The Hollywood Athletic Club hosted the first-ever Emmy awards ceremony back in 1949. And all these decades later, the same glorious building used then—now incarnated as restaurant/nightclub/bar/private club Social Hollywood—housed TV Guide’s big Emmy after-party following the ceremony at the Shrine. Working with the magazine’s Lauren Ruotolo, Tony Schubert of Event Eleven produced the affair.
Guests made their way into the space on a vast, 250-foot-long red carpet, shrouded from the traffic on Sunset Boulevard with a black-draped wall decorated with glowing tubelike LED light fixtures in a fluid pattern called Versatubes. (Felix Lighting handled all the lighting for the party.) “My thing was to wow the crowd before they even got to the red carpet and give them a show from the outside,” Schubert said.
Inside, sponsors were well represented in a chocolate-filled Dove lounge, and an upstairs Hanes lounge—decked with table linens, throw pillows, and chandelierlike sculptures all made from T-shirts—where guests got foot and leg massages to soothe their stiletto-clad extremities. All around the space, caterwaiters passed trays of house specialties, like Santa Barbara prawn risotto, beet salad, and mac and cheese—and female caterwaiters dressed like old-time cigarette girls passed lamb-filled pastries, which they called lamb cigars. Flat screen TVs throughout the venue animated pages of the magazine and showed clips from the awards show.
In the ballroom (formerly the athletic club’s track), rocker Pink performed a set for the packed-in crowd (security monitored the entrance per fire code, and kept guests from other areas of the venue in a queue). After her performance, an all-star band called Band for TV—comprised of the likes of Desperate Housewives’ James Denton, NYPD Blue’s Bonnie Summerville, and House’s Hugh Laurie—took their turn on the stage. (Band for TV’s performance fee went right to charity.) DJs Samantha Ronson and AM also spun for the crowd.
—Alesandra Dubin
Posted 08.30.06
Photos: Nadine Froger Photography
Related Stories
Lush Landscape Fills Draper-Style Emmy Ball
Sponsors Rule Republic for EW Emmy Party
Sunny Climes Inspire HBO’s Peachy Emmy Bash
Pre-Emmy Roundup Includes Swag in Spades
