Symphony Party Was Murder

The Pasadena Symphony Assn. held what might have been the world’s first fund-raiser funeral Saturday night when it commemorated the passing of the mythical Angus Riordan McGinty and raised $60,000 with a black-tie murder-mystery gala at the Villa D’Oro in Sierra Madre.

It was as though “Tony and Tina’s Wedding” had been recast as “Finnegan’s Wake.”

The premise, conceived and performed by Capers, was that McGinty had offered his home to the symphony for a fund-raiser, but had been murdered two days before the gala; the family had decided to go ahead with the party, combining it with a burial service. After all, it was St. Patrick’s Day, and Angus “was always a lot of fun at parties,” said Dolores Kroop, who co-chaired the event with Linda Shamsid-Deen.

“We wanted to demonstrate once and for all we’re not above killing to make money,” said the symphony’s executive director, Robert McMullin.

As baroque as the party’s premise was, its setting--the Villa D’Oro--is a sumptuous Italinate mansion copied from a design by Michelangelo. Donated to the Franciscan order, it sits on the grounds of Alverno High School and is frequently rented out to film companies. It’s often used as a location for “Murder She Wrote.”

It was across the Villa’s marble floors that a dozen actors from Capers conspired and confided with the 370 guests as they distributed clues on the McGinty Murder. There were gun shots, plot twists and enough defective Irish brogues to fill a score of Pat O’Brien movies.

The schmoozing and sleuthing were halted long enough for the guests, who included Robert and Elizabeth Strub, Billie Bowlby, Kay Paschall, Stephen J.M. Morris, and Don and Marian Cameron, to retire to a huge black-and-white tent pitched on the tennis court for a prime-rib dinner.

With dessert came the mystery’s final denouement; a trip to San Francisco went to Steven J. Mason for solving the crime with the simple logic that “this is California, and money is always the motive.”