Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr Read Online Free PDF Page A

the James Bond franchise, turned to new-boy-in-town Howard Rosenman, fresh off an affair with Leonard Bernstein back in New York City and already in production with a few TV movies, to say, “Allan must have invited his Rolodex.”
    Actually, it was two Rolodexes: his and Hach’s.
    “We cross-pollinated lists,” Hach confirms .
    As long as Allan plied them with food, liquor, drugs, and sex, the guests didn’t seem to mind when their host said clunky things like “I’m instant Elsa Maxwell!” Whoever the hell she was. The food was good, the drugs and sex even better.
    That first summer at Hilhaven, the parties merged deliriously into each other. So many people spent so many nights at Allan’s house that many who attended don’t remember being there the night of May 26, and many who think they were weren’t. His housewarming was followed in quick succession with fetes honoring a lazy Susan array of celebrities that ranged from Elton John and Martha Raye to Rudolf Nureyev and Mick Jagger, who didn’t make it to the party in his honor. “But that didn’t matter,” says Hach. “Bianca Jagger showed up, and besides, Mick Jagger was at half a dozen Allan Carr parties that he hadn’t been invited to.”
    “It was just before the Robert Stigwood disco period,” says Alice Cooper, “and Allan was the social butterfly who had a million different parties because he was always promoting something.” Cooper called it a “family thing” since the parties usually included fellow rockers Elton, Rod, Mick, Ringo. “For a while there, we were out almost every night,” he recalls, and Allan was the catalyst that brought them together with the movie and TV people. “I became
friends with Groucho Marx. We’d go to Allan’s and it would not be surprising to find Mae West sitting next to Rod Stewart or Salvador Dali or Jack Benny. Those people did hang out there,” says Cooper.
    “Allan was the bridge between new and old Hollywood,” says Flashdance producer Peter Guber. “When I first came to Hollywood, he gave parties on a scale of what you read about in Harold Robbins.”
    Allan’s parties weren’t the only starry gatherings in town. Agent Sue Mengers’s dinner parties were strictly A-list, as were the weekend salons over at Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s house. “What made Allan’s parties unique is that you just didn’t know who would walk in the door,” says agent Ron Bernstein.
    Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher agrees. “It was like Noah’s ark. His parties were two of everything.”
    “Allan’s parties were loud, vulgar extravaganzas to which he invited half the town,” says critic and Gong Show regular Rex Reed.
    Who knew? The next person through the door could be Rita Hayworth or L.A. Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta, Diana Ross or rock mogul David Geffen, Sidney Poitier or porn star Harry Reems or a neighbor’s good-looking pool boy. It was Allan’s introduction of the rockers to the movie mix, however, that really shook up Hollywood. “He was a force that drove that kind of thinking in the 1970s,” Guber adds.
    Time magazine put the epicenter of the rock star/movie star confluence at two points on the Los Angeles map. A club called On the Rox occupied the second floor above the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. Unofficially, people called it Lou Adler’s Living Room, since it boasted an exclusive list of only forty members. Most of them were rockers but a few made movies, including Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Ryan O’Neal, and his pubescent daughter Tatum in the flush of her Paper Moon Oscar-win days.
    As Time put it, there are “only two places where L.A. music and film personalities can meet informally.” On the Rox was one. “The other location is Allan Carr’s house in Benedict Canyon,” Time continued. “If a rock, film or TV performer wants to cross over, his journey must begin here.” The newsweekly went on to call Allan Carr “the king of the A