What’s cooking on Wisteria Lane? Dana Delany and friends rally behind Child Hunger Ends Here campaign

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Something was amiss on Wisteria Lane.

‘It’s odd, because usually when I’m in this house, there’s some dark secret,’ mused ‘Desperate Housewives’ star Dana Delany.

On Wednesday morning, the Universal Studios suburbia set was the site of anything but -- Delany and other celeb supporters of Feeding America were there to publicize the new national Child Hunger Ends Here Neighborhood Rally campaign sponsored by ConAgra Foods. As David Arquette and Melissa Rivers packed cans of pasta and other non-perishables into bags destined for area food banks, Delany talked about her cause: ‘We’re here to educate the rest of the country that there’s a problem, which is shocking to me, that one in four kids goes hungry.

‘Someone from Con Agra called me directly because they know I’m cause-oriented, and when I heard the statistics, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be glad to help.’ And this is a natural tie-in, to have a neighborhood like this -- what we’re trying to do is get people all over the country to have neighborhood events that will raise money for food banks in their own community.’

Arquette, who is Feeding America’s Entertainment Council chairman, knows his own neighborhood food bank well. For the last year and a half, he has spent two days a week helping out at ...

... St. Joseph’s Center in Venice when he isn’t working. ‘When you’re there, you see the people Feeding America is helping,’ he said. ‘You see it’s working Americans, it’s seniors living on a fixed income, it’s families. You see kids all the time. It’s touching. I have [daughter] Coco come down when she’s not in school, and she helps at the pantry. It teaches her that charity is important.’

Arquette and wife Courtney Cox have also worked on Feeding America’s Stamp Out Hunger campaign, spreading the word that on May 8, postal workers will pick up nonperishable goods left at mailboxes and take them to food banks.

Outside, Kathy Ireland was unloading boxes of books, skin-care products, clothes and candles for an online celebrity auction on Jane Kaczmarek’s Clothes Off Our Back website, benefiting Feeding America.

‘I was on the phone with Elizabeth Taylor last night, and she’s sending over a whole batch of [her new fragrance], Violet Eyes,’ Ireland said. ‘She’s doing great. She’s planning a trip to Europe right now, to Buckingham Palace with her kids. They’re honoring her late great love, Richard Burton.’

As Andrea Bowen, Brenda Strong and Beau Mirchoff of ‘Desperate Housewives’ packed food and posed for pictures alongside Stephanie Pratt and other star supporters, Delany, who has no kids, pondered her attraction to the mission.

‘I feel like my causes are my children,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about why I do so much, and I realized that it’s my way of being maternal.’

-- Irene Lacher

Upper photo: David Arquette and Dana Delany kick off the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign on the Wisteria Lane set. Credit: Susan Goldman

Lower photo: The ‘Desperate Housewives’ crowd (from left, Delany, Brenda Strong, Beau Mirchoff and Andrea Bowen) pack bags destined for food banks. Credit: Susan Goldman

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