Connie Wald

Connie Wald, a Beverly Hills hostess whose dinner parties began during Hollywood’s Golden Age and became an enduring social institution — part home-cooked casual, part parade of stars — died at her home on Nov. 10. She was 96.

Her death was confirmed this week by her son Andrew.

Ms. Wald had no need to drop names. They fell all over her.

Clark Gable. Joan Crawford. Errol Flynn. Gary Cooper. Audrey Hepburn. Jimmy and Gloria Stewart. Harrison Ford. Angelica Huston. Joan Didion, Dominick Dunne. Diane Keaton. Woody Allen. Gregory Peck. Gore Vidal. Mae West. Maurice Chevalier. Three generations of Goldwyns.

They came and came again with their wives and husbands and sometimes their children to the big but unpretentious house on North Beverly Drive, where Mrs. Wald lived for 70 years. She grew the roses she put on the table as well as the basil and arugula she used in the simple soups, salads and chicken dishes that guests requested because they enjoyed them so much the last time they were over. They might preview a new release afterward in the house’s screening room, but everyone said that the evenings were not about celebrity or ambition.

“It was just cozy,” said Betsy Bloomingdale, the socialite and philanthropist and a longtime friend, “and they don’t do cozy anymore.”

Plenty of the faces were not famous, and Mrs. Wald herself was no household name. She grew up in West Virginia, moved to New York, became a model for the designer Claire McCardell (Mrs. Wald said that their figures were similar) and then followed her parents to California, where she met and married the producer Jerry Wald.

The dinners began when the couple was young and Mr. Wald was entering his prime, producing successful films like “Key Largo,” “An Affair to Remember” and “Peyton Place.” But they continued well after Mr. Wald died of a heart attack at 50 in 1962.

Nancy Reagan said in an interview on Thursday that Mrs. Wald was the first person she met when she moved to California in the 1940s — “It was very easy to be drawn to Connie,” she said — long before Mrs. Reagan married the man who became president.