It wasn't the moguls or reigning superstars who showed up at a hastily-organized fundraiser for the beleaguered Motion Picture and Television Fund Home.
Those guys seem to have run for the hills.
Instead it was a modest gathering of actors including Renee Taylor and Shirley Jones, Elliott Gould and Alan Rosenberg, who joined forces to raise money for the remaining residents at the soon-to-be-shuttered hospital and long-term care facility.
“It’s shameful that we’re here to bail out the hospital that serves this prosperous industry," said Marty Ingels, Jones's husband (both pictured). "Where are the Steven Spielbergs and Angelina Jolies?”
Where indeed?
There’s an old Stanislavski acting exercise that instructs students to stand in a corner and not think about a white bear. Few attending Saturday’s auction benefiting the remaining 60 residents of the Motion Picture Home, however, seemed able to ignore the obvious predicament facing those elderly residents who find themselves in a dire corner.
Unless the Motion Picture and Television Fund that operates the home can be persuaded or forced into changing its mind, the senior citizens who spent their lives working for Hollywood will soon be moving to outside nursing homes.
Thrown together in little more than two weeks time, the gathering at Taylor and Joe Bologna’s Beverly Hills home clocked 250 RSVPs. Attendees paid a $25 minimum admission to a table of volunteers who included former Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg and current first vice president Anne-Marie Johnson.
“This is a minor effort,” Taylor (pictured above with Bologna) told TheWrap. “It’s about caring for one another and showing that this can be done. We just want to make them comfortable.”
Elliott Gould (pictured), however, seemed to be thinking of the white bear responsible for the 
Motion Picture Home’s closure.
“Morally and ethically,” said Gould, “the people who are [at the Motion Picture Home] must not be sacrificed because of mismanagement.”
Other attendees included Dick Van Patten, Carol Connors, France Nuyen.
Hundreds of items crammed Taylor and Bologna’s house, and included scripts, books and posters signed by Stanley Kramer, Diane Ladd, Hugh Hefner, David Hockney, Carrie Fisher and others, as well as gowns, photographs and a director’s chair once used by Bill Clinton – and which came with a pre-intern photograph of Monica Lewinsky. Jayne Meadows also donated a collection of shoes.
Bidding got off to a slow start, with two paintings by comedian Phyllis Diller fetching $500 apiece – one-quarter of what the artist said was their appraised value. But the auction then picked up steam as a bidding war drove up the price of an ornamental bottle prop from “I Dream of Jeannie,” donated by Barbara Eden, to $1,600.
While Taylor and her friends tried to downplay the heated politics surrounding accusations and denials that the MPTF is essentially evicting its most vulnerable residents, they occasionally bubbled to the surface.
“Spielberg and them raised $100 million for Israel like it was nothing,” Taylor addressed the bidders before the
