A Star-Studded Brouhaha : Letter for a Gala Fund-Raiser Is the Buzz of Hollywood

The letter bearing the signature of actor Jack Lemmon arrived at columnist Art Buchwald’s office in early January. It was an invitation to a gala party for Russian President Boris Yeltsin to be held in Beverly Hills on the night of the Academy Awards.

But right away, Buchwald wondered if he was being made the butt of a joke.

Why would Lemmon spell the columnist’s name Art Buckwald ? Why was Buchwald’s address wrong on the stationery?

Why would he mention Paramount Pictures’ President Brandon Tartikoff, whose studio Buchwald sued in a bitter legal battle over the Eddie Murphy film “Coming to America”? And why would Lemmon be inviting Buchwald to a party being hosted by, among others, Eddie Murphy?

“I smelled a real rat there,” Buchwald recalled. “Tartikoff had announced that he wouldn’t give me $1 for my lawsuit . . . and I thought if Eddie Murphy was the host, he would give me a table somewhere in the back in the kitchen.”

The gala Oscar night party March 30 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel for Yeltsin didn’t just get Buchwald’s attention--it has become the talk of Hollywood because of the man who’s throwing it: Michael Bass.

When Oscar officials called Elizabeth Taylor to see if she would attend the ceremony, the actress begged off saying she was going instead to Jack Lemmon’s tribute to Boris Yeltsin. Officials were dumbstruck. A party for Boris Yeltsin?

“Russia is in such deep trouble, Lithuania is pulling away, they have such phenomenal problems of life and death and you think this guy is going to come to the United States to party on Academy Awards night?” said Oscar producer Gil Cates. “Does no one have a sense of reality any more?”

Then Cindy Adams wrote in her New York Post gossip column that Lemmon would personally hang a humanitarian award around Yeltsin’s neck the night of the Academy Awards.

Organizer Peter F. Paul said $100,000 in tickets to the event have already sold. But organizers admit they do not have official or recent confirmation that Yeltsin will attend.

When Kim Basinger, among other actors, was listed as a member of the gala’s host committee, her publicist hit the roof. “They are not authorized to use her name at all,” said Alan Nierob.

And when asked if Eddie Murphy, who Bass said allowed his name to be used, would be attending it, the actor’s executive assistant said: “Definitely not. He’s working on a film (in New York).”

A spokeswoman for a peeved Lemmon said the actor had supplied his signature sample--as celebrities often do--to help a charitable group raise funds, but he never was shown the letter and does not plan to attend the party. She said Lemmon has disassociated himself from the event.

Bass, the 34-year-old son of a local dentist, has become something of a legend in Hollywood. Although he works as a manager at Stanley Kramer Productions, Bass spends much of his time getting celebrities to attend charity events.

It was Bass who sent out the Jack Lemmon letter; Bass says the letter was written by volunteers and not intended to offend anyone. “I don’t think anyone thought it was an intimate dinner with Eddie Murphy,” Bass says. He now regrets that Lemmon and Buchwald took offense, and says based on a prior association, he believed Basinger would support the dinner. He also denies that he planted the column item with Cindy Adams.

For the past four years, Bass’ Oscar parties have attracted some of Hollywood’s leading stars. He is quick to say that 105 celebrities attended last year’s bash at the Roxbury, including Gregory Peck, Christian Slater, Raul Julia, Maximilian Schell and Edward James Olmos. Former President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, attended a press conference announcing that director Stanley Kramer would receive a humanitarian award from the American Foundation for the Performing Arts (Bass produces the foundation’s events).

No one argues that Bass, who grew up in Beverly Hills and made it his job to befriend television and movie stars, knows many celebrities.

Actor Dick Van Patten, for one, said he has attended the last two Bass Oscar parties. “They were fun and the food was great.”

Van Patten said he met Bass five years ago through his son, Jimmy. “(Bass is) always calling up saying, ‘You want a ticket to this?’ He’s been a middleman to a lot of different celebrities.”

But some say that it is the nonprofit groups he attaches himself to that really attract the stars.

In throwing the Oscar parties, Bass has joined forces with several nonprofit organizations ranging from El Rescate, a local group that deals with Central American refugee issues, to the Better World Society, Ted Turner’s now-defunct environmental group.

Bass said all he gets out of his work is the pleasure of knowing he has helped others, but he said he wants the Yeltsin gala to succeed for personal reasons.

“I’m 34 years old,” he said. “I want my dad to see this before he goes. He’s hanging on with cancer.”

Bass said Yeltsin committed to come to the event through a “special adviser” but that was before the breakup of the Soviet Union. Nothing is official, he added, saying “One thing we can promise, there will be hundreds of stars there.”

Critics say Bass uses the events to feed his own ego. They believe he wants to become his generation’s Irving (Swifty) Lazar, the legendary agent who each year hosts his own celebrity Oscar night party at Spago.

“I certainly respect his ability to pull in a great crowd,” Bass said of Lazar. “I certainly would love to be in his position.”

The Yeltsin party is being sponsored by the American Foundation for the Performing Arts, the American Spirit Foundation in Beverly Hills and the International Foreign Policy Assn. in San Francisco.

Paul, president of the American Spirit Foundation, said he hopes to raise $300,000 in ticket sales by the night of the party. Television rights are being negotiated.

Bass said the event will raise funds for the Russian Rebirth Foundation, which was founded by Yeltsin in 1990 and has become “the United Way of Russia.”

John Crean, chairman of Fleetwood Enterprises in Riverside, told The Times that he underwrote Bass’ Oscar party last year but has disassociated himself from the Yeltsin event.

“I bowed out because I didn’t like the looks of where things were going,” Crean said. “I think it’s ridiculous (to think Yeltsin would be there),” he said. “I know what it takes to get a head of state to visit the country--weeks and months of preparation.”

Crean said he backed out after giving $10,000 to $15,000 to the American Foundation for the Performing Arts only to discover that it is not tax exempt. Bass told The Times that because his group lacks tax exemption, any money raised at the gala for the Russian Rebirth Foundation will go through the American Spirit Foundation, a group founded by actor James Stewart and Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee.

Controversy seems to dog Bass.

He once promoted fights for super-lightweight boxing champion Julio Cesar Chavez. He became embroiled in a dispute with promoter Don King over who controlled Chavez, and Bass said one of King’s men got so angry with him after a press conference that he tried to throw him off a balcony of the Bel-Age Hotel.

In the mid-1980s, he was convicted of mail fraud and served 3 months of an 18-month sentence in Lompoc Federal Penitentiary in a case stemming from a private business venture, not his charity organizing. “I certainly did time,” he said.

Bass drives around town in a white Rolls-Royce. He lives at his parents’ house (“I come from a lot of family money. My dad gives me a check each week.”) and is married to a 23-year-old Russian model named Irina. It was Irina, he said, who got him interested in Russian charity endeavors.

Last Christmas, for example, Bass staged an event called “Toyskis for Totskis” at Spago, an event designed to send toys to the children of Russia. A number of celebrities showed up.

But some who have worked with Bass on past fund-raisers say that when he got involved, chaos followed and the events fell short of their fund-raising goals.

“We had a bad experience the first time we did the Oscars party with him,” recalled Oscar Andrade, executive director of El Rescate.

The 1988 event was staged at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. “We put everything in his hands,” Andrade said. “He said he would underwrite everything and help with producing the event. All we had to do was give him some support staff. He was going to get corporate sponsors and friends who would underwrite the event.”

But Andrade said the event turned “chaotic.” While half of the crowd consisted of people concerned with Central American political and social causes, Bass showed up with Hollywood hangers-on.

“There were a lot of bimbos there,” Andrade said. “There was even some guy with a mountain lion on a chain.”

Lauren McMahon, who at the time was El Rescate’s executive director, said her group made $20,000 to $25,000 from the event. With 1,000 people attending at $500 a head, she said, they expected much more.

McMahon said she discovered that one of Bass’ partners had gone all over town passing out complimentary tickets and that Bass “invited a significant number of models” to the fund-raiser.

“He thought they would glamorize the evening,” McMahon said, “but we were absolutely appalled.”

Bass said he thought El Rescate had a “double standard” at the party, fawning over big stars who showed up but looking down their noses at the models.

“If you were one of their stars, that was one thing, but if you were just some low-level model that nobody knew anything about, you were just a slut,” Bass said. “I know the women involved in that organization (El Rescate) were in their 40s and I don’t think they appreciated the competition.

“I put together all the food, I brought the stars out, I brought the hotel in for free,” Bass said. “They’ve continued doing their event, not as successfully as the first year, but they’ve had a presence ever since.”

The next year, Bass threw an Oscar bash at the same hotel for the Better World Society.

“He said, ‘Last year I did a party at the Mondrian and we raised X amount of dollars,” recalled one woman who helped organize the event for the group. “He said, ‘This year, because it’s Ted Turner and the Better World Society, I can raise $100,000.’ ”

Once again, stars showed up for the party but the woman said they didn’t look like earnest supporters of the Better World Society.

“I said to Michael, ‘What is happening? No one is writing out a check,’ ” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’ll get the money, don’t worry.’ The bottom line was, we raised about $2,000 or $3,000.”

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she was so upset that she spoke to the hotel’s owner, Severyn Ashkenazy.

“He deputized his assistant to write out a check right on the spot for $20,000,” the woman said.

Bass admits that he said he could raise the $100,000, but was not hired as the event’s fund-raiser. “The only thing I did for them was produce the event,” he said.

In 1990, Bass linked up with a charity called Athletes and Entertainers to sponsor an Academy Awards night benefit for young AIDS victim Ryan White that drew former President and Mrs. Reagan and grossed a reported $40,000.

Bass was forced to relocate the event at the last minute because organizers had failed to get a permit to erect a tent on a vacant Beverly Hills estate. Several of the advertised celebrities failed to show up.

“Everybody started fighting,” Bass recalled. “It was a disaster. It was an ambitious project. I think it would have been wonderful with the tent and all.”