Partying With The King

King and his wife flank the Trumps

The short hallway between the “Pool Room” and bar acted as a sort of cosmic, generational media portal last night at the Four Seasons, where a pair of cocktail parties — one celebrating Larry King‘s 50 years in broadcasting (a.k.a the “old people room”), the other celebrating the New York Observer‘s redesigned paper and Web site (a.k.a the “kids room”) — were in full, boozy, media-centric swing.

In the “Old People Room”: King and his television and famous New York pals, like Joan Rivers, Donald and Melania Trump, the View‘s Barbara Walters (at one point Trump and Walters were just feet from each other, but didn’t appear to acknowledge each other) and Joy Behar, Campbell Brown, Mario Cuomo, Lou Dobbs, Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas, Tina Brown, Jeff Greenfield, Ron Howard, Time Inc. managing editor Jim Kelly, Keith Kelly, Ray Kelly, Oprah B.F.F. Gayle King, Calvin Klein, Time Warner chief Dick Parsons, Sandra Bernhard, Jerry Stiller, Arliss actor Robert Wuhl, Mort Zuckerman, American Morning‘s newly-installed Kiran Chetry, Glenn Beck, Montel Williams, James Carville, Tom Wolfe, Andy Rooney and artist Peter Max, whose colorful rendering of King served as the room’s centerpiece.

In the “Kids Room”: 23-year-old Observer owner Jared Kushner held court with twentysomething bloggers and their youthful bosses, like Gawker’s Choire Sicha, Radar‘s Jeff Bercovici and Maer Roshan, Page Six‘s Corynne Steindler, Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg, Domino‘s Deborah Needleman, WWD‘s Irin Carmon, and HuffPo’s Julia Allison, Katharine Thomson and Rachel Sklar. Fittingly, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, chose the Observer party over King’s.

CNN president Jon Klein called the party a “celebration of life” and the 50 years a reflection of “America’s enduring love for Larry King,” joking CNN had calculated that King had roughly asked 8.3 million questions over that period, counting “So, what do you think of that?” just once. King then stepped to the small podium, thanked his family and recalled his first time on the air at a Miami radio station: “I was scared to death.”

King, Walters, Lara Spencer [credit: CNN]

King, of course, had to leave his own party at 8:15PM to host his live show.

Some notable no-shows: Fox News chief Roger Ailes (who had RSVP’d), King pal Don Imus (as we previously reported), NBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Soledad O’Brien, Miles O’Brien, John Roberts and Paula Zahn, who were in Blacksburg covering the Virginia Tech shooting.

As for the Observer, the party lasted well past King’s, and well into the night at an after-party at Barramundi on the Lower East Side.

The King, we assume, was in bed.

RELATED COVERAGE:

Larry King Celebrates 50 Years on Air With Bad Jokes, Old Celebrities [Daily Intel]

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Are Just Friends. Really. [Daily Intel]

The ‘New York Observer’ At The Four Seasons [Gawker]

Double-Fisting At The Four Seasons: Partying With The New York Observer and CNN [ETP]

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