• March 10, 1997
• Vol. 47
• No. 9

Goldie Rush

At a Swank Manhattan Gala, Celebrities Toast the Achievements of the Ever-Bubbly Goldie Hawn

SURE, SHE CAN SING, dance, act and manage a career like some Hollywood sharpie. But what makes Goldie Hawn's peers sigh with envy is her gleaming yellow mane. "An unfair advantage," moans Glenn Close. "I've always been jealous of her hair."

In fact it was for her work in Shampoo—and much more recently The First Wives Club and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You—that Hawn, 51, was honored on Feb. 25 at the 12th annual American Museum of the Moving Image salute at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. "The thought of being a star was kinda scary," Hawn told some 600 guests, squinting at her cue cards and giggling because she'd forgotten her glasses. In fact, added Hawn, she once thought she would be a dancer "until I got older, then I would move back to Washington, D.C., and marry a Jewish dentist and start my family."

Those in attendance were glad she'd changed her plan. Carol Channing, who once appeared with Goldie in a Laugh-In number, said she saw Hawn's talent instantly: "I knew I was working with another George Burns." Meryl Streep, who costarred with Hawn in 1992's Death Becomes Her, praised the honoree for being "a good, strong, pure woman [and] a loyal friend." And Bette Midler, who costarred in First Wives, joked, "The picture we made had strong American values: divorce, alcoholism, plastic surgery and revenge. I don't believe we would have had a big hit if Goldie wasn't in it."

One thing Hawn wasn't in, at least entirely, was her dress. Upon arriving at the Waldorf, she let one shoulder of her slinky, chocolate-brown Vera Wang gown slip off, revealing sculpted muscles that remained in view all evening. "She looks better now than she did on Laugh-In," a female guest murmured. "Looks like gravity never hit her."

At Hawn's side were longtime beau Kurt Russell, 45, and her three children, Oliver, 20, Kate, 17, and Wyatt, 10. "She's very open. She really knows how to talk to us," said Kate, dressed in the black gown her mother wore to the 1974 Oscars. Oliver described his mother as "a lot like she is in her movies—like champagne, bubbly and floating."

Hawn marveled at her award but noted that showbiz has its ups and downs. "When it's a good time, I celebrate. When it's a bad time, I also celebrate," she says. "Know what I mean?" These days she's celebrating for the right reason.