Lawrence Eisenberg

LIVING THEATRE AT THE PLAZA ATHENEE

By Lawrence Eisenberg

Published In St. Petersburg Times, August 7, 1988


No-frills and package tours are a way of life for most travelers, and we're always congratulating ourselves on how we were able to tough it out and cut a corner, like booking a cheap flight to London with only one stop-off in Cairo, or getting a discount on a tour of vampire bat caves, even though we never wanted to see them.

Most of us can't afford to stay in luxury hotels. But for those who are closet self-indulgers, try the next best thing: treating them as objets d'art or living theatre.

Take the Plaza Athenee in Paris. From the outside, it looks like a Parisian hotel out of the movies: scrubbed beige stone dotted with red awnings and geraniums at every window. A small garden on either side of the entrance has blooming flowers all year. One wonders how they do this in winter, but why ask? This is showbiz. The small lobby features round Chinese rugs and couches covered in silk, most of whose occupants are also covered in silk.

It's at the concierge desk that you can watch Theatre of the Shamelessly Indulged. Behind it, five days a week, is chief concierge Gerard Thiault, a slight man with graying hair and a mustache, who has spent the last 37 of his 54 years here. Gerard says, "Our job is to make things easy for our guests. They know that none of us will ever say 'no' to them no matter what they ask." On a recent morning he got a call from a Plaza Athenee regular who lives in Madrid. The caller said his dog had cancer and he'd heard about a life-saving medicine manufactured somewhere in Germany; he didn't know the names of the medicine, the laboratory or its location in Germany. "So we worked for two hours," Gerard says, "and we found the product in a very small town in Germany. We had it shipped to a concierge we know in a large city and he sent it on to Madrid."

Gerard gives the traditional Frenchman's shrug. "Nowadays, most people are specialists. Here we specialize in everything." Another canine story: A female guest who was very close to her dog (She would ride in the front of her Rolls Royce next to the chauffeur while the dog sat in the back seat) once told Gerard that she was unhappy that her pet had to take his walks in the Bois de Boulogne, where he might fall in with the wrong kind of dog. So she gave Gerard authorization and he bought her a house with a large garden in the chic, residential section of Paris where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived. The woman continued to stay at the hotel while her chauffeur took the dog for daily walks in the garden of the lavish, empty home (When the dog died, Thiault
arranged for the house's sale).

The concierge will neither confirm nor deny a rumor that one guest, a princess, keeps 70 trunks of clothing in permanent storage at the hotel and, when she shows up for a two or three week stay, her luggage includes 600 pairs of shoes. She goes shopping daily, returning with huge packages of designer clothing, but wears the same dress every day.

If you're getting the impression that many guests could buy the hotel with the cash in their wallets, you may be right. Among them have been Fords, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Fellini, Dominguin, Dior, Callas, Streisand, Hepburn (Katharine and Audrey), Woody Allen, Taylor and Fisher, Taylor and Burton. Even Mata Hari was a guest when she was arrested during World War I; possibly turned in by somebody who wanted the room.

Theatre of the Rich: If you want to stay at the Plaza Athenee, each night costs $415 for a double, with suites ranging from $655-866. For that outlay, you get 400 employees for 250 rooms, 24-hour room service on Havilland Limoge china, fresh flowers in all the rooms and public areas at an annual cost matching the electric bill ($100,000). Furnishings vary from good copies of Louis XV & XVI furniture to Persian rugs, silk wall coverings, marble bathrooms with jacuzzis and TV sets concealed in chests. All rooms in the hotel have connecting doors, so a suite can expand to a whole floor (for guests like King Hussein). If you want your dog to stay with you, that's an extra $40 a day (If he trashes the place, as did Elizabeth Taylor's dog, there is an additional charge for replacement of the carpet).

If, like most people, you can't afford to sleep there, move to the next phase of theatre: walk through the lobby and right into the 19th century--the Gobelins Gallery. Running the width of the hotel, the red-carpeted gallery manages to be cozy, despite marble columns and mammoth crystal chandeliers. Sink into a chair, tweak a nearby palm frond and order a drink, a pastry or coffee. During the day you'll see Theatre of the Absurd: a parade of haves, have-nots and many on their way to either destination. Everybody seems to be carrying shopping bags from name designers. In the hotel are the boutiques of Guy LaRoche and Harry Winston. Nina Ricci and Chanel are down the block and Givenchy is around the corner (The Plaza Athenee is located at 25 Av. Montaigne, in the 8th arrondissement). The parade of shoppers moves with a dizzying swiftness--as though the money will fall off if the pace is slackened.

For Theatre of Sheer Joy, the best hour to come here is teatime, when the lights are softer and so are the people. Well dressed Parisians talk quietly while a pianist soothes with songs from the past. No matter what your day has been like, you feel warm and protected and, for a few minutes, rich.

To move the theatre concept into a Comedy mode, complete with clatter and chatter, schedule a lunch at the art deco Relais Plaza restaurant. It's usually crammed with fashion designers and their staffs, dressed in understated flamboyance and conversing chicly and somewhat exaggeratedly, waving their cigarettes like bayonets (A recent visitor from New York said, "You get a better class of phony here than back home"). Try the Ravioli Royans, mixed salad and espresso and you can get out of here for about $30 a person, entertainment included.

If the Relais Plaza is comedy, the Regence Plaza restaurant, off the Gobelins Gallery, is High Drama. A lush, thickly carpeted room, it's quiet enough to hear the rustle of money. Flowers and crystal abound, along with such Plaza Athenee inventions as Mousseline de Scampi (shrimp dumplings with two sauces--lobster and champagne--topped with Beluga caviar) plus a $500,000 wine cellar. By ordering carefully, you can get out of here for about $35 a person and you might spot one of the regulars, such as Princess Doria of Italy (Her dishes must be boiled in Evian water before food is placed on them. She also requires 20 napkins for each lunch; a napkin touches her lips only once and is then discarded). A former guest, according to the maitre d', "was an English widow who always ordered two lunches, the second one for her departed husband. At the end of each lunch I asked her whether her husband had enjoyed it. He always did." Conductor Herbert Von Karajan once requested that a screen be placed around his table while he was eating lunch. It was done tout de suite. At almost any time you might spot a 5'5" sheik sipping Dom Perignon with a 6'2" beauty from the south of France. This is known as Theatre of On-the-Make.

On warm days and evenings, the restaurant moves into the courtyard, where Musical Theatre begins: Hidden somewhere in the ivy that creeps up to the roof are thousands of little birds that twitter all day and evening. You never see them, but the hum is like a silly symphony, and you'll find yourself giggling. That's the best theatre of all, and it doesn't cost anything.
#

NOTE: SINCE THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN (1988), GERARD THIAULT HAS RETIRED AND—QUELLE SURPRISE!—RATES HAVE GONE UP CONSIDERABLY. BUT, AS OF A RECENT TRIP, EVERYTHING ELSE IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME.
***************************************************
Copywright Lawrence Eisenberg. 2010. All Rights Reserved






MARCH 14, 1988 FIRST TIME RIGHTS

IN YOUR AREA



LIVING THEATRE AT THE PLAZA ATHENEE

By Lawrence Eisenberg



No-frills and package tours are a way of life for

most travelers, and we're always congratulating ourselves on how

we were able to tough it out and cut a corner, like booking a

cheap flight to London with only one stop-off in Cairo, or

getting a discount on a tour of vampire bat caves, even though

we never wanted to see them.

Most of us can't afford to stay in luxury hotels.

But for those who are closet self-indulgers, try the next best

thing:treating them as objets d'art or living theatre.

Take the Plaza Athenee in Paris. From the outside,

it looks like a Parisian hotel out of the movies: scrubbed beige

stone dotted with red awnings and geraniums at every window. A

small garden on either side of the entrance has blooming flowers

all year. One wonders how they do this in winter, but why ask?

This is showbiz. The small lobby features round Chinese rugs and

couches covered in silk, most of whose occupants are also

covered in silk.

It's at the concierge desk that you can watch

Theatre of the Shamelessly Indulged. Behind it, five days a

week, is chief concierge Gerard Thiault, a slight man with

greying hair and a mustache, who has spent the last 37 of his 54

years here. Gerard says, "Our job is to make things easy for our

guests. They know that none of us will ever say 'no' to them no

matter what they ask." On a recent morning he got a call from a

Plaza Athenee regular who lives in Madrid. The caller said his

dog had cancer and he'd heard about a life-saving medicine

manufactured somewhere in Germany; he didn't know the names of

the medicine, the laboratory or its location in Germany. "So we

worked for two hours," Gerard says, "and we found the product in

a very small town in Germany. We had it shipped to a concierge

we know in a large city and he sent it on to Madrid."

Gerard gives the traditional Frenchman's shrug.

"Nowadays, most people are specialists. Here we specialize in

everything." Another canine story: A female guest who was very

close to her dog (She would ride in the front of her Rolls Royce

next to the chauffeur while the dog sat in the back seat) once

told Gerard that she was unhappy that her pet had to take his

walks in the Bois de Boulogne, where he might fall in with the

wrong kind of dog. So she gave Gerard authorization and he

bought her a house with a large garden in the chic, residential

section of Paris where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived.

The woman continued to stay at the hotel while her chauffeur

took the dog for daily walks in the garden of the lavish, empty

home (When the dog died, Thiault arranged for the house's sale).

The concierge will neither confirm nor deny a

rumor that one guest, a princess, keeps 70 trunks of clothing in

permanent storage at the hotel and, when she shows up for a two

or three week stay, her luggage includes 600 pairs of shoes. She

goes shopping daily, returning with huge packages of designer

clothing, but wears the same dress every day.

If you're getting the impression that many guests could

buy the hotel with the cash in their wallets, you may be right.

Among them have been Fords, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Kennedys,

Fellini, Dominguin, Dior, Callas, Streisand, Hepburn (Katharine

and Audrey), Woody Allen, Taylor and Fisher, Taylor and Burton.

Even Mata Hari was a guest when she was arrested during World

War I; possibly turned in by somebody who wanted the room.

Theatre of the Rich: If you want to stay at the

Plaza Athenee, each night costs $415 for a double, with suites

ranging from $655-866. For that outlay, you get 400 employees

for 250 rooms, 24-hour room service on Havilland Limoge china,

fresh flowers in all the rooms and public areas at an annual

cost matching the electric bill ($100,000). Furnishings vary

from good copies of Louis XV & XVI furniture to Persian rugs,

silk wall coverings, marble bathrooms with jacuzzis and TV sets

concealed in chests. All rooms in the hotel have connecting

doors, so a suite can expand to a whole floor (for guests like

King Hussein). If you want your dog to stay with you, that's an

extra $40 a day (If he trashes the place, as did Elizabeth

Taylor's dog, there is an additional charge for replacement of

the carpet).

If, like most people, you can't afford to sleep

there, move to the next phase of theatre: walk through the lobby

and right into the 19th century--the Gobelins Gallery. Running

the width of the hotel, the red-carpeted gallery manages to be

cozy, despite marble columns and mammoth crystal chandeliers.

Sink into a chair, tweak a nearby palm frond and order a drink,

a pastry or coffee. During the day you'll see Theatre of the

Absurd: a parade of haves, have-nots and many on their way to

either destination. Everybody seems to be carrying shopping bags

from name designers. In the hotel are the boutiques of Guy

LaRoche and Harry Winston. Nina Ricci and Chanel are down the

block and Givenchy is around the corner. The parade of shoppers

moves with a dizzying swiftness--as though the money will fall

off if the pace is slackened. For Theatre of Sheer Joy, the best

hour to come here is teatime, when the lights are softer and so

are the people. Well dressed Parisians talk quietly while a

pianist soothes with songs from the past. No matter what your

day has been like, you feel warm and protected and, for a few

minutes, rich.

To move the theatre concept into a Comedy mode,

complete with clatter and chatter, schedule a lunch at the art

deco Relais Plaza restaurant. It's usually crammed with fashion

designers and their staffs, dressed in understated flamboyance

and conversing chicly and somewhat exaggeratedly, waving their

cigarettes like bayonets (A recent visitor from New York said,

"You get a better class of phony here than back home"). Try the

Ravioli Royans, mixed salad and espresso and you can get out of

here for about $30 a person, entertainment included.

If the Relais Plaza is comedy, the Regence Plaza

restaurant, off the Gobelins Gallery, is High Drama. A lush,

thickly carpeted room, it's quiet enough to hear the rustle of

money. Flowers and crystal abound, along with such Plaza Athenee

inventions as Mousseline de Scampi (shrimp dumplings with two

sauces--lobster and champagne--topped with Beluga caviar) plus a

$500,000 wine cellar. By ordering carefully, you can get out of

here for about $35 a person and you might spot one of the

regulars, such as Princess Doria of Italy (Her dishes must be

boiled in Evian water before food is placed on them. She also

requires 20 napkins for each lunch; a napkin touches her lips

only once and s then discarded). A former guest, according to

the maitre d', "was an English widow who always ordered two

lunches, the second one for her departed husband. At the end of

each lunch I asked her whether her husband had enjoyed it. He

always did." Conductor Herbert Von Karajan once requested that a

screen be placed around his table while he was eating lunch. It

was done tout de suite. At almost any time you might spot a 5'5"

sheik sipping Dom Perignon with a 6'2" beauty from the south of

France. This is known as Theatre of On-the-Make.

On warm days and evenings, the restaurant moves

into the courtyard, where Musical Theatre begins: Hidden

somewhere in the ivy that creeps up to the roof are thousands of

little birds that twitter all day and evening. You never see

them, but the hum is like a silly symphony, and you'll find

yourself giggling. That's the best theatre of all, and it

doesn't cost anything.

#





*****************************************************************

* GERARD THIAULT



Most of the people call me Gerard. I'm here 37

years.

Request this morning from Madrid. He said he has a

big problem with his dog and he found in a newspaper somewhere

the name of a new medicine that could save him because he had

cancer. The drug was in Germany. He didn't know the city or the

laboratory. So this morning we worked two hours to find the

product in a very small town in Germany, then we had it sent to

a big town there, to a concierge, where it was sent to Madrid.

We try, at least, to do everything.

The woman with the dog used to sit in front of

Rolly Royce with driver and two dogs sit in back.

I'm now 54.

Last week somebody was making a large party of 40

tables and in 48 hours she wanted big numbers on the tables. The

restaurant would say we don't have that, but we casn give you

the name. We do it. We specialize in everyting.

Not too many middle-easterners lately. The King of

Jordan in Paris now, stying at the Jourdanian embassy, but his

party is here.



Story about a client who telephoned from a public

booth and asked him to get him a reservation at a restaurant

across the street fromt he booth. Thiault knew the manager,

called and got it.



He also got people a New Year's reservation at

Regine's in N.Y.--a N.Y. client called.



STORY FRAGMENT ON GERARD THIAULT-JUNE 15, 1990



It's at the concierge desk that you can watch

Theatre of the Shamelessly Indulged. Behind it, five days a

week, is chief concierge Gerard Thiault, a slight man with

greying hair and a mustache, who has spent the last 37 of his 54

years here. Gerard says, "Our job is to make things easy for our

guests. They know that none of us will ever say 'no' to them no

matter what they ask." On a recent morning he got a call from a

Plaza Athenee regular who lives in Madrid. The caller said his

dog had cancer and he'd heard about a life-saving medicine

manufactured somewhere in Germany; he didn't know the names of

the medicine, the laboratory or its location in Germany. "So we

worked for two hours," Gerard says, "and we found the product in

a very small town in Germany. We had it shipped to a concierge

we know in a large city and he sent it on to Madrid."

Gerard gives the traditional Frenchman's shrug.

"Nowadays, most people are specialists. Here we specialize in

everything." Another canine story: A female guest who was very

close to her dog (She would ride in the front of her Rolls Royce

next to the chauffeur while the dog sat in the back seat) once

told Gerard that she was unhappy that her pet had to take his

walks in the Bois de Boulogne, where he might fall in with the

wrong kind of dog. So she gave Gerard authorization and he

bought her a house with a large garden in the chic, residential

section of Paris where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived.

The woman continued to stay at the hotel while her chauffeur

took the dog for daily walks in the garden of the lavish, empty

home (When the dog died, Thiault arranged for the house's sale).



The concierge will neither confirm nor deny a

rumor that one guest, a princess, keeps 70 trunks of clothing in

permanent storage at the hotel and, when she shows up for a two

or three week stay, her luggage includes 600 pairs of shoes. She

goes shopping daily, returning with huge packages of designer

clothing, but wears the same dress every day.

**************************************************************



GERARD THIAULT-INTERVIEW JANUARY 1988



Most of the people call me Gerard. I'm here 37

years.

Requet this morning from Madrid. He said he has a

big problem with his dog and he found in a newspaper somewhere

the name of a new medicine that could save him because he had

cancer. The drug was in Germany. He didn't know the city or the

laboratory. So this morning we worked two hours to find the

product in a very small town in Germany, then we had it sent to

a big town there, to a concierge, where it was sent to Madrid.

We try, at least, to do everything.

The woman with the dog used to sit in front of

Rolly Royce with driver and two dogs sit in back.

I'm now 54.

Last week somebody was making a large party of 40

tables and in 48 hours she wanted big numbers on the tables. The

restaurant would say we don't have that, but we casn give you

the name. We do it. We specialize in everyting.

Not too many middle-easterners lately. The King of

Jordan in Paris now, stying at the Jourdanian embassy, but his

party is here.



Story about a client who telephoned from a public

booth and asked him to get him a reservation at a restaurant

across the street fromt he booth. Thiault knew the manager,

called and got it.



He also got people a New Year's reservation at

Regine's in N.Y.--a N.Y. client called.

_____________________