Mandell Weiss’ Celebration of a Century

The single, jaunty red rose that glowed in the buttonhole of Mandell Weiss’ pearl gray sports jacket paled to near invisibility Monday afternoon as principals, students and performers of UC San Diego and La Jolla Playhouse heaped a brilliant bouquet of songs, tributes, encomiums and panegyrics at his feet.

The entrepreneur and major benefactor of the two-theater Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts on the UCSD campus starred at a celebration of his 100th birthday that doubled as a preview of the new Mandell Weiss Forum, a 400-seat theater built as the second stage in what UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson said is planned to become a “theater district” that will encompass three separate houses.

As the story of his personal century--from his birth in a Romanian village on April 22, 1891, to his moment of triumph on April 22, 1991, unfolded to amusing but respectful narration and frequent intervals of song, Weiss sat quietly in the center of a row of armchairs that had been set up as a temporary royal box on the edge of the theater’s “thrust” stage.

Flanked by Atkinson and by fellow birthday boy and La Jolla Playhouse managing director Alan Levey, Weiss smiled as Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff and UCSD theater department chair Adele Edling Shank offered the information that Queen Isabella, Jack Nicholson and Glen Campbell are among the many famous folk born on April 22. Saying that Weiss is “a historical phenomenon in himself, but that his birthday needs to be seen in perspective,” the narrators added that the day is not only Earth Day in the United States, but an official holiday in Egypt called “Sniff the Air Day,” and that among the events of Weiss’ birth year were the introduction of Sherlock Holmes, basketball, “Hedda Gabler” and, perhaps not least, the zipper.

If tributes were money, Weiss, already sufficiently wealthy to donate well in excess of $2 million to the two theaters that bear his name, would see his income soar. Four separate standing ovations (which may be a local record) by the crowd of more than 350 interrupted the proceedings. The day was declared Mandell Weiss Day in San Diego by an official city proclamation, President George Bush sent a letter of congratulation, and Weiss became just the fifth recipient of the highly prestigious Revelle Medal, issued by UCSD to recognize distinguished service to the university by persons not directly affiliated with it.

But best of all for Weiss may have been the recognition and celebration of a life in the theater.

The event took place exactly one year to the day after ground breaking ceremonies for the new theater, but McAnuff invested the building with significantly greater age.

“The Mandell Weiss Forum is not 1 day old, or 1 year old, it has a century of experience behind it,” he said. That experience includes Weiss staging a circus in the yard of his home in Romania before the family emigrated to this country in 1898, and mounting a minstrel show as a high school student in Portland, Ore., at which the still-familiar song, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll,” had its first West Coast performance.

His thespian activities continued through graduation from the University of Oregon, but an intention to enter the theater professionally was set aside for service in World War I, after which Weiss came to San Diego seeking work, became a jeweler and later an investor in the Price Club, and in 1981 returned to the theater via his major donation to La Jolla Playhouse. Without the faintest tone of irony, McAnuff said of Weiss that, “His theatrical career went on hiatus from 1920 to 1981,” a hiatus that lasted the better part of an average life span.

Of all the stories told about Weiss, the most amusing may have been that as a child in New York, he was taken to a performance of “Julius Caesar” and was so entranced by the performance of title actor Richard Mantell that he added an “l” to his name, originally spelled “Mandel.” As they might say of such a name change back stage, “What the l, why not?”

The program included periodic performances by students in the university’s Professional Theatre Training Program, although the first was given by former theater department chair Arthur Wagner, who danced up to Weiss and sang a comic ditty from Yiddish Vaudeville entitled “Romania, Romania.”

The students offered a melodramatic performance from an old Weiss favorite, “The Girl of the Golden West,” and various sung tributes that included Mexican and American birthday songs. After the last of these, in which the audience joined, a cake virtually blazing under a grove of 100 slender tapers was wheeled out; the cast helped Weiss--who more than held his own--blow out the candles.

In response to the tribute, Weiss, in a clear voice that did occasionally reveal 100 years of service, told the audience, “Now it’s my turn.” Various anecdotes from his youthful days on the boards were followed by a proud summation. “It seemed like the world was not interested in my acting, so I did something different,” he said. “I became an entrepreneur. But my life started in the theater, and my final days are in the theater, so my life is complete.”

Like an Academy Award winner who returns to the stage to acknowledge a director he had forgotten to thank, Weiss later returned to the microphone to offer a coda to his speech.

“And one more thing, I want to thank my two doctors who have kept me alive,” he said, which drew howls of laughter from the audience and nearly provoked a fifth standing ovation, which might have prolonged the proceedings until April 22, 1992. Instead, the crowd trooped outdoors to the glass-screened plaza to share in the six massive birthday cakes and drink to Weiss’ health in Champagne.

The attendance included architect Antoine Predock, whose design for the Forum drew considerable praise; builder Harold Kvaas and his wife, Rose Lee; Maurice and Playhouse President Charmaine Kaplan; Roger and Ellen Revelle; Rita Atkinson; art dealer Jose Tasende and his wife, Helen; Bruce Darling; actress Susan Berman; Stanley Chodorow; Christine and Fred Stalder; Faiya and Mickey Fredman; Judith Harris, and Arthur and Sandy Levinson.

SAN DIEGO--The difficulty of swathing in fabric a hanging sculpture measuring 60 by 100 feet, so that it might be officially unveiled, was solved in strikingly contemporary fashion Friday by contemporary artist Richard Lippold.

He decided simply to forgo an actual unveiling of his monumental “Flying Emeralds” in the lobby atrium of downtown’s new Emerald-Shapery Center, whose eight hexagonal, green towers have transformed the skyline.

Lippold’s decision to opt for a simpler dedication ceremony by no means precluded a party, however, a reception given in one of the Pan Pacific Hotel’s twin peach-colored ballrooms as a benefit for the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artist, known for his massive hanging sculptures (four decorate hotel lobbies), wore a lime green suit to honor the Emerald Center and told the audience, “I tried to find the poetry of the building, the meaning of the building. The relationship of this building to emerald crystals is in the sculpture.” Lippold added a sort of praise for the city by saying that, on his first visit here about 20 years ago, “San Diego was a one-horse town of tattoo parlors and saloons. I’d say the horsepower has increased to about 400 since then.”

Museum director Hugh Davies assured the attendance of 300 that the event was “an auspicious moment” for his institution because it will open a branch in 1992 in a neighboring office tower.

The guest list included developer Sandor Shapery, architect C.W. Kim, arts patron Danah Fayman, Bill and Lollie Nelson, Victoria Hamilton and Paul Hobson, Linda and Neal Hooberman, Paulette Gibson, Mac and Tim Canty, and Mary and George Jessop.