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Tenth Annual Proudly Pro-Life Dinner to Honor Actors in New York, New York

By Holly Miller

National Right to Life will celebrate the 10th annual Proudly Pro-Life Dinner by honoring pro-life celebrities April 29, 2003, at the Waldorf-Astoria's Grand Ballroom. Joining our distinguished honorees from years past as recipients of the Proudly Pro-Life Award will be entertainers Ben Stein, Margaret Colin, and Jennifer O'Neill. The honorary committee will be chaired by two more distinguished stage and screen actresses, Patricia Neal and Celeste Holm.

Honorees have provided exceptional and selfless service to the pro-life cause, and the commitment to the unborn of this year's honorees is all the more laudable because they have been outspoken in a place where their views are not welcome: Hollywood.

Monsignor James P. Lisante will be the Master of Ceremonies this year since Ben Stein, who traditionally emcees, is being honored for his commitment to protecting the unborn.

Stein is probably the most outspoken pro-life figure in Hollywood, and is well known for his character roles in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a long-running part in the series The Wonder Years, and over two dozen movies and dozens of television shows and commercials. Stein also hosted Comedy Central's Emmy Award-winning comedy quiz show, Win Ben Stein's Money, and is currently a regular judge on the new Star Search.

Stein is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School, where he studied constitutional law under Robert Bork. He served as an economist for the Department of Commerce, a trial lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, a speech writer for two presidents, and a university professor.

He is the author of sixteen books, seven novels, and nine nonfiction books. His most recent book is the bestselling humor self-help book, How To Ruin Your Life. He is also regular diarist for The American Spectator and writes frequently on right-to-life issues in every forum possible.

Born and raised in New York, Margaret Colin has an impressive history of roles in television, Off-Broadway theater, feature and independent films, and Broadway theater. She is best known for her co-starring roles in the feature films Independence Day with Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum, and The Devil's Own, opposite Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt. She was also in Three Men and a Baby with Tom Selleck and one of the dinner's Honorary Chairwomen, Celeste Holm.

On stage, Colin earned the 1998 Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut for her Broadway performance in Jackie: An American Life. Her

Off-Broadway work includes Aristocrats, for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and Sight Unseen.

Colin has appeared in several television series, including Chicago Hope, Foley Square, Madigan Men, and Now and Again. She also played the role of a pro-life woman in Swing Vote, the critically acclaimed made-for-TV movie about abortion.

She has been an outspoken right-to-life advocate and has also testified before Congress in favor of banning human cloning.

Jennifer O'Neill is an acclaimed actress, film and television star, director, spokeswoman, author, and artist. She became a household name with her starring role in the film Summer of '42 as well as being spokesperson for Cover Girl cosmetics. She has written her autobiography Surviving Myself followed by her newly released book From Fallen to Forgiven and CD, Love Never Fails. With more than 30 feature films, numerous television movies, three series to her credit, and a host of projects in development, she continues to be active in the entertainment industry.

O'Neill entered international modeling at age 15 and magazine covers quickly led to other goals, including acting. She was soon cast to star opposite John Wayne in Rio Lobo. Summer of '42 skyrocketed O'Neill to international stardom and has become a classic. Other film credits include The Innocent, The Carey Treatment with James Coburn, Caravans with Anthony Quinn, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud with Michael Sarrazin, A Force of One with Chuck Norris, Lady Ice with Robert Duvall and Donald Sutherland, and the David Cronenberg blockbuster Scanners.

On television, O'Neill has starred in ABC's Movie of the Week Love's Savage Fury, The Other Victim costarring William Devane for CBS, and her own CBS series Cover-Up, among other projects and specials. She was a recent guest on The View and Inside Edition in her capacity as national spokeswoman for "Silent No More," an advocacy organization for post-abortive women.

Previous Proudly Pro-Life Award honorees include Mother Teresa, Cardinal O'Connor, Judge Robert Bork, Fr. Frank Pavone, Ronald Reagan, Dr. James Dobson, and Congressmen Henry Hyde (R-IL) and Christopher Smith (R-NJ), to name only a few.

Entertainer Pat Boone served as Honorary Chairman of last year's dinner and this year's Honorary Chairwomen have also had spectacular careers.

A Knoxville, Tennessee, native, Patricia Neal's decorated stage and film career began with Another Part of the Forest, for which she received several awards, among them the Tony and the Drama Critics Award for Best New Actress. Her triumphant stage success in 1946 led to many offers from Hollywood where Neal signed with Warner Brothers and proceeded to make 13 movies in the next four years, including John Loves Mary and The Hasty Heart with Ronald Reagan, The Fountainhead and Bright Leaf with Gary Cooper, Diplomatic Courier with Tyrone Powers, and Operation Pacific with John Wayne.

While continuing to appear in films, both in Hollywood and England, she returned intermittently to the stage, where she performed in The Children's Hour, A Room Full of Roses, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Miracle Worker.

Neal persevered through personal tragedies and continued her acting career. She won an Oscar as Best Actress in 1964 for her performance with Paul Newman in Hud, and made In Harm's Way with John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, and Larry Hagman.

At the peak of her success, when she had started work with director John Ford, Anne Bancroft, and Eddie Albert on MGM's Seven Women, tragedy struck again. On February 17, 1965, she suffered a series of massive strokes. After surgery, she was unconscious for three weeks, waking completely paralyzed on the right side and unable to speak. Her recovery is an epic in the annuals of stroke rehabilitation.

Neal returned to her career and received an Academy Award nomination for The Subject Was Roses with Martin Sheen. Distinguished television roles including The Homecoming, The Lou Gehrig Story, and All's Quiet on the Western Front garnered three Emmy nominations.

In 1999 she starred with Glenn Close in Cookie's Fortune.

Her autobiography, As I Am, was published in 1988 by Simon & Schuster and has been reprinted all over the world.

Celeste Holm made a name for herself on Broadway in comedies and musicals, including the debut of Oklahoma! before signing a long-term contract with 20th Century-Fox under whose auspices she made the first nine films of her six-decade Hollywood career. Holm gave consistently lauded performances in a wide range of films, including several top-notch dramas, comedies and musicals, earning Oscar nominations for her roles in Come to the Stable with Loretta Young and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve. She won the Best Supporting Actress statuette for her performance in Gentleman's Agreement.

Holm continued to appear on stage, on television and in movies. Holm starred in her own TV series, Honestly, Celeste! and in two MGM musical comedies, The Tender Trap with Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, and David Wayne, and High Society with Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Bing Crosby. Other high points include a Broadway production of Candida with Holm in the title role, a lauded appearance as Aunt Polly in the film musical Tom Sawyer, a one-woman Off-Broadway show called Paris Was Yesterday, a recurring role on TV's Falcon Crest, and an appearance as Ted Danson's mother in the smash comedy Three Men and a Baby.

The Proudly Pro-Life Award was conceived as a way to honor those who are outspoken in the advocacy for the unborn. In spite of professional pressure to "be pro-choice or be quiet," these celebrities have gone public with their belief that unborn children and their mothers should be protected from abortion.

Hopefully, their courage will inspire others in the entertainment industry to do the same. We are proud to have these celebrities involved in our efforts and grateful for their energy on behalf of the unborn and their mothers.