Turner takes the award and runs

GOOD MORNING: Here's a good lesson for charities bestowing honors on a celeb at fundraisers: don't give the award to the honoree until your show is complete. Monday night at the Plaza in N.Y., the Friars Foundation chose to give Ted Turner its Friars' Foundation Applause Award at the start of the evening. Then came the dinner/dancing and skedded to follow was a show in tribute to Turner, headed by Alan King. But Turner, wife Jane Fonda and the rest of their table of 10 decided to leave after the dinner and before the show. Turner told the Friars they were tired and were going home. (He had gotten another black-tie dinner-award only last Wednesday from the American Museum of the Moving Image). Friars Foundation president Jean Pierre Trebot and the rest of the packed ballroom were dumbfounded at Turner's departure. "We couldn't figure it out," he told me. Alan King said it was his first appearance as the Friars' new abbot. "I volunteered to emcee the dinner since it was not to be a roast," he said. "I spent a couple of weeks with my writers." So what did King do? He sat down at the (empty Turner) front row table and said, "This was not supposed to be a roast, but it is now!" And proceeded to do his entire (new) act from the Turner table. King said he felt badly for the performers who followed (also working gratis). They included Julie Budd, Joy Behar, Jay Black & the Americans and the Bayside Boys. Despite the disappointment, the evening raised $200,000 for performing arts charities. The ever-busy King is prepping a feature based on the famous Walter Winchell-Barry Gray feud. Charles Evans is partnered with King on this venture. And Alan's working on a TV series with comic Jon Stewart. The Friars had their problems earlier this year, you recall, when Kelsey Grammer had to bow out of the roast being prepped for him. It is now definitely set for Nov. 15 at the N.Y. Hilton with David Hyde-Pierce, Grammer's TV brother, as m.c. Trebot told me Grammer is looking forward to the event. So are the Friars again.

HERE COME THE PRESIDENTS of agencies, studios, networks, etc.: Tuesday, six CAA mailroom trainees were elevated to full agentry as announced by president Richard Lovett (himself a mailroom alumnus), co-chairman Jack Rapke, Rick Nicita and Lee Gabler. The names to watch in the future: Matt DelPiano, Kim Hodgert, Mara Jacobs, Michael Nilon, Mark Ross and Jonathan Ruiz. CAA's Martin Baum wrapped a rich deal for Frank P. Rosenberg ("One-Eyed Jacks," "Madigan," etc.) to exec produce "The Doctor's Wife" for Mike Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures. The film, based on the erotic love story by Brian Moore, goes next spring in Belfast, Paris and the south of France. ... Maybe "My Fellow Americans" director Peter Segal should have directed Bob Dole's campaign. Segal's pic for WB, in which Jack Lemmon and Jim Garner play two ex-Presidents, tested through the roof at Mann's 9 Thousand Oaks, with test reactions topping both "Grumpy Old Men" pics. ... Ryan O'Neal plays producer James Edmonds, who takes advantage of the director (played by Eric Idle) in "An Alan Smithee Film." Arthur Hiller, who helms, realizes the movie is "risky": the filmmakers have to avoid being too "in" for the general public. ... Cloris Leachman, au naturel (with fancy body paint) on the cover of Alternative Medicine Digest, told me, "I used to be compared to Mary Tyler Moore -- now it's Demi Moore!" Asked howcum she did the eye-catcher, Cloris said, "They asked me to do the cover. And I was lying in bed thinking, 'Who would buy a magazine with the picture of a 70-year-old lady on the cover?' I wouldn't buy it." So she cooked up the idea of her body covered with (painted) fruits and vegetables. It's done very tastily (sorry). We can see and hear a clothed Cloris starting Nov. 17 in "Show Boat" at the Music Center. ... Not to be outstripped, it's only fair to note "The Playmate Book," with 514 famed centerfolds starting with 1953, takes off at the Mansion Nov. 19, when many of the centerfolds reconvene. They include Kimberly Conrad-Hefner (1980s). Gretchen Edgren authored the book -- of course there is also text.

MOREY AMSTERDAM RECEIVED a standing ovation from the SRO group of family and friends attending his funeral at the University Synagogue in Brentwood, Monday. How about this cast of pals who stood at the pulpit to tell (warm) jokes about the man who unselfishly gave each of them so many jokes over so many years: Carl Reiner, Red Buttons, Jack Carter, Jan Murray, Steve Allen, Sid Caesar, Norm Crosby, John Rich, Rose Marie and Milton Berle, who called Amsterdam "a joke machine and an angel." A.C. Lyles, longtime friend of Amsterdam's, gave the eulogy; noting the cast of performers, he said, "Too bad this wasn't a fundraiser for the synagogue." Berle appointed Lyles "an honorary Jew and gave him "5,000 years of retroactive persecution." Milton had returned from Gotham, where he was honored by the N.Y. chapter of the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences with their Lifetime Achievement Award at a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf.