By Todd Stone
Graceful and glamorous, Debbie Dangerfield, wearing a form-fitting bright red gown, drifted from one table to the next in a church school auditorium-turned-ballroom Sunday night.
This was her annual Oscars party and she regaled her guests as they began to take their seats. The tradition started 20 years ago when she invited a small group of friends to watch the awards ceremony in her Clinton Hill apartment.
Realizing that her apartment could no longer accommodate all of her friends and neighbors, in 2008, Debbie held the party at Steiner Studios, a Hollywood-scale production facility in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
This year, like last year, Debbie, 58, transformed her church auditorium into a lavish banquet hall.
By the time her guests started eating dinner, Debbie was wearing a new dress. She didn’t say a word about it, but everyone noticed.
“Debbie knows everyone in the neighborhood and everyone loves her,”said Ted Lewin, a neighbor. “And I come every year because I can’t wait to see the dress she’s wearing.”
Lewin and his wife, Betsy, were among the most veteran neighbors at the party. They are well-known illustrators of children’s books who settled in the area in the 1950s after attending the nearby Pratt Institute together. Among the crowd of about 100 were other prominent members of the Clinton Hill community, including DK Holland, who runs a neighborhood publication called The Hill, and Jim Morehand, a masseuse, who is known in the community for creating a group called Parlor Jazz, where neighbors host professional jazz musicians in their homes. “I’ve never been much of an Oscars fan,” Morehand said. “I came to this party to see friends and neighbors and to support Debbie.”
As the guests arrived, they were interviewed on a red carpet by the gregarious Ron Balaguer, a celebrity impersonator, dressed as a woman, who had a small role in “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.” “I’m trying to be impartial, I’m really trying,” Balaguer said when asked what movie he was hoping would win for Best Picture. When Mo’Nique was announced the winner for Best Supporting Actress in “Precious,” the crowd of mostly African Americans cheered and many rose from their seats as Balaguer announced into a microphone, “Let’s all stand for Monique.”
Debbie seldom sat down throughout the evening; she was too busy making sure that her guests were enjoying their food – from a bountiful buffet of lobster and lamb, salad and cous cous. Guests paid $120 per person to be there, yet it felt like no money was exchanged. The professionally-trained chef was a friend of Debbie’s daughter from the neighborhood and most of the servers and coat check people were also Debbie’s friends from the community.
At one of the tables toward the back of the room, Raymond Glover told the few others at his table, “I’ve never had lobster before. I don’t know how you eat it.” Glover said he met Debbie when he approached her one day while she was gardening in front of her home. “I was looking for work and asked if she could help me,” Glover said. “She gave me a number and I thought she was just trying to get rid of me, but it was her real number. She found me work, and she’s gotten me work for other people. She and her husband, they’ve helped me lot.”
Debbie’s husband, Felipe Ortiz, said he contributes behind the scenes, helping set up the two large TVs and the projector that showed the Oscars on a large wall at the far end of the room. Somewhere between 10 and 10:30, the ubiquitous Debbie slipped away again, because at 10:31 she was wearing yet a different gown.
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