Philanthropic L.A. Marches to the Tune of the Masterplanner

In a city as balkanized as Los Angeles, community building has to start somewhere. Liz Familian started with parties.

Familian publishes the Masterplanner, an up-to-the-minute list of the year’s significant upcoming Los Angeles philanthropic events. Even those who do not regard sorting out galas as the most important task facing the Western world might find the Masterplanner to be a handy decoder of the elite--and an interesting little document of postmodern Los Angeles society. Familian, however, considers her creation nothing less than “a Bible for the community.”

While it is not everyone’s cup of tea, the Masterplanner helps movie premiere planners dodge the merry-go-round of philanthropy balls, museum openings and awards galas that anchor public life in Los Angeles. It reminds people not in “the Industry” when potential invitees will be at such perennials as the Sundance Film Festival.

“I would never place an opening of a movie without checking [the Masterplanner],” says Paramount Pictures chairwoman Sherry Lansing on the Masterplanner’s Web site. Her high-powered endorsement is merely one of many that leap off the site like movie poster blurbs:

“Indispensable.”--Jean Picker Firstenberg, director of the American Film Institute.

“If the Los Angeles Masterplanner didn’t exist, someone would need to invent it!”--Billionaire philanthropist and Masterplanner advisory board member Eli Broad.

And though the Masterplanner’s primary purpose is listing fund-raisers, former studio chief Lew Wasserman once posted his 80th birthday party on the Masterplanner--to warn the city that he had dibs on many deep-pocketed Hollywood guests, Familian said.

Because what if somebody threw a party and nobody came?

The genesis of this social scripture, Familian says, was “BC 1986.”

“I mean, think about it,” she muses, over a plate of chopped Shrimp Louie at a fashionable Beverly Hills bistro, Maple Drive, where white tablecloths, deep booths and hushed conversations conjure an air of high-end Zen. “There was no desktop publishing. No fax machines. Databases were very cumbersome to use.”

In those days, a group of old-money Los Angeles bluebloods circulated an annual registry, the Master Calendar, listing the events of 20 or so of what Familian calls “elite WASP charities.”

But where did that leave the social events orchestrated by all the new money? Clusters of new elites and new museums were assembling like barbarians at the gates of Rome, and their mushrooming fund-raisers outstripped the pace of an annual calendar.

The Master Calendar, concluded Familian, who was then chairing the board of the Children’s Museum, “did not cover the mosaic that Los Angeles had become. L.A. is not a static place. There are new people. With new energy.”

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Finally, Familian witnessed “a train wreck of two events”--and decided to wade into the fray. She announced she was creating a citywide clearinghouse on all Los Angeles fund-raising schedules--the Jewish calendar, the Catholic calendar, the Democratic and Republican calendars, arts and Hollywood events--to unify this civic Tower of Babel.

When her first Masterplanner newsletter came out in 1986--with Los Angeles’ first African American mayor, Tom Bradley, on its advisory board, along with leaders of the Music Center, LACMA and the Junior League--it unveiled a new organogram of social orchestrators.

Not to mention, nowadays, a whole new genre of soiree, such as the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center dances and the Gay Asian Pacific Services Network awards ceremonies.

The inevitable Web site (https://www.masterplanneronline.com) came in 1999.

“Imagine the chaotic traffic jam of events that would occur” without the Masterplanner, onetime NBC chairman Grant A. Tinker says on the Web site, crediting the agenda with providing “organizational sanity.”

Traffic jams? Train wrecks? Sanity itself?

If the Masterplanner has saved Western (or at least Westside) civilization, it does not always succeed in the herculean task of blanketing all the city’s emerging social universes.

The March 1 NAACP Image Awards were absent from the Masterplanner Web site in early February. Event publicist Jalila Larsuel said she had not known how to place a listing--but the event subsequently made the Web site and the March newsletter.

Veteran publicist Jeanne Taylor “didn’t think twice” about listing a February jazz benefit for the California African American Museum. “I think if people knew it existed, they would use it,” she says.

Familian says that despite research and outreach, it’s impossible to find out everything--especially when people list late or not at all. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to be listed,” Familian says. “We’re in a melting pot and anything that hasn’t melted needs to.”

Although major Latino events do appear on the list, one prominent publicist, Oralia Michel, who promotes such fe^tes as Fiesta Broadway, says she never notifies the Masterplanner. “The listing doesn’t do anything for me, not for my clients,” Michel says. “The worlds are so segregated. They thrive without crossing.”

Michel does post events on https://www.latinoLA.com, a 3-year-old e-mail service that launched a Web site in 1999.

Perusing the Masterplanner for the first time, LatinoLA’s co-founder, Abelardo de la Pena, sighs: “They have nothing. It’s more like the Blue Book, the socialites, who put on their glittery gowns and tuxes and do the fund-raising circuit.”

His maestro calendario offers charities such as Padres Contra El Cancer (Parents Against Cancer) along with the Mental Menudo arts salon, theater and music.

“We cover the community,” he says.

The Masterplanner, by contrast, lists mostly high-profile events. Subscribers, Familian says, tend to be “your high net worth individual”--those who entertain for business and philanthropy (the Los Angeles Times has multiple subscriptions).

“In the greater scheme of things, it helps you navigate the social waters,” explains Irena Medavoy, who helped plan a big Valentine’s gala for a children’s charity, COACH For Kids. “There’s a lot of great charities out there and we’re all friends,” said Medavoy, who is married to Phoenix Pictures chairman Mike Medavoy. “You never want to ostracize, hurt, or take over someone else’s time. You have to be very careful.”

Charity donors also use the calendar to help allocate contributions and research the leaders and honorees of organizations, Familian says.

People can also find out if they can buy tickets or if events are invitation-only, because Los Angeles, Familian notes, “is a place people have come to, by and large. And when you come to somewhere, you need to connect.”

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And when you do, Masterplanner board member Sandra J. Ausman, Los Angeles County protocol chief, is there for you, dispensing such helpful tips as when you should send a handwritten thank-you note. Can you remember the last time you sent one? Her list of occasions when it is absolutely required is voluminous--and failure to do so “establishes you as deficient in manners”(!).

Protocol issues notwithstanding, in the future, predicts California historian Kevin Starr, Angelenos will eventually make their way onto the same agenda.

It was only back in the ‘50s, he said, that Dorothy Chandler, the philanthropist wife of Norman Chandler, then-publisher of the Los Angeles Times, offended Los Angeles’ wealthy Old Guard by inviting the ascending Westside Jewish elite to contribute much-needed money to build the Music Center.

Anti-communist fervor in Southern California--where McCarthyite witch-hunting roiled Hollywood--was partly a reaction by the oligarchy to its gradual loss of control to the newcomers, said Starr, who is California’s state librarian.

“The state of mind is totally different today,” Starr says. “The movie people who were despised in the ‘20s and ‘30s now treat themselves as transcendent royalty. Today, people even dress with a similar sense of style, and that cuts across all camps.”

Yet many onetime newcomers are now society stalwarts on the pages of the Masterplanner. “Nobody would keep anybody off that now,” says Starr, “for color, creed or race.”