Betty White holds court at Elton John’s Oscar viewing party

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What better way for Betty White to celebrate the culmination of her epic year than with a seat next to Sir Elton John at his annual Academy Awards viewing party?

On Sunday, the onetime ‘Golden Girls’ actress cozied right up next to the likes of Jamie Foxx, Victoria Beckham and Heidi Klum for a five-course meal and charity auction at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood to benefit the Elton John Aids Foundation.

White confirmed to People magazine that she would indeed appear on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ which she first told The Ministry was in the hands of producer Lorne Michaels.

After the auction was a performance by the legendary Grace Jones, banging cymbals in a gold sheath, while Nicole Richie and Miley Cyrus watched on hand-in-hand. Richie’s main squeeze, Joel Madden, finally arrived from the Kodak Theatre, as did Jennifer Lopez, to catch some last-minute elbow rubbing with the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Johnny Weir.

Weir changed from his black tux into a crushed-velvet smoking jacket.

‘I was matching too many people,’ he told me.

Also at Elton John’s party: Chace Crawford, JC Chasez and Olympian and ‘Dancing With the Stars’ hunk Apolo Anton Ohno.

-- Matt Donnelly

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.

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