A LITTLE NIGHT MAGIC

Some arrived clutching their little gold men, others swooned over the big kind (Denzel! Sidney! Mel!), some (Oprah and Angela) rose to their feet for Halle Berry's historic speech, but all of V.F.'s Oscar-night revelers made its ninth annual party the place to star and be starry-eyed. Photographs by Jonathan Becker. Alan Berliner. Larry Fink. Patrick McMullan. Richard Young

OSCAR NIGHT

Vanity Fair's ninth annual Oscar party at Mortons outdid all the previous gala bashes and then some. At the seated dinner in a white tent, 145 guests, including George Lucas, Diane Sawyer, Jay Leno, Julian Schnabel, Liz Smith, Diana Ross, Salman Rushdie, Annette Bening, Warren Beatty, Diane Von Furstenberg, Barry Diller, and Paul Allen, watched the Academy Awards ceremony on six eightby-six-toot Plexiglas screens. Between the entrée and the cheesecake parlait, Elvis Costello got to meet one at his idols, Artie Shaw. As the Oscar for best actress went to an African-American for the first time, Oprah Vlfinlrey and Angela Bassett stood up at their tables for the duration of Halle Berry's emotional acceptance speech. After presenting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to director Arthur Hiller, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal dashed to Mortons and reunited with Love Story's producer and Ali's ex, Robert Evans. After dinner, the tables and Kartell Maui chairs were whisked away to make room for a parade at stars, directors, and producers coming from the new Kodak Theatre. As British D.J. Steve Lewis rewed up the wheels of steel, award winners including Denzel Washington, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Jim Broadbent, Sidney Poitier, Catherine Martin, Randy Newman, and Jennifer Connelly began to arrive, most of them still holding their gold statuettes. Within an hour it seemed that all of the industry's beautiful people were in one enclosed space-Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lopez, Josh Hartnett, Renée Zellweger, Ridley Scott, Cameron Diaz, Mel Gibson, Robert Altman, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe, Maggie Smith, Baz Luhrmann, Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke. They quickly mingled with moguls Rupert Murdoch, Ron Perelman, and Sumner Redstone; musicians Beck, Paul McCartney, Sting, and Janet Jackson; models Helena Christensen, Heidi Klum, and Molly Sims; and lashionistas Tom Ford, Donna Karan, Hedi Slimane, and Donatello Versoce. It was nonstop magic.

KRISTA SMITH