Benefit dinner parties have become a familiar sight along our culinary landscape. Just a few weeks ago, Downtown Dining and the Monterey Bay Aquarium joined forces to help raise $180,000 for victims of the Soberanes Fire.
Impressive to say the least.
Imagine if that same party featured the following: Hollywood A-listers dressed in masquerade; a nearly naked, sedated woman lying prone inside the wreckage of a staged car accident; a co-host (and wife of one of the world’s most acclaimed artists) dressed in a unicorn hat being wheeled around the party tucked into a giant red-velvet bed; silver cloches on elaborately decorated tables, lifted to reveal live frogs that frantically hop around the tipsy guests. And imagine that when the party ends and the receipts are counted, the charity will receive nothing, and the venue will be stuck with an enormous bill — and plenty of publicity.
That (in)famous party took place Sept. 2, 1941 (almost exactly 75 years ago) at Pebble Beach’s lavish Del Monte Hotel (now the Naval Postgraduate School). Spanish painter Salvador Dali dreamed up the surrealistic event, hosting more than 1,000 guests (including Bob Hope, Clark Gable, poet Robinson Jeffers and a 17-year-old debutante named Gloria Vanderbilt). The event was supposed to assist European artists displaced by war. No money reached the refugees, but the gala became known as “the party of the century,” according to Carmel author Barbara Briggs-Anderson, who wrote the 2012 book “Salvador Dali’s ‘A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest.’”
Anderson chronicles the party in great detail, beginning the project after sifting through old family photos to discover that the grandfather of her husband, Terry, was Julian P. Graham, the official photographer for Pebble Beach from 1924 to 1963.
Through the years, Graham photographed heads of state, royalty, golf legends, hotel guests and everyone in between. When he died in 1963, the photos were willed to the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley — one of the country’s largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books and unique materials.
Graham’s photos alone tell the story of Dali’s dinner, but Briggs-Anderson conducted extensive research, and her descriptions tell a story of imagination, creativity and excess.
Guests paid $4 for the dinner, which began with Avocado and Crab Meat served in black high-heeled shoes, followed by Double Consomme with Sherry. For an entree, guests could choose from Monterey Sardines a la Dali, Spring Chicken Saute au Risotto or Minute Steak Grill with Fresh Mushrooms. The dessert was something called Coupe Surrealistic.
The invitation requested guests arrive in costume, “preferably one from a dream.” Sticking with the forest theme, Dali had live animals delivered in cages from the San Francisco Zoo.
The man holding the purse strings (and the bag) was Samuel F.B. Morse, called the Duke of Del Monte, who developed Pebble Beach. It’s unclear how much red ink Dali’s party produced, but in the end, Morse earned enormous publicity.
Morse’s publicist Herbert Cerwin, in his book “In Search of Something,” wrote about “a party the likes of which I am quite sure has never been equaled. It cost a great deal more money than we could possibly realize on the party itself, but it was written up all over the world and still is talked about and written about.”
The Monterey Herald’s social editor Evelyn Zaches Londahl described the party as “one of the strangest ‘gags’ the Monterey Peninsula has seen — and it has seen more than its share.” The dinner party also was depicted in newsreels, including a famous one featuring the comedian Hope hamming it up with the leaping frogs.
There are more than a few epilogues to this story. Briggs-Anderson’s book provides one:
“The Museum of Modern Art in New York sent a letter requesting the money from the party for the refugee artists. The hotel sent the museum an accounting of the party, including the 1,200 high heel shoes, the cost of various props, etc., and detailing the staggering red ink. Hotel Del Monte never heard from the Museum of Modern Art again.
Salvador and Gala Dali checked out of the Hotel Del Monte several days later. By all accounts the party had been a tremendous success for exposure and publicity for Dali and the Hotel Del Monte, but was a disaster financially. Dali worked his magic and cast a spell through his imaginative and innovative fantasy party of the century that will be remembered for years to come.”
As for Graham, Briggs-Anderson has worked tirelessly to collect and catalog his work. She set up a photographic archive of thousands of his images at www.Julianpgraham.com, photographs that effectively chronicle the history of the Monterey Peninsula. She’s contacted almost daily by people all around the world interested in the collection, Graham, Dali or all of the above.
“It’s been such a positive experience, a web of local lives, stories and history,” said Briggs-Anderson, who followed up “A Surrealistic Evening” with another book, this one about famed golf course architect Dr. Alister MacKenzie.
Dali died in 1989 in Figueres, Spain, at age 84. After the party, the Dalis spent many months at the hotel, until the U.S. Navy took over the property in 1943. The couple then moved to The Lodge at Pebble Beach, and kept visiting the Peninsula until 1948.
That local connection gives added significance to this summer’s opening of Dali17 (www.dali17.com), a museum in Monterey showcasing 543 of Dali’s avant-garde pieces. It’s said to be the second largest private collection of Dali art in the United States and the first of its kind on the West Coast.
Also hanging on the wall at Dali17 are several of Graham’s photos of that dizzy Dali dinner so many years ago. The museum has been so occupied with opening details that it will not be able to commemorate the dinner on Sept. 2, but they plan to invite local young artists to the museum on Saturday, Sept. 3, for a painting activity. Something more Daliesque will take place on Halloween eve, however, and details are still being discussed.
Whether or not there is a commemorative party, one thing is clear: Dali lives on, and not just in our dreams.
Mike Hale can be reached at thegrubhunter@att.net. Listen to his weekly radio show “Food Fodder” at noon Wednesdays on KRML, 102.1 FM.
