The hot ticket in Hollywood: An evening with Obama

Tom Hanks has bought a $2,300 ticket. So have Jennifer Aniston, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington.

Tom Hanks has bought a $2,300 ticket. So have Jennifer Aniston, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington. The studio bosses from Universal, Paramount, Disney and 20th Century Fox have all sent checks or faxed their credit card numbers, too.

Given the A-list stars, movie and music moguls, and top Hollywood dealmakers who have sent their RSVPs, one would think the man of honour at Tuesday night’s benefit at the Beverly Hilton would be getting a lifetime achievement award. But the toast of the evening is Barack Obama, the 45-year-old first-term Democratic senator from Illinois, in his first foray to Los Angeles as a declared presidential candidate.

It is hard to say whether the unusual heat behind the evening owes more to interest in Obama or to the three men who spearheaded the fundraiser: the DreamWorks co-founders David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.

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The haul is expected to be at least $1 million, making it the first major event here of the presidential campaign. Originally set for a restaurant with room for 400 people, the Obama event was moved over the weekend to a hotel ballroom with a capacity of 600.

The scale of the event amounts to a coup, political operatives in Los Angeles said, since even veteran senators seldom take more than $50,000 to $100,000 from fundraisers this early in the campaign cycle.

Despite that, aides to Obama, loath to let the spotlight on their candidate drift to his wealthy donors or newfound Hollywood ties, declined to discuss the event except to say it would be closed to the news media.

–DAVID M HALBFINGER