Liberty's Ringmaster of Ceremonies

By Bonnie Angelo

In the turbulent mid-Manhattan headquarters of Liberty Weekend, one figure remains noticeably calm: veteran Producer David Wolper, the ringmaster of the four-day jubilee. Although besieged by last-minute problems and battered by criticism, Wolper, 58, relies on the experience of his 37 years and 160 awards in the entertainment world to steady his nerves. "If you go into these things thinking it's going to be a Pollyanna situation, you won't survive," he observes. Nevertheless, the strain shows. After six months as Liberty Weekend chairman, creating a celebration that is part official, part spectacular and totally public, his normally tanned cheeks are almost as gray as his beard.

Wolper's long career has produced more than 500 films and documentaries as varied as The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. His television triumphs include Roots and The Thorn Birds. The opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics were his first public spectacles. But as an exercise in patriotism and promotion, Liberty Weekend is even more demanding.

"There are three stages to these things," he muses. "First you think, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to do for my country? Second you ask, why the hell am I doing this? And third, after it is over, you say, wasn't it a wonderful experience! I am now in Stage 2."

Wolper's Stage 2 pains result largely from the crises that inevitably arise in coordinating a string of events at half a dozen sites involving upwards of 20,000 people, including the Presidents of France and the United States. One day last week he was found fretting with Nancy Reagan's advance team over details of a speech and nursing a severe sting administered by Federal Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, who canceled the naturalization ceremony that was to be held at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington and televised nationally. Gesell said the planners were turning the "usual dignified naturalization court" into a "pageant" of dubious taste.

Transient anxieties also nag at him from reports of snafus at the statue's original dedication. In 1886 it rained on their parade. "If it drizzles," says Wolper, "we all get umbrellas. If it's a hurricane, we go the following evening." At the first ceremony, the signal to drop the French tricolor veil from Liberty's face set guns to booming and crowds to cheering during a speech by New York Senator William Evarts. Wolper's nightmare: the President hits the button to light the statue, but nothing happens. So a $250,000 backup system is in place.

All this goes on against a drumbeat of criticism. Wolper has been savaged for glitzy overkill and for commercializing the statue by selling TV rights to ABC for $10 million. The other networks, furious, forced ABC to share the news events. His equanimity strained, Wolper bridles at talk that he is making money from Liberty Weekend: "I get zero, zip. They offered a fifty-fifty deal. I turned it down. I wanted to be a volunteer, because I'm asking so many other people to be a volunteer." (He receives $400 a day for expenses, far below his normal income.) If the July 6 closing ceremonies are an extravaganza, Wolper says defensively, "the sixth is a big party. This country enjoys that sort of thing. People want to have a good time." And while critics sneer at the 200 Elvis Presley look-alikes, he grouses, "Nobody talks about Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic." Nor, he adds, is anyone giving him credit for the two-day conference of creative thinkers on liberty.

A devoted family man, Wolper is eager for the post-Fourth Stage 3, his return to Los Angeles and his eclectic pastimes. He is an avid collector of Lincoln / memorabilia and Picasso sculptures, an unstinting volunteer for aid to medical research and a nut about the Dodgers. Ahead are projects that have been on hold: TV productions on Picasso, Napoleon and Josephine, and Betty Ford's autobiography, The Times of My Life, are all coming in 1987. But no more civic spectaculars: "I'll pass the torch to the next generation."