Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

While Americans across the land gather to enjoy Thanksgiving feasts and family time, this holiday weekend will also see celebrities turning out on the West and East coasts and many points in between — doing their bits for charity and adding star luster to events for folks in need.

This year marks the 31st Annual Thanksgiving Feast at the Laugh Factory on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, Calif. Top comics will greet and help serve guests, as well as perform live shows following each of four meals served throughout the day. Owner Jamie Masada is also behind comedy camps for underprivileged kids visited by volunteer helpers the likes of Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Adam Sandler, Drew Carey, Chris Tucker, Jamie Foxx, George Lopez and Bob Saget. That's been going on for 25 years.

Comedians, he said, "donate their time. Comedians are very giving people."

As the economic situation has worsened, the turnout of folks in need of a hot meal at the Laugh Factory has increased.

Masada recalled recent holidays as "literally overwhelming to see, especially Christmas day — 5,000 people with no place to go, shaking and cold. It just breaks your heart. People were coming in with kids and it was raining. A family came in that had five kids sleeping in their car, one of the kids told me."

"The whole face of homelessness changed completely," remarked Dick Van Dyke, who has been deeply involved in supporting Los Angeles' Midnight Mission for years. "It used to be old derelicts. Now it's families and kids."

The beloved entertainer, who begins a run of his "Step in Time! — A Musical Memoir" show Dec. 8 in L.A., has even served as fundraising chairman for the facility, where Thanksgiving meals are served each year. (Van Dyke and his Vantastix a capella quartet are also performing a holiday fundraiser for the Midnight Mission, Dec. 3 at The Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles.)

Meanwhile, over at the Los Angeles Mission, celebrity sightings are part and parcel of the annual Thanksgiving holiday event, with stars serving up dinners and greeting the hungry and homeless. Cindy Crawford, Corbin Bleu, Chris Pine and Harrison Ford are among the famous faces who've made that scene.

The "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movie icon delighted onlookers, declaring himself an autograph hunter's dream: "I'm as gentle as a lamb.

I even give autographs while having lunch," said he. "The only time you shouldn't ask for an autograph is when I'm standing in front of a urinal. Or while I'm having sex."

Visitors to soup kitchens have been served by the likes of Adrian Grenier in Brooklyn and Pamela Anderson in Las Vegas.

Other famous types choose to do their good works in private. Countless actors and musicians visit Make-A-Wish kids, children's hospitals and other helping facilities sans media attention.

Still others are known for both high-profile giving and quiet acts of aid, like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, whose latest philanthropic gift was the $150,000 they donated this month to the charity SOS Children's Villages, in recognition of National Adoption Day. Pitt and particularly U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Jolie have made a practice of maximizing the awareness-raising possibilities even of their personal moves — from taking up residence in post-Katrina New Orleans to utilizing a Namibian hospital for the birth of daughter Shiloh. When Jolie visited Russia years ago to raise global awareness of the plight of Chechen refugees, it made more of an impact than a host of non-celebrity media stories.

Patricia Arquette and Sean Penn continue to work on behalf of the earthquake/hurricane/cholera-stricken poor of Haiti.

The list goes on and on, and that's a good thing because while cynics may carp about celebrities and their causes, there is no disputing the invaluable publicity that comes with stars' involvement in charitable activities.

As philanthropy-minded movie star cum best-selling author Jamie Lee Curtis (Starlight Starbright Foundation, The John Wayne Cancer Institute, etc.) puts it, "Being a celebrity is good for a couple of things. You can get good tickets to events and reservations when others cannot. And more important, you get to reflect back the media you get onto something you care about. I appreciate the obscene amount of attention a celebrity gets for, honestly, doing the right thing — and by the way, doing a nano-fraction of what millions of people do as volunteers."

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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