Skirting danger, sipping cocktails at Women in Film’s pre-Oscar bash

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Peter and Tara Guber may have opened their Bel-Air manse to Women in Film for the group’s third annual pre-Oscar cocktail party Thursday evening, but that was definitely the Most Dangerous Man in America staring intently at his PDA in a corner of the producer’s screening room.

OK, so he didn’t look that scary.

For a guy who’s 78.

Unless you happen to be Richard Nixon.

After all, Daniel Ellsberg‘s expose of the Vietnam War was one of the major scandals of the late president’s scandal-ridden administration -- which is coming to a theater near you in the new Oscar-nominated doc, ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.’ Doc director Judith Ehrlich was there to toast her Oscar nod.

‘He’s still kinda dangerous,’ she mused, while the Gandhi Peace Award winner tapped away on his PDA. ‘I follow him around carrying his raincoat while he gets arrested.’

Ellsberg’s wife, Patricia Marx, beamed with pride. ‘He’s been arrested 79 or 80 times,’ she said.

Nominees like ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ costume designer Monique Prudhomme and ‘Precious’ producer Sarah Siegel-Magness wore gardenias that made them stand out from the crowd packing the Gubers’ cavernous living room.

Best actress nominee Gabourey Sidibe and stars Mena Suvari, Camilla Belle, Viola Davis and Angie Harmon had yet to arrive, but ‘Hart to Hart’s’ Stephanie Powers was rushing out to make a ‘West Side Story’ reunion -- dinner at Matteo’s Restaurant with Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and other dancers from the 1961 film choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Powers was one of them until she got the boot for being only 15.

‘He was a monster,’ she said of Robbins as she waited for her car, ‘but he was brilliant.’

-- Irene Lacher

A new Times database puts readers on the sidewalks of Hollywood, using more than a century of archives to track the lives of the stars, including current Oscar nominees Jeff Bridges, James Cameron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep.