Seeing Stars

If anyone knows about Hollywood hostessing, it’s Sue Mengers. The tart-tongued former super-agent who represented Barbra Streisand, Candice Bergen, Ryan O’Neal and other stars is as legendary as the parties she held in the 1970s and ‘80s at her Bel-Air home. (Mengers calls it her “party house” as opposed to the more modest--by Hollywood standards--”dinner house” she now lives in in Beverly Hills.) Back then, Mengers’ guest list was a veritable who’s who of industry insiders such as Peter Bogdanovich, Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson. (Nicholson still comes over, she says, deeming any meal served before 10 p.m. “breakfast.”) Those were the days when everyone smoked grass, movies cost less than $10 million to make and the word “blockbuster” was a fresh addition to the Hollywood lexicon.

Times have changed, of course, as have the social habits of Tinseltown. In lieu of intimate dinners with a dozen or so guests, such as the kind Mengers hosted, Hollywood’s celebrations, like its movies, are now all about a few major annual events.

These mega-soirees take place in the run-up to the awards season (from October to February), with the climax the Friday before the Academy Awards when CAA’s Bryan Lourd, William Morris’ Ed Limato (until recently of ICM) and Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel open their homes to Hollywood A-listers and anyone else who can wrangle a ticket (good luck). On the eve of the Oscars, the spotlight shifts to the Night Before party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the swag (which has been known to include iPods, HP laptops and Isaac Mizrahi pajamas) is as impressive as the star wattage.

At the mention of these fetes, Mengers--lounging in one of her signature caftans on her living room sofa and looking out from behind dark-tinted tortoiseshell glasses--raises her eyebrows.

“With all due respect to Ed and Ari, those are once a year”--and here she utters something unprintable before taking a drag on her cigarette. “You go into one of those parties, and there are hundreds of people in a large house. You don’t even see everyone who’s there. To me, to go someplace and then have somebody say the next day, ‘Oh, did you see Orson Welles?’ No, I didn’t.”

Of course, the bacchanalian spirit remains alive on a small scale. There are still screening-room salons and Malibu beach parties and discos in director Brett Ratner’s basement. They’re just not as “brilliant,” Mengers insists, as those hosted by, say, the late agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar. At his parties, she says, “you saw George Burns and Jack Benny in one corner, and in another corner you saw Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett. Irving was able to have one foot in with young Hollywood and one in with his old Hollywood friends.”

And yet, Hollywood entertaining--then as now--is about work. Where better to talk about a script, scrape together financing or be charmed into the arms of another agency than over cocktails? “Everything is business,” Mengers says. “You go to a party, and there are going to be people who can maybe give you a job. Some of the actresses that I remain very close to told me that going to my parties was a nightmare--that it was like going to a long audition.

“If someone comes to your home and they have a pleasant evening, it’s going to be impossible for them not to take your phone call [later].” Mengers pauses and takes a drag. “But the caveat is, it has to be done right.”

How, exactly, is this accomplished? Up go Mengers’ eyebrows as she leans forward, a conspiratorial glimmer in her eyes. Hosts and hostesses, take note:

“Everyone wants to see stars,” she says. “That star could be a head of a studio or a hot director, but you better have some celebrities.

“You have to cast your parties, be they dinners for eight or parties for 40, very carefully. You have to make sure none of [your guests] are enemies and none of them are too competitive with each other.” (Even so, Mengers admits, people left off the guest list “get offended. They say, ‘I’m a client, why wasn’t I invited?’)

“You have to be selfish. You cannot invite anyone who would not add to the festivities. If it’s pouring rain and your mother’s standing outside the front door waiting to be invited in, you have to say, ‘No, mother.’

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RULE #1

Cast the party guest list carefully. Don’t invite sworn enemies or those competing for the same acting role.