniffing around. Time Warner, for example, spent time and money developing a magazine to be called Tribe. Although that effort died on the drawing boards, "The way it traditionally works is that mainstream publishers will let magazines like us finesse the market over the next five years. Then, they'll come in and buy us," Pettit said.

All of this makes it harder to remember the hard times. When Jeff Yarbrough was named Advocate editor in 1991, he seemed to face two choices: Tread water and watch the publication slowly expire, or eliminate the classified sex ads, which made up 40 of ad revenues, and plunge more deeply into the red, gambling that in time the magazine could attract mainstream advertisers. Yarbrough, formerly a reporter with People and for London's Sunday Times magazine, thought piat imLmuiMuuiMm.ujjujutii. wn.pii a -s. 1 fAfi ill lf Art and Comedy: The Latino Theatre Company and the UCLA Chicano Scholarship program will benefit from "Die Laughing," a Day of the Dead celebration Monday evening.

Dancing skeletons, street performers and an art exhibit will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the courtyard of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center. Latino comedy night starts at 8 at the Veteran's Wadsworth Theatre. Information: (213) 223-6403. Write On: The Brandeis University National Women's Committee will welcome authors Belva Plain, Pierre Salinger, Carol Doumani, Digby Diehl, Denise and Jack Smith and Rod Lurie at its 16th annual "Authors and Celebrity Award Day" luncheon Wednesday morning at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

Tickets are $65. Information: Eris Field, (310) 278-5995. A Real Gem: On Wednesday, American Friends of the Israel vocate reported on the memo, American promptly pulled its advertising. Some interesting stories never made it into print. During the past few years, the Advocate threatened to separately "out" two closeted political leaders pursuing anti-gay policies.

"We showed each what we had and gave them the choice of being outed on our pages, or coming out on their own," Yarbrough said. Both whose names he would not disclose "voluntarily" came out and have markedly changed their policies toward gays, he said. Such a political edge is less apparent elsewhere. At Genre, editor Ron Kraft develops many of his ideas skimming Cosmopolitan and Vogue. The result is a fluffy lifestyle magazine for "the happy homosexual." About 45,000 subscribers receive the magazine 10 times a year for articles such as "It's Raining Men: How to Find Mr.

Right." And while 28 of the Advocate's readers and 40 of Out's are women, Genre appeals almost exclusively to men. Despite progress in gay publishing, Joe Dolce, editor in chief of Details, Condd-Nast's mainstream magazine for young men, thinks the magazines still have a difficult road ahead. "They have to placate skittish advertisers, constantly having to weigh editorial concerns against advertising concerns," said Dolce, who is gay himself. Dolce doesn't feel threatened by the competition. "Our circulation is five times bigger than that of the largest gay magazine," he said.

Uli ,1 i mm mm nn ill ilium I Vs. Hf' i 1 is a Kir, I "II ft n't- LJ i IlLi the classifieds would forever get in the way of the Advocate's'claims to serious journalism. So, he, spun off the ads into a separate publication, the Advocate immediately shed a third of its heft, and rumors of its demise centered not on if, but when. Today, the gamble appears to have paid off. The Advocate's profit margin again climbed by double digits in '95, he reports; the January 24th Roseanne cover issue was the largest seller at 150,000 copies.

Other cover stories in the past few years have included interviews with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, then-presidential hopeful Bill Clinton, director Oliver Stone, and movie stars Cybill Shepherd, Tom Hanks and Patrick Swayze. Louisiana white supremacist David Duke, as well as fundamentalist preacher Fred Phelps, have also been interviewed Duke agreeing only if were on the cover. Yarbrough has broken some big stories. After it published an April in-depth interview with Candace Gingrich, an uncomfortable Newt Gingrich called a Capitol Hill news conference, his lesbian half sister by his side, proclaiming the theme of family unity.

The Advocate has also gone after some of its own advertisers. In one case, the magazine came across an American Airlines' memo following the '93 Gay March on Washington that instructed an outbound Washington, D.C., crew to change all blankets and pillow covers after landing in Dallas; the apparent fear was that gay passengers might transmit AIDS to subsequent passengers. After the Ad "GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Timea Jeff Yarbrough, the Advocate's editor in chief, has focused the magazine on political issues and eliminated classified sex ads..