A Birthday Salute to Craig Noel at 75

The world’s stock of wise sayings grew Saturday at “A Birthday Fantasy,” a 75-candle-power gala to honor Craig Noel at his very own Old Globe Theatre.

The warning: “Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it” was twisted into the newly coined Noel Corollary: “If you really, truly, energetically and avowedly hate something, watch out, because you just may get that, too.”

Noel, the Globe’s executive producer and one of the city’s officially designated Living Treasures, has a reputation around the theater as the Grinch Who Stole Birthdays. Noel in fact is credited as so disliking the mere mention of his natal day that, in a feisty ballad penned for the occasion by Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien, he was given the sobriquet, “Craig Noel, the birthday troll.”

So what was Noel’s reward for almost three-quarters of a century of enthusiastically denying himself cards, candles and cakes? A birthday bash on a scale simultaneously so grand and crazy that no more than a handful of his contemporaries can dream of enjoying its equal. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, indeed.

To the degree that Noel was hoisted with his own petard, it was from the heights of the towering candles that lined the walk to the Balboa Park theater and from the top of an immense jack-in-the-box that sprung a cargo of balloons over the Lowell Davies Festival Stage, site of the open-air cocktail reception and such giddy diversions as clowns, a fire eater and a balloon man who fashioned fanciful tubular chapeaus for the less self-conscious among the 400 guests.

On the way to the reception, guests passed the well-guarded tent erected on the green lawns of the Shiley Terrace II. Premature entrance to the mystery-shrouded structure was strictly forbidden, even to high rollers who laid out the $5,000 required to sponsor a top-level table. Co-chair Bea Epsten explained the tight restrictions by saying that the essence of “A Birthday Fantasy” lay hidden in the tent.

“The fantasy is the tent,” she said, then added rather obliquely, “Or the tent is the fantasy.”

For the record, Noel looked thrilled to have been fingered by fickle fate for this particular honor. His face, in fact, seemed to glow with about the same intensity as 75 massed birthday candles.

During the reception, he said, “I’ve never had birthday parties because I’ve never celebrated my birthday. Since I was 12 years old, I’ve gone away at the time of my birthday. But, since I’m 75, I decided, what the hell, I better have a birthday and I better enjoy it.”

It would, in fact, have required a concentrated effort not to enjoy “A Birthday Fantasy.”

When Epsten and fellow co-chair Martha Gafford finally raised the curtain on the tent, they revealed a fantasy setting that looked to have been confected by a mad professional gift-wrapper working primarily in confetti, glitter, tinsel and balloons (yard-wide specimens hung in nets above the tables).

Strings of lights festooned the ceilings, but the tables featured neither candles--forbidden in such settings by fire regulations--nor flowers, since Globe production designer Robert Brill and his staff instead erected wild centerpieces of gift boxes and glitzy doodads. Tables and floor were shrouded in black cloth to emphasize the mass collision of colors that fought across the scene like some gorgeous battle of blossoms.

“This is just a joy,” said Gafford as she surveyed the zany scene. “And the icing on Craig’s cake is that we’ve raised $120,000 for the Globe.”

The Aubrey Fay Jazz Band and First Class alternated on opposite sides of the tent and kept the two dance floors hopping between courses in the lengthy meal, catered by the Sheraton Harbor Island hotels.

The evening’s richest confection, however, was the witty musical tribute written by O’Brien, which was narrated by actor David Ogden Stiers and sung by a cast of frequent Globe performers led by Amanda McBroom. Titled “The Boy Who Never Grew Up” and subtitled “A Child’s Story,” the piece teased and almost roasted the delighted Noel with such phrasings as “Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, Wish him happy birthday and he’ll give you hell!” The singers also suggested that Noel’s pooch, Bijou, makes all the important decisions at the theater.

Many of the attorneys in the crowd commented on the presence of actor Larr Drake, who has done star turns at the Globe and is a cast member of NBC legal drama “L.A. Law.” Among other celebrities were Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Foxworth, stars of the Globe’s upcoming “Love Letters;” Marion Ross; Katherine McGrath; Joan Houseman, widow of John Houseman; Barry Bostwick; Harry Groener; Doug Sheehan; Kandis Chappell; Tom Lacy, and Jonathan and Terry McMurtry.

After the formalities, the netted balloons plopped to the floor and became players in the comedy by joining the dancers in an unlikely but mirthful samba. Globe angel Darlene Shiley rushed back to her table after bouncing through the orbs with former Gov. Jerry Brown, who attended with Bobbie and Blaine Quick. “I just had to dance with him; I’m one of the few registered Democrats here,” she explained.

The keepsake program, designed as a birthday book, contained greetings from a goodly number of actors who launched or aided their careers with stints at the Globe. Dennis Hopper sent word that work kept him from attending the event. “If I am working, it is because you were the first to cast me in a play. It’s your fault,” he wrote.

Christopher Reeve, Julie Kavner and Paxton Whitehead were among the other Globe players who have achieved stardom to send notes, and the centerfold was taken by a tribute from Richel and Tawfiq Khoury, the principal underwriters of the event.

Among principal sponsors in attendance were Alice and Richard Cramer, Audrey Geisel, Rita and Josiah Neeper, Sondra and Victor Ottenstein, Donald Shiley, Alice and Terry Churchill, Jeannie and Art Rivkin, Gail and Richard Schack, Brenda and Arthur Fred Bern, Barbara Bloom, Valerie Preiss with Harry Cooper, George Gafford, Nina and Robert Doede, Bob Epsten, Darlene Davies and Paul Marshall, Mitchell Kay, Luba Johnston, Sheridan Harwin, and Barbara and Neil Kjos (back from Europe that morning but dancing nonetheless).