Five Women at a Certain Stage in Their Careers

As showbiz awards ceremonies go, this one was different: No red carpet. No television cameras. No thanking of agents and money managers in neat sound bites. No attitude.

Sure, last night's Legacies of Women in the Performing Arts fete had your requisite celebrity honorees, star-dusted souls of stage and screens both big and small: actress-singer Diahann Carroll, comic-actress Jane Curtin, actress Loretta Swit, actress-singer Della Reese and director Julie Taymor. But this was an event that was about introspection and inspiration, that took the time to look back so that others can look forward.

The awards, presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in celebration of its 20th anniversary, took the long view, honoring careers rather than breakthrough roles, recognizing the work of women who, as Reese put it, when encountering doors of opportunity slammed in their faces, found a way to wiggle a foot through a crack, then shove the door wide open.

"I was the token Afro-American for a long time," Reese said. "I had the privilege of opening the door so the rest of my people could get in. . . . There was no doubt in my mind I would make it, since I was 7. Talent will not be denied. It will not be denied."

And so, last night gave women of a certain maturity and accomplishments a chance to talk about how they did it, via a Q&A format. (Onetime WJLA anchor and producer Kathleen Matthews moderated.)

After the audience of about 300 people, who paid up to $250 each to attend, watched a montage of clips from "Saturday Night Live," "Kate & Allie" and "3rd Rock From the Sun," Curtin talked about buzzing on adrenaline during late nights in the earliest days of "SNL," and the excitement of doing comedy that was bitingly funny and topical in the "volatile" '70s.

"Political satire was bubbling everywhere," Curtin said. "Everyone was walking around with their nerve endings exposed."

Emmy Award winner Swit, all flowing hair and fluffy skirt, waxed on perhaps a bit too long about her days on the set of "M*A*S*H," starring alongside Alan Alda as Maj. Margaret Houlihan.

Carroll, looking elegantly frozen in time, talked about the days of being the token with a capital T, the first black woman to star in her own TV show -- "Julia," back in 1968 -- and how exhausted she was from it all.

And how, in 2007, "when I'm 104 years old," she got a call from "Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes asking her to guest-star. "I'd love you to be in my show," Rhimes told her, as Carroll desperately racked her brain trying to figure out what show that was. And later, how thrilled she was, watching Rhimes, an African American, boss everyone around on the set of the show she created.

"When I started," Carroll said, "there could never be a Shonda Rhimes."

" Never," Reese cut in.

They talked about careers and opening doors and being shut out of what Taymor called "the men's club." But then, too, they talked of the importance of life offstage, of the realities of mixing motherhood and work.

Carroll confessed that as a child her daughter hated for her to leave for work, but that she worked so that her daughter, now a filmmaker, would have it a little easier. "Now that she's an old broad, she's forgiven me," Carroll said with a laugh.

Curtin described parking her baby daughter on the set of "Kate & Allie," and how hard it is to be a female comic trying to keep up with male comics in comedy clubs. "A lot of women feel the need to compete on that level," she said. "You can't. It's all testosterone and angry and somebody did them wrong."

Taymor, who at 54 is the youngest of the bunch, was celebrating on two fronts: Her new film, "Across the Universe," starring Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood against a Beatles soundtrack, opened yesterday in limited release. And, said Taymor, whose film "Frida" garnered six Academy Award nominations, she was celebrating that "as a woman artist, I'm being honored with these great ladies."