Born On This Day- May 28th... Party Animal Allen Carr

I have a certain amount of camp sensibilities; I am zany for a really good bad movie: Valley Of The Dolls, Battlefield Earth, Roadhouse, Terror In Tiny Town, Ishtar, The Oscar, Mommy Dearest. Showgirls is my #1 Good Bad Movie, but Can’t Stop The Music is right behind it, nipping at it’s ass.

The 1980 musical epic was the only time The Village People starred in a film, proof that it takes a village. He cast it with a lot of ex-boyfriends, but on the set they got out of hand & Allan Carr issued an edict: “Anyone caught having sex on the set will be fired!”

Nothing says 1970s hedonism like an Allan Carr production. But then there was nothing else like very ostentacious, obese, ornate caftan-wearing Allan Carr.

Carr produced & promoted the films Grease, Grease 2, Where The Boys Are ’84, Tommy, & Broadway’s La Cage aux Folles. Carr kept was also busy hosting exclusive & extravagant events with guest lists that included most show biz legends & those that loved them. The invitations to the gatherings at his opulent mansion, with bars, a disco, & plenty of private rooms where guests could indulge in cocaine & sex, were highly coveted. Even in homophobic Hollywood of the 1970s.

He titled his parties like movies: the Roman Polanski Rolodex Party, the Rudolph Nureyev Mattress Party, the Mick Jagger Cycle Sluts Party, the Truman Capote Jailhouse Party. He invited rock stars & Hollywood royalty. You could rub up to Elton John, Groucho Marx, or the pool boy. To promote the movie Tommy, he held the opening-night party in the New York subway.

Carr’s fall from grace was as dramatic as his rise to the top. He was banned from the Academy Awards after producing what is remembered as the worst Oscar broadcast of all time, with a tone deaf Rob Lowe & Snow White singing Proud Mary. Stars like Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews & Paul Newman signed a petition banning Carr from the Oscars. Disney sued the Oscars for copyright infringement of their Snow White character. The Breakout Superstars of Tomorrow segment in the program’s second half featured 12 minutes of young actors like Christian Slater & Patrick Dempsey writhing around a giant Oscar as if it was the golden calf.

Soon after, the Hollywood establishment shunned the sizzling scandals, sex & sordid lifestyle of the flamboyantly gay Allan Carr. Grease may have been the word, but nothing lubed Carr like pretty parties, pretty caftans, pretty drugs & pretty boys.

In 1999, Carr died of Liver Cancer. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific by Ann Margret in front of his former Diamond Head Estate in Oahu, Hawaii.