Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr (40 page)

Genuine excuses or poor reasons, Allan accepted every rejection as if the star had pummeled him with his or her Guccis. He went from loving the potential presenter to hating anyone who said no. Like Sophia Loren, who announced that she couldn’t show up for her own tribute. “Whaaaaat?” Allan brayed at the news. “I offered her the moon—Oscar tickets for her kids—anything.” Rightly or wrongly, Allan blamed it on her acting coach, Anna Strasberg, and her publicist, Bobby Zarem. “So instead, she accepts a benefit in Florida for the University of Miami, three nights later?! And she could have done both.” Allan retaliated by canceling the Pontis’ tribute.

Or when John Travolta wouldn’t say yes or no to introducing a montage of musical clips. “He appeared in
Grease,
for Chrissakes!” said Allan, as if he owned the actor. The offer then went out to Patrick Swayze, hot off
Dirty Dancing,
which had outgrossed Travolta’s last movie,
Perfect,
in which he played a
Rolling Stone
reporter investigating health clubs. “The ungrateful!” Allan called any star who wouldn’t cooperate. He took no delight in the second-choice Swayze pick, but kept it civil, professional. “I want Patrick Swayze’s people to see the tape of the movie musical montage,” he said. “I want to see how he feels about it.”

In the middle of the booking madness, Allan took a call from an A-list publicist, who was pushing a B-list client. “I like her,” Allan told the flack. “We were at the fat farm in England together three years ago—she’s terrific. But I’ve got biggies on the waiting list. . . . Love you, too.” Then he hung up without thinking to say good-bye.

Someone in the office delivered a pseudobombshell. “Don Ameche can’t do the show. He is in New York to be in
Our Town
.”

Allan didn’t even bother to look up from his bagel. “I knew that three days ago. What world are you people living in? They better wake up.”

There’re no demands like show-business demands. Allan tried to indulge them all. His patience, which was nonexistent for friends and family, knew no limits for a star. If Doris Day required a dog sitter to make the trip to Los Angeles, “Then get her a fucking dog sitter!” he ordered no one in particular. She also wanted to be driven, not flown, down from Carmel. Her neighbor Kim Novak wanted to be flown, not driven, from her home on Big Sur. Both women insisted on hotel suites, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and a certain size of dressing room. And of course neither of them would sit in the audience with the Oscar nominees and other stars during the telecast. Alice Faye wanted to be limoed from Rancho Mirage. She’d do her own hair, but insisted she sit onstage next to Dorothy Lamour, who didn’t really care one way or the other about much of anything. The real troupers of the affair, Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, would get themselves to the Oscars on time and even bring their own horsy wardrobe. But they didn’t much care for the accommodations at L’Ermitage and preferred to stay at the Tolucan. “Whatever they want!” Allan harrumphed.

He wanted the entire Oscar experience to be a party for his stars, and to that end he created a green room, or hospitality suite, at the Shrine. “He did everything to make them feel like stars,” says Richard Kahn, “and he wanted to create that kind of a private protective enclave for them to relax in.” Other producers might have provided them a bare-bones room to sit and watch the telecast in before their appearance. “Allan was the first to put a label on it,” Kahn says of the fancy green room. Allan called it Club Oscar, and he even made a sign to hang on the wall. Club Oscar would be a party room not only on the big night but during the four days of rehearsal leading up to the show. Dom Perignon, Moët & Chandon, and cuisine by Fernaud Page would be served to the star participants, “who never get to see each other,” Allan said. Sometimes it seemed as if he had truly thought of everything. He even had the green room sponsored by Waverly fabrics, “so that the Academy wouldn’t have to pay the costs of decorating it,” says Dozoretz.

Club Oscar emerged as an oasis of overstated relaxation in the midst of the general decay and grime of the Shrine. “You never would have known that you were backstage in a theater,” says Jeff Margolis. “It was like you were in some highfalutin’ club in West Hollywood or New York City.”

The closer it came to Oscar Day, the more Allan’s dream solidified as a triumph in his brain. “His ego was becoming the size of the Academy Awards.
Everybody was calling Allan,” says Dozoretz. “And everyone was bowing. He liked that in real life. He had all this power. I couldn’t believe who was calling him for favors and asking him. Allan knew for a few days that he would never have again that power. Allan, who was not always the most polite man, burned bridges. He was the king of the world.”

Even one of Allan’s most admired Hollywood major players, überagent Swifty Lazar, offered his respects. Swifty’s annual Academy Awards party had, over the years, eclipsed the telecast in star power, draining the talent pool of A-list celebs, who preferred to watch the TV proceedings in the comfort of Spago restaurant rather than embarrass themselves at the Oscars and remind everyone that they hadn’t been nominated.

Allan saw it as the passing of the torch when Swifty graciously accepted his invitation to make a brief appearance in the Cocoanut Grove opening number. Allan gushed, “He’s a legend. Swifty is as much a legend as the Cocoanut Grove.” And Swifty returned the favor. In no less a forum than the
Sunday Los Angeles Times,
the agent predicted that the 1989 Oscar telecast would be “the best party we’ve had. There’s a greater feeling of fun than I’ve ever had before. There are so many new people who are going to be here after the telecast, new blood. Allan Carr is such a great showman, and he’s having about 40 people present the awards, up from about 20.”

Allan dramatically upped the telecast’s celeb population. “We won’t show the movie clips all in one big clump at the end of the telecast!” he ordered his Oscar bookers. “Instead, we’ll have each nominated film and its clip introduced by a big star and intersperse them throughout the evening. It gives us five more star participants!”

Allan referred to the seven days before March 29 as “White Knuckle Week,” and if he fretted unduly over the presenters and the movie clips, he bet the show’s success on his two big production numbers, each of which was clocking in at a whopping twelve minutes. ABC was also feeling the pressure, and insisted in the final days that Allan hire Hildy Parks, who’d written several Tony Awards telecasts, to join Vilanch as cowriter.

Rehearsals began on a Thursday only six days before the actual broadcast. With Marvin Hamlisch at the piano, Allan stood on the bleachers in Rehearsal Hall No. 1 at the ABC Studios on Vine in Hollywood. Together with lyricist Fred Ebb, Hamlisch had written the “(I Want to Be) an Oscar Winner” for the fourteen young actors and actresses who were now watching their leotarded reflections in a giant mirror set on rollers. Only one of the scheduled performers,
fifteen-year-old Savion Glover, remained behind on the East Coast, having to appear on Broadway in the new musical
Black and Blue
before he flew to Los Angeles on Monday for the final run-throughs. The other showbiz newcomers were ready to go, and that included such to-be-or-not-to-be stars as Blair Underwood, Patrick Dempsey, Christian Slater, and Ricki Lake, as well as those here-by-the-grace-of-their-famous-parent kids like Patrick Cassidy, Carrie (Burnett) Hamilton, Patrick O’Neal, and Tyrone Power Jr. Allan didn’t mess around when it came to making predictions about their future success. He called them, simply, the “Break-Out Super Stars of Tomorrow.”

Despite his new plastic hip, Allan jumped up and down on the bleachers or, at the very least, he bounced a little, his body like jelly in aspic. It thrilled him that he’d rounded up the children of the famous in this one room, while in Rehearsal Hall No. 2 he held court with the real legends, everyone from Vincent Price and Alice Faye to Buddy Rogers and the Nicholas Brothers. Allan had sold Rob Lowe on playing Prince Charming in the opening Cocoanut Grove number as an homage to old Hollywood “and those who came before us.” But in rehearsals the twenty-five-year-old actor grew leery of the concept as soon as it became clear that “a lot of the legendary old Hollywood folk could not walk unassisted,” Lowe observed firsthand.

Their overall immobility didn’t disturb Allan, who quickly ordered Vincent Price and others to simply sit at the tables and wave. Or if need be, he got a chorus boy to help walk them across the stage.

Allan had one eye on the past and one finger on the current pulse. He also had to watch his rear. “That Young Hollywood number was the direct result of ABC’s edict that he ‘young-up’ the show,” says Bruce Vilanch.

Allan wanted to sex-up the Oscars as well, and he hired
Dirty Dancing
choreographer Kenny Ortega to put his Young Hollywood troupe through its paces. Christian Slater agreed to do the production number on one condition: “If I could swing in on a rope,” he said. Ricki Lake claimed some expertise. “I had a year of ballet when I was five,” she said, “but I don’t think that really counts.” Tracy Nelson, granddaughter of TV’s Ozzie and Harriet, had actually studied ballet and did a mean pirouette, but other than her and Savion Glover, there wasn’t a lot of innate talent or training for what these novice performers would be required to do in front of the vast television audience—for twelve long minutes.

Could Tyrone Power’s son sing? Could he dance? If Allan didn’t ask these questions, it’s because he had fallen in love with the charm of the future—and
his role as star maker. “Allan was like a little kid jumping up and down,” Linda Dozoretz says of the rehearsals. “The excitement of his meeting Tyrone Power’s son!”

Allan gave Kenny Ortega only four rehearsal days to perform his miracle. While other producers might want to cloak such protégés in a secure blanket of secrecy, Allan chose to invite select members of the press to the rehearsals. “People put down Young Hollywood as a group of actors who are pretty but not very talented,” he told reporters. “There are a lot of talented, caring young actors out there. On Oscar night, we’re going to acknowledge them. I think it’s going to be a showstopper.”

Power Jr. put his finger on the challenge faced by these showbiz newbies. “All of the production numbers on Oscar night are usually so serious,” he told Allan’s phalanx of reporters. “This is just a bunch of young actors, none of whom are really singers, dancers, or fencers, goofing around and having fun. Hopefully everyone else will too.”

The next day, the
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
gossip Kevin Koffler wrote up the rehearsal. He titled his column, “Hooray for Nepotism!”

While choreographer Kenny Ortega worked with the kids, Hamlisch played nursemaid to a nervous Eileen Bowman, who only a year before had been singing in the chorus of Youth for Christ. “Snow White is a bigger celebrity than anyone else in that audience,” Hamlisch assured her.

Bowman wasn’t so sure. Earlier in the day, she’d fought back nausea just thinking about Wednesday night. If she feared that she might “look at one person and forget my lines,” Allan harbored no such doubts as he threw out ideas. “It will be gold if we have Snow White greet and shake the hands of the celebs in the audience,” he said.

Steve Silver hated having actors interact with the audience. “It won’t work,” he told Allan. “It never works.”

Vilanch also cautioned, “The Shrine will be lit up. There’s no place to hide. I don’t think you can take a woman dressed up as Snow White and put her in the audience with Tom Hanks and Sigourney Weaver and Geena Davis and expect them to react to her. They’ll freeze and not play along.”

“You’re wrong,” said Allan. “It’s going to be gold!”

Silver tried to explain: What made
Beach Blanket Babylon
a success was its speed. “Things are always edited down,” he said. But he saw the reverse happening with the Oscar telecast’s opening number, which only grew in size as more and more celebs were added. “Everyone wants input,” Silver said. And
the more the input, the more that got put in. Instead of lasting eight minutes, the number soon clocked fifteen. Rather than cut, Allan added yet another legendary actor to the Cocoanut Grove parade. Silver worried about the extra minutes that the Snow White meet and greet would add. He timed it. “Sixteen minutes!” he exclaimed. “Nothing should be sixteen minutes!”

Allan took his director aside. “Look, you’ve got your show in San Francisco.
This
is my next job!”

The rehearsals continued. While Eileen Bowman practiced shaking the imaginary hands of movie stars, another crooner substituted momentarily for Merv Griffin, who would not only sing “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” but introduce the evening’s Prince Charming: “And your blind date for the Oscars, Snow White, is none other than Rob Lowe!” At which Bowman and Lowe would break into “Proud Mary,” singing the new lyrics, “Keep those cameras rolling, rolling, rolling.” It worried Allan that Merv Griffin couldn’t rehearse on the Shrine stage. Then again, Griffin had already sung “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” a thousand times when he used to deliver it with a cockney accent for $150 a week at the real Cocoanut Grove in the 1940s.

Allan watched “the dinosaurs,” as they came to be called, walk across the rehearsal hall. Or, at least, they tried to walk. Fortunately, Cyd Charisse’s legs still looked great and she could dance, as could Fayard and Harold Nicholas, who hadn’t stopped tap-dancing since they appeared with Eubie Blake and his orchestra nearly sixty years ago.

Ray Klausen’s Cocoanut Grove set also moved well, segueing seamlessly into his rendering of Grauman’s Chinese as a chorus line of high-stepping ushers led up to the big box of popcorn from which Lily Tomlin would descend a long flight of stairs. It was supposed to be Bette Midler, but she departed the telecast soon after her name was not announced as one of the best-actress nominees, for her over-the-top performance as a pop singer in
Beaches.
It fell to Tomlin to cap the production. The comedian did it as a favor to her friend Bruce Vilanch. But in rehearsals she was having second and third thoughts, so Vilanch wrote her an opening line, “How do you follow this?” It was a tacit acknowledgment of all the questionable extravagance that would precede her. Vilanch also thought it might be funny for Tomlin to lose her shoe on the set—“Like what else could go wrong?” he surmised—at which she would say, “So on with the shoe. I mean, show,” as a chorus-boy-usher slithered down the stairs to pick up her errant slipper.