Wall Flowers

Let us now frame the famous

WE prefer to go heavy on W the id and light on the superego,” said Robert Bachrach, at twenty-nine the cadet member of the family that has photographed the powerful and the well known for well over a century. “I like to think we tell the truth in kindly terms. ’ ’

The occasion for his remarks was a show entitled “Prominent Personalities,” a selection of about 300 portraits of the studio’s past and present customers, a number of whom actually showed up. The photographs themselves were pasted like wanted posters on the orange marble walls of Donald Trump’s six-story bandbox on Fifth Avenue. “We do this once every two or three years,” said Robert, while his father, Fabian, greeted guests nearby. “It beats advertising, and it’s cheaper. Our main problem is that people think we’re more expensive than we are. A black-and-white portrait only costs $149, and one in color is $ 195. Most sessions run around forty minutes, but Walter Cronkite could only spare us one.”

“Do go to the women’s exhibit on the third floor,” said Blanche Ross, the president of Ross Associates Speaker Bureau, Inc., as she stood drumming up business at the foot of the escalators. “About half the pictures belong to our clients. Our motto is, ‘Put a woman on the podium.’ ”

And indeed it was something of a ladies’ night at Trump Tower, although Donald Trump himself came downstairs and briefly graced the proceedings with his presence. His hired bouncers were everywhere, guarding the photographs and the Steinway grand with a fine impartiality. Cronkite was on the wall, as were John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Perdue, Governor Cuomo (and Mayor Koch) of New York, and Henryk de Kwiatkowski of Kwiatkowski Aircraft, but they were not present in the flesh. Rene Dentan, the president of Rolex—‘ ‘I’m in charge of the errand boys”— dropped in from his nearby headquarters and stayed the entire evening, sporting a magnificent walnut-faced watch. Fergus McLarty, of the Saint Andrew’s Society of New York, arrived in his kilt.

“I think,” said Dr. M. Moran Weston, chairman of Carver Federal Savings and Loan, examining his own portrait, “that you get a sense of a man looking for another mountain to climb. ’ ’

By contrast, what was generally known as “the women’s floor’ ’ was fairly thronged. Enid Nemy, the New York Times reporter, looked like a genial bird of prey. Patrice Munsel, the opera star, attended in red paisley and Spanish hat. Doe Lang, the author of The Secret of Charisma and president of Charismedia, attempted to play Chopin’s Fantaisie-impromptu in C-sharp Minor on Mr. Trump’s piano, but was prevented by Mr. Trump’s associates. (“The party took us by surprise,” explained Mr. Trump’s concierge.) Heloise, the adviser, wore what appeared to be a cowboy hat modified for the occasion by.a veil, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, about as tall as a candle and as bubbly as a glass of Poland Spring Water, found herself nearly speechless at the approach of the amiable Fabian Bachrach. “You’re the famous. . .the famous.. she exclaimed in her darling little accent, searching for a word that begins with p.

Meanwhile, on the vertiginous escalators that kept the party from assuming an unseemly intimacy, other guests passed one another like ships in the night as they searched faces for signs of a similar fame. “I hear that company’s getting hassled,” said a man gliding upward in stately fashion. The man he addressed, gliding downward toward the women’s floor, seemed to agree.

—L. J. Davis