Two days after the fact, in New York and in Palm Beach where the principals dwell at least part of their multi-residential time in winter, they – the great washed (as opposed to unwashed) and manicured ones – were burning up the wires and the airwaves emailing and talking about the Steve Schwarzman 60th birthday party which took place on Tuesday night at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue and 67th Street.
Mr. Schwarzman, if you didn’t know, is a principal partner in the private equity firm called the Blackstone Group. In terms of personal wealth, he ranks number 73 on this year’s Forbes 400 (richest Americans) list with an estimated net worth of $3.5 billion.
Mr. S. is not quite at the top of that New York list (although far far from the bottom as well). According to Forbes, he’s preceded by Leonard Stern ($3.7 billion), Ralph Lauren ($3.9 billion), (Mayor) Michael Rubens Bloomberg ($5.3 billion), Leonard Blavatnik ($7.0 billion), Ronald O. Perelman ($7.0 billion), brothers Si and Donald Newhouse ($7.3 bill each), Rupert Murdoch ($7.7), George Soros ($8.5), Carl Icahn ($9.7), David Koch ($12 billion – and that’s probably just the tip of that iceberg since he and his brother are private co-owners of Koch Industries with assets valued upwards of $700 billion!) .
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Christine and Steve Schwarzman |
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Whatever his net worth, Mr. Schwarzman is a charter member of that billionaire boys (and girls, some girls) club and possessor of one of its highest public profiles. Married to (his second wife) Christine, a fireman’s daughter from Long Island whose first husband was Austin Hearst, grandson of William Randolph Hearst, Mr. Schwarzman and his missus cut a wide social swath in Manhattan, in East Hampton, in St. Tropez, in Palm Beach where they have homes, and wherever else their private jet can land nearby.
In New York he gained great attention several years ago when he bought an enormous apartment at 740 Park Avenue from Gayfryd and Saul Steinberg for $31 million. In Palm Beach a couple of years ago he gained a lot of local attention (and not all of it favorable with the gilt-edged local citizenry) when, having already acquired a $9 million villa from Quest publisher Chris Meigher, he bought a landmarked 18,000 square foot one-story house for approximately $22 million and knocked it down because, it was said, he wanted a second story (more room) and the existing dwelling couldn’t have taken the weight of a double size. Big, he likes.
Tuesday night’s birthday party had 640 guests in a room designed, constructed and decorated by Philip Baloun who started out in business as a floral designer (so don’t get upset if your kid finishes college and wants to go into the flower business). Mr. Baloun is famous in New York for designing and decorating many very expensive private and public (charity) parties with costs running into the seven and maybe occasionally eight figures.
The colors of the décor of the Tuesday affair were Las Vegas reds and blues because the theme was a nightclub. Cocktails were held in a large anteroom decorated with murals depicting the living room of the Schwarzman apartment, and even hung with some of the actual art from their apartment. From there guests were led into the nightclub where tables were arranged on tiers (like the Rainbow Room or the old Copa) and all facing a main curtain which opened to reveal a stage backed by a scrim decorated like a starry night.
This was for the show – Marvin Hamlisch and a Chorus Line-type chorus, Patti LaBelle (singing “Happy Birthday”) backed by the Abyssinian Baptist Church choir, comedian Martin Short whose monologue was a little too raunchy for some ears, and finally the headliner Rod Stewart, who was reportedly paid $1 million for his performance. Legendary rock stars such as Stewart regularly command such fees and even more. Don Henley of the Eagles, for example, commands and gets $2 million for 60 minutes at a private party.
There were, according to WWD’s Jacob Bernstein, “orchids by the truckload, tycoons by the dozen, and enough Oscar de la Renta gowns to fill the party pages for at least a year.”
Sean Driscoll’s Glorious Food provided the menu of filet mignon et cie. The wines and champagnes, according to the oenophiles in the crowd, were splendid and first rate. The seating, always a very tricky – and possibly the most crucial -- strategic matter for any great dinner, especially amongst the rich, the chic and the shameless, was technically not so hot for some: i.e., Arianna and Dixon Boardman were seated at the same table as Mr. Boardman’s first wife, the reigning queen of Palm Beach society, Pauline Baker Boardman Pitt; Governor Jon Corzine was seated at the same table as the former New York governor George Pataki, the former a Dem and the latter a Repub, and said NOT to be (even slightly) bosom buds.
Then there were also “the tears over the tiers” where guests complained that the construction design made it great for seeing the entertainment but almost impossible to “see” who was there in the audience. Zut alors! as the French would say.
Then there were the stories about the uninvited such as the socialite who is said to have just shown up (sans husband) but was turned away; and the social (ice) queen who was furious to have been left out and asked someone to get her on the list. But what’s a great (gargantuan, expensive) party without a list of complaints from the peanut gallery?
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Truman Capote and Kay Graham |
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Mr. Schwarzman has a fondness for big splashy parties. When he married Mrs. Schwarzman several years ago, he hired The Frick for the wedding reception, a very rare and very expensive (and glorious) venue for such occasions. Furthermore every year at holiday time, they give a party for several hundred at their New York apartment.
Big parties, historically, are most famous for grabbing almost notorious public attention, no matter how honorable the intention. Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, given in 1966 “in honor of” Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham got even more and lasting media attention than “In Cold Blood,” his best-selling book that paid for it all. And unlike Mr. Schwarzman’s party, the guest list of the Capote party was published the next day in the New York Times. Capote, however, was a stickler for guest lists and seating, having been inspired by his famous swans (who later ostracized him), and a genius when it came to self-publicizing.
Other bigs: In 1988, when Saul Steinberg’s daughter Lisa married Jonathan Tisch, the wedding (at a reported cost of $3 million) was held in the fabulous Temple of Dendur, hosting 500 guests, and decorated with a French Directoire theme that included 50,000 French roses. The marriage ended several years later in divorce.
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Saul and Gayfryd Steinberg |
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The following year Gayfryd Steinberg outdid herself with a 50th birthday party for 200 close friends and family, honoring her husband, at their beachfront estate in Quoque. The party, which was reported to have cost $1 million, was decorated as a tribute to Mr. Steinberg’s passion for Old Master paintings, with ten tableaux vivants of his favorite works (live actors, cast to animate the models in the paintings perfectly).
Astounded and amazed by his wife’s creative powers, Mr. Steinberg toasted her in thanks by exclaiming in what turned out to be an ironic understatement, "Honey, if this moment were a stock, I'd short it."
The Steinbergs saw a lot of negative press about their spectacular evening and its cost, although years later it is recalled by those who attended as a great party, full of laughter and camaraderie: the perfect party.
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Alva Vanderbilt and her house at 660 Fifth Avenue |
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The Steinbergs, incidentally, did not attend the Schwarzman party this past Tuesday night, although Saul Steinberg’s son Jonathan and daughter-in-law Maria Bartiromo, were there.
When Alva (Mrs. Willie K.) Vanderbilt gave a house-warming for Fifth Avenue chateau in 1883, constructed to show the neighbors (and Mrs. Astor) who was who and what was what in New York, her guest list, as well as her menu and the wines and champagnes, and the descriptions of the ladies’ dresses were published in several New York newspapers, and like Truman Capote’s party, is still written about more than a century later.
Twenty years later when Mrs. Astor’s daughter, Carrie and her husband Orme Wilson (whose millionaire father was always said to be the model for Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind) moved into their mansion on East 64th Street in 1904, they held a private ball for several hundred in the house’s ballroom and Enrico Caruso came to sing. All of which, including a list of the guests was published in the press.
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In 1951 Charles de Beistegui, (or Don Carlos, depending on who’s doing the addressing), heir to a Mexican mining fortune, threw a costume ball at the 18th century Palazzo Labia in Venice, it was said to be the largest and most lavish social event of the 20th century. Pierre Cardin’s career as a fashion designer was launched by it, having designed more than two dozen of the guests’ costumes. Cecil Beaton was hired to photograph all of the guests at the party in their costumes, an almost surreal display, reflecting Venetian society just before the fall of the republic at the end of the 18th century (when the Labia family lost most of their fortune.
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Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd |
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Although Mr. Schwarzman’s birthday party was larger than most of the aforementioned, it was far far from the record in New York. In 1957 Mike Todd, the flamboyant stage and film producer, then married to Elizabeth Taylor (her third husband, after Nicky Hilton and Michael Wilding) celebrated the first anniversary of his hit movie “Around the World in 80 Days” with a party for 18,000 of their “close friends” at Madison Square Garden.
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Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr. President to JFK |
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Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, alternating with Duke Ellington and his orchestra provided the (live) music.
A “Pageant from India” (re-creating a scene from the film) featured movie stars entering on elephants, along with some of the films many stars, including Fernandel and the famous Ringling Brothers circus clown Emmet Kelly performed. Playhouse 90, a popular 90 minute CBS weekly television show, covered it live so that all over America people were watching.
A giant food fight turned the over-populated logistical nightmare into a disaster at the time.
Five months later Todd was killed when his chartered plane crashed in a New Mexico desert.
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Louis and Marie-Antoinette |
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Five years after the Mike Todd party, Madison Square Garden saw another extravaganza, the celebration of President John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday with thousands of paying guests (a fundraiser) and blonde on blonde Marilyn Monroe cooing “Happy Birthday Mr. President” from the stage. Less than three months later, Monroe was found dead in her Brentwood house. A year and a half later Kennedy was assassinated.
None of these parties, however, come close in extravagance and dramatic conclusion to the reception for the dauphin and dauphine of late 18th century France, Louis and Marie-Antoinette given by the dauphin’s grandfather Louis XV at Versailles, where tens of thousands of guests from the royal familes of Europe, to the aristocrats of the kingdom to the lowliest citizens, came to celebrate the marriage of the couple whose lives would end a quarter century later on the guillotine on Place de Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde) in Paris. |
