Dentist to the stars Dr. Jay Grossman attended A Smile for Every Child, a Sept. 10 gala for his nonprofit Homeless Not Toothless. The local organization has brought together nearly three-dozen Los Angeles-area dental offices to provide free care to the homeless and underserved.
Democrats for Israel (DFI) gathered at a private Beverlywood home on Sept. 13 for its annual Garden Party fundraiser.
Rob Kutner is a veteran comedy writer for “The Daily Show” and author of the tongue-in-cheek “Apocalypse How” (Running Press, 2008). Having just returned to Los Angeles to work for “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien,” he talks about being an observant Jew in Hollywood, why George W. Bush is more fun to write about than President Obama and why he doesn’t believe you ever really “make it” in Hollywood.
Howie Mandel, host of “Deal or No Deal,” paid a visit to the Chabad Drug Treatment Center in Los Angeles, where director Kevin Bright, co-creator of “Friends,” filmed a documentary of his visit. The short segment, which includes Mandel putting on tefillin with Rabbi Chaim Cunin, will air during the upcoming 29th annual Chabad “To Life” Telethon. The telethon airs Sept. 13.
J.J. Abrams is responsible for some of the most beloved entertainment of the past two decades. He is the writer/creator of the television dramas “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and “Fringe.”
Among Hollywood’s most sought-after publicists, Howard Bragman, 53, has a celebrity clientele that includes Stevie Wonder, Ricki Lake, Mischa Barton and Ed McMahon. In 1989, he founded Bragman Nyman Cafarelli Public Relations and Marketing (BNC), which became one of the premier PR firms in the country before it was sold in 2001. In 2005, he founded Fifteen Minutes, his own boutique agency, where he specializes in entertainment, crisis management and the gay/lesbian market.
On a rainy December morning at Marta Kauffman’s office at Warner Bros. Studios, the producer’s assistant brought in some good news:
For every 100,000 babies born, 6,500 mothers die in the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan due to unavailable or inadequate medical care. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, violent conflicts over control of its rich mineral deposits have killed more people than the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur combined.
Pressman was a founding father of Camp Ramah in California, University of Judaism (now American Jewish University), Brandeis-Bardin Institute and Los Angeles Hebrew High School, among other projects
