Speechless, for once

SHARON STONE snapped his suspenders. Don Rickles bussed his cheek. Barbara Sinatra called him “one of the few press people Frank really trusted.� And Sid Caesar tossed out some advice: “Keep doin’ what you’re doin’.�

For CNN talk show host Larry King, the surprise bash his wife, Shawn King, threw for his 70th birthday was more than a martini-swigging, dance-to-a-Sinatra-sound-alike romp. It was the chance for the Brooklynite-made-good to spend some rare downtime with a few hundred friends.

Sure, many of them -- Priscilla Presley, former Gov. Gray Davis, Johnnie Cochran, Jackie Collins, Robert Shapiro, Bill Maher, Nancy Grace, Pat Boone -- had appeared on “Larry King Live,� and it was payback time. But it was more than that, Cochran said: “He has this immense ability to put everybody at ease, and he’s a really good guy who’s fair. You love to be around him.�

From the surprise takeover of his Nov. 19 show by Dr. Phil to the hundreds who welcomed him afterward at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills -- where the library had been turned into a groovy ‘70s-style bar and the rooftop into a nightclub, complete with white dance floor, disco balls and cushy, candlelit lounge -- the evening was “the biggest surprise of my life,� King said.

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-- Ann Conway