From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
FOR THE MEN ATTENDING THE 55TH ANNUAL GOLDEN Globe Awards—a kind of Oscars on speed—at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills on Jan. 18, dressing was a breeze. "Except for the rental fee," said tuxedo-clad Ben Affleck, who won for best screenplay with Good Will Hunting cowriter and costar Matt Damon, "this is not unlike getting ready for the prom in high school."

Not so the women. They came not to win or lose but to dazzle—amid cutthroat competition. "Glamor is not easy!" said Selena star Jennifer Lopez, in a one-shoulder Valentino with a peekaboo slit on the bodice. "It takes hours to look like this. Don't let anyone tell you differently." Alfre Woodard, best actress in a TV movie or miniseries (HBO's Miss Evers'Boys), wouldn't dare. Before she donned her beaded, cut-velvet Badgley Mischka, said Woodard, "a manicurist, my assistant, my stylist, a hairdresser and my makeup person all descended on my house at once." But it was Chicago Hope's Christine Lahti, in a navy Hervé Léger dress, who suffered the most for fashion. "This dress holds me in just the right places," she said, "but forget about eating."

The prefestivities dinner, with filet mignon and a salad with caviar, wasn't the only thing Lahti missed. She was in the ladies' room when presenter Michael J. Fox announced that she had won best actress in a dramatic series. But the show's emotional high point came when Ving Rhames, weeping all the way to the podium to accept as best actor for the HBO movie Don King: Only in America, summoned fellow nominee Jack Lemmon from the audience and, claiming him the greater actor, handed Lemmon the award. "The whole ceremony was so full of genuine emotion," gushed David Hyde Pierce, whose Frasier lost to Ally McBeal as best comedy I series and who was crushed at not meeting Cecil B. DeMille honoree Shirley MacLaine. "But," he reasoned, "I'm sure we'll meet on another plane."

STEVEN COJOCARU, TOM CUNNEFF, JULIE JORDAN and MONICA RIZZO in Los Angeles