There are New York parties where everyone comes to be seen, and parties where everyone comes to be counted. On Monday, October 19, the 20th annual Golden Heart Awards for God’s Love We Deliver managed both, under the vaults of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
About 700 guests made the trip to Morningside Heights. The charity cooks and delivers medically tailored meals to New Yorkers too sick to shop or cook for themselves, and it said the night raised nearly $4 million. That is about 400,000 meals. Michael Kors, whose name was on the evening, put the arithmetic more elegantly. “These people are the picture,” he said, according to Vogue’s Ariel Bielsky. “I just make the frame.”
The Honorees
Three of them, each introduced by someone who could have been honored too.
Andrew Scott received the award for Humanitarianism and Cultural Impact. He was introduced by Stephen Beresford, who wrote Elsinore, Scott’s play about Ian Charleson. Charleson, the Chariots of Fire actor, played Hamlet in his last stage role before he died of AIDS-related illness in 1990. The pairing gave the evening its most serious moment. God’s Love was founded in 1985 by Ganga Stone, a hospice volunteer, to bring meals to people with AIDS. It started at West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side, delivering 50 meals a day, according to the charity’s own history. Scott’s presence put that history at the center of the room, and the evening was better for it.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus received the award for Artistry and Advocacy. She was introduced by Chloe Malle, Vogue’s editor in chief. Louis-Dreyfus has just made her Broadway debut in Other Desert Cities, and the cathedral crowd treated her as the season’s leading lady. “The work they do is critical. It’s urgent. And, I love this organization,” she said, per Vogue. The trophy count varies by source. The charity and Vogue give different tallies of her Emmys, and we have chosen not to referee.
Misty Copeland took home the Michael Kors Award for Inspiring Philanthropy. She put the mission in two sentences: “Someone is thinking about you. Someone cares.”
The Program
Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka opened the evening. They managed to make a Gothic cathedral feel like their living room, which is no small thing in a nave that long. The organization premiered a short film, A New Ambassador, featuring Jane Krakowski, Ariana DeBose and Kors. Lea Michele introduced Jasmine Amy Rogers, who sang “Climb Every Mountain” with the Cathedral Choir. In that room, the song fit.
Terrence Meck, the charity’s chief executive, told the crowd it was the best Monday of the year. Nobody argued. Anna Wintour served as honorary chair. Erich Bergen produced. Raiola/Co. designed the room, Canard did the catering, and the awards were made by Baccarat, so the honorees took home crystal.
The Paddle Police
The real star, in the column’s humble view, was the auctioneer. Harry Santa-Olalla ran the paddle raise like a man who knew he had the audience’s undivided attention and its credit cards. According to Page Six, he announced that any guest who dropped a paddle on the floor would be “fined” $500. The first casualty was the writer Gary Janetti, whose paddle hit the floor and cost him. In the first 15 minutes, Vogue reported, the paddle raise brought in more than $1.5 million. Some of that, presumably, was fines.
The fund-raising math deserves a moment of its own. A seated benefit in New York is usually judged by who came and what they wore. This one can also be judged by a rate of exchange, and the rate is unusually easy to read. Nearly $4 million and about 400,000 meals works out to roughly ten dollars a meal. Few charities can tell their donors so plainly what a raised paddle buys, and that may be why the paddles went up so fast.
Who Was There
The guest list ran from fashion to politics. Martha Stewart was there, and so were Nicky Hilton, Olivia Munn, Judith Light, Huma Abedin and Paige DeSorbo. So were Annabelle Wallis, Peppermint, Brad Hall (Louis-Dreyfus’s husband), the stylist Carlos Nazario, and Janetti with his husband, the stylist Brad Goreski. Erik Bottcher and Brad Hoylman-Sigal represented the elected class. It was, by any measure, a lot of good shoes for a cathedral.
Twenty Years, Forty Years
The Golden Hearts began two decades ago, and the organization they pay for is twice as old. God’s Love now operates from 166 Avenue of the Americas in SoHo. Its newest outpost is Liberty BKLYN, a 30,000-square-foot facility in Sunset Park, the charity’s Emmett Findley wrote in a recap the next day. The 50 meals a day of 1985 have become an operation that measures a single night’s fund-raising in hundreds of thousands of meals. Those meals go to people living with H.I.V., cancer and other serious illnesses, and the people who eat them do not pay.
That is the thing about the Golden Hearts. The parade of famous faces is real enough, but the evening’s real subject is a meal. Somebody, somewhere in the five boroughs, will open the door this week to a delivery paid for by a paddle in a cathedral. A few of those meals will have been paid for by Gary Janetti’s fine.
Elsewhere on the Circuit
Page Six’s column the same week brought news that Gillian Hearst is engaged to Ryan Jansen. The Hearsts have never been strangers to a society page, and a Hearst wedding will give this one plenty to do. Also on the calendar: the Nexus “Broadway and Bowties” benefit on November 9. Black tie, show tunes, and with any luck no auctioneer fining the guests.
Featured image: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one of this year’s Golden Heart honorees, at the Montclair Film Festival in December 2019. Photo by Neil Grabowsky, for the Montclair Film Festival via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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