THE CROWD:

One of the hot hangouts on the Balboa Peninsula is the infamous T.K. Burger.

Recent celeb spotting at T.K. found indie film actor Hal B. Klein and his Italian Greyhound Lucy stopping in for a juicy burger prior to a run on the beach.

Klein, who recently starred in an upcoming film release called “Nobel Son,” with Danny DeVito, Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman, claims to be a major burger aficionado. He confides, “Most guys think a burger has got to have three things: meat, cheese and bacon.”

Klein and Lucy were each enjoying their own serving of double meat, cheese and bacon prior to their beach workout.

Klein can also be seen in the film “Bottle Shock” and was recognized for his work in “Killer Movie,” which was lauded at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

His love of the classic T.K. Burger has also translated into a video show on the Internet called “This Man’s Kitchen,” where, Klein says, “I teach guys how to make dude food.”

Longtime Newport resident Carolyn Roos Olsen, who grew up during the golden age of Beverly Hills movie stardom and glamour, has just released a biography on her father, Bö Roos, who was a business manager to some of the world-famous Hollywood elite.

The book is titled “Hollywood’s Man Who Worried For The Stars,” and it is written with co-author Marylin Hudson, well-known to local citizens as the co-founder of the long-running and wildly popular book and author program “Round Table West,” which introduced readers over the years to countless aspiring and famous scribes.

The book is a sentimental portrait of life in another world at another time; hard to imagine such a society existed.

Olsen shares an insider’s view of some of the back-door dealings and business decisions that made some of the stars, including Fred MacMurray and his wife, June Haver, very wealthy while others were not so fortunate.

She includes anecdotal stories on John Wayne, Lupe Vélez, Peter Lawford, Red Skelton, Joan Crawford and others. Newport-Mesa readers will be enchanted by her stories of coming to Newport as a young girl as well as her family’s boating adventures and life at Avalon on Catalina Island.

The high fashion of South Coast Plaza will be showcased Sept. 18 at one of Southern California’s most charming hotels, The Inn At Rancho Santa Fe.

The 2008 fall and winter Prête-à-Porté collections from such houses as Pucci, Donna Karan, Celine, Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, St. John, Chloé and Saks Fifth Avenue will be on the runway.

The fashion presentation is scheduled as a fundraising event for a charitable group known as “The Country Friends.”

This season, the ladies will donate proceeds from the fashion luncheon to The Burn Institute.

This is the fourth year South Coast Plaza has supported The Country Friends, an organization created in 1954 by dedicated Rancho Santa Fe women.

Today, the charitable body has a roster of more than 1,200 members, and they have donated more than $12 million to various charitable organizations that “help people help themselves.”

For more information on the event, call Beverly Morgan at South Coast Plaza at (714) 435-2115.

Taste for the Cure in Newport Beach raised $75,000 for diabetes research and transplantation programs through UCI.

It was the seventh annual Taste for the Cure and Wine Auction last week at the Center Club in Costa Mesa.

The UCI Medical Center transplant program, working in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, will benefit from the generosity of more than 300 local citizens and wine lovers, who converged upon the Center Club sampling wine from more than 25 fine vintners, including wines from Far Niente, Buttonwood Farm and Korbel.

Outside the Center Club, a collection of some 40 fabulous Ferraris and Lamborghinis were on display to tantalize event-goers.

Chaired by Jerry Stefani, who also happens to be the founder of the North American Foundation for the Cure for Diabetes, the event has helped to raise more than $2 million toward research for islet cell transplantation programs at UCI Medical Center.

THE CROWD runs Thursdays and Saturdays.