HOLLYWOOD MAY PLANT SEEDS OF CIVIC GIVING.

Byline: Judith Miller The New York Times

Steven Spielberg has given more than $45 million to charity in the past five years and vows to commit at least $20 million more by the year 2000. David Geffen has probably given away nearly as much.

Just this year, Michael Eisner, chairman of Walt Disney Co., transferred 1.3 million shares of Disney stock, worth $127 million, into his family's charitable foundation, and he recently promised $25 million from his company to help build the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

In Hollywood, a new generation of philanthropists is being born - and not a moment too soon, some philanthropists would say.

For all their glitzy wealth and self-promotion, residents of Los Angeles - particularly members of the entertainment industry - have been relatively stingy when it comes to charity. The United States' second-largest city, Los Angeles ranked 48th in a survey of giving by the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1994, the most recent data available. (New York City was 27th, while Minneapolis was No. 1).

``Hollywood has not really been involved in the city until now,'' said Harold Williams, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which runs the J. Paul Getty Museum and, with its $4.3 billion endowment, does not need to raise money. ``While there are incidents of huge generosity, there is, unlike New York, no sense of civic pride that obliges one to give in a sustained or systematic way. There is no Brooke Astor.''

Yet Eli Broad, chairman of the SunAmerica financial services corporation, who has helped raise money for the new concert hall, argues that the Disney gift suggests a resurgence of the old coalition of entertainment, business and civic interests that 30 years ago helped pay for the city's original concert hall and other pioneering civic projects.

Philanthropy professionals trace charity's tepid performance in Los Angeles to several factors. As a relatively new city compared with those in the East, for instance, it has less of a tradition of giving. Its population is increasingly made up of immigrants who are not only new to the city but to the American style of charitable giving.

The city's entertainment industry is notoriously volatile, as are the incomes of those who depend on it. Finally, Los Angeles has been battered by natural disasters and economic changes that reduced the financial base for charity.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to philanthropy is the city's geography. In New York City, many of the leading cultural institutions are concentrated in the wealthiest neighborhoods, like the Upper East Side. But in Los Angeles, cultural institutions downtown are far from their well-heeled patrons in Pasadena, the traditionally Catholic and Protestant stronghold, and in the Westside, home of the entertainment industry and Jewish professionals.

``I love downtown,'' said Jack Shakely, president of the California Community Foundation, which serves mainly Los Angeles County. ``But many friends won't go there for lunch, much less dinner. They think of downtown as some kind of Kurt Russell movie.''

The city's separation of social elites also complicates fund raising. Historically, a few prosperous families owned large tracts of Los Angeles and influenced much of its development. But in the early 1960s, as their wealth diminished, the establishment was forced to reach out to the Jewish studio heads of Hollywood and to African-Americans who had gained a share of power in politics and the civil-rights movement.

Dorothy Chandler, the wife of the Los Angeles Times publisher and the city's leading cultural patron, joined forces with Lew Wasserman, head of the entertainment conglomerate MCA, to build the Music Center of Los Angeles County, the city's first major performing arts facility. The center's largest auditorium, a frequent home to the Academy Awards ceremonies, was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

But the alliance between Hollywood and old-line society did not last. In addition, the persistence of what Shakely calls a ``Jewish-Protestant gulf'' and the lack of a unified social elite have hindered the civic spirit that underpins philanthropy.

The city's troubled economic base has intensified philanthropic dependence on the entertainment industry, which tends to be cause-oriented, highly personal, and more political than other philanthropic groups. As a result, causes like AIDS and civil liberties often take priority over the city's cultural institutions.

Hollywood charity also tends to be more flamboyant than gifts from other Los Angeles givers, like Katherine Loker, an heiress who is said to have given about $20 million to universities, or Wayne Hughes Sr., chairman and co-founder of Public Storage, the nation's largest owner and operator of self-storage space, who has given about $25 million to health charities.

``Hollywood giving is all about billing,'' said Edward Bleier, president of pay television and cable distribution for the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner, who lives in New York.

Consider Geffen, a founding partner of the new movie studio Dreamworks SKG, who is worth an estimated $2 billion and who has given away more than $35 million.

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art now has a Geffen Contemporary annex ($5 million gift); the University of California, Los Angeles has a Geffen Playhouse (another $5 million gift); and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, an AIDS service organization, has a David Geffen Center for HIV Prevention and Health Education ($2.5 million gift). Fund-raisers in Los Angeles joke that Mayor Richard Riordan could solve the city's fiscal troubles simply by changing its name to Los Geffen.

Hollywood givers also like creating their own philanthropies. For instance, Spielberg, the film director, has chosen to promote Jewish life through two new foundations. He said he also gives to Los Angeles institutions, as well as to ``whatever touches me.''

But in a break with most of Hollywood, Spielberg said that at least 25 percent of his giving is anonymous. Likewise, Eisner, though not yet known as generous by mogul standards, declined to disclose how much he gives each year. But to lure other givers, he went public with the company's ``challenge'' gift to the Disney Concert Hall, which depends on other corporate sponsors to donate $25 million more.

Supporters of the Disney hall have raised 80 percent of the money needed to build the 2,350-seat hall, which is seen as instrumental in reviving downtown and forming the kind of inclusive civic coalition that characterizes New York philanthropy.

The Disney corporate gift took more than a year to secure because the company wanted to ensure that a performing arts center would be provided at the hall for students of the California Institute of the Arts, which it supports, Eisner said.

Nevertheless, supporters say, the gift will shake loose other foundation and corporate money. ``Once the city has a few high-profile projects around which all citizens can rally,'' said Broad, the SunAmerica executive, ``people who have never given will do so, and a tradition of giving will finally take hold here.''

Others are not so sure. Williams, of the Getty, said the Disney gift was perhaps the start of a trend. Eisner said that while that was not his intention, he would be delighted if it had that effect.

``I personally did well in Southern California, so I feel I should give back here,'' he said.