SPOTLIGHT
you work in this town or how do you work in this industry that hates you?’ [In the telling] Allan Carr gives me not only Can’t Stop
the Music and The Village People but he also gives me La Cage aux Folles and the disastrous Oscars…” It’s quite true that the time period Allan Carr was a
part of is full of astounding and amazing Hollywood stories. “One reason I wanted to do this book is that I feel the 1970s is a very misinterpreted period. Particularly in gay history because we always think that everything was very repressed and then there’s the 1970s where everything all happened. I always felt that people tend to think that there was Stonewall in 1969 so the 1970s was terribly liberated politically. My memory of that time period was that it was all a nighttime integration. That it was all party time but if you went to the office; politically it was nowhere. But certainly in Hollywood [Carr] was the only powerbroker who was out of the closet.” Robert Hofler shares who he felt was able to give him
the most detailed and factual information on the real Allan Carr. “There were really a lot of people but one of them who is well-known is Bruce Vilanch. Bruce Vilanch had known him from Chicago in the 1960s to his death. He had worked on so many projects with him…he got fired from Can’t Stop The Music and had written patter for Cass Elliot and I believe Ann-Margret. Bruce has written so many of the Oscar telecasts but [1989’s Oscars] was his first one. Bruce was really great. There was also a guy named Freddy Gershon who was president of Robert Stigwood’s organization. He just really knew Allan not only from a personal viewpoint but also a real business viewpoint so that was intriguing.” Allan Carr was notorious for his outrageous and drug
and alcohol-fueled Hollywood parties in his home called Hillhaven in Beverly Hills. Author Hofler touches base on just one private party that astounds him out of the many mentioned in his book. “I think the one I was most fasci- nated with was one of his private parties and that was the [Rudolf] Nureyev ‘Mattress’ party. I’ve never been to any- thing like that! Carr had given this party for The National Ballet of Canada and then a week or two later, he had a private party where he said, ‘bring a mattress.’ All these guys brought a mattress and they put them on a floor in his living room and he [Carr] watched the young boys wrestle. What is kind of interesting to me and it’s not part of the book. It’s how I got information through Dominick Dunne. Dunne was kind of ‘in the closet’ until he died. He said, ‘Well…I wasn’t there but he had this party where all these hustlers were hired. One for each room so Nureyev could be serviced on the spot.’ I confirmed that with other people who were there and then they talked about that there was this line outside the cottage where Nureyev was getting serviced (laughter). It was interesting because I called Dominick Dunne back a year later and said there was something else I learned. He said, ‘Oh yeah. That Nureyev party…that was a good one.’ Then he didn’t give me the x-rated version but he was there.” Allan Carr was often described as two people…the wild
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RAGE monthly | MAY 2010
Where The Boys Are ‘84 produced by Allan Carr La Cage aux Folles soundtrack
and The Village People
party man and the savvy business-minded individual. In mentioning what an innovative Hollywood trendsetter Carr was, Hofler states, “Yes and no. There are certainly innovations with the Oscars. I think the big innovation that he had was he really trumped up the fashion. That he had a fashion show before the Oscars. Then he got a lot of designers to lend dresses to the actresses, which now, of course, they fight over it but at that time it hadn’t been done. Arms really had to be twisted to get people like Halston and Lagerfeld to lend them these clothes. He really expanded the red carpet coverage, which now is like a billion dollar industry. That’s taken over the Emmys, the Grammys and everything now. So that was all Allan. Continuing Hofler adds, “A lot of his other promotional stuff I don’t think has endured because in today’s media if you gave a huge party and spent $100,000 or $200,000 (because that’s what Allan spent on let’s say for Cage aux Folles)…that kind of thing, I don’t think that in today’s media saturation you would get much ‘bang-for-your-
buck’ by doing that. Back then, you could still get that because everything was so much print. His parties were written up in Time and Newsweek—these big magazines that everyone read. Now it would just be a flash on the TV set and it’s over with. Also the celebrities would not give that kind of access. You couldn’t throw those par- ties and have the press wandering around interviewing them and photographing them. Now, everything is just done on the red carpet in front of the vodka sign. I don’t think some of his showmanship would endure today.” Robert Hofler gives his overall evaluation of the man,
Allan Carr. “His kind of major conflict was his weight be- cause he was morbidly obese. He’d even had this bypass operation in 1972, which was very early to have that done. That was very chancy. He never had great health. Was he the role model I wanted in the 1970s? No. I think he was innately honest and innately honest about him- self. So, he had that gay identity very, very early on. He might have been troubled by it but I didn’t get that.”
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