V.F. Diary

DEBORAH MITCHELL

Whitney's Ross and the Boss; Saegram groom jumps the broom; Mort Zucks up to Castro

Clarissa Alcock's wedding to Seagram's president and C.O.O. Edgar Bronfman Jr. gave new meaning to the term bridal party. Only 100 of the 1,000 guests who assembled in Caracas, Venezuela, to witness the marriage were invited by the groom. Among the select group were Bronfman chums Barry Diller and Michael and Diandra Douglas. The ceremony took place at the home of Alcock's grandmother, in a large garden lit with candles. Eighteen children dressed in mauve silk with ecru lace trim served as the bridal attendants; the groom's son and two daughters were also in the wedding party. Afterward, a sit-down dinner for the massive crowd was served under a tent. Prenuptial festivities included flights to Los Roques, a string of islands off the coast of Venezuela with exquisite coral reefs, and, later, a journey to Canaima to see Angel Falls.

ROSS AND THE BOSS

Whitney Museum director David Ross's first job was curating a Yoko Ono show at Syracuse's Everson Museum in 1971, and the two have remained friends ever since. Ross sat at Ono's table at the latest Rock V Roll Hall of Fame dinner. Bruce Springsteen was nearby, and Ross asked the Boss if his Marsden Hartley painting survived the earthquake. (It did.) Ross's rock 'n' roll connections are bringing some new blood to the Whitney: Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, is on a museum committee, and David Harleston, the president of Def Jam records, became a Whitney trustee last year. On May 9, the Whitney honors Sony's Michael Schulhof.

BARGAIN HOGE?

Sharon King Hoge, the wife of Foreign Affairs editor Janies Hoge, has camped out on a desert island and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, but those adventures pale when compared with her regular busman's holiday. Three or four times a year, Hoge ventures to the Port Authority to catch the $27 midnight bus to Boston. After the five A.M. arrival, she goes to a friend's home for a quick nap, does an errand or two, then hits Filene's Basement. Hoge, who used to host a consumer-affairs program on Boston TV, explains that she travels to Boston to see optometrist Donald Korb, "the world's best eye doctor," and her hairdresser. "But you have to wait and wait and wait, unless you get there first thing in the morning," she says, adding that the airline shuttles don't run quite early enough for her. Does Manhattan's new Filene's measure up to the original? "There will never be a Filene's as good as the one in Boston," Hoge insists. "That's like saying will there ever be another Judy Garland?"

AND. ..

.. . Mort Zuckerman has just returned from Havana, where he stayed in one of the six beautiful bungalows Fidel Castro keeps for visiting dignitaries. Zuckerman had an off-the-record visit with the bearded leader. Others who have been guests at the Comandante's complex include Gregory Peck, Geraldine Chaplin, Harry Belafonte, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. . . . Director Spike Lee is scouting locations in Brooklyn for the movie version of Clockers,Richard Price's 1992 novel set in Jersey City. Lee has just handed in his rewrite of Price's screenplay to the producers, who include Martin Scorsese and Jon Kilik. Filming is scheduled to start on July 8.

. . . Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione began his career as an artist doing caricatures in the cafes of Cannes. He could also read palms in five languages, "so one way or another I'd get 1,000 francs out of them," Guccione remembers with a laugh. The artist (whose latest work goes on view this month at Ohio's Butler Institute) met author Tom Wolfe (whose next novel is set in the art world) when the New York Academy of Art unveiled its new school in Tribeca.