Opulence Reigns at Monte Carlo Night

That’s the funny thing about dragons--the greedy beasts never can get enough.

The 26-foot-high dragon’s head that lurked Saturday at the entrance to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (with its jaws open wide to grab the unwary, it looked like one huge grin) gobbled up nearly 800 souls and sent them sliding down its gullet into a Never-Never Land of caviar and jewels.

Mind you, the guests at the 11th annual “A Night in Monte Carlo” didn’t find the circumstances inside the dragon’s maw at all terrible. Almost too lavish might be a better description, quite on a par with the opulence that would be expected of a party sub-titled “The Emperor’s Ball.” The gala’s seven hours of dancing, dining and casino-style gambling for prizes resulted in net proceeds for the museum of about $175,000.

“This is old China,” said Monte Carlo Chairman Emmy Cote (reprising the role she played last year), who decided that it would make a nice change for the museum to be stripped of its artworks and decorated in the style of a mythical, if tasteful, Chinese emperor of the 17th Century.

Thus the dragon’s head entrance, as well as galleries with wall murals painted by the ball committee to retrieve the themes of Imperial and Confucian China. Shark-sized goldfish swam along the walls of the Fayman Gallery, which with Gallery 3, its walls painted with possibly frolicsome bats (a Chinese symbol of good luck), housed blackjack and roulette tables.

In the gallery transformed into “The Resting Place of Buddhas,” the unlucky at cards could lick their wounds in an incense-scented atmosphere, while the bare-midriffed could contemplate their navels. (There were a number of women whose daring decolletages exposed them overly to the elements, which thanks to the cool, breezy evening required periodic retreats from the open-air ballroom.)

The ballroom, under normal circumstances the museum’s utterly unexceptional parking lot, became an extraordinary party site under the influence of Cote, her co-chairs Debbie Malloy and Shannon Rockcastle, and a sizable committee (the Gang of Forty, perhaps?) whose skills with paintbrush and hammer were put to the acid test by the decor’s requirements.

Red silk was used lavishly, on the tables, as a pavilion for the bandstand, and as a groundcover for the man-eating-sized phoenix that guarded the entrance to the dining area. Flowers imported from three continents blossomed out of bases centered by ceramic Foo dogs, and eight-armed lampposts supported fat, crimson paper globes, lit from within and each supporting a set of wind chimes that given the merry breeze threatened at times to drown out the best efforts of the Gene Hartwell Orchestra.

Retreat From Contemporary

If the ball’s retreat from the typically contemporary, avant-garde theme established over the past 10 years signaled a kind of cultural revolution, it also was viewed as a great leap forward by several Contemporary Art Museum principals. Museum Executive Director Hugh Davies said of “The Emperor’s Ball” that it was “Probably the most impressive performance piece to happen in America this year. It’s a museum’s equivalent of the opera, a visual extravaganza.” Having delivered himself of this opinion, Davies glanced around at the opulently dressed but by no means sedate crowd and added, “It’s a damn good party, too.”

Museum board President Sue Edwards summed up the scene by pointing out the juxtaposition of the jet black sky above the ballroom, the brightly lit palm trees just beyond the walls, and the rumble of the ocean swells breaking on the rocks a scant block from the site. “It’s La Jolla, but tonight, it’s also somewhere else,” she said. If she had added that it was the best of two possible worlds, no one would have disagreed.

Well, actually, a truly dedicated Maoist might have turned up his nose at the champagne, the lavish shellfish and steak tartare hors d’oeuvres, the dinner menu of stuffed artichoke and roast rack of lamb, and a dessert buffet of such variety as to make the recounting of its offerings a wearisome task. (French Gourmet caterer Michel Malecot had his pastry chef whip up a life-sized panda in white and dark chocolate, which he said he would take to the San Diego Zoo if it survived the evening unaltered by chocolate-crazed guests.) And there was a Mao-like figure in the crowd, industrialist Forrest Shumway, whose Mao-style pajama suit of simple blue cotton stood out among the more typical black evening clothes of his fellows.

Attracts Out-of-Towners

“A Night in Monte Carlo” traditionally attracts a platoon or two of glamorous out-of-towners whose common cry seems to be that the champagne is always more effervescent on the other side of the hill. There were more than enough such souls Saturday, including New Yorkers Prince Ivan Obelensky and his wife, Mary, hosted by Larry and Jeanne Lawrence, and a group of 16 guests flown in from all over the country by the Neiman-Marcus department store chain. These guests took advantage of the store’s “In-Circle” incentive program, which allows customers who charge a mere $60,000 in purchases in one year to attend their choice of one of the country’s five frothiest annual balls. The store also made a donation in each guest’s name to the museum. Other visitors were Dallas socialites Reuben and Donna Martinez, and San Francisco’s Candy and Bill Hamm.

The gala’s other function--quite unofficial, but very real in these circles--is to bring an end to the three weeks’ worth of non-stop socializing inaugurated by the opening of the Del Mar race track and brought to the boil by the intervening Jewel Ball. Or as Gordon Luce said, with quite a sigh of relief, “This is the end of it all. Now we can can spend some time at the beach.”

The art world was represented at the party by, among others, La Jolla gallery owners Thomas Babeor and Jose Tasende. The guest list also included Tawfiq and Richel Khoury, Fran and Ed Marston, Heather and Jack Metcalf, Liz and Joe Yamada, Bud Cote, Marne and Jim DeSilva, Dian and Ray Peet, Vicki and Haley Rogers, Patti and Ron Mix, Liz and Chris McCullah, Linda and Neal Hooberman, Martha and George Gafford, Phyllis and Stephen Pfeiffer, Jeanne and Bill Larson, Jacque Powell, Harriet and Bud Levi, Nancy Podbielniak, Davilynn and Bill Furlow and Barbara and Charles Arledge.

Others were Don and Karen Cohn, Mike and Carol Alessio, Rea and Lela Axline, Don and Betty Ballman, Mike and Cindy Cote, Todd and Suzanne Figi, Dick and Hank Corwin, Jim and Claudia Munak, Robert Singer and Judith Harris, Ted and Audrey Geisel, San Francisco’s Clarence Woodard with Jeanne Jones, Harold and B.J. Williams, Larry and Junko Cushman, and Debbie Lee with Don McVay.