We will, we will save you!

"What is it they're looking for?" Greenberg asks, when asked about the logic behind cash-strapped charities providing first-class travel and accommodations for wealthy stars. "They're looking for celebrated individuals. How can you be a celebrated individual if you treat the person in a subcelebrity way? It's ridiculous. If you want this person to add panache to your organization, and then you drive out there -- as well meaning as your organization may be -- and pick that person up in your '73 Cutlass, you're not keeping up the image that you're trying to convey."

"Whenever I talk to a charity about why they're asking a celebrity to do something for them," Tateel says, "putting the good value of the cause aside, they have to answer the question, 'What's in it for me?' In other words, why should the celebrity say yes, other than it's a worthy cause? If they don't have the answer to that question, they're going to have a much harder time getting a celebrity connected."

"We do a lot of celebrity golf and tennis events," Tateel says, "and other kinds of sporting events for charities. And you know what? Especially with the golf events, half the time the celebrities don't even know what the cause is. They just love to play golf. They love to play golf with all expenses paid, and to travel the world to some exotic place. For goodness' sake! They don't care what the charity is!"

By the same token, nonprofits can also be callous in their search for star endorsements. ("We've gotten calls over the years from organizations that say, 'I'd like to get a celebrity,'" says Oettinger of the Celebrity Outreach Foundation. "And I say, 'OK, what do you want them to do?' And they say, 'I don't know. We just want a celebrity.' I can't just call someone and say, 'They want a celebrity, so how'd you like to be their celebrity?'") They can also tend to favor the biggest names in the business -- sometimes rejecting generous offers from celebrities they consider less visible, scaling down their expectations as time goes on and reality sets in. ("Up until that time," Greenberg says, "everybody wants Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.")

"Charities have unrealistic expectations every day," Greenberg says. "I think I'd be able to spend most of my life playing golf if I didn't have to deal with the unrealistic expectations of charities. Not that companies don't have unrealistic expectations. They think that a celebrity [is the answer to their problems]. Especially the mom and pop charities. Those are the ones that create the greatest problems for us -- thinking, 'My niece Lucy has this growth on her leg, and we're going to form a nonprofit organization. And all I'm going to do is get a celebrity. And boy, we'll raise a lot of money.' It's never about that."

"Celebrities have been involved with charities for many, many years, starting with World War II," says Tateel. "But it didn't become hugely popular until the time of We Are the World and Hands Across America and Hands Across Africa."

In fact, many Hollywood notables have been deeply involved in social and political causes since the '20s (when movie people were not accepted by then conservative Los Angeles society, and saw politics as a means of establishing themselves and gaining legitimacy), but Tateel is referring to the highly publicized and noncontroversial Live Aid concert. The concert, which was almost single-handedly organized by musician Bob Geldof, raised about $100 million for Ethiopian famine relief. U.S.A. for Africa, a temporary band featuring Bob Dylan, Daryl Hall, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder, among others, donated the proceeds from its 1985 hit, "We Are the World," to African relief.

"When those things were happening in the early '80s," Tateel continues, "that's when everybody from the celebrity community to the charity and the corporate community started seeing the power that celebrities could bring to a project in terms of national and international exposure."

A few years earlier, Richard Walden was also made aware -- entirely by accident -- of the exposure such a project could bring to a celebrity, and of the entertainment industry's desire to be linked to good works on a grand scale.

"In 1979, we flew the first international relief into Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge was kicked out. Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards paid for the plane; it was the first plane into Cambodia and we had 200 media people wanting to go. We were only able to take nine reporters because it was a cargo plane. Later, it leaked out -- not through us -- that Julie and Blake had paid for this flight. By the time we got home, in early December, everybody in town had called Julie and Blake to congratulate them and to say, 'Why don't we do something more?'"

Walden and his organization wound up with $1 million from CBS as a fee to produce a two-hour television special that ran in February 1980. "We were not allowed to raise funds because this was a network TV show," says Walden. "They said, 'You may do it about Cambodia, you may have a backdrop with starving children if you want to and the show can be thematically linked, but it's got to be entertainment.'"

Operation U.S.A. put together a program with 30 major stars including Michael Jackson (in his first performance away from his brothers), Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews, Jane Fonda, Ed Asner, Walter Matthau and John Ritter, and netted $1.1 million from the show. "That helped bankroll a proper relief agency and all of our Cambodia work," Walden says.

Since then, however, Walden has learned how difficult it is to keep celebrities interested in and committed to a cause. Causes go in and out of favor, and famous people tend to prefer to be linked with the most fashionable causes. Walden has found it can be difficult to compete with the "cause du jour" in a town that craves novelty.

"One friend of mine," Walden says, "a P.R. guy, told me, 'You know, you're kind of an old shoe now. There's less of a buzz around you because you're just there -- you're part of the establishment now.'"

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