A Tasty Dish

Dolly Parton's gown was accessorized by her Honors medal Saturday night. "I want to look like Frederick's of Dollywood," said the country singer. (By Rich Lipski -- The Washington Post)

Robinson's hair curls around his face like a corona, and his turquoise eyes are as mesmerizing as his voice. "In one word," he said, "this is awesome." Later in the evening he was lauded by Richardson: "When Smokey sang, people got together. Babies were made." Or, as Motown Records founder Berry Gordy puts it, "He has touched people in places they had never been touched before."

Spielberg, describing himself as "ebullient," said, "When I got the official letter, it came to my office. I had them read it to me three times to make sure there wasn't a typo. So few filmmakers have been honored."

The drinks were served in big goblets, like fishbowls on skinny stems, and Webber was having trouble with his, getting jostled by the throngs. "It's great to have an American award like this," he said, then disappeared into the jostlers.

Right behind him, Mehta -- this year's other non-American honoree (he was born in Mumbai and is, he said, "still Indian") -- was reaching out as his dear friend Elaine Wolfensohn walked past and touched her sumptuous stole.

"This is from my country!" he exulted, rubbing the fabric lightly between his fingers. "Wow! Wow! Wow! It's super pashmina." He invited us to touch it, too -- but "without the pen," he admonished sternly. The shawl was softer than a puppy's ear, and as for the embroidery: "Just look at this work!" he said. "People go blind doing this."

"You have a good eye," Wolfensohn said and stroked Mehta's cheek. Her husband, Jim Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, would be doing Mehta's toast later in the evening.

At the far end of the room, Liam Neeson asked a waiter to bring him a glass of pinot noir. A tall and peevish presence, dressed like a funeral director, he was telling us he couldn't talk about Spielberg. Just listen to the four-minute speech I'll be giving tomorrow, he said. (It is a speech, by the way, that in rehearsal focused a lot on Neeson. Just saying.)

We asked about "Schindler's List." Is there really anything about Spielberg that he hasn't already written into a short speech?

"Schindler's List," Neeson said, almost with a sneer, "is not an anecdotal movie. It's really not. But we were a band of brothers." And we were dismissed.

Across the room, Tom Hanks was talking opera with Verdi baritone Sherrill Milnes -- comparing Shakespeare's "Othello" with Verdi's "Otello" -- and exchanging greetings with Ted Kennedy -- "We're going to be sitting at the same table," Hanks told the senator -- then took a moment to describe Spielberg as ("and I mean this in the best of all possible ways") "a machine. . . . He's never doing anything but movies. That's the way his DNA was created."

By 11 p.m., after the honorees received their medals, it was time to take the "class picture" (professional photographer unhappy that everyone in the room was snapping, too, messing up his flash) and get into the limos.

Perhaps the meaning of the whole night -- the whole weekend, and of the arts themselves -- was best summed up by Alison Krauss, who toasted Parton and made her cry when she said: "Dolly, you make me want to be somebody."

Staff writer Anita Huslin contributed to this report.