Hollywood Executives Fill Beverly Hills Ballroom to Raise $2.2 Million at Saban Community Clinic's 50th Anniversary Gala

Hollywood executives, producers and show creators packed the Crystal Ballroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Monday evening for the 50th anniversary gala of Saban Community Clinic. The event raised $2.2 million for the organization, which runs seven clinics across Los Angeles and has a new 12,000-square-foot location planned for the Crenshaw corridor.

The headline honorees were Peter Friedlander of Amazon MGM Studios and David Nevins, the former Showtime chief. Creators including Dan Fogelman, Sam Levinson and Jonathan Nolan were among the guests. Many said they came to support the clinic's cause, while some joked that they could not resist the pull of longtime supporter Ellen Hoberman or event chair Richard Weitz.

One of the evening's warmest moments came early. Weitz, the WME co-chairman, led an unscripted round of applause for fellow event chair Bela Bajaria, who was recently ousted as Netflix's chief content officer and replaced by Peter Rice, amid a shakeup that included layoffs of 1,000 staffers. Weitz called Bajaria someone who has "changed, I think, the face of Netflix," and noted that the two had been Saban honorees together a few years ago.

Politics also surfaced from the podium. Hoberman, a philanthropist and longtime Saban advocate, said the Trump administration has rolled back healthcare policies and cut programs such as Medicaid, making care harder to reach for vulnerable people. "If you want change, please vote," Hoberman said. Actor Jimmy Smits added that the administration has removed long-standing protections against immigration enforcement at clinics, hospitals, schools and places of worship, leaving families afraid to seek care.

In a surprise that was not on the program, Hoberman's children, Eric and Sarah, took the stage to honor their mother's work for Saban over more than four decades. Sarah described a parent who sends invitations by hand, assembles centerpieces and even dyes towels black to satisfy performers' backstage requests. Hoberman accepted a glass trophy.

Comedian and actor Alex Edelman hosted, opening with jokes about "Paramount+ executives holding on for dear life" and noting that the dinner's past hosts were Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel. He also teased Fogelman over the show Paradise, which centers on an assassinated president, and quipped that Hoberman had approved the joke.

Actress Connie Britton presented Nevins with the Lenny Somberg Volunteer Award, recalling how he embedded himself in the production of Friday Night Lights two decades ago and even helped carry boxes out of her apartment after the first season. Accepting, Nevins said Somberg was killed 50 years ago this week in a botched robbery at the clinic office. He also noted that Los Angeles has the largest concentration of uninsured patients in the country.

After a short set by musician Aloe Blacc, actor Walton Goggins presented Friedlander's award, recounting how the two met 14 years ago as neighbors. Friedlander, who began his career as a driver for actor Gary Sinise before working for Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman at Playtone, joked that he moved to Los Angeles to become a city bureaucrat. He said accessible healthcare is "infrastructure as essential as any road, as any railway or any crosswalk."