Birthday Salute for Hammer Packs ‘Em In

WASHINGTON — If you turn 90, you’re entitled to celebrate your birthday. If you are Dr. Armand Hammer, you can celebrate it any way you want.

Bring together 300 of your friends--including West Coast movie stars, East Coast politicians and a cheering section of foreign dignitaries--for a dinner at the Watergate Hotel. Then fold in 600 more buddies at the Kennedy Center Symphony Hall, entertain them all with a classical evening featuring Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern and Kiri Te Kanawa, and finish up by taking the baton out of Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich’s hand to lead the National Symphony in “The Washington Post March.”

Ironically, the behind-closed-doors negotiations between Senate leaders and White House staff on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty kept a couple of key congressional invitees from making it to the fete, but at least 10 senators were spotted. (There were frequent and laudatory references to Hammer’s role in the summit and the INF Treaty, including a mention in a lengthy pre-dinner invocation by the Crystal Cathedral’s Robert Schuller.)

Summit Next on Agenda

Hammer had happily changed his travel plans that day. At one point, he leaned over his dinner partner, Lady Bird Johnson, to explain that after a two-day stop in Los Angeles, he was off to the summit himself, invited by Soviet Ambassador to the United States Yuri Dubinin. The invitation had taken place earlier in the day, when Hammer showed up with Dubinin at the Michael Jackson KABC-AM radio talk show, moved to Washington for the birthday party.

As Jackson, a guest at the dinner, related it, Hammer showed up at the studio, unannounced, with Dubinin in tow, told the talk-show host that “you have us as long as you want us,” and then looked shocked and happy when Dubinin asked him to be present at the summit and at the signing of the treaty.

The radio station drop-by seems perfectly consistent with the assembly-line production of public relations and documentation that accompanies “The Doctor” everywhere. There were, at the party, the usual photographers, the standard video crew, and, this evening, a slick program book containing letters from President Reagan, Vice President George Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Also given to each guest was a folder containing dozens of letters received after publication of the program from French President Francois Mitterand, Prince Charles and Princess Diana (who addressed the birthday boy as “Dr. Hammer” and wrote on Kensington Palace stationery), White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker (who addressed his letter to “Dear Armand”), Barbara and Frank Sinatra, Bulgarian Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers Georgi Yordanov, and other assorted kings of pop culture and of countries.

Hammer’s eclectic guest list was remarkable. Weintraub Entertainment’s Jerry Weintraub (who with his wife, Jane, had spent the night before as house guests of George and Barbara Bush) chatted with Bob Farmer, the finance chair of the Dukakis presidential campaign and now head of the Democratic Party’s Presidential Trust.

Warm Words for a Fund-Raiser

Occidental Petroleum’s Rosemary Tomisch made Farmer happy, saying the words that bring warmth to fund-raisers: “Bob, I want to help. I’ve got to talk to you.”

Lined up with Hammer and his wife, Frances, in the Presidential Box were Democrats like former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson (her daughter, Lynda Bird, and her political-hopeful son-in-law, Chuck Robb, were in the audience), and House Majority Whip Tony and Phyllis Coelho, as well as Republicans, including Energy Secretary John and Lois Herrington.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was there, as was Los Angeles’ own Abigail Van Buren Phillips with her husband, Morton and her twin sister, Eppie Lederer; Metromedia’s John Kluge; newspaper magnate Randolph and Veronica Hearst; former Atty. Gen. William French Smith and his wife, Jean; Los Angeles County Chief of Protocol Sandra and Sheldon Ausman; producer Sherry Lansing with Bob Morrow; and the totally delightful Merv Griffin, who introduced himself as Donald Trump and brought along Eva Gabor and his son, Tony Griffin.

Help From Hammer

Everyone had a “Doctor” story. Like Miami’s Alec Courtelis, a major breeder of Arabian horses, who said he approached Hammer several years ago for help in buying a stallion from a Soviet farm. When Hammer set up the meeting, the Soviets said the price was $1 million, Courtelis related. He had wanted to negotiate, but “Hammer said that a million sounded better” than bargaining.

On a more serious note, Hammer’s well-wishers and Hammer himself kept talking about his “two great dreams”--achieving a meaningful world peace and finding a cure for cancer.

In a tribute, attorney Louis Nizer said “We cannot control the length of our time, but we can control the depth and the width.”

Hammer, with an elfin grin, told the audience that Schuller had told him a story while flying to D. C. about a 90-year-old man who wanted to marry an 18-year-old girl. “That could be fatal,” he was told. Hammer said the man replied, “If she goes, she goes.”

Griffin might have been kidding when he asked “What do you buy for a man who has a Rembrandt?” but it was obvious that everyone wished Hammer 10 more years--including Hammer himself, who told his guests, “you made my 90th birthday a wonderful beginning for a new decade for me and I will welcome you back for my 100th.”

The indomitable Hammer, arriving upstairs ahead of the crush to cut his birthday cake (decorated with views of the Earth’s hemispheres), knew what he wanted--but how to top this one?

“Maybe we’ll do it in outer space. . . .”