DRY ROT IN PARADISE

Vanities

Acapulco has gone the way of all flash

HIGH season in Acapulco is Athe week of Valentine’s Day—a last gasp of extravagance before everyone picks up and moves on to another watering hole. This year the week’s festivities began with the arrival of Candy and Jimmy Van Alen of Newport and New York. On Saturday, after cocktails in honor of the Van Alens, everyone adjourned to a party at the villa Arabesque given by Baron Enrico “Ricky” di Portanova, honorary consul general of San Marino and an heir to legendary Houston wildcatter Hugh Roy Cullen’s fortune, and his wife, Sandra (“Buckets” Hovas to her former Lamar High classmates in Houston).

A series of white Moorish pavilions that range down the side of a mountain like a lava flow, Arabesque has thirty-two bedrooms, twenty-six baths, four kitchens, two indoor waterfalls, and three swimming pools. A forty-foot guard tower rises inside the main gates, and men in white carrying walkie-talkies patrol for crashers.

Once past the guards, we descended a curving staircase that followed the course of an artificial brook edged with tropical plants to an immense white room whose sweep of white marble floor segued into an aquamarine swimming pool that hung 150 feet above the ocean. An orchestra was playing a slow samba as John Gavin, the former actor and the current U.S. ambassador to Mexico, and Roy Cohn, the di Portanovas’ attorney, chatted with several tall, handsome women around the pool. The baron, dressed in white leather moccasins, maroon trousers, and a matching maroon shirt, was lounging on a white chaise near the orchestra, making occasional requests in a rumbling basso profundo voice. I followed Henry Kissinger up the stairs to where more guests were trickling through the gates and wandering out onto a rooftop pavilion that doubles as a helicopter pad. Even the most sophisticated paused to snap Instamatics in front of the eleven life-size white concrete camels grouped around a desert tent. From the pavilion I could still see the baron reclining on his chaise and smoking a very large cigar as Roy Cohn came to the microphone to sing “New York, New York” with the Mexican vocalist.

A young man in a white scarf and a plaid jacket without a shirt introduced himself as Jurgen Friedmar and gave me his card, which had a Palm Beach address and telephone number as well as his title. “You’re a prince,” I said, reading the card.

“And a painter,” said Prince Jurgen von Anhalt. “Today I have been using the di Portanovas’ Leaijet to make my jet art. I set up a canvas behind the engine blast of the plane, then throw the paint.”

“And were you happy with the results?”

“Of course. Today I made art history.”

Acapulco has a long tradition of the rich and the beautiful looking for paradise. American and Mexican businessmen began developing the northern end of the bay in the late 1930s, when Acapulco was still little more than a fishing village, but the resort didn’t really catch on until World War II put an end to European travel. Errol Flynn anchored here in 1945 on his yacht, Zaca, with Orson Welles close behind. Welles leased the Zaca to film The Lady from Shanghai, starring his wife, Rita Hayworth, and Hollywood has been using Acapulco as a set ever since.

Houses, or rather villas, have always been part of the attraction. Natasha and Jacques Gelman, Cantinflas’s producer in Mexico, built one of the first. They were followed by Merle Oberon, the Tasmanian actress with the air of a duchess who asked her guests to remove their shoes and bathe their feet before stepping into her living room.

Acapulco, of course, has its detractors—who complain that it has grown too large, too seedy. But glamour in the tropics tends to be overripe—a quality Tennessee Williams caught in Night of the Iguana, which he wrote in a small hotel just off Avenida CosteraMiguel Aleman.

On Thursday night John Whyte gave a party. A blue scroll invitation arrived rolled in a silver foil tube; guests would be expected to wear blue and silver. The host greeted us in a lustrous blue shirt open to the waist, silver lame harem pants, and blue thong sandals. A model for thirty years in New York, Whyte appeared ‘ ‘on the side of every Railway Express truck in the United States” until he was “replaced by a blue pigeon,” and he was the True-cigarette man until he quit smoking and gained thirty pounds. When I asked why blue and silver, Whyte explained, “Because those will be the new colors. Every year I give a party in Acapulco, and every year the colors I choose become the colors of the year. ”

On Friday night Nicolas Sanchez-Osorio, society columnist for Novedades de Mexico and a founder of Vogue Mexico, gave a black-and-white party for Carolyn Farb, something of a celebrity in Houston for receiving $20 million in a divorce settlement. The party took place at La Luna, another hillside villa, this one owned by Kicki and Roberto Trouyet. Carolyn wore a strapless white gown by Vicky Tiel, with a set of turquoiseand-diamond earrings and necklace that had belonged to Merle Oberon. Once again an orchestra played by a pool as torches flamed in the night and rockets burst over the heads of the guests at another Acapulcan fiesta. Ruminating on the theme for her party, Carolyn pointed out that the black-and-white color scheme was carried out in the menu: chicken with mole, black beans and rice, octopus in its ink, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. “All of the men are wearing white guayaberas and black bow ties,” said Carolyn. “That used to be standard evening dress in the tropics. It’s an old tradition that we’re bringing back, and it’s very exciting."

The party on Saturday night for the orphans of Acapulco was a bal de mer. Padre Angel and about twenty of his young charges were waiting on the steps to greet guests as they entered Teddy Stauffer’s open-air beach club. The guests—the women at least—wore fancy headdresses. Emi Fors, who is credited with being Acapulco’s leading hostess, welcomed an army of friends in a white sequined headdress adorned with tufts of white ostrich. Mrs. Fors promised dinner, dancing, fireworks, a floor show, and a door prize.

After a week in Acapulco, the obligation to have fun every night had become burdensome. Perhaps it was the weather—it was a warm, still night—but a pall hung over the party. The guests, distributed across three terraces overlooking the beach, appeared as dispirited as any orphanscould.

Nights in Acapulco

During a dance performed by female impersonators in body stockings and dog masks, I was introduced to Piero A verso, an Italian painter who has helped the di Portanovas with their house. Piero, who is bald, has a beard, and wears a diamond stud in his left ear, was carrying part of a smashed pinata that he had worn as his headdress. When I asked about Piero’s contribution to Arabesque, he said, “Yes, I helped, but, of course, they are both so creative, they could have done it all alone. Do you know Sandra? She is brilliant. A genius. She can pick up the pieces and make something out of nothing. And she works so hard. It is a miracle the way she can work all day long, then, when it is time for the party to begin, there she is, the beautiful and gracious hostess. No, I cannot take credit for the house. That is the di Portanovas’, but the camels are mine. ’ ’

John Davidson