In the Hilton ballroom, people drank and ate from a buffet and generally made do, while members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., the governing body of the Globes, gave away their awards as usual, filling in the awkwardness of the whole event with some gallows humor.

"It still has a patina of glamour, doesn't it?" said HFPA member Jack Tewksbury, seated in the ballroom minutes before the news conference began.

Tewksbury, who, according to the HFPA website, writes for publications in Argentina and Russia, is among the judges of an award show that has become an important marketing tool and Oscar bellwether.

There were victories all the same to be had Sunday night for the likes of movie star Cate Blanchett (for her Bob Dylan persona in the film "I'm Not There") and Tina Fey (for best actress in a comedy series, for her NBC show "30 Rock").

In any other year, Blanchett and Fey would have been escorted from the stage like precious cargo, ushered into a series of press rooms, where photographers and the TV and print media would await their reactions, feeding the worldwide hunger for Hollywood's leading lights.

But that machine never even got churning, really. For the news conference Sunday, there were sentries and roving squads of dour-faced security officers. By the middle of the show, though, they were relaxing rules about entry, BlackBerry usage in the room and keeping doors shut.

Of course, the starriest room in the joint was the ladies room, where Marilyn Monroe's photo hangs.

The Beverly Hills Police Department, which usually has 120 officers (including SWAT) on site, had 10 there Sunday night.

Outside the news conference, there was a handful of film workers who were holding signs beside the hotel's parking structure, urging passing motorists to honk for an end to the Writers Guide of America strike.

"I'm on unemployment, and it ain't cutting it," said Barbara J. Keys, an on-set medic for the last 12 years, most recently on the ABC drama "Private Practice." "We're out here to let people know that this isn't just about the writers and producers."

Behind the dozen or so protesters was a huge poster signed by about 70 workers who had lost their jobs and their healthcare because of the strike.

Before the show began, a crew of die-hard fans lingered in the lobby, waiting in vain for stars to show up.

Janice Osborne of Arlington, Texas, has been coming to the Golden Globes each year for more than a decade, and she and her daughter were not going to make an exception this year.

But the only boldfaced name they'd seen during their trip was Vanessa Williams having lunch at the Farm, a restaurant in Beverly Hills, said Osborne's daughter, Erin Norris.

Inside the ballroom, the trickle-down of the strike was being felt as a giant anticlimax. The Hilton has been hosting the Globes for 34 years, in recent years unfurling about 30,000 feet of red carpet for the entrances, according to Hilton public relations director Lynda Simonetti.

"We normally have 1,300 guests at the Globes and another 3,000 at the viewing and after-parties," she said.

Hilton staffer Christina Sanchez was working her 10th awards show. "It's sad to see it come to this," she said with a shake of her head. "It's no fun."

Then she nodded toward the journalists sipping sodas. "And no tips, either."

By 7:15, the half-hour news conference was long over, and it was last call at the bar anyway.

Times staff writers Maria Elena Fernandez, Greg Braxton, Martin Miller and Rachel Abramowitz contributed to this report.