An ‘Architect’ Who Builds Dream Parties : Clive David’s Fees Range From $50,000 to $150,000

What a conversation stopper:

“Have you ever seen a man’s suit of armor fill up with water as he’s waiting to get out of his gondola?”

Clive David continued, arching his eyebrows at the memory of that rainy masked ball in Italy. “Oh, I can’t tell you all the crazy things that happen in this business.”

He has stood in the ruins of the Citadel of King David alongside Golda Meir for Israel’s 25th anniversary gala. He has made sure Marilyn Monroe wasn’t late to sing “Happy Birthday” to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. He took care that Queen Elizabeth II didn’t fall down an unlit flight of stairs during a visit to the Bahamas. “I mean, who wants to look at a toppled queen?” he asked.

He has had a lifetime of extraordinary adventures that he can dine out on for decades to come. And that is why this 52-year-old bicoastal Englishman is in such demand around the world as le dernier cri of party planners when VIPs want something more glitzy than a backyard barbecue. But he’s not bad at that, either.

Just ask Patricia Kluge, wife of Metromedia mogul John W. Kluge. In 1985, David organized a “harvest barbecue” at the Kluges’ Virginia estate as part of a weekend of festivities for 300 notables including King Constantine of Greece, Ann Getty and Norman Lear.

There was a whole buffalo roasting on the spit. Brass chandeliers hanging between horse stalls. And prize-winning cattle roaming during the cocktail hour.

But these bulls and cows were especially primed not to defecate.

It was David who found out that the cattle could be fed a dry diet ahead of time that was guaranteed to keep them from soiling the pristine white wood shavings on the floor of the barn. “His imagination is extraordinary,” Patricia Kluge enthused. “I must say that I would never do any other project without Clive David.”

Hired for Anniversary

That seems to be the feeling of many hosts and hostesses. Lorimar’s Merv Adelson and Barbara Walters hired David to organize their four-month wedding anniversary in New York. So Adelson naturally tapped David to plan an even bigger event--an invitation-only Ultimate Weekend at the La Costa Hotel and Spa on Friday through Sunday to show off the resort’s $85 million make over to 400 royals and Rothschilds, moguls and movie stars.

Adelson, one of La Costa’s main investors, has so much confidence in the party planner that he and Walters flew off to China and Tibet “without,” as Adelson’s assistant noted, “a worry that the weekend will be anything less than perfect.”

David, meanwhile, is working at a frantic pace to make sure it is. “We’re talking about people coming from all over the world,” he explained. “We’re talking about three days and nights of meals, 175 hair appointments, innumerable golf outings, the works. It’s the same as putting on a Broadway show with no dress rehearsals and no out-of-town tryouts. And, though it runs only a couple of nights, it needs to be structured like it could run forever.”

Maxim No. 1: “ People get in touch with me because of my reputation. They don’t get me in the Yellow Pages. “

Who’s Who in America lists his occupation as “party architect.” But David is still smarting over a newspaper headline “that said I made my living as a ‘party boy.’ It made me sound like a flake who goes around partying all the time.”

After a flurry of publicity, David often receives irate calls and letters. One man phoned in the 1970s to say, “You make me sick. Our boys are dying in Vietnam and there are people living on the streets and you’re spending all this money on parties.”

David was livid. “I said, ‘Hold it. You show me what’s wrong with a charity party that helped others and gave joy and provided employment, and call me back.’ And then I hung up on him.”

Parties for World Peace

He still gets criticism but handles it more gracefully nowadays. He might cite the time that Dr. Ralph Bunche called him a “valuable asset” for world peace because of a party he had planned at the United Nations. “And I said ‘Why?’ ” David recounted. “And he said, ‘We achieve more at a party like this than we ever do on the floor of the General Assembly.’ ”

In case anyone should misunderstand, David throws parties for other people, not for himself. And while he has extraordinary access to some of the wealthiest people around, he leaves the guest lists to his clients.

Maxim No. 2: “We live in a lobotomized, robotoid society. I get such palpitations and stress from incompetence that I’d rather put in the hours and do it myself.”

David has no permanent staff. Instead, he uses answering machines to link up the office/homes in Beverly Hills and New York City that comprise his Party Enterprises Ltd. When he does need help, he hires people wherever he is working at the moment, be it Italy or Israel or Indiana.

For the La Costa weekend, David will have as his staff all 1,200 resort employees. Plus, he will involve 200 outside personnel, including printers, musicians and florists.

David is the first to admit he doesn’t come cheap. He charges anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 for his soup-to-nuts services.

One reason he asks so much is that these parties, with few exceptions, usually take at least a year to plan. “Knowing three to four years in advance what I’m going to do is quite normal for me,” he admitted. “It makes no difference if the party is for one person or 1,000 people. The work and the involvement is the same.”

For charity parties, he charges his minimum as long as it’s not paid out of the money being raised. Right now, David’s No. 1 cause is AIDS. “I have lost friends to AIDS. I have friends now with AIDS. And I will do anything I can to ensure that AIDS research will become the next fashionable charity,” he said.

As a result, David is responsible for linking the La Costa weekend with the Embassy Ball in New York City on May 5 in what will be a bicoastal event to benefit two charitable causes, French-American AIDS research and French-American art. Not only has La Costa given $60,000 to help underwrite the New York gala, but benefactors to the ball are invited to the La Costa weekend as a “thank you” for their donations. “Two bashes benefiting both body and soul. I love it,” he exclaimed.

Maxim No. 3: “America is Utopia. It is the Promised Land. Just look at the quantity of choice. You have 10 different types of Scotch tape.”

Born in a suburb of Manchester, England, David developed his flair for the dramatic in public school where he created all the sets, music, lighting and costumes for every school production.

His first introduction to party-giving came in the British army. Stationed in Wales in 1953, after celebrating his 18th birthday, David decorated his cubicle in such a way that his sergeant major exclaimed, “What’s this? A whorehouse?” and ordered him to tear it down.

But that evening his commanding officer asked if he could “do anything” to liven up the officers’ mess for the brigadier general’s retirement party. “Well, that was a very good name for it,” David recalls. “It was a mess .”

He gathered up wild grasses and huge hydrangeas. He constructed a waterfall in front of the orchestra stand. And he played with spotlights until he had achieved a natural rainbow effect.

His father had hoped his son would join him in his engineering business. But while David showed a clear aptitude for electrical and chemical machinery, “I didn’t like the oily water and metal filings. That was not my forte.”

By May 2, 1957, he found himself sitting in Gimbel’s department store in Philadelphia, the star of a promotion for Chippendale’s furniture. “And I sat there for three weeks while Camden, N.J., housewives asked how to redecorate a house with $200,” David remembers. “But I tried to help them.”

He also made a decision. He would stay in America and try to earn his living.

After some starts and stops, including a stint as a radio talk-show host, David was hired as social arbiter Earl Blackwell’s assistant in 1960. It was David’s job to coordinate major events and parties for the likes of Elsa Maxwell, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, even President Kennedy. “I was at that point a gofer, making sure Maria Callas was out of the air conditioning or Jack Benny wasn’t kept waiting,” David recalls.

But he loved the work and formed his own firm by 1965.

Maxim No. 4: “I am fanatical about not spending money. Just because people have money does not mean they should be taken to the cleaners. I resent it.”

Often, David is limited not by the size of his clients’ bankroll but by the scope of his own imagination. Rarely do clients give him a formal budget. “But I do not have carte blanche, either,” he cautioned. “It’s simply an arrangement whereby my clients trust me. They know I won’t throw their money away.”

He is still gleeful over hiring members of the San Diego Symphony to form a salon orchestra during the La Costa weekend. “The price was right,” David explained.

David planned to send each of the La Costa guests special luggage tags “because when you have hundreds of Louis Vuitton bags all looking the same, you’ve got a problem.” But the printer wanted $200 just to put strings on them.

“I said, ‘This is ridiculous,’ ” David recalled. “So we went to a five and dime and bought two balls of twine for $13.88.”