L.A. Orders AIDS Project USA to Stop Fund Solicitations

A Beverly Hills-based organization that sought endorsements from scores of show business celebrities and politicians has been ordered by the Los Angeles Department of Social Service to refrain from soliciting contributions for a proposed AIDS fund-raising drive.

In a letter mailed Tuesday, the department ordered AIDS Project USA “to cease and desist from conducting further illegal charitable solicitations” until it has met city registration requirements for charities.

The department regulates and audits charities soliciting money in the city. It monitors expenses, fund-raising methods and management.

The city’s letter was addressed to Jon Mercedes III, who announced the formation of AIDS Project USA on Oct. 3 in a four-page advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter, an entertainment industry trade paper. The ad said the organization intended to sponsor benefit dinners across the country, as well as a nationally televised Halloween entertainment show in an effort to raise $50 million for AIDS research, education and support services.

Mercedes, 31, a personal manager to Hollywood actors and actresses, signed the ad as “executive producer” of National Charities Television Network AIDS Project USA at a Beverly Hills residential address.

“We have not made any solicitations,” Mercedes said in a telephone interview Tuesday after being told of the cease-and-desist letter. “We have not asked anybody for money.”

However, city regulations define solicitations more broadly. They include “the distribution, circulation, mailing, posting or publishing of any handbill” and “the making of any announcement through the press or over radio or television” concerning a fund-raising appeal.

Mercedes also said that the planned Halloween TV special has been postponed for at least 60 days because “we are trying to find an organization that will receive the money.”

The advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter also listed the names of more than 250 celebrities as members of the group’s honorary committee.

California politicians identified as members of the honorary committee included Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Reps. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Councilman Joel Wachs.

Efforts to reach Waxman and Cranston were unsuccessful Tuesday, but Polly Kreisman, press secretary to Levine, said “as far as anybody in this office knows, Mel is not affiliated with AIDS Project USA. . . . Where do they get off using people’s names?”

Entertainers listed as members of the honorary committee include Bob Hope, Ralph Edwards, Lucille Ball, Ed Asner, Marlon Brando, Bill Cosby, Morgan Fairchild, Lorne Greene, Amy Irving, Norman Lear, Fred McMurray, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Martin Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Steenburgen, Brenda Vaccaro and Debra Winger.

Quoted in the ad, although not identified as an honorary committee member, was actress Elizabeth Taylor, who has taken on a prominent role in raising funds for AIDS causes.

Taylor is a founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Speaking for Taylor, Bill Misenhimer, executive director of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, said Tuesday that her name was “inappropriately associated” with AIDS Project USA in the ad and in telephone solicitations by the group.

A spokesman for Hope said the comedian had given permission to use his name “thinking it (the organization) was part of the Liz Taylor group.” Hope, who is out of the country, “has withdrawn his name until these irregularities have been taken care of,” the spokesman said.

Ralph Edwards’ publicist, Charles Pomerantz, said, “Nobody at Ralph Edwards Productions was ever contacted. I don’t know him (Mercedes) and I don’t think Ralph does.”

Pomerantz, who also handles public relations for Lucille Ball, said she did agree to lend her name to the project.

The AIDS Action Council, a national federation of AIDS-related organizations, wrote Mercedes a letter dated Oct. 6 saying that his advertisement raised “serious questions concerning the representations” it made. The letter was signed by representatives of more than 20 AIDS groups.

Group Complains

Another group, AIDS Project Los Angeles, also complained to Mercedes about his efforts. In an Oct. 11 letter from its attorneys, AIDS Project Los Angeles demanded that Mercedes stop using an organizational name that “will confuse the public.” The Los Angeles organization also demanded that Mercedes’ group stop “using the names of persons who have endorsed AIDS Project Los Angeles,” without written consent.

Mercedes insisted that he had proper endorsements from the people named in the advertisement. “My files are open to you,” he said.

Also disassociating himself from the group was Bruce Decker, chairman of Gov. George Deukmejian’s AIDS Advisory Committee.

After some initial contacts with Mercedes, Decker said, he asked that his name be withdrawn from the AIDS Project USA committee list a week before the advertisement appeared.

‘Increasingly Uncomfortable’

“I became increasingly uncomfortable because of Mercedes’ tactics and name-dropping,” Decker said.

Decker’s name appeared in the ad, anyway, and Mercedes said it may have been the result of a typist’s mistake. “I don’t know how his name remained in there,” Mercedes said.

Mercedes describes himself as “career producer.” Best known as the former personal manager of actress Charlene Tilton (Lucy Ewing on the “Dallas” TV series), Mercedes began managing the careers of other TV actors and actresses in 1978. Prior to that, he said, he was a script writer, actor, nightclub owner, founder of a theatrical repertory company and producer.

According to a 1983 US magazine profile, Mercedes is a Cuban refugee who moved to Miami with his parents and family in 1960. He claims to have discovered Tilton in a Hollywood T-shirt shop in 1977 and managed her career until they parted company about two years ago.

Times staff writers Judith Michaelson, Lee Margulies and David Friendly contributed to this article.