Hayman: He Says Thanks With a Party

Fred Hayman knows all about the sweet smell of success, and on Jan. 14, he’s going to share it with 1,000 of his closest friends and best customers.

What a party! Hayman (who is non-stop elegant) is taking over Stage 27 at Universal Studios and bringing in six top restaurants to feed the assembled famous. Food will be presented by Chasen’s Maude Chasen, La Scala’s Jean Leon, Jimmy’s Jimmy Murphy, the Bistro and the Bistro Garden’s Kurt Niklas and Christopher Niklas, Spago’s Wolfgang Puck and the Grill’s Bob Spivak.

What a guest list! For 27 years, Hayman has catered to a Rolls-Royce mix of the Westside show biz and business personalities and personages. So he’s guaranteed an extraordinary turnout, all to celebrate the end of his relationships with “Giorgio,” since he’s sold off the perfume and, with it, the name that has hung on the signature yellow-and-white striped awnings on his Rodeo Drive store. The new name, which tells it all, is “Fred Hayman Beverly Hills” and the color is “very yellow.”

Hayman is too classy to talk figures, but one retailer in the know said that a “good customer, and he’s got a lot of those” would be likely to spend $60,000 a year in Hayman’s store. There is no “ticket price” to this party--except being someone important and fashionable. And, there will be no “seating,” which means that hundreds and hundreds of just about everybody will be milling around between the Bistro and Jimmy’s (just as many of them do in real life). Of course, Hayman added, that if some people don’t wish to go to a buffet table, there will naturally be waiters (from the individual restaurants) to serve them.

The party serves as a launch for Hayman’s new perfume, “273,” but he insists that the event is mostly for pizazz and not promotion. He’s got Merv Griffin to emcee, and Marvin Hamlisch with Marilyn and Alan Bergman have volunteered to write a special song for the evening. “I expect the evening to be in great style, but not overdone,” Hayman promised. There will be the USC Marching Band, strolling mariachis, Les Brown--and, as Hayman said, “no fashion show--except what the women are wearing. The fashion show will be their jewels.”

Oh, yes, and there will be pots and pots of his signature caviar too.

MORE SPECIAL OLYMPICS--This time in D. C., and with a daylong celebration, a movie premiere and a very special thank-you.

A big thank-you, too, since A&M; Records’ Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss have turned over checks totaling more than $8 million to the Special Olympics International. That’s all the proceeds from the sale of the album, “A Very Special Christmas.” They’ll be honored, admittedly reluctantly since they usually avoid publicity, by the Special Olympics at a luncheon at the State Department Monday.

“We used to scrape for money for the Special Olympics,” Bobby Shriver, one of the album’s producers, explained. “Every year in June we had the fear we were going to go broke. But now, thanks to Herb and Jerry, that’s all changed.”

The luncheon begins a full day for the Special Olympics that will include an evening presidential premiere of Universal’s new comedy, “Twins,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Thirty-foot cutouts of the mismatched duo will soar beside Kennedy Center, part of the entrance scene for the 1,300-plus crowd expected at the benefit. In the RSVPs are President-elect George and Barbara Bush, plus the film’s stars and enough elected officialdom to make even Hollywood happy.

Fabulous added entries are Olympic medal winners like Mary Lou Retton, Bart Conner, Matt Biondi, Lee Evans, Donna De Varona and, of course, the president of the California Special Olympics, Rafer Johnson.

Following the film--it’s off to the new Potomac, Md., home of Eunice and Sargent Shriver for a non-black-tie party in a massive tent.

Who knows--maybe Washington will get to be a fun town after all.

SAVE THE DATE--That’s Jan. 24, for the premiere of “Three Fugitives” starring Nick Nolte and Martin Short. It benefits California Institute of the Arts, and the co-chairs are Creative Artists Agency’s Mike Ovitz, Disney’s Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg and attorney Lynne Wasserman. . . .

WOMEN OF COURAGE--The Los Angeles National Organization for Women 1988 Courage Awards Dinner Thursday will honor several well-known women, including Susan Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign, and Dolores Huerta, the longtime union activist and first vice president of the United Farm Workers.