I'm trying to find Janet de Cordova."

"She's seated in that comer between Tom Selleck and Johnny Carlson. At the table next to Jimmy Stewart's."

"I feel like I'm going to be trampled to death by movie stars."

"Nobody but Swifty could get all these people under one roof. Nobody."

When Mrs. William Backhouse Astor Jr. built her vast Fifth Avenue mansion in 1857, she had the ballroom designed to dance four hundred guests, and for her first ball she called on the social arbiter of that time, Ward McAllister, to draw up a list of New York's four hundred grandest people. There was much jockeying for McAllister's favor, as well as gnashing of teeth by those not invited, and from then on society itself became known as the Four Hundred.

In recent years, in Hollywood of all places, an unlikely successor to Ward McAllister has emerged in the person of Irving Paul Lazar, the diminutive septuagenarian agent, known far and wide as Swifty. The Academy Awards party he and his wife, Mary, have hosted for twenty-five years has become the place to be, and his guest list, as carefully honed as Ward McAllister's, varies each year as people gain or lose prominence. On Lazar's list, success has replaced McAllister's criterion of pedigree. "Are you going to Swifty's?" people in Hollywood ask weeks in advance. Immense pressure is brought to bear on both Lazars by people who have not been invited, but Swifty has not got to the top of the heap in Hollywood and remained there for almost four decades by being a softy. "NO!" is the answer people say he gives. Or, if the person calling, or being called about, interests him, the answer is "Come after dinner." Sometimes he even qualifies that by adding, "Late!"

Although Spago, the trendy West Hollywood restaurant where the party has been given for the last two years, is smaller than Mrs. Astor's ballroom, nearly the same number of people crossed its threshold during the three waves of this year's nine-hour party. In the first wave were 190 members of the Hollywood establishment and a few billionaires. In the after-dinner crowd were people who had attended the ceremony but bypassed the Academy's Governors Ball. In the third wave came those who had also gone to the ball. All evening Swifty moved through the rooms like a ringmaster, directing traffic, telling people to get back in their seats.

"I can't see anything," complained one man. "I mean, it's hard to say to Raquel Welch, 'Hey, Raquel, you're blocking the TV.' " "I'd like to be a fly on that table where Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, Kathleen Turner, and Sally Field have their heads together," said his friend.

Audrey Hepburn, who had presented an Oscar, arrived late to a standing ovation.

"Audrey!" cried Elizabeth Taylor.

"Elizabeth!" cried Audrey Hepburn, leaning over a table to kiss her.

"Ouch! You stepped on my toe!" yelped Elizabeth Taylor to a passerby.

"Oh, God, William Hurt brought the whole Spider Woman crowd with him," said Mary Lazar.

"Where are Jack and Anjelica?"

"They had to go to that damn ball."