Heart Foundation Gala

Music filled the air at the Heart Foundation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Gala in June, as the foundation honored Motown founder Berry Gordy with the Steven S. Cohen Humanitarian Award. Held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the party drew plenty of famous faces and voices, all in the support of the research of Dr. P. K. Shah, the director of the Division of Cardiology & the Atherosclerosis Research Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Honorary Dinner Chairs included Sidney Poitier, Norman Brokaw, and Quincy Jones; Dinner Chairs were Doug Morris, Clarence Avant, Mary Hart, and Burt Sugarman. Hart, of “Entertainment Tonight” fame, emceed the evening and offered up some of Gordy’s favorite singers, including Louis Price, Thelma Houston, Teena Marie, and “American Idol’s” Michael Johns; every one of them wowed the receptive crowd, and most reminded them of a time when the Motown Sound was the king of the charts. Grammy winner David Foster served as Musical Director along with longtime Motown producer Suzanne de Passe. The audience was filled with familiar faces, like Billy Dee Williams, Jimmy Jean-Louis of “Heroes” fame, Marilyn McCoo, Debbie Allen and husband Norm Nixon, philanthropist Barbara Davis, and Gordy’s daughter Hazel and her children with Motown’s Jackson 5 star Jermaine Jackson – Jermaine, Jr., Autumn, and Jaimy.