New York Social Diary - Social Diary

Looking south along 6th Avenue and 12th Street towards One World Trade center. 2:30 PM. Photo: JH.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014. Very hot and humid, yesterday in New York, with dark clouds moving in late afternoon hinting of rain. Nada.

The city is noticeably quieter (you could tell by the lighter mid-town traffic on the cross-streets and on Fifth Avenue). Summer is here. No doubt by tonight, it will be even quieter, for this is one of the few weekends where anybody who can get out of town usually does.

I doesn’t. Me and the d’s -- and with old friends and good books -- will be celebrating by watching the fireworks down by the river and otherwise taking it easy.


	Jackie and Rod Drake.

Yesterday afternoon in the Episcopal Chapel at the General Theological Seminary on 440 West 21st Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, about 300 New Yorkers and family attended and grieved, at a Memorial Service for Rodman Drake who passed away on Monday night a week ago (June 23rd). Rod was 71, a member of the financial community, father, animal lover and the husband of Jacqueline Weld Drake, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this past January. He was a very very well liked man, a kind man who liked people and who made friends and kept them. He will be missed by many.

Elements. In one of my Diaries last month, I commented (not for the first time) on the “heavenly pear trees” that bloom in the Springtime “that someone was inspired to plant on the streets of New York 30 or so years ago.” I had moved from New York (and Connecticut) to Los Angeles during that time, and was surprised when I returned in 1992 to see them flowering the following Spring. They are very effective in calming and adjusting the mood of us harried New Yorkers living in the thick of the daily rush.

Last week, I got a letter (in the mail) about that “someone who inspired” from Margaret Ternes, who for many years has been involved in running the Park Avenue Malls Planting Project as well as the Park Avenue Holiday Lighting, and the Salute to the Seasons Fund, Inc.:

Dear DPC:

Mrs. Lasker thought Second Avenue was ‘dreary,’ so in went pear trees from 40th to 86th Streets. The following year (and I don’t know exactly what the year was), but sometime in the early 80s (which is when I started working with her) came Third Avenue, the West Side Highway (especially the exits: 79th and 95th). Lastly I was able to finish up on Madison Avenue.

Of course many property owners liked the look as well as we do which brought the pears to many side streets.

Another interesting Lasker initiative is the flower plantings in the tree pits. With trees, New York is now leading the way. We will get larger tree pits (see 895 Park Avenue).”

The pears on East End Avenue in front of the Henderson Place houses between 86th and 87th Street.

And a a side street in the West Village.

The malls along Park Avenue this Spring.

Watering a flower pit on Park Avenue.

There are many New Yorkers now who do not know about Mary Lasker (who died in 1994 at age 94), although she was famous from the 1940s right up to the end of the 20th century for her beautification projects (especially the Park Avenue malls), and across the world for her huge philanthropic work having to do mainly (but not exclusively) with health issues.

Born in Mary Woodard in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1900, the daughter of a banker and a mother who was active in civic affairs, she attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduated from Radcliffe where she majored in Art History, and later studied briefly at Oxford. After college she married and settled in New York, working as an art dealer as well as collector. During the Great Depression, she launched a successful dress pattern company. She was naturally enterprising and naturally ambitious.

Mary Lasker with her horses in the 1940s.

In 1940, divorced from her first husband, she married Albert Lasker, an advertising executive who ran the firm Lord & Thomas, renowned in the world under his direction. He was a distinguished individual in the public eye, known in his day as the founder of modern advertising. Mr. Lasker’s clients were famous for their catchy slogans (such as “L.S.M.F.T./Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco,” “Ask the man who owns one…” (Packard cars); turning clients’ products into household words such as the aforementioned as well as Palmolive Soap, Coca-Cola, Kotex, Pepsodent Toothpaste.


	Albert and Mary Lasker.

	Albert Lasker and Warren G. Harding.

Very much the creative entrepreneur, Albert Lasker, a young man from Galveston, Texas who joined the Lord & Thomas firm in Chicago in 1898, believed that advertising was news. His presentation technique was simple: a slogan. He called it “salesmanship in print.” It was innovative. He helped create the popularity of orange juice in this country when in 1908 he acquired the Sunkist Growers ad account.

The citrus industry had been in a long slump. Growers in California were producing so many oranges that they couldn’t sell them all and were actually cutting down trees to limit supply. The Lasker (Lord & Thomas) ad campaigns encouraged people to eat oranges and also to drink orange juice, and soon increased business to the point where they were no longer eliminating trees.

It was Albert Lasker who first applied advertising technique to sell political candidates (he was a Republican). His advice to the Warren G. Harding campaign in 1920 (using newsreels, billboards and newspaper ads) led to a landslide for Harding, and Lasker’s appointment to chairman of the United States Shipping Board. He was only the third man of Jewish descent ever appointed to such a high post in the Federal Government.

Having already acquired ownership in Lord & Thomas, he was also an early owner of the Chicago Cubs and created the “Lasker Plan,” a report which led to the creation of the Commissioner of Baseball. When he was 62, he sold Lord & Thomas to three of his senior executives who changed the name to theirs: Foote, Cone & Belding.

Mary Lasker on her living room sofa, ca. mid 1950s.

Mary Lasker in front of a Monet from her personal collection, ca. mid 1960s.

When Albert Lasker met Mary Woodard in 1938, he met an equally ambitious, innovative and creative woman. She was president of the Birth Control Federation of America– now known as Planned Parenthood. He was impressed by her philanthropic thinking. They evolved into partnership and married in 1940. Two years later, they created the Lasker Foundation to promote medical research. Today, the Lasker Award is considered the most prestigious of its kind in medical research. Eighty-one of its laureates have gone on to receive a Nobel.

The couple involved themselves in what was then known as the American Society for the Control of Cancer at a time when the word itself was rarely mentioned in ordinary conversation, people were so terrified of it. Together the Laskers restructured the organization, changed the board, began advertising and promoting fighting cancer as well as raising record amounts of money, directing a large percentage of it to medical research. The organization took on a new name also: The American Cancer Society.

Mary Lasker at the first meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board at the National Cancer Institute, March 20-22, 1972.

In those early days of their marriage, during the administration of President Truman, the Laskers were promoting a “National Health Insurance” -- which was only prescient but not created.

In 1952, Albert Lasker died at age 72, himself a victim of colon cancer. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Lasker’s philanthropic work grew. She had a major influence in promoting the National Institute of Health (NIH), and had a major effect on the expansion of its annual budget from $2.4 million in 1945 to $5.5 billion in1985.

Mary Lasker with Bob Hope and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Martino at the ACP Humanitarian Award Dinner, 1965.

Mary Lasker, Lady Bird Johnson, and Michael DeBakey at the 1983 Lasker Medical Research Awards luncheon, 1983.

Her politics moved on, and in 1960 she encouraged her friend Eleanor Roosevelt to endorse Senator Lyndon Johnson for the Presidency. That connection later led to Mrs. Lasker’s assisting Mrs. Johnson with her highway beautification projects all over the country. She also gave tens of thousands of daffodil bulbs for the roadside of the parkways along the Potomac as well as the thousands of azalea bushes and flowering dogwoods along Pennsylvania Avenue.

My NYSD reader, Marge Ternes recalled that in the 1950s, when Mary Lasker met Robert Moses, arguably the most powerful individual in New York City government in those years, who was in the midst of re-designing the city’s traffic system and public spaces, she lobbied him to plant something that bloomed along the malls of Park Avenue that covered the railroad tracks. At the time, the malls were covered with shrubs.

Mary Lasker at tree planting ceremony with New York City Mayor Robert Wagner, ca. 1960.

Mr. Moses didn’t like the idea. “Don’t be foolish,” he admonished the lady, adding “It’s too dirty and too dark. Flowers will never grow there.”

Mrs. Lasker took a bargaining tack: “If I pay to plant 20 blocks, and the flowers are successful, you pay afterwards.”

“We’ll match you 2-to-1,” Mr. Moses countered, underscoring his doubts.

Marge Ternes, who first met Mary Lasker back then, and later worked on some of her projects recalled: “She had a lot of money and a lot of will, and a lot of charm. It was a rather unbeatable combination.”

Mary, front and center, with the Albert Lasker Medical Awards Jury, 1989.

As time moved on Mary Lasker’s philanthropy moved with it. Besides her fund-raising for the NIH and cancer, she became involved in raising money for AIDS. She took Elizabeth Taylor to lobby Congress, advising the star: “Be sure to wear a low neckline.”

I had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Lasker in the early 80s. I had known about her beautification project along Park Avenue and about her great medical research foundation and the prestige of that award. She had a stature that was both stylish and far-thinking in the public consciousness. She was highly respected. She used to rent a house in Beverly Hills for six weeks in the dead of New York winter. Edie Goetz, the eldest daughter of L.B. Mayer, who in her prime was the empress of filmland society, and also had an intense interest in medical research befriended Mrs. Lasker, who was often a guest at her dinners.


	Mary Lasker and Hillary Clinton at the 1993 Lasker Awards luncheon.

Then in her early 80s, she still cut a glamorous figure. Women dressed for the Goetz dinners – long dresses, jewels, etc. (men: dark suits). On one such night, there were six of us at a smaller table in the bay of the dining room (with its Fantin Latour, Bonnard, Degas, Modigliani, Manet and Picasso paintings surrounding us in a brightly candlelit space -- our hostess, Mrs. Lasker, Fred and Robyn Astaire, Luis Estevez and myself.

After the dinner we adjourned to the living room where, after everyone was comfortably seated on sofa or chair, an 16 foot wide screen descended from ceiling to floor, the room began to dim, while symphonic music swelled until dark, and the film began. It was Harold Pinter’s"Betrayal" with Jeremy Irons. It was pre-release (Mrs. Goetz “heritage” in Hollywood retained her relationship with the studios and had access).

The mood and environment of the film was in stark contrast to the crew in Mrs. Goetz’ living room that night surrounded by more of her Picassos, Monets, Manets, Soutines, etc. Mrs. Lasker, who was gracious and bejeweled in ruffled black taffeta Oscar de la Renta seemed mainly – like the rest of us – fascinated to be dining with Mr. Astaire – whose classic bearing was as modest as it was stylish -- and watching a Pinteresque moment in contemporary Anything Goes London. What/where is reality, I recall thinking.

All this, inspired by Mary Lasker’s sense of beauty and life.

Mary Lasker's CV: Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1969, French Legion of Honor, 1984, Congressional Gold Medal, 1989, American Cancer Society, Birth Control Federation of America. Secretary; Cancer Research Institute, Trustee; Kennedy Center, Board of Directors, Lasker Foundation, co-founder and President 1942-1994; Museum of Modern Art, Trustee; National Cancer Institute, Norton Simon Museum; boards, Planned Parenthood, Vice President; Research to Prevent Blindness, Trustee; National Committee for Mentla Hygiene; United Cerebral Palsy Research and Education Foundation.

Contact DPC here.

Upper West Side sky. 4:48 PM. Photo: JH.

July 3, 2014. It was very hot and humid, yesterday in New York, sun out with a “Real Feel” of 103 by early afternoon. But by late afternoon the breezes picked up and the dark clouds moved in from the southwest on their way to the Bay of Fundy. Then thunder, then lightning, and finally torrent blowing in, cooling the city and its inhabitants. It rained for the better part of an hour. Flash flood warnings followed in the entire metropolitan area.

East 83rd Street and East End Avenue looking west toward the approaching storm and east to Roosevelt Island and the calm awaiting, about 7 p.m.

The same view about 7:45 p.m., and looking northwest after the first rainfall about 8 p.m.

Over on the Upper West Side, JH was also keeping an eye over the sky above the Hudson. 4:40 PM.

4:41 PM.

4:42 PM.

4:51 PM.

4:54 PM.

6:10 PM.

6:31 PM.

7:12 PM.

7:13 PM.

7:15 PM.

7:27 PM.

I went down to Michael’s for lunch not because it was Wednesday, because any day before a long holiday weekend is a loss. I went to lunch with Brooke Hayward, who came in from Connecticut, and Alex Hitz, who is just back from L.A. It was also to celebrate Brooke’s birthday, which is this coming Saturday, the 5th of July. We didn’t tell Brooke that until Steve Millington came out with a scoop of ice cream and berries (and something else…??...) and a single candle. She asked me to help her blow it out. We didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” though. Brooke wasn’t interested.

DPC and Alex Hitz about to help Brooke Hayward blow out the candle on her "cake."

After that, she took us into the Ladies’ Room to see the photographs that her second husband Dennis Hopper took with a camera she gave him back in the early 1960s when they were living in L.A. On one of the walls was a photo portrait of a young Ed Ruscha, another of Jasper Johns. Everybody was in the bloom of youth. Ruscha was movie star handsome and the girls lined up.

Ed Ruscha by Dennis Hopper, 1964.

Paul Newman, 1964.

Jasper Johns, 1964.

Wallace Berman, 1963.

There are photographs by Dennis in the Men’s Room also, including a headshot of a twenty-something Brooke wearing a crown with a tag on it, looking like it was from some costume house out there. There was also a photograph of David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, and David Goodman coming out of a building.

Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney, and David Goodman, 1963.

Robert Rauschenberg with his tongue stamped "Wedding Souvenir, Claes Oldenburg" at Oldenburg's wedding, 1966.

Bruce Conner (in tub), Toni Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Marshall, 1965.

Otherwise it was a quiet Wednesday at Michael’s. Jill Fairchild and Jim Fallon, Executive Editor of WWD, with Jason Binn, publisher of DuJour. On the other side of us Euan Rellie was lunching with Tony Gellert, and behind them at table One was Dan Abrams with a very engaging lady. Across the way, Catherine Saxton, the New York PR guru (Hiltons, Trumps, etc.), who moved from the Big Town to West Palm Beach and loves it. Next to her, PR consultant Judy Agisim and friends.

The young Mr. Hopper and Ms. Hayward at the time of their marriage.

Mary Rodgers Guettel died last Thursday in her home in the Beresford on 81st and Central Park West. She was 83, born January 11, 1931. She started out life as one of the two daughters of Dorothy and Richard Rodgers, the great composer of American musicals and longtime collaborator of Lorenz Hart and later Oscar Hammerstein II.


	The baby Mary Rodgers at the keyboard with her father, taken in Los Angeles where he was writing for the movies. In this picture she later related having no recollection of the gentleness in the man she knew as her father.

I can’t remember how I met her, or where I met her, around the turn of the century. I knew about her specifically because of the great PBS documentary on her father in which she participated. It provided an inside look into the life of the man whose personality away from the keyboard expressed a darker side. He was alcoholic and a depressed individual. That couldn’t have bolstered the personality of a girl approaching womanhood.

We first had lunch at Michael’s. She was a short woman – probably no more than 5 three or four. She wore her greying dark hair that was well cut in a Buster Brown profile. No matter the age (by now she was in her late 60s, early 70s), she retained a girlish quality that gave her a youthful image, possibly even to herself; a pleasure to meet.

It was a getting-to-know-you lunch. This was easy because Mary had a natural sense of intimacy. She was a person who liked people. Her smile that you see in her pictures is a bright one; and when in the room with her, it was a very warm, even affectionate one. In her company, she seemed like one of those people who had a lot of time to socialize. There was no: “I’ve got a 2:15 appointment ...” etc. And yet this was a woman who wrote books, wrote scripts, composed music, brought up two families, kept up copious friendships, had a decisive hand in the management of the Rodgers and Hammerstein archive (which brought in millions annually to the heirs), and devoted a lot of her time to Juilliard too.

Richard Rodgers and his daughter, the composer.

Although we were brand new “friends,” she told me about her life, her father, and her husbands. There was no hostility in her observations and memories. Yes, father worked at home – which might sound exciting to a fan. But he worked with his door open, so everyone had to be quiet a lot of the time. This was an inconvenience especially to a child or even a young energetic woman full of curiosity about herself and life.

Carol Burnett and Mary RG in a publicity photo of Mary's show which made Burnett a star: "Once Upon A Mattress."

She told me about her two marriages and why the first one didn’t work out. None of this information was sought after, although I am a naturally curious individual so details that people share about easily themselves is always fascinating. Most all of these details, no matter how dramatic they seem to the principals, and in the telling, still fall into that category of all-in-the-family to me (who grew up in a very dramatic – the nice word for it – family atmosphere).

Mary Rodgers Guettel (or Mary RG as she signed her letters) had a practical handle on all the dramatic personalities that she grew up with, but harbored no deep resentment of her circumstances or the difficulties they presented to the girl growing up.

Richard Rodgers, Dorothy Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Dorothy Hammerstein at the opening night of the film THE KING AND I, 1956.

It was revelatory to the viewer of the PBS docu who knew only about Richard Rodgers’ beautiful musical compositions to learn that he was difficult to live with and be around. The great man was revealed to be a very difficult number. It was well known in the theatrical community of his era that he “fooled around.” His marriage, however, remained intact. It was also known that he could be a taskmaster about the interpretation of his work.


	Henry and Mary Rodgers Guettel.

Mary’s mother Dorothy Rodgers was a strong woman with her own creative works too, especially in the field of interior design in her own houses. She created two best selling books in the 1960s about these properties that she created. In person, she was a somewhat diffident yet gracious, chic looking woman of means with a natural elegance.

It must have been challenging for the daughter (and there were two, including Mary’s sister Linda) of Dorothy and Dick Rodgers to develop creatively and in terms of sociability. Nevertheless there were distinctive advantages, which she was never unaware of, for a girl who wanted to be in the same business in which her father was a giant. She pursued a professional career successfully as well as being a wife and mother. She’d also inherited her parents’ (especially her mother’s) emotional durability.

I think the charm of her lingering girlishness provided the mattress, if you will, to soften the harshness and hardships of Mary’s parents’ home life. To these eyes, she never lost that quality. That first lunch, after the two of us “confided” our backgrounds and growing up to each other, Mary RG concluded: “oh why don’t we just go somewhere and neck!” I paid the check, she went back to her office, and I to my desk and keyboard. She will rest in peace.

Catching up in Paris. Word comes from Paris of the opening of an exhibition at the Hotel George V of Harry Benson’s photographs celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles and Harry staying at the hotel in 1964 as Beatlemania broke out all over the world. The photographs were shown 15 feet high and were surrounded by masses of flowers created by Creative Director of the hotel, Jeff Leatham.

There was a party for 300 held in the hotel’a courtyard honoring Harry. From Los Angeles came Harry and Gigi Benson’s daughter Wendy and Michael Landes with Mimi and Dominic, and daughter Tessa Tooley with Tucker, Jr. as husband Tucker stayed in LA to put the finishing touches on his new film for Relativity, "Earth to Ecco" which opens Friday.

The Harry Benson exhibition of his Beatlemania pictures taken 50 years ago this year at the Hotel George V.

Friends who celebrated with Harry and Gigi include New Yorkers Brad and Amy Fine Collins with their lovely daughter Flora, Hamish Bowles, Susan Lloyd, Ambassador Brenda Johnson, Karl Wellner with his and Deborah Norville's lovely daughter, Mikaela, and Joan and Sandy Weill. The Palm Beach contingent: Kate Khosrovani, John Loring, Val Alexander, Susan Lloyd, Jonathan and Eileen Otto, Franklin and Emmy Haney straight from their boat docked in Copenhagen, and Bill and Regine Diamond. Paris friends included fashion designer Emmanuelle Khanh and Regine of Regine's fame. Sergio Mendes entertained and the champagne flowed till well after midnight while the hotel's chef whipped up risotto on the spot!

Harry in the courtyard of the George V being interviewed about his experience catching the shot of the Beatles' famous hotel pillow fight.

Contact DPC here.

Bridgehampton scene. Photo: JH.

Monday, July 7, 2014. Beautiful weather for the long holiday weekend in New York. Torrential rains on Thursday night flooded many of the city streets briefly, leaving a weekend of Sun, warm but not hot or humid temperatures, and a quiet city for those of us cave dwellers who remained in town.

A reader who must have been looking through our archives sent us an email about a Diary we wrote about the Hamptons four years ago. I'd completely forgotten about it, as had JH. This one tugged on old memories which made it particularly effective because it reminds how much the world of the Hamptons has changed over the last five decades ....

July 28, 2010. A warm summer day, yesterday in New York; sunny but not too humid followed by a warm but beautiful evening in the city.

Nostalgia and back to reality. Forty-five years ago, July 1965 to be exact. In Southampton, Angela Taylor writing for the New York Times, reported:


	One-time Hampton residents Elaine Steinbeck and Mrs. John O'Hara (Katharine Barnes).

The summertime living is easy in the dune-bordered communities of eastern Long Island, but the colonists take their leisure in different ways. Southampton's life purrs as quietly as a Rolls-Royce among the middle-aged and older generations but roars like a Jaguar at night when the young get away from their parents and gyrate at a night spot called Mitty's General Store.

Less showy East Hampton has smaller houses and few decorators' shops. It seems to be populated by young marrieds who wear neat shorts or white ducks and walk its streets unself-consciously, because society photographers rarely stalk them.

.... Life settled down to shopping on Job's Lane and getting hair done at Elizabeth Arden's pink salon on Main Street in Southampton where Mrs. John O'Hara was being combed out at the same time that Mrs. John Steinbeck was being put up in rollers.

"We're living very quietly in a teeny-tiny house in Sag Harbor," Mrs. Steinbeck said as she offered a hand to the manicurist. "We don't go to parties, although we've been asked to one on a boat tonight ..."

I remember Mrs. Steinbeck – Elaine– although I didn't know her except to say hello. Mrs. O'Hara, I never met, although her husband was my favorite writer at that time in my life, and I knew they lived in Quogue on the beach.

The area was known by its individual towns, not so much the Hamptons. Each area had its own personality/demographic in terms of summer inhabitants. After the season the towns returned to their small town village-ness, run mainly by the small businessmen and big landowners, many of whom were farmers, especially potato farmers, some from families that had been working the land since the 17th century.

The summer residents opened up their houses around Memorial Day and closed them up after Labor Day until the following year. This was partly because of the access. The LIE got about as far as Patchogue by the early 60s, and then you were on two lane blacktop most of the rest of the way.


Truman Capote's saltbox home in Sagaponack.

There was also another year round community in the towns east and north of Southampton of writers and artists and their exponents in life style. The area in the colder weather had a semi-rural feeling, far away from the city's smells.

The artists and writers lived comforably but modestly no matter their prominence. Truman Capote had a simple beach house in Bridgehampton for years, which after his death was purchased by artist Ross Bleckner.

Real estate was cheap. That first summer I was out there in 1963 we rented a four-bedroom two-bath (and two-kitchen) house set south of the highway, just outside Southampton in the middle of a potato field. It was owned by famous men's fashion editor named Robert D. L. Green. The place slept eight comfortably, and the rent for Memorial through Labor Day was $1200. Total.

The Sagaponack home as Capote lived (via Architectural Digest).

A couple years later, I was a newlywed and we looked at a house near the beach in Southampton that was an old ark of a place with wrap-around porches and cupolas. It had been abandoned and was for sale for $35,000. Whoever had inherited it, wanted to dump it. That was a lot of money for a summer house then, but peanuts considering the property which today commands a price in the millions.

By the late 60s, as the LIE continued to move eastward, the summer populations grew and so did the real estate prices. Old time families east of Southampton were selling their acres of farmland for six figures. Newcomers tore down old houses and put up bigger ones.

Walking along the beach in Southampton.

A Hamptons mom and her child.

The world was changing rapidly. We had a housemate who had come back from working in Japan. He used to tell us that one day Japan was going to take over the car industry. This seemed a really absurd projection/prediction. At that time, Japan was just emerging in the field of technology and manufacturing little handheld transistor radios and very small, very cheap compact-style cars.

Americans looked at compacts as an insult. Wassamattuh, you can't afford a real car? Our housemate, we all kind of thought, was a dreamer. It turned out of course that he was; and the dream turned out to be reality. And the joke was on us. In some ways, it still is.

Southampton, 2006.

A fond memory is of the now long defunct Mitty's General Store, a very cool discotheque to go to on Saturday nights on the road to Bridgehampton.

I've described it here before (recently). From the outside it was a simple clapboard house with a simple front porch. Inside it was transformed: a spacious barroom with tables, crowded with 20-somethings and 30-somethings, (although I don't ever remember a line waiting to get in).

The dress was preppier than it is today in that the preppies always looked like preppies no matter what they were wearing even if it were a tee-shirt and jeans. That look, was archived by the then budding Ralph Lauren and revised into a billion-dollar business selling life-style known as Polo.

A young deer retreats into the fescue in Southampton.

Beyond the bar at Mitty's was a dining room of banquettes and tables, and beyond that was a big dance floor with a DJ spinning. Those were the years of the Frug which had progressed from the Bop, the Chicken and then the Twist. It was pre-drug era. If anyone were smoking anything (other than cigarettes), or snorting/sniffing, nobody knew. Cocaine was ancient lore, associated with the Prohibition and the 1930s. LSD was just about to come into the national psyche, and Cary Grant of all people admitted to experimenting with it. The prescription meds that morphed into "recreational" drugs didn't really get started until the early to mid-1970s.


	Dancing the Chicken.

	Dancing the Twist.

By the late 60s, the prices out East had jumped, just as they had for everything else around New York. We stayed in the city and eventually got the bright idea of going north to Westchester and Fairfield County for a getaway. The prices were better and the country life was year-round and appealing to 30-somethings settling down.

A few years later, in the late 70s, I moved West to Los Angeles and didn't return East until 1992. Twenty years past and twenty years older, the Hamptons was bigger and everywhere. Southampton still had its gilted "aura" although by that had been mottled by Big and More. It had gone from a summer beach town of woody buggies and barefoot kids in the sand to Money talks and Nobody walks.

That became our main theme. The Old Guard ignored it as long as they could; and the Newcomers, if they didn't meld, didn't care because they made their own groups. And then, eventually, ten years on, it turned out, the Old Guard were dead or practically, and the Newcomers were no longer new, but now the center.

There went the neighborhood. Out in East Hampton -- now a hike on the perpetual parking lot called Route 27 -- is a community bustling with commerce, and big SUVs and Mercedes and Bentleys and Broncos and Range Rovers lining the roads bumper to bumper. Movie stars live there. Movie directors. hedge fund owners, entrepreneurs, rich divorcees, tycoons and real estate moguls. It's a microcosm of the American very rich at the beginning of the new millennium. Their Old Guard has mostly died off although the Newcomers are fast becoming third generation. And Big and More remains a player.

Traffic to the Hamptons on a Friday afternoon.

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine who has had a house in East Hampton for the past couple of decades. I was telling her how the aforementioned Angela Taylor piece in the Times was evidence of how the stage had changed.

My friend is, like me, a big animal person. She had thanked me for reminding readers that dogs cannot take the heat, let alone exercising in it, and that it can kill them. We were lamenting that many people don't bother to learn about the health and safety of their Best Friend.

She told me a story about how one day out in East Hampton walking her dogs she found a beautiful Golden Retriever wandering around. She'd seen the dog a number of times in the middle of the village and was concerned about his safety because of all the cars.

One day she was able to get him by the collar which had a phone number on it. She took him home and called the number. Answering machine. She left a message. No return. The next day she called again. Answering machine. No return. The third time she left a message: "I have your dog. I found him wandering around the town. If you don't want him unfortunately I can't keep him so I'll have to take him to the Animal Rescue Fund (ARF)."

Hampton Hedgerows.

She got a call shortly thereafter. A man's voice. Angry. "How dare you leave a message like this," he ranted. "I don't give a sh*t about the dog," he raged, "I just don't want my wife upset about the dog going to ARF." He told her he was so angry for doing this to him and his wife that he'd see that my friend would "never have another happy day in your life," warning, "You'll never have another reason to smile."

That was a couple of years ago. This man, incidentally, is known professionally as an "entrepreneur" but is mainly in the banking business and is admired for the size of his fortune which fits neatly on the Forbes 400 list. He and the wife have since divorced. No one seems to know what happened to the dog.

Although, my friend told me, it still goes on. The other day she saw a woman driving a gray SUV, running her dog alongside her car as she drove down the road. Was it her plan to kill the dog, you might wonder? If you see her, report her. If you know her name, I'll print it.

Contact DPC here.

A Monday morning nap. 9:00 AM. Photo: JH.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014. Sunny and very warm in New York. Muggy too. Thunderstorms are forecast, and the weatherman says it will cool things off. Hot but not as punishing as it can be in the northeast at this time of the year. But 85 degrees at the time of this writing (Monday night, 10:45 p.m.).

Meanwhile, today we’re featuring an event that took place last Saturday in that perfect summer climate of Glendale, California at the Brand Library and Art Center, which marks the opening of the library’s newly renovated gallery with an important inaugural exhibition, Joan Quinn Captured.

The Library when it was first built as the private home of Leslie C. Brand at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Brand is part of the Glendale Public Library which celebrated its centennial seven years ago in 2007. It is housed in a mansion built in 1904 in the foothills overlooking Glendale and the San Fernando Valley. The mansion, which was named El Miradero, was built by Leslie C. Brand, a real estate developer best known for developing Glendale. The house has a design similar to the East Indian Pavilion built for the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago (which Mr. Brand visited). When Mr. Brand died in 1925, he bequeathed the mansion to the city of Glendale with the proviso that the property be used for a public park and library.

Today the Brand is an art and music library which includes 70,000 book titles,126 periodical subscriptions, a vast collection of compact discs, records, videos and DVDs, slides art prints and 200 piano rolls. It also houses the Art Gallery which features four exhibits a year of California artists, as well as a Recital Hall used for art and music events.

The Brand Library as it looks today.

Joan Quinn, the center of the current exhibition at the Brand, is a native Los Angeleno who has made a footprint in the art world, expecially in the art world of Los Angeles that is as historical as the Brand (albeit a lot younger – by about a century), and far better known in contemporary art. There isn’t an artist or collector in the West (and probably the East) who hasn’t met (and befriended), doesn’t know, or know about Ms. Quinn. A friend, supporter, an art maven extraordinare, she is a collector, connoisseur, writer, and personality whose interests encompass that world.

This exhibition – Joan Quinn Captured – is a reflection of that history. It was curated by Laura Whitcomb in collaboration with curators J. Cheryl Bookout and Joan’s daughter, Amanda Quinn Olivar.

Joan Agajanian Quinn with portrait by Richard Bernstein.

The Quinn family: Jack Quinn, Amanda Quinn Olivar, John Olivar, Joan Quinn, Paloma Quinn Gowey, Jennifer Quinn Gowey, and Eric Gowey.

"Joan," says Ms. Whitcomb, "probably has the largest collection of non-commissioned portraits in the world. This group of portraits spans over 40 years, so it has been compelling to work with her and many of the artists who made these works." Whitcomb adds."Most artists who had never attempted portraiture rose to the challenge with interesting interpretations of the subject, Joan."

The curators displayed the style in which each artist typically works, alongside the portrait he or she had made. In the center of the gallery was a stylized mountain containing video screens which run Joan's art interviews as well as a steady stream of snaps from the '80s international culture scene.

Portraits of Joan Agajanian Quinn by Dora De Larios, Roberto Lizano, and Shepard Fairey.

Portraits by Richard Bernstein, George Hurrell, Chaz Guest, Eugene Pinkowski, Kevin Whitney, Zarko Kalmic, and Gregory Weir.

Portraits by Tony Berlant (Jack as a rooted tree & Joan as a whirlwind), Tadanori Yokoo, and Susi Cantarino.

Portraits by Allen Ruppersberg, Frank Gehry, and Billy Al Bengston.

December 1984 House & Garden magazine (photos by Helmut Newton — "Quinn Essential" — in display case).

Earlier in the evening last Saturday, critic/author Peter Frank and J. Cheryl Bookout, President at Southern California Women's Caucus for Art, co-chaired a panel consisting of artists Laddie John Dill, Tony Berlant and George Herms, who wrote an ode to Joan and Jack Quinn which was sung by Herms with his own arm banging accompaniment at the piano.

Native Californian, USC graduate, journalist and collector Joan Agajanian Quinn has been active in the local art scene for over decades. As a journalist, she has written for several art magazines, was appointed West Coast editor of Interview by Andy Warhol, and at one point enjoyed the position of society editor of the Hearst's L.A.. Herald-Examiner.

The Panel — Moderator Peter Frank, Laddie John Dill, George Herms, Tony Berlant, and Moderator J. Cheryl Bookout.

George Herms singing and playing his Ode To Joan and Jack Quinn.

Quinn was also the longest sitting member of the California Arts Council nominated by then assembly speaker Willie Brown, and has served two terms on the Beverly Hills Arts Commission. She continues to sit on the board of the Armenian Museum in Boston and has for the last 12 years represented the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) as an NGO to the United Nations.

Hundreds of friends, local politicians and a large contingent from the Armenian community attended the opening. Artists including Ed Moses, Matthew Rolston, Kaloust Guedel, Michel Chearney, Salomon Huerta, Dan McCleary, Emmanuel Galvez, James Morphesis, Kristina Hagman, Woods Davy, Don Bachardy, Wayne Shimabukuro, Sharon Weiner, Zareh, Stephen Jerrome, Sarah Newby, besides panelists Berlant, Dill and Herms, mingled in the gallery and in the patio where buffet tables surrounded the newly installed 20 ft. vertical Woods Davy sculpture.

Kaloust Guedel in front of Chuck Arnoldi's early '70s Cats Cradle.

Herair and Lori Garboushian (from Garboushian Gallery, Beverly Hills CA) viewing Dora De Larios' early 1960s Queen Joan.

Fredell Pogodin viewing portrait and historic 1966 Dento by Billy Al Bengston.

This exhibition celebrates Joan Agajanian Quinn's life and contributions to art and culture by presenting 60 images of her in a varied array of media selected from a collection of over 300 portraits. The works shown are made by Joan and Jack's friends including: Zandra Rhodes, Frank Gehry, Claire Falkenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Billy Al Bengston, Beatrice Wood, Mel Ramos, Arthur Tress, Joe Goode, Helmut Newton, Robert Graham, Ed Ruscha and Robert Mapplethorpe to name but a few. The portraits provide a link to the vibrant art scene in Los Angeles and around the world from the 1960s through today, giving a glimpse into friendships established and maintained over the years.

Joan Quinn Captured focuses on the artists and friendships of Joan and Jack Quinn and includes an extended film forum with public panel discussions taking place at The Brand Art Center Recital Hall through August 1, 2014.

Amanda Quinn Olivar with Jennifer Quinn Gowey and Paloma Quinn Gowey in front of portrait by Lucie Abdalian.

Exhibit curator J. Cheryl Bookout, exhibit curator Amanda Quinn Olivar, gallery director Annette Vartanian, and exhibit curator Laura Whitcomb.

Laura Whitcomb and Kathleen Davy.

Vishnu, of the Steven Arnold Foundation, with Zareh.

LACMA curator Leslie Jones, Marya Dosti, and curator Robert Dean.

Darlene Medve, Jennifer Quinn Gowey, and Julia Perry.

Photographer Gregory Firlotte and Joan Agajanian Quinn.

Leonard Majzlin, Joan Agajanian Quinn, Carol Hall, Cynthia Tusan, and Kaloust Guedel.

Peter Frank and J. Cheryl Bookout.

Don Bachardy and Lori LeBoy.

Country musician Dennis and Victoria Agajanian with Jack Quinn.

Ed Moses, Laddie John Dill, Jack Quinn, Tony Berlant, and Nelson Loskamp.

Ed Moses with Joan Agajanian Quinn.

Ani Kopelian, filmaker Gary Conklin, and Carole Boyajian

Jack Quinn, John Olivar, and Laddie John Dill.

J. Cheryl Bookout with Don Bachardy.

Rose Norton, Jack Quinn, and Suzanne Hertfelder.

Joan Quinn and Francesca Garcia-Marques in front joe Goode's portrait.

Coralie Whitcomb and daughter Laura flanking Joan Agajanian Quinn.

Laddie John Dill with Kurt Evans talking about his portrait — Joan Agajanian Quinn as an interview Magazine Stand.

Peter Nelson watching The Joan Quinn Profiles.

Amanda Quinn Olivar, portrait of JAQ by Joe Goode, and artist Sophie.

Filmmaker Schezaad Ausman.

Writer Ruth Ziony.

Molly Barnes, Nancy Krasne, and Rose Norton with portraits by Mel Ramos and Eric Pedersen.

Photographs of Joan (by Arthur Tress, Steven Arnold, and Maria von Matthiessen) being viewed by Tony Berlant, Ed Moses, and Laddie John Dill.

Tony Berlant, Ed Moses, and Laddie John Dill.

Mus White with Margaret Black in front of an Ed Moses painting.

Debra Burchett-Lere, director of the Sam Francis Foundation, with Fredell Pogodin, standing in front of Eric Pedersen's portrait of Joan.

Ace Montana with Video Installation showing interviews from The Joan Quinn Profiles.

Wayne Shimabukuro, Amanda Quinn Olivar, Don Bachardy, and Avilda Moses.

Guest taking selfie with Paul Jasmin's portrait.

Dan McCleary and Jim Morphesis.

Solomon Huerta.

Ace Montana and Jonathan Riggall.

Coralie Whitcomb and Mary Empey.

Kristina Hagman and Madere Olivar.

George Herms having a laugh with Amanda Quinn Olivar.

Michael Chearney, Brian Nelson, and Raymond Lee.

Molly Barnes, Merry Norris, and Kelly Brumfield-Woods.

Avilda Moses and Don Bachardy.

Photographs by Stephen Jerrome, Gregory Firlotte, & Amanda Quinn Olivar.

Contact DPC here.

Sweltering sun over the Hudson. 7:45 PM. Photo: JH.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Hot, yesterday in New York. Very, with a small breeze late evening with maybe thunderstorms; still waiting for the maybe part at this late hour (midnight).

JH and I were entertained at lunch by our Washington Social Diary correspondent Carol Joynt. We met Carol about eight years ago. I was sitting at this desk one night about two a.m. finishing up, waiting for JH to send me the final layout when I got an email from Carol. I hadn’t heard of her at that moment, (New York)-provincial guy that I am, who knew little to nothing about Washington life. At the time Carol was the (inherited) proprietress of a popular meeting spot/brasserie-ish burger joint in Georgetown called Nathans. (Innocent Spouse, Broadway Paperbacks, Random House, 2011). She started out life writing the news for Walter Cronkite and later on in her career produced for Charlie Rose back in the days when he had a very late night show on NBC, and later than that, for Larry King when he was broadcasting from our nation’s capital.

Outside Nathans when David Kennerly, Vice President Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were dining there on July 27th, 2008.

At the time of that email, Carol was conducting a vid-interview weekly from Nathans. It was a merchandising effort (bringing in business: a special lunch price plus interview) and she’d interview a wide variety of Washington players, relatives, Hollywood stars, New York authors and anybody else she could get for an hour or an hour and a half.

Her email was an invitation to be a guest on the show. Now, you may already know this about me but given the opportunity to talk, I am habitually compelled (just this side of addicted) to answering questions about whatever I can. I tell myself that I’m one of those people who likes to hear himself talk. I can be unabashed because I know I’m not alone in this habit. Especially in Washington with all those politicians and politcos and their carbon dioxide.

So about two minutes after receiving Carol’s email, at 2:03 am, on that fateful morn, I responded that I’d like that. She was shocked to get such a quick response. We set a date, and I later wrote about the experience somewhere back there in our archives. JH and I grabbed that Metroliner out of Penn Station one weekday morning. We made it to Nathans in Georgetown about 11:30 a.m. And were back in New York by six or seven.

DPC and Carol dishing over lunch at the Q&A Cafe at Nathans in 2006.

It was a fascinating interview. I say that because Carol does her homework. Unlike me who tends to wing it based on particular interests of mine, Carol really finds out as much as she can about her interview and his or her subject. Mine was Society in the Big Apple, is-there-isn’t there and what’s the latest skinny. The interview was set up in a section of restaurant with thirty to forty luncheon guests, with video cameras recording it. Carol is an intrepid interviewer, honestly, truly interested but always with her audience in mind. She asks what she thinks you might like to know. And like any good interview, she can be any man, any woman.

I liked it. Who wouldn’t? I escaped making a fool of myself, no small thanks to her tone and direction. And I learned a lot from it, including that Carol is a great journalist. I mean: she tells you what she sees, her eyes, not yours, maybe, but through those eyes. Again the audience, the reader, is her foremost objective. And there is a major paucity out there in media-land of that un-ego-adorned technique.

DPC and Carol having more fun over lunch at Nathans in 2007.

After the interview that day, JH and I asked if she’d like to write a weekly Washington Social Diary for us. At first she seemed uncertain that she was up to it (modesty/uncertainty). But it was a win-win situation. It led to a revival of her journalistic career (she had been a recent widow and was mother of a young son), and today she is Editor-at-large for The Washingtonian magazine, prolifically covering that monumental waterfront and its denizens and high muckymucks. Every week she gives us another view of life in our nation’s capital.

A couple of times a year Carol graces us with her presence. She came up yesterday morning on the Metroliner, and met us at Michael’s for lunch. She loves Michael’s for the rose champagne and the fries. A bowl of them that everyone obsessively helped himself too while consuming the rest of lunch. In other words, we had fun as these pictures attest ...

Finally, one worth printing.

Michael’s was pretty busy for a quiet Tuesday in New York in summer. At the table next door, Jason Binn, publisher of DuJour magazine, was lunching with singer John Legend and another friend. Peter Brown was next door at his table entertaining two guests. Carol was surprised to see Washington people there like Politico’s Mike Allen who was lunching with Steve Rattner.

According to Carol, "The first thing everyone in Washington does when they get up in the morning — the first thing, before anything else — is read Playbook." He’s the first word and the last as to what the weather is like behind the Grecian columns and under the Roman domes. Carol made clear that she wasn’t exaggerating: everyone — they can’t help it.

Mike Allen and Steve Rattner on the Charlie Rose Show in 2013.

Mr. Allen stopped by the table to say hello to Carol on his way out. He’s a tall thin fellow, younger than you might think, with a modest, unassuming bearing. Young professorial. His manner is diffident and polite but sincere. You know by the looks of him, by those apparent qualities, that the chances are what he’s writing, is what is so.

After he left I was wondering what it must feel like for this modest, unassuming fellow to be commanding such journalistic power of attention of Washington politics and its vast subsidiaries. He works even later hours than we do here at the NYSD according to Carol — after three and onwards. It’s a very isolating life in a way, but delicious in terms of what you learn — about the world, life and men and mice; rich in the literary sense, like a novel. And yet, ponderous like those great marble monuments that reside nearby.

POLITICO Playbook's Mike Allen.

Among the Michael’s lunch tables: Mitch Rosenthal and Linda Janklow, Prince Dimitri with Basila Bokoko and Judith Agisim; Simon & Schuster editor — including the “A Life of Barbara Stanwyck” which I finished reading much to my disappointment (wanting more) after 860 pages — Alice Mayhew.

A portrait of an important time in American culture and politics, so thorough and so captivatingly portrayed in the place, the scene, the characters and the very successful star. The American dream. I know, I’m pushing it, but if you like that stuff, this the place to go to. Also in the room, Andrew Stein; the impresario of culture and history, Elihu (Elly) Roseand daughter Isabelle and assistant Mary; uber-publicist Cindi Berger(PMK).

ThenSusan Zirinsky, the exec producer of 48 Hours stopped by the table with her lunch partner, the beautiful Norah O’Donnell,to say hello to Carol. Norah was an anchor in Washington before coming to do the CBS Morning show with Charlie Rose. Small world all around.

Also at table around the room:Nick Verbitsky; Larry Burstein, publisher of New York magazine; Cathie Black; Boatie Boatright; Luke Janklow;Robert Marston with Martin Puris; Gordon Davis; Diane Sokolow. And it wasn’t even Wednesday. But cool inside Michael’s.

The beautiful Norah O’Donnell.

Contact DPC here.

Congregating in the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles, June 18, 2007. Photo: JH.

Monday, July 14, 2014. A sunny, warm weekend; humid but not so bad with storm clouds gathering and threatening to stop by. The weatherman says they will bring cooler temperatures. If and when.

Today is Bastille Day in France, or La Fete Nationale (French National Day), a day that marks the (eventual) beginning of the nation’s century-long transformation from monarchy to republic. It is the 225th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, now regarded as the official beginning of The French Revolution which brought down the Monarchy of the Bourbons, including the beheading of the King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie-Antoinette three years later.

Storming of the Bastille, by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel.

The Bastille – official name Bastille Saint-Antoine – is an ironic symbol of political revolution, as for more than three centuries before it had been a bastion of political (monarchical) repression. It was originally a 14th century fortress that was, for much of its existence, from the 15th century onwards, used by the Kings of France as a state prison.

Louis XIV, the Sun King, used it as a receptacle of punishment for members of the upper classes who annoyed or infuriated him. Later it was also used by Louis to imprison Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict, which was signed by Louis XIV’s grandfather Henry IV, was an agreement of religious tolerance granting certain human and political rights of the Calvinist Protestants (non-Catholics) in a pro-Roman Catholic country.

Louis XIV.

Louis XV.

Louis XVI.

Vigée-Lebrun portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children Marie Thérèse, Louis Charles (on her lap), and Louis Joseph, 1787.

Louis XIV revoked his grandfather’s Edict 87 years later. As many as 900,000 of French Protestants (Huguenots) left France over the next two decades (Louis was still king). Many immigrated to America and distinguished themselves by their prosperity, such as Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours, founder of the great chemical company (“better things for better living, through chemistry”).


	Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours.

By the 18th century, during the reign of Louis’ grandson Louis XV, and later his great-great grandson Louis XVI, the Bastille was used as a political disposal of those who disagreed with the monarchy’s (the king’s) policies, including those who wrote disagreeable reports of opposition to the monarchy’s politics.

By July 1789, all was not well in the state of France. The monarchy of the Divine Right of Kings was under pressure on all sides, and fraught with accumulating financial corruption all around itself. The problem that would not go away and continued to worsen was a common one: Debt.

The government’s (the monarchy) was so massive that eventually it began to claw away at the supplies of the essentials. In 1788, the crisis was exacerbated by a very bad harvest -- for not only the great unwashed (and they were unwashed) but for the political enemies of the government as well.

East view of the Bastille.

Among the solutions the government put forward was the printing of the assignat, which was a bill, a piece of official paper, identified as currency. It was not the first time in history that a government sought to relieve debt by printing money – Nero did the same (but he coined rather than printed) back in the ancient days of Rome – nor would it be the last. Alas for poor Louis XVI, not to mention Marie-Antoinette.

The problem was a long time in the making. The misdirected and mismanaged finances of the monarchy began almost a century before with Louis XIV. After him came Louis XV (age five when he inherited the throne). Between the building (and constant refurbishing) of the chateau at Versailles and several other chateaux, and the wars that ran for decades, and the expense of the aristocracy (who did not pay much in the way of taxes, and naturally didn’t think they should have to – being aristocracy and all that), by the 1780s too much of a good thing had turned into a bad thing for the French people.

Entrance gate to the Palace of Versailles.

The marble court at Versailles.

In 1776, the year of the beginning of the American Revolution, Louis XVI appointed Jacques Neckerdirector-general of finances. Necker was a Swiss, a prosperous banker in Paris. He could not have the official title of “controller” under the King, because he was Protestant, but he had the power.

During that time he approved and encouraged the loans to the American revolutionary parties that amounted to about $2 billion in today’s currency. He also raised interest rates and encouraged borrowing. Later, when the finances of the government began to come apart, Necker was blamed for the enormous loans to the Americans.


Jacques Necker, director-general of finances.

Twelve years later, by 1788, the French finances were worse than ever. Furthermore, there had been years of official “reports” by Necker that painted a far rosier picture than the reality. He was in the habit of telling people (the King and his advisers) what they wanted to hear. The King dismissed Necker.

Necker in turn failed to be present at one of the king’s speeches. His absence was looked on as a failure (one of many at this point) of the King. Necker, after all, was the “savior” in the minds of many. The revolutionaries who attacked the Bastille on July 14, 1789 did it three days after Necker’s dismissal.

Having been (mis)perceived as the savior of France’s finances and economy, the revolutionaries used that as a reason to attack the Bastille. They freed the seven prisoners, but not before the battle between the soldiers defending the prison, and the attackers, caused 98 deaths – mainly the attackers and the officer who presided over the prison, as well as three others from his staff.

The incident, now celebrated as the spark that ignited the French Revolution, was witnessed by no more than 300 people that summer day in Paris, and almost a third of them did not live to tell about it. Without modern communication, the general population of Paris had little or no idea. It was made known, however, to the powers that be, including the King.

Women's March on Versailles.

Conscious of the protestation against Necker’s firing, five days later, the King tried ameliorating by re-hiring him. Jacques Necker had triumphed. But he was on a fool’s errand: the natural forces of economics and finance had long before moved away from a managed solution. There was no turning back. And so, on this day in 1789, the first blow came with the Bastille.


	Click here to read FIAT MONEY INFLATION IN FRANCE by Andrew Dickson White.

The writing had been on the wall for a long time to not afew -- whose warnings were ignored by almost all (the peasantry notwithstanding, although they probably thought very little about any of it).

Three months after the Bastille, on October 5, 1789, there was a march on Versailles by several thousand women from the marketplace in Paris. The demonstration was entirely not unplanned. The idea had been moving through various circles of citizens in Paris. It was a well known possibility by the time it happened.

Precautions were taken at the palace at Versailles for protecting the royal family. Additional soldiers were brought in. On October 1st, there was a banquet welcoming the soldiers, set up in the palace’s opera house. It was a king’s banquet and the soldiers partook of the abundance including the wines and champagne. The party went on into the early hours of the next day. Within a day or so, it was reported in one of the Paris papers and referred to as a lavish orgy.

Banquet given on 1 October 1789 at the Versailles Opera House.

The idea that the King and Queen could entertain their guards so lavishly while the “people” were starving, took flight. So it was on that morning of October 5th, a young woman in the market place of Paris, standing on the edge of a crowd of market-women, struck a marching drum. Soon after the bells of a nearby church tolled. And it began, and in driving rain. Traipsing the 12 or 13 miles through rain and mud in some places, the market women were protesting the high price and scarcity of bread.

The crowd had grown by thousands by the time they reached Versailles. There was an audience with the King for a small committee of marchers. He was accommodating and impressive to those with whom he met. He offered to return to Paris to be closer to his people.

Massacre of a Garde du Corps at the door of the Queen's Apartment.

On the advice of the Marquis de Lafayette, the King appeared on a balcony to address the crowd. It was favorable. He was followed by the Queen and her children, and that was not unfavorable also. The following early morning, however, a group of protestors found an unguarded gate to get into the palace. Two guards attempted to face down the crowd. One of the guard’s head was cut off and put on pike. Soon another guard was beheaded. Eventually Lafayette brought some calm to the situation.

Marquis de Lafayette.

In the early afternoon, the royal party got into their carriages and with the National Guard and an estimated 60,000 people escorting them, they were transported to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, where their lives moved into the beginning of the end.

Palace and garden des Tuileries.

Less than two years later, in June 1791, the King and Queen made a botched plan to flee from Paris, and France. They were caught, and returned to the Tuileries where they remained until they were both arrested and imprisoned after the monarchy was abolished in September 1792.

The following year, on January 21, 1793, Louis was guillotined in the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde). Nine months later, on October 16th, Marie Antoinette was guillotined.

The guillotine in operation at the Place de la Revolution in 1783.

Over the next nine months, about 16,000 people were guillotined across France in a period known in history as The Terror. More than a half million were imprisoned and 10,000 died before coming to trial. Political chaos ensued along with the wholesale murders.

One of the heroes who eventually emerged from this melee of the people against the people was a Captain Napoleon Bonaparte, who within a little more than a decade would crown himself Emperor of France.

The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, by Jacques-Louis David, 1812.

During the final period when the royal family was at the Tuileries, Jacques Necker had continued in his role as director of the finances. But matters had only grown worse, and beyond his control. Soon he was no longer regarded as the hero saving France. In 1790, with his reputation forever tarnished by the continuing failure of the economy to revive, with Mme. Necker and his daughter Germaine, Jacques Necker had narrowly escaped the fate of the King and Queen and the revolutionary turmoil, by fleeing to Switzerland where he remained safely until his death in 1804.


	Madame de Stael.

Necker’s daughter Germaine, when she came of age, married the Swedish Ambassador to France, and became known forever more as Madame de Stael. A very early feminist, visionary and writer, Mme. De Stael, like her father, and her mother – who had presided over one of the most influential salons in Paris – she became a force on the national political scene in France. Never fooled by the meteoric rise of Capt. Bonaparte and his Machiavellian ambitions, her commentaries about him annoyed him to the point where instead of jailing or executing her, he wanted to make her suffer. He banished her ... not from France ... but from the one place in all the world that she loved the most: Paris. At a distance of 40 leagues (120 miles), she could never set foot in Paris. Again. Or so he thought.

Napoleon’s “edict” toward Madame de Stael did not hold of course. After his second exile to St. Helena, she resumed residence in Paris where her “salon,” like her mother’s, was highly frequented by people of literary influence and political power. She died on this day, July 14, 1817, 28 years after the fall of the Bastille.

And dear old France, after the Revolution, then briefly a republic, then an Imperial monarchy, followed by a restoration of the throne; then a second Empire, another republic and then two more, remains powerfully French.

The remaining stones of the Bastille on Boulevard Henri IV.

Contact DPC here.

Lilies along Columbus Avenue. 4 PM. Photo: JH.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014. Yesterday in New York was overcast, occasionally sunny, and hot and humid. Then about 8 pm, the rains came, first lightly and then steadily through the evening leading up to midnight. The city streets are quiet after dark. It is summertime and vacationtime. You can feel it.

Yesterday morning at the Frank Campbell funeral home, they held a service for G. Nicholas (Nick) Simunek who died last Thursday, July 10th, after being briefly ill with cancer.


	Nick Simunek and Terry Allen Kramer.

Nick, an Englishman, born and bred in London, a member of the Coldstream Guards in his youth, was 76. He’d attended McGill University in Canada and then lived in this country for a good part of his adult life. Fifteen years or so ago, he married Broadway producer and Wall Street banking heiress Terry Allen Kramer. Nick was a hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy, a man with a warm, ebullient personality which he shared with whomever he came in contact.

He and Terry shared a deep interest in theatrical and film producing, as well as the camaraderie of a wide variety of friends. They very often entertained at their fabulous Upper East Side duplex penthouse, at their spectacular oceanside villa in Palm Beach, and every summer in St. Tropez.

In the last few years Nick has been active in film production. He was vice-chairman of two production companies – Helmdale and Gateway Films. He was also president of Remarkable Partners, a production company owned by Terry which has produced more than 40 plays and musicals on Broadway and in the UK.

Catching up with the social calendar. Last Wednesday night at Arena, the event space next door to Bryant Park, Fred Anderson, the business partner of fashion designer Douglas Hannant, celebrated a special birthday in the company of scores (hundreds?) his mostest and closest friends. Arena is an ideal stage set for special parties with a very sophisticated lighting system, 5600 square feet of party space easily transformable for multi-media events. Fred Anderson knows how to show his guests a good time, and so it was ...

The scene at Arena for Fred Anderson's birthday bash ...

Frederick Anderson, Dietchi Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, and Dimitri Anderson

Chad Wagner and Gavin Grymes

Marie Stewart and Frederick Burton

George Wayne and Sonja Morgan

Oscar Plotkin and Sharon Bush

Richard Turley and Yaz Hernandez

Jo Hallingby and Yaz Hernandez

Kim Mallett and Richard Yumang

Svetlana Smolina, Tatiana Vidus, and Barbara Regna

Jack Thiles and Jack Mims

Lauren Roberts and Nicole Noonan

Shaokao Cheng and Niki Cheng

Joe Wiese and Zev Eisenberg

Andre Viveros, Angeline Loo, and Bryant Robinson

Sharon Handler-Loeb and Geoffrey Bradfield

Jackie Astier and Nancy Jones

Katia Dryleba

Margot Lewis, Albert Zamora, and Adam Behlen

Jean Shafiroff and Chiu-Ti Jansen

Marco Guidetti-Hoffman, Alice Judelson, and Jason Hoffman

Salomé Mazard and Douglas Hannant

Nicole Hanley Mellon, David Marshack, and Marcy Warren

Eric Javits, Lucia Hwong Gordon, Barbara Regna, Harrison Morgan, Di Mondo, and Greg Kan

Kim Mallett, Garrett Bowser, Richard Yumang, and Francisco Casales

Richard Farley and Chele Chiavacci

Nina Soriano and Cailan Orn

Roy Kean, Stanislav Sokolov, Gabriel Sebastian, and Paul Beirne

Eric Ketcham, Hyein Lee, and Lorenzo Hill-White

Svetlana Smolina and Marty Thomas

Jane Lawrence, Polly Onet, and Karen Klopp

Sonja Morgan and friends

Matthew Leeb, Dr. Mark Warfel, and Antonio Fiumara

Julio Gaggia and Dominique Semiole

Frederick Anderson and Douglas Hannant

Erik Bottcher and Sam Bolton

Sonja Morgan and Jihad Harkeem

Katrina Long, Eddy Bogaert, and Katia Dryleba

Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin, Nicole Noonan, Adele Nino, Joy Marks, and Nicole Hanley Mellon

Alan Marks, Adele Nino, Bryant Robinson, and Joy Marks

Also, celebrating his birthday recently was interior designer Mark Epstein, who hosted a dinner at Haven’s Kitchen on 109 West 17th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenue. Friends, clients, associates from the world of finance, business, interior design and media joined the birthday boy for an evening that culminated in a dance performance by American Ballet Theatre’s princepal dancer Megan LeCrone.

The birthday boy, Mark Epstein

Bob Smith toasting Mark Epstein

Robert Zimmerman, Mel Gerstein, and Gayle Gerstein

James Schreiber, Wendy Schreiber, and Jamie Drake

Jamie Drake, Dennis Miller, Terry Fassburg, and James Kerse

Jon Satovsky, Stacey Satovsky, and Jara Feinblatt

Mark Epstein and Jill Smith

Zach Schreiber, Lori Schreiber, Danny Romanoff, Ronnie Fisher, and Chris Sullivan

Principal Ballet Dancer, Megan LeCrone

Also this past Saturday in Southampton, Sequin, a fashion jewelry store founded by sisters Kim andLinda Renk, along with store manager, Cheryl Dovenberg, along with Jean Shafiroff hosted a kick-off reception for this coming Saturday’s (July 19th) Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation's 5th Annual Unconditional Love Gala.

Among the SASF’s supporters attending were Jonathan McCann, Martin Shafiroff, Lucia Hwong Gordon, Cassandra Seidenfeld, Patricia Gray, Nicole Noonan, Sandra McConnell, Susan Allen and Amy Rosi, admiring the fashions and petting the adoptable dogs on hand for the party.

Pat Gray, Jean Shafiroff, Gina Martini, Kathy Ferraro, Dakota, and Munchkin

This year they will be honoring Georgina Bloomberg. Honorary Corporate Chairs are Allen & Co.,Barclays, Ferguson Cohen, LLP and Sequin Jewelry.Alex Donner and his orchestra will provide the music for the special evening.

The Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation is ranked among the top ten shelters in the country. In addition to providing adoption services, the shelter offers a low-cost spay/neuter clinic. The Training and Behavior Department, evaluates each dog and develops individually tailored training, based upon a dog's needs. Dog obedience classes, as well as dog play groups, are offered to the public.

Sandra McConnell and Tony Urrutia

Cynthia Roth and Susan Allen

Renee Adrienne Smith and Cassandra Seidenfeld

Marcia Schaeffer and Pepper

Amy Rosi and Peter Rosenthal

John Awe and Linda Renk

Maria Mora and Dakota

Ed Ankudavich, Dakota, and Rosemary Ponzo

Randi Schatz and Rosemary Ponzo

Dustin Lujan and Victor de Souza

Arlette Castro and Laura Pashayan

Melissa Breitbart-Sohn, Randi Schatz, and Katlean de Monchy

Chris Arnold and Dana Bartel

Victor de Souza and Cassandra Seidenfeld

Carol Bauhs, Amanda Schaefer, Rascal, and Mimi

Giuliana Koch and Carole Harting

Joe Alexander and R. Couri Hay

Steven Knobel and Nicole Noonan

John Awe and Liz Kelly

Cheryl Dovenberg, Jean Shafiroff, Linda Renk, and Dakota

Jean Shafiroff and Martin Shafiroff

Somer Abramson and Seth

Contact DPC here.

18th Street and Fifth Avenue. 2:30 PM. Photo: JH.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014. Rainy days in New York. Yesterday it was hot and fairly humid, and threatening rain until late afternoon when it came down in torrents into the early evening. And then more, off and on after that. The good news for this non-air-conditioned writer is that everything cooled down nicely. So far this summer – the first three weeks – Mother Nature has been very kind to us while also demonstrating the season honestly.

The city is summer quiet. The nabe is much quieter because the two schools nearby are closed. And surely many of the residents are away at least for part of the summer. The traffic yesterday, however, was heavy and confounding. You could read a mood of angst and uncertainty (if you’re “into reading what you see in this great big town). There are lots of tourists in midtown. You can tell that they’re tourists because they dress like they’re at the beach and on the beach. Yesterday, however, there were some strong thunderclaps in the late morning and fewer beach bunnies and their rabbits.

I went down to Michael’s to lunch with Bonnie Strauss and Paula Stein of the Bachmann Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation. Bonnie who has lived with Dystonia for much of her adult life (she contracted it after her second pregnancy). When she told her father whom she was close to and respected, he advised her to seek solutions for herself, but for others also. That fatherly advice was well taken.

Today there are four Bachmann Strauss Dystonia Centers at Beth Israel Mount Sinai here in New York, a the University of Alabama at Birmingham, at UC San Francisco, and at the University of Florida. In the past twenty-two years of the foundation’s existence they’ve raised about $25 million which has been re-distributed for research grants. You may have read about their 22nd annual fund-raising golf tournament a couple of weeks ago here on the NYSD.

Paula Stein, DPC, and Bonnie Strauss at Michael's.

Most people have never heard of Dystonia, and it is very difficult to diagnose the early symptoms, but it affects people of all ages. And because it is a neurological condition, it can ruin people’s lives. It is an enormous burden for children to grow up with. Bonnie and her associates and contributors/supporters, are dealing with that.

Bonnie and her foundation director Paula Stein make an interesting lunch as there is much to learn and understand. It is also especially interesting to me to hear what they are doing and why. Bonnie’s father was a successful textile manufacturer here in New York. The family lived in Rye. But her father was also an active philanthropist and inculcated his daughter with the values of his objective. When he advised her to do something about it for others, she was naturally predisposed to follow in his footsteps. Families.

Last night, I had dinner at Sette Mezzo as a guest of Scott Stevenson, a young lawyer, the son of a friend of mine, whom I have known since he was a boy, and his fiancee Dr. Karen Duncan. Sette was busy: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was dining with his wife Judith. Wilbur and Hilary Geary Ross were dining with Harry and Gigi Benson– the Bensons are just back from Paris where the George V is running an exhibition of Harry’s photos of the Beatles at the very beginning of their spectacular career.

Dessert #1: Tartufo topped with stewed cherries.

Also around the room, Gayfryd Steinberg and her fiancé, writer Michael Shnayerson, who will marry next month in Sag Harbor; continuing: Donald Newhouse and family; Geraldine Fabrikant with Shelby White; Harry Macklowe; Billy and Ophelia Rudin with family (including daughter Samantha, and Alex Papachristidis and Scott Nelson); David Wassong; philanthropist Helen Kimmel. New York on a rainy summer night.

Dessert #2: Cherry pie with cherry sorbet.

Today we are running one of those remarkable obituaries from the Telegraph of London– this one of the Duchess of Roxburghe, the first wife of the 9th Duke of Roxburghe of Floors Castle, Scotland. The duchess died last week at age 99. The duke, who was a cousin of Winston Churchill, was also the son of May Goelet, heiress to a Manhattan real estate fortune. May’s mother, Mary Wilson Goelet, was the sister of Grace Wilson, who married Cornelius Vanderbilt III, Orme Wilson, who married Carrie Astor, the daughter of the Mrs. Astor and William Backhouse Astor. The duchess’ divorce from the duke was one of the great scandals of the Edwardian era when women’s rights were practically unheard of. She survived.

The Telegraph Obituary: Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, who has died aged 99, showed courage and tenacity when in 1953 she resisted a six-week campaign by her husband, the 9th Duke, to evict her from Floors Castle, his 100-room ducal seat overlooking the Tweed, near Kelso.


	Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, when she was evicted from the Floors Castle, 1953.

	9th Duke of Roxburghe.

	The mother of Duchess of Roxburghe, Lady Crewe, c. 1899.

He brought the action under Scottish common law which, at that time, laid down that a wife lived in her husband’s house only “by licence”. The Duke gave no reason for wanting to turf his wife out of the family home. The marital dispute was eventually settled out of court and the Duchess departed for London. In December that year she was granted a divorce on account of her husband’s adultery.

Mary Roxburghe had withstood the seige without telephone, electric light or gas. The Duke had ordered the water be turned off, too, but the edict was rescinded after a neighbour, the Earl of Home (as the future Prime Minister was then styled) advised her to warn the insurance company of the fire risk. Other sympathetic neighbours, including Lord Haig, surreptitiously supplied her with food, paraffin lamps and candles for six weeks.

But not everyone took her part. At another border estate, Bowhill, the then Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch were divided in their allegiance. The Duchess sympathised with Mary Roxburghe, but her husband, an aristocrat of the old school, plumped for the duke.

Lady Mary Evelyn Hungerford Crewe-Milnes was born on March 23 1915, the only daughter by the second marriage of the first and last Marquess of Crewe to Lady "Peggy" Primrose. She was named after her godmother, Queen Mary.

Both her parents came from colourful families. Crewe was the son of Monckton Milnes, created Lord Houghton, an MP, man of letters, raconteur, patron of the arts and owner of a fine library containing, as the Complete Peerage demurely put it, “books by no means virginibus puerisque” [ie not “for girls and boys”]. Lord Crewe, who inherited his father’s barony in 1885, was subsequently created an earl (1895) and a marquess (1911). As a Liberal statesman he held several important offices, among them Viceroy of Ireland, Secretary of State for India and the Colonies; Lord President of the Council and Ambassador to France.

The splendour of his career, however, was punctuated by an amiable recklessness in money matters, and in 1904 he was said to have amassed debts of £600,000 (nearly £64 million today) as a result of extravagance and speculation, not least on the racecourse.

Lady Crewe was a daughter of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister in 1894-95, by Hannah Rothschild, daughter of Baron Mayer de Rothschild, who built Mentmore. She entertained with panache and cast the net of friendship widely. Some found her formidable.

Born into the purple of high office and beautiful possessions, Mary Crewe-Milnes was brought up at Crewe Hall, a huge Jacobean pile rebuilt by Barry, on the outskirts of the Cheshire railway town — and at Crewe House, Curzon Street, one of the last great mansions of Mayfair.

Crewe Hall where Mary Crewe-Milnes was brought up.

In 1935 she was married in Westminster Abbey to the 9th Duke of Roxburghe— “Bobo” to his intimates — a Scottish landowner of more than 80,000 acres, and perhaps the best shot in the kingdom.

In 1937 the Duchess’s imposing stature and dark good looks were again seen to advantage in the Abbey at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. With the Duchesses of Buccleuch, Norfolk and Rutland, she carried the new Queen’s train.

Floors Castle, 9th Duke of Roxburghe's 100-room ducal seat overlooking the Tweed.

Mary Roxburghe showed enterprise in the early months of the war by joining a party of “illicit wives” who had wangled passages to the Middle East to be with their Army husbands. Peter Coats, the garden designer and ADC to General Wavell, noted in April 1940: “Palestine is more like Ladies’ Day at Ascot than ever. Actually, I disapprove of them being here, just because they can pull strings and have the fare. But as they are all friends, I can’t work against them.”


	The enterprising Mary Roxburghe.

A few weeks later the ever-obliging ADC extricated the Duchess from her car, marooned near Jerusalem in a herd of goats.

After her divorce, Mary Roxburghe spent much of her life at 15, Hyde Park Gardens, a large and elegantly furnished flat overlooking the park. She worked for many charities and was President of the National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds. She also became an enthusiastic member of the Royal Society of Literature, and was for many years a devoted patron of the Royal Ballet.

Mary Roxburghe entertained young and old alike with the same attention to detail and Rothschild cuisine as had her parents. She was well-informed on the politics and diplomacy of the day, showing no aversion to gossip. She loved bridge, too.

From her mother, who died in 1967, she inherited West Horsley Place, a spacious 16th century house and estate near Leatherhead, Surrey, where a well-developed aesthetic sense prompted her to allow only the more comely breeds of cattle to graze on her Elysian pastures.

West Horsley Place.

She took a philosophic view of the worldly goods with which she was endowed. When informed in 1983 that Crewe House, sold by her father in 1937 for £90,000, was on the market again for £50 million, she was unimpressed. “I will bear the news with fortitude,” she said.

There were no children of her marriage.

Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, born March 23 1915, died July 2 2014

Contact DPC here.

An everyday scene. Photo: JH.

Thursday, July 17, 2014. Rain over for the time being; the Sun came out yesterday, the temperatures reached up into the 80s but the humidity was minimal. The traffic wasn’t. Choking the streets and avenues, the worst in midtown, the worst of the week.

How do I know this? I was on my way down to midtown to meet our No Holds Barred columnist Blair Sabol and her friend Linda Rodin (Ro-danh), the beauty consultant whom Blair swears by and whose services she subscribes to. And JH made one of his rare appearances and joined us too.


	Blair taking in the scene at Michael's.

Blair, who lives mainly in Scottsdale, Arizona, has been on the East Coast for the past several weeks staying at her parents’ house in Philadelphia. This was her second or third foray into Manhattan (and environs) since she’s been in Phila. Visiting New York is always a goldmine for writers who can’t help writing about their experience. Blair fits that bill.

This trip she stayed at a luxury hotel which will remain nameless because, among other things, the hotel fire alarm went off (falsely, it turned out) about 4 a.m. This is disturbing to anyone in a sleep, deep or otherwise. But even more disturbing, the same thing happened after the midnight hour the last time Blair stayed there. Was it a conspiracy? Should she take it personally? She should take Ambien if nothing else at 4 a.m.

The thought might have passed through her head. What transpired, I cannot say, and I don’t know if Blair Will say or What she will say if she does, so I’ll leave it to the wait. What she did learn was that there is an attitude in New York about which hotels are the good ones and which aren’t, and what part of town they’re in. If so, it’s dismaying news on many counts. But that’s for Blair to tell you in the next No Holds column ...

Michael’s was very busy Wednesday, with the decibel levels moving up noticeably (I couldn’t hear my lunch partners without practically shoving my ear in their faces.) Normally my hearing is far from perfect. Others would attest to its obvious deafness. However, on this kind of Wednesday at Michael’s the majority of lunchers (diners?) were filling the air with that New York clatter chatter. The amazing thing about that is, in a place where all kinds of deals and dramas are being hatched by one and all (media/TV/film/publishing/bankers/Wall St), you can’t hear a word anyone is saying even if they’re yelling because so is everybody else. Yelling. Probably a good place to share a deep secret with someone you trust; the noise is so much that people try to tune out the voices nearby. What’d you say??

Meanwhile, more selfies in Central Park. Photo: JH.

The rundown. At the table next to us, the gregarious, garrulous and ubiquitous financial advisor Euan Rellie, a Scot, married to one of the famous Sykes sisters. Euan was with Justine Mannerling and Kevin Martel, the creative director of Harry’s of London. Harry’s of London was started I was told, by Matthew Mellon, the former husband of Tamara Mellon, the tycooness of Jimmy Choo fame and fortune.

Men’s shoes, Harry’s. Now all the rage. Euan would love it if I’d show you a picture of Harry’s current, line but I’m not going to. You know where to look if you really want to know. Go ahead, you might like.

That was next door to us. In the bay at Table One, Steven Rubenstein, the PR guru (along with his father and brother). On the other side of us Fern Mallis was lunching with architect Steven Learner and Sarah Medford. Beyond them, marketing and advertising executive Cindy Lewis. In the corner (Barry Diller’s table when he’s in town), Dana Miller and Mitch Kanner. You don’t know who they are? Neither do I. Michael’s knows, however, and maybe you might want to also. Next to them, Alice Mayhew, the Simon & Schuster editor with literary agent Ed Victor. Were they discussing the rumored to be imminent acquisition of S&S by Amazon.com? I have no idea, but others were definite airing opinions about the rumor and Jeff Bezos taking over the whole publishing/media world. And then the moon, of course.

Moving along, at the table next to Alice Mayhew, Bob Barnett, the Washington attorney, husband of newcaster, the great (the voice) Rita Braver. Mr. Barnett on meeting is a congenial, gracious fellow, just the way you’d hope a high powered lawyer would be. At table, or across the desk, wherever it is, however, he’s a genius dealmaker for his clients, many of whom are very famous celebrities, athletes, actors, politicians -- and rich, no small thanks to him. Mr. Barnett was with Adrian Zackheim, the publisher.

I am your camera. Across the way, and in the center of the room, Diane Clehane, girl reporter, was interviewing Tessa Edick, founder of FarmOn!, along with public relations lady Judy Twersky who arranged the howjado’s, and Beth Feldman. Across the aisle again: Lisa Linden (Linden Atschuler) with writer James Panero. Across the way from Ms. Linden, Dini Von Meuffling.

On one side of her, PR consultant and political analyst Robert Zimmerman. On the other side of Dini, politico Andrew Stein lunching with a beautiful model. next to her Couri Hay, and across the way from Couri, Christy Ferer. Nearby: Sotheby’s Exec VP Jamie Niven with Neal Lasher. Also nearby: (David) Sanford (of the WSJ) and (Lewis) Stein; Jack Myers with Mark Debevoise; Jack Kliger with Tom Goodman; Shelly Palmer; Jim Smith of Niche Media; Pauline Brown, Liz Smith (Alliance Bernstein, not your Liz Smith; William Hardie, Cliff Sobel, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil; Paul Beirne; Duncan Darrow, Michael Christenson of Allen & Company; and Philippe Salomon and his wife Paula who always take two places at the bar where they can take in the whole scene coming and going while enjoying the Michael’s menu. The Salomons, aside from their view (and they are in my purview) have a very good time together. A team, you could call it.

I would guess, the world outside aside, the guests yesterday afternoon at Michael’s were having a good time together too. And making some inroads, some agreements, some deals and some ideas that may move their worlds and even the world along to better things.

Early evening in Riverside Park. Photo: JH.

Contact DPC here.

I'll drink to that. 3 PM. Photo: JH.

Friday, July 18, 2014.Warm, sunny day, yesterday in New York. No rain, little to no humidity; a perfect Summer day.

Remembering. Elaine Stritch died early yesterday at her home in Birmingham, Michigan. Stritch, who grew up in Michigan, came here to New York when she was in her early 20s to have a career as an actress. Her talent took her all over the world, and to the heights of New York’s theatre where she learned everything her talent would need to become one of the great great performers of our era.

She’d retired to Michigan sensibly but reluctantly only a couple of years ago. One could see that no matter how sensible the decision to leave, she was always back in town if she had any reason to be here, trouper that she was.

I can say I knew Elaine, although really only from being in her company – usually with Liz Smith. Liz and she had been friends for the better part of sixty years or more. And although I never got to know her on a personal level, I learned so much about from Liz, and from Peter Rogers, and another friend of Stritch’s who happened to be a college mate of mine, Bob DiNapoli, that the combination of being in her company, hearing her friends talk about her, and watching her perform, I felt I knew her.

She lived to be on that stage. At the end it was very hard to leave it, and she wasn’t shy about demonstrating that. It had been a great pleasure watching her perform -- aside from her ability to amuse -- because she was the consummate pro. She had learned from the greats who came before, and she became one herself.

She was one of those people, one of those actors, who was entirely there, wherever she was, including in her performances whether on stage, in a cabaret like the Café Carlyle, or in front of a camera. And she loved it! At a birthday party (she shared the same day with Liz and they celebrated together occasionally, with lots of friends), it was the same lady you saw up there on the stage or screen.

She lived for years at the Carlyle, and so East Siders might see her walking in the neighborhood. Seeing her even on the sidewalk could tell you a lot about the lady. She was tall and angular, and walked with a wide, determined gait, at a good speed. She was going somewhere (“otherwise why would I be on the sidewalk?”).

When she stopped to talk to a stranger or a friend, again, you saw that personality and character operating. There was a quality of the naïve, and the new girl in town still in the old dame who’d seen and heard it all. We were lucky to have her.

I chose this video of her which is the opening of her wonderful one woman show on Broadway, “At Liberty,” because it’s classic Stritch and it’s a perfect epitaph – and told her way. Nobody could have done it better. She owned and shared it Big Time. We were lucky to have been here when she was.

Also, speaking of the departure of the greats, yesterday Maria Cooper Janis sent me a couple of photos of the great conductor Lorin Maazel, who died on Sunday at age 84, at his home in Virginia. The maestro was a longtime friend of Maria’s husband Byron Janis, the great piano virtuoso.

The first photo is of the two friends when they were teenagers. Maria wrote: “The performance that Vladimir Horowitz first heard Byron perform at was a concert with Lorin and the Pittsburgh Symphony – Lorin 14, Byron, age 16 – in Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. The rest is history ...

Byron Janis, age 16, and Loren Maazel, age 14, before a concert with the Pittsburgh Symphony, 1947.

And many years later, old friends ...

Contact DPC here.

An empty lot on 31st Street and 6th Avenue. 3 PM. Photo: JH.

Monday, July 21, 2014. It was another really beautiful weekend, in New York. Maybe the best one so far. Sunny, warm but in the low 70s, with an occasional breeze cooling things in the shade.

Showboat (sort of) moves along up river yesterday afternoon about 2 p.m.

Today is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois. I was of the generation that couldn’t resist Hemingway. He and Fitzgerald and O’Hara, were giants in 20th century American literature to this boy. The three men were also friends, and admirers of the man’s talent. And he, Hemingway, was, in my opinion, the most influential as a stylist. (Although O’Hara has always been my favorite.) I read the books and was deeply affected by AE Hotchner’s biography of him. He shot himself just three weeks before his 62nd birthday in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961.

Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

Well, we’re late with this one. Real late. Last May 17th. But better late than never, at least in this case. It was on that day, a Saturday, when the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh formally celebrated its 20th Anniversary.

I’ve written somewhere on these pages (quite some time ago) about my experience of going to one of the very first Andy Warhol shows of New Works back in 1963. It was at the Leo Castelli Gallery in the East 70s.

Neither Warhol nor Castelli were famous outside of the art world. I had never heard of either man, so I had no idea what I might expect. Castelli was highly regarded (although I didn't know that) but not the giant he became. Andy I had never heard his name before the night I walked into the gallery which was on the ground floor of a townhouse.

Leo Castelli, Pop art dealer Ivan Karp and artist Andy Warhol, at Castelli's gallery in 1966. Sam Falk/The New York Times/Redux.

It was all Brillo boxes, Campbell Soup boxes and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes boxes. Filling the rooms so that you couldn’t enter. They filled the rooms, leaving no room for a human to even stand.


	Warhol's Brillo Boxes, 1963.

There probably isn’t a reader among you today who can’t easily picture that, because Andy became like his boxes -- beyond fame and into the collective unconscious. At first sight for this kid, who was never an art historian, who had no interest in Art History, and just wanted to Go Out in New York, it was absurd. I’d seen those likenesses all my life growing up. On the breakfast table, in the kitchen sink and in the cupboard. How could that be Art?

He asked.

I thought it was funny and naturally thought I was pretty smart. I probably still think I’m pretty smart at times, but I also know I don’t give much thought to a lot of things. I sure didn’t know a thing about Andy Warhol and his art when I walked in the door that night. I’d been invited by a girl I knew who was an assistant to an editor at Glamour magazine. The editor was invited to everything going on around town, and anything she didn’t want to do she passed off to my friend. Lucky for us, kids in New York now grown up.

After the reception at the gallery, we went over to a party that Ethel Scull, an early Warhol collector, was hosting in Andy’s loft in the East 40s. I still recall that evening vividly because it was my first look at the New York Art World, something I didn’t know existed until that moment – which was already a cool thing to a young man in a hurry.

Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963.

Jean Shrimpton, the model, then at her peak, was the star of the evening. Gloria Vanderbilt was there. She was famous, even more famous that Shrimpton. The kid was agog. Photographers were taking pictures of the two women with several artists, none of whom had names recognizable to me: names like Rosenquist, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg. At one point while the mass photographing was going on at one end of the large space, Mrs. Scull stood in the middle of the room and shouted: “I’m paying for this f**king party, when are you going to take a picture of me?” She was pissed off. But no match for Shrimpton or Vanderbilt in this kid’s mind.

Rosenquist and artists at a party at Andy Warhol's studio, The Factory, in New York City, 1964. Pictured from right: Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, British fashion model Jean Shrimpton, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg. Photo: Ken Heyman.

Andy had a very agreeable personality, not remarkable. And so, to me, like his art which I had just seen and left with the impression that it was ordinary (everyday), he seemed to have almost no personality. He was courteous, he was pleasant but otherwise ... Ha! on me. I should say. It took me quite some time in life to see what I was looking at, and even longer to realize that that this very seemingly unassuming man wearing what looked like a white wig (I thought it was his real hair ...!) would one day be a museum!

I should add, in self-defense: like many others, I came to understand Warhol, who was his art, who lived his art and knew what he was assuming. It was he, more than anyone, who was the influence on my own work as a writer. The media was his art also.

The Andy Warhol Museum.

And it was, this past May 17th at the Andy Warhol Museum, a weekend celebration of the anniversary. Andy, who grew up in Pittsburgh, was a household word, with a museum under the umbrella of four museums known as the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, he was as famous – actually probably more famous, and legendary – than the man whose philanthropy – derived from his genius – built the museums – Andrew Carnegie.

It must have been some weekend. On Saturday night there was a cocktail reception, a tour of the newly installed permanent collection of The Warhol Preview of Halston and Warhol: Silver and Suede exhibition. Then after the black tie dinner, there was a dance party with DJs Andrew Andrew.

George Shaner, Marylou Hacker, Jill Briercheck, Michel Franklin, and Michael Philopena

Then on Sunday, May 18th, Bob Colacello, who is Warhol’s Boswell to the point where it may as well be official, gave a talk and a book signing of his “HOLY TERROR: Andy Warhol Up Close.” Colacello’s career as a writer and biographer began with Warhol and “Interview,” the magazine that changed American magazines and influenced everybody today.

The Warhol Halston Show runs through August 24th. No doubt people will be coming from all over the world to see it. It’s an American Dream story: local boy goes to New York, makes good and brings New York back to Pittsburgh, to stay. A great place to end up. I’ve been to Pittsburgh, so I know.

Alexander Gilkes and Misha Nonoo

Ann Fu Yung and Gregory Labon

Alan Mur, Cindy Lisica, Jessica Beck, and Gerilyn Huxley

Ben Malka

Craig Jordan and Ellen Jordan

Jamie Schutz and Eric Shiner

David Jensen

Jane Holzer and John Block

Jeff Weimer, Jill Weimer, Anna Ciaccio, and Tim McVay

Debbie Barbarita and Michael Barbarita

Dolly and Curt Ellenberg

Jeffrey Bradford, Norah Lawlor, Susan Jones Block, and John Block

Jill Briercheck

Virginia Nelson, Elizabeth Nelson, and Nancy Burns

John Guehl and Miroya Stabile

John Peterman and Curt Ellenberg

Jim Gruber and Barb Gruber

Katarina Bjoernslev and Flemming Bjoernslev

John Peterman, Donna Peterman, Patrick Moore, and Ann McGuinn

Lee Foster, Alice Snyder, Judy Davenport, and Ron Davenport

Madeline Warhola, Maria Warhola, George Warhola, Marty Warhola, and Abby Warhola

Marc Chazaud, Michele Fabrizi, Christopher Hahn, Ron Booth, and Diana Reid

Maureen Kerr-Burkland, Tim Hunt, Vincent Fremont, Patrick Moore, Robert Becker, and Shelley Dunn Fremont

Melanie Brown, Tim Hunt, and Cathy Lewis Long

Peter Davis, Patrick McGregor, and Stephane Le Duc

Shelly Dunn Fremont, Bob Colacello, and Vito Schnabel

Contact DPC here.

Sunset. 8:21 PM. Photo: JH.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014. A warm, somewhat humid day in New York. But beautiful. I went to dinner with my friend Emilia at Sette Mezzo. Emilia, whom I have known since the 1970s, always treats me to lunch or dinner on my birthday which is this coming Saturday. We’ve been doing this for years.

DPC and Emilia at one of their lunches at Michael's.

Just as we were finishing up, a man and a woman came in to take the table next to ours, and Emilia said to me, “oh, it’s Essie!” I didn’t know who Essie was except that she was obviously a friend of Emilia’s. Then Emilia showed me her fingernails and told me that the color was called Hot something-or-other, and said: “this is Essie’s.”

I asked how they knew each other. Emilia and Essie both said: “from the salon.” I figured since the nails were Essie’s and they knew each other from the salon, I started to talk to Essie about her business at the salon and how the clientele all spill their innermost secrets to the staff.

Essie Sortino in the "lab."

Essie agreed but then told me that she didn’t own the “salon,” that she was a customer. Then why did Emilia tell me her fingernails were Essie’s? Probably most women reading this already know the story. Essie manufactures the fingernail polish and her brand is called Essie. She and two others are the most famous fingernail polish in the world. Essie recently sold her business to L’Oreal for $50 million, or something like that.


	Essie's Turquoise & Caicos, which Emilia was wearing on her toes.

Then Essie and Emilia started talking about houses in East Hampton. Emilia’s building one and Essie is buying one. Essie, at that moment was the most famous woman in the restaurant even if people didn’t know who she was, or even that she was famous. She’s probably one of the most famous names in America, maybe the world since you may have noticed, as almost every woman and girl is wearing polish on their fingernails and toes. Emilia wears one of Essie’s greens -- Turquoise & Caicos -- on her toes. I don’t like green nail polish. I don’t know why. But then as a clever woman once said to a man who told her he didn’t like the color of her lipstick, “then you shouldn’t wear it darling.”

Then again, Emilia has great taste and style. She’d tell me it’s because of Essie.

Yesterday I found this painting by Maurice Prendergast, an American post-Impressionist painter on a wonderful website I often look at called Emphemeral New York. Prendergast lived in the last half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th I’ve been familiar with his New York scenes for most of my adult life. Their colors are compelling and engaging. Many of his pictures have water in them – either the sea, the river, or in the case of Venice, the canals.

What especially caught my eye was the caption wondering if the scene were actually a children’s playground in Carl Schurz Park on the East River. And since Carl Schurz Park is only a few footsteps from my door, and I visit it daily walking the dogs, I looked very closely.

Maurice Prendergast, early 1900s.

If the year were 1901, which I gathered from the piece it might very well be, there was no FDR Drive then, and no elevated promenade (The John Finley Walk) at the riverside. The land went down to the shore. Nearby was the new neighborhoods including Henderson Place which was built in the 1890s. There were also originally some pieces of sandy beach in Manhattan when the Europeans came to settle. The island across the water could easily be what is now Roosevelt Island, but was then known as Blackwell's Island, with Queens in the background. It definitely is not southern Manhattan on the East River. Nor is there any other island of that shape on the eastern side of the East River with that much industrial activity on the eastern side of the channel where it is divided by the island. The only question is, where is the lighthouse, known as the Blackwell Island Light at the northern tip of the island?

Before I went out to dinner, I went down to the Promenade to get a photo of that location of what I think (and so does Ephemeral New York) is the location of Prendergast’s children’s playground. It wasn’t called Carl Schurz Park then although it was a park. It was named in honor of Mr. Schurz a few years later.

Yesterday afternoon I went out and took a photo of the vista that Prendergast painted more than a century ago. In the painting, you can see the sailboat in the upper center of it, coming out of the eastern channel (the other side of the island). That could be what is now Roosevelt Island on the other side where you can see trees and a house. On the far side of that eastern channel you can see Queens, the shoreline of which was originally industrial.

An oil tanker moves north pushed by a tug. None of what exists today -- the buildings, the bridge, the boats -- existed at the time of Prendergast's painting of the East River. Except the River and the land.

A view of the East River looking south, with Roosevelt Island on the other side and the Edward Koch 59th Street Bridge beyond. Where the FDR is was mainly countryside, out of town for affluent New Yorkers to occupy during the warmer months.

The social life in New York right now is actually the social life in New York-adjacent – the Hamptons. There isn’t a free moment on the weekends, from Thursday through Sunday, no matter what list you’re on. Besides the private parties, there are many charity associated gatherings.

For example: Jerry Ford and his wife, interior designer Kelli Ford, hosted a cocktail reception for the President’s Committee of Southampton Hospital on Saturday at a private residence in Southampton.

Jerry Ford, Kelli Ford, Laura Lofaro Freeman, and Bob Chaloner.

Southampton Hospital CEO & President Robert Chaloner, Southampton Hospital Foundation President Steve Bernstein and Laura Lofaro Freeman, the chairman of Southampton Hospital’s 56th Annual Summer Party, welcomed more 100 guests including Audrey and Martin Gruss, Jean Remmel Fitzsimmons, Cliff and Raya Knight and Howard Marton. Chaloner and Freeman thanked everyone for their support of upcoming August 2nd event, which will take place under the air-conditioned tents on Wickapogue Road, with dinner catered by Robbins Wolfe Eventeurs and music by the Alex Donner Orchestra. This year, the Hospital's 56th Annual Summer Party will benefit the Jenny and John Paulson Department of Emergency Services. For more information, visit www.southamptonhospital.org.

Kelli, Kelli Ford, Electra, and Laura Lofaro Freeman.

Mac King and Katherine Carey.

Lisa Arnold and Cushla Kelly.

Martin Gruss, Audrey Gruss, and Bob Chaloner.

Jack Hadlock, Ken Meszkat, and Ladd Willis.

Cliff Knight and Oscar Mandes.

Charlie and Kristen Krusen.

Melanie Wambold, Steve Bernstein, Laura Lofaro Freeman, Gregory D'Elia, and Shereen Abdel-Meguid.

Cindy Willis and Jerry Ford.

Elyn and Jeff Kronemeyer.

Rich Wilkie, Gil Walsh, and Steven Stolman.

Also on Saturday evening, Love Heals, The Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education hosted its Let’s Misbehave ‘80s Style, its 18th Annual Hamptons event at the Wolffer Estate Vineyard.

1980’s cover band, Jessie’s Girl rocked the house with American Idol and Rock of Ages star Constantine Maroulis. Love Heals co-founder Dini von Mueffling and co-chairs Caroline and Eric Villency, DANNIJO’s Danielle Snyder and Jodie Snyder Morel, Alina Cho, Kelly Delaney Kot and Mark Kot danced the night away.

Jessie's Girl.

In the crowd: Nicky Hilton, Emily and Lawrence Chu, Eric and Sandra Ripert, Joey Wolffer, Kristian Laliberte, Richie Notar, Rory Hermelee, Samantha Yanks, Sonja Morgan and Thuyen Nguyen and Michael Lorber, and scores more all familiar by no more than 3 degrees of separation, if that.The Alison Gertz story is a sad one but a triumphant memorial for the girl who was a personal friend of many of the guests.

Joey Wolffer.

Constantine Maroulis and , Dini von Mueffling.

Sonja Morgan.

Love Heals was founded in 1992 to carry on the work of the late AIDS activist Ali Gertz. Love Heals empowers young people to become leaders by giving them the knowledge, skills and confidence to protect themselves and their communities from HIV. Love Heals’ HIV-positive speakers break down stigma and make the disease real for young people living in communities hardest hit by the epidemic. The leading provider of HIV/AIDS education in New York City public schools, Love Heals has partnered with more than 700 schools and community groups throughout the metropolitan area, educating and empowering nearly 600,000 young people, parents, guardians, educators, and community leaders.

Alina Cho and Danielle Snyder.

Eric and Caroline Villency.

Nicky Hilton.

Dr. Dendy Engelman.

Richie Nortar with Sandra and Eric Ripert.

Dr. Mark Kot and Kelli Delaney Kot.

Jodie Snyder Morel and Danielle Snyder.

Then on Friday night, Jeffrey Lane, Alexandra Lebenthal, Andrew Stern and Carrie Gallaway hosted the Grand Opening of the Lebenthal Bridgehampton Office. Yes, this was a party. The office of Lebenthal Wealth Advisors. Alexandra Lebenthal, the third generation in the financial business, explained that they’d “brought a very successful team from Morgan Stanley to LWA in February. One of those advisors was Andy Stern.” Mr. Stern lives in Amagansett year round.

An art show curated by Lorinda Ash was displayed around the venue featuring local artists. With work from artists including Ross Bleckner and Eric Freeman and a portion of all proceeds going to the Children’s Museum of East End, the exhibition will run until through the summer until Labor Day.

Jim Lebenthal, Alexandra Lebenthal, and James Lebenthal.

In the party Jon and Lizzie Tisch, Andy Stern, Carrie Gallaway, James A Lebenthal, Jimmy Lebenthal,Bonnie Lautenberg, Randy Slifka, Hilary and Wilbur Ross, Bryan Hunt, Lucy Winton, Noelle Beck, Jesse Pasca, Spencer Peterson, Pamela Boulet, Amy Heilberg, Rajan Mantani, Eric Freeman, Ross Bleckner, Tatiana Platt, Randy Polumbo, Sari Mandel, Susan Zises.

Lebenthal Wealth Advisors started in 1925 as an odd-lot firm focused on individual investors. Today, the firm provides personal wealth management, asset allocation and portfolio construction services. The firm is run by Alexandra Lebenthal who was recently joined by former Neuberger Berman Chairman, Jeffrey B. Lane.

Susan Solovay, Lizzie Tisch, Jonathan Tisch, and Judith Feder.

The evening was to benefit the Children’s Museum of the East End which all started with a conversation between seven mothers around a kitchen table in 1997. Seventeen years later, CMEE strives to create educational opportunities for children on the East End of Long Island. They continue to present educational exhibits and programs and partner with other arts and social service organizations in the 7,000 square feet of exhibition and program space designed by Lee Skolnik Architecture + Design Partnership. Along with the support of hundreds of stakeholders in the community, CMEE has been successful in their mission, “to enrich the lives of children and families and strengthen the East End community by promoting learning through play.”

Sari Mandel, Susan Zises, and Lorinda Ash.

Mary-Lou Russell and Jerry Russell.

Joe Stein, Barbie Zakin, and Kenny Zakin.

Michael Lascher, Nancy Lascher, and Andy Stern.

Jimmy Janeczek and Leigh Moglia.

Joe Alexander, Ross Bleckner, and R. Couri Hay.

Contact DPC here.

Dining al fresco on 57th and 6th Avenue. 2:30 PM. Photo: JH.

Friday, July 25, 2014. A beautiful very warm summer day, yesterday in New York, cooled the night before by thunderstorms passing through to New England.

Anthony Haden-Guest, born 2 February 1937, is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published.


	British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite Anthony Haden-Guest.

	"Moi" - April, 2005

This is how Anthony is described in the short Wikipedia biography of him. It’s pretty much on the money despite the more interesting inferences. For example, Wikipedia includes a blurb, written by his half-brother Christopher Guest, the actor/director/writer, for Anthony’s book “The Chronicles of Now, a book of Anthony’s cartoons:

“Boring, pompous and a complete and utter waste of time. I don’t know what my brother was thinking.”

That quote cracked me up, and it would you, if you knew the man Anthony. I couldn’t help wondering if indeed Anthony had written it himself, because he is very good at the occasional poke at the self.

If you don’t know about him, he’s like a character out of a book. In fact Tom Wolfe’s best-selling “Bonfire at the Vanities” has a character in it named Peter Fallow, who is said to be modeled on Anthony. In some ways, the portrait-ish characterization rings true of aspects of the man’s personality. But in other ways, it's Wolfe's portrait of an idea for a character possibly inspired or enhanced by Anthony’s wild ways.

We’ve known each other for a couple of decades. Not well, but knowing Anthony for any length of time is to know him. He’s one of those people who lives his life as he pleases and openly, is endlessly curious, brilliantly witty in a way that only the English can be, and potentially eccentric, or maybe not even potentially.

When I used to see him back in the 90s – we’ve seen much less of each other in the past decade -- he was often in black tie and could be found at Mortimer’s late nights after the parties, imbibing and conversing with pleasure and sharing such with with whomever he was conversing. He’s very very smart and deeply sensitive despite the devil-may-care adventurous bent of his life.

Because he is a writer, as well as a cartoonist and poet, I would imagine he carries with him the writer’s worry about the next gig or book or article and what pays the rent. But outside in the world, he’s a great fellow, an amusing fellow with a sharp eye for the ironic, and after all is said and done (and drunk), a worker bee. The character in Tom Wolfe’s book could be in someone else’s book as a hilarious fellow partaking of life and sharing the experience with whomever is nearby.


Anthony Haden-Guest last Wednesday night at the Swifty's exhibition. Behind him is one of Damon Johnson's roses paintings.

In 2002, the Telegraph of London publishedan obituary of Anthony’s mother. She was born Louise Ruth Wolpert in 1910 and died ninety-two years later in 2002. She too was a writer and somewhere along the way became known as Elisabeth Furse. In 1939, she married Peter Haden-Guest, the 4th Baron Haden-Guest. But before that in 1937, they had a son, Anthony. This was the first son for the Baron although since he wasn’t married at the time of the son’s birth, Anthony was therefore not considered the legitimate heir (Christopher, who was born 11 years later to a different mother, got that title).

I point out the obituary because in reading it, I understood completely where Anthony came from and why he is the adventurous, highly creative and talented writer/journalist/artist that he is. An amazing mother (probably not an easy one either), and as compelling a character as her son (click here to read the obit).

I tell you all this because this past Wednesday night at Swifty’s there was a cocktail reception for Anthony and Damon Johnson and some of Anthony's cartoons and Damon Johnson's paintings. It ran between 5 and 7 and Anthony got a small crowd of his thousands of friends and acquaintances to celebrate this moment. Stop in and have a look. You can see more of Anthony's work at www.haeart.com. Enjoy.

Mario Buatta and the artist.

Doug Dechert and friend.

Maggie Norris, Christine Schott, and Whitney Schott.

More of Anthony's and Damon Johnson's work can be seen at www.haeart.com.

I missed the Michael’s lunch on Wednesday, although a couple of little birdies filled me. There were a lot of the regulars whose names you’ve seen on the Michael’s reservation list. Here’s a good sampling of it: Dah Boyz: Jerry Della Femina, Dr. Imber, Michael Kramer, Andy Bergman; Andrew Stein; Elizabeth Harrison with Bonnie Abrams; Betsy Perry; Patricia Bosworth; Jolie Hunt with Susan Mercandetti; Ed Victor and Rick Heller; Fern Mallis with Hedi Kim and Don MacKinnon; Mickey Ateyeh with Judy Agisim, Bisila Bokoko and Diane Clehane; Jack Myers; Bonnie Verbitsky; Susan Blond and Baron Birtcher and Alex Boye; Steve Madden; Jack Kliger; Gerry Byrne and Greg Kelly; Susan Silver with Judy Twersky;Jim Mitchell; Kevin Crotty; Ross Martin; Bruce Hallet; Peter Brown; Stan Shuman; Michael Wolff and Jonathan Knee; Steven Schragis; Billy Kimball; Tim Spengler; and Michael Mailer, Michael Della Femina, and Jon Friedman.


	Ivy League Crimelords Michael Della Femina, Jon Friedman, and Michael Mailer at Michael's.

The latter Mr. Della Femina is the son of the guy lunching with Imber, Bergman and Kramer. His partner Mr. Mailer is the son of the great American novelist, and Mr. Friedman is the cousin of JH of the NYSD. The troika are working on a web series called "Ivy League Crimelords” about three middle-age friends from Harvard, Yale and Princeton (Mailer, Friedman, and Della Femina) who create a fictitious mob leader in order to shake down the industry and get their TV show made.

Think “Curb Your Enthusiasm” meets “GoodFellas” with the naturally revolving door of archetypal New Yorkers making regular cameos. According to Della Femina, it's a unique New York show that integrates iconic New Yorkers in a fact meets fiction story.

Guest stars include Abel Ferrara, nightlife impresario Rocco Ancarola, Academy Award nominated director James Toback, Jerry Della Femina, Matti Leshem, William "Blood Bill" Annesley, wine expert John Ryan, performance artist Thomas Morrison, FBI Agent Mark Rossini, comic Josh Weinstein, Emmy winner Jerry Perzigian, actor Adam Storke (Mystic Pizza, Broadway's Finest), Dylan Page, and the ghost of Norman Mailer.

We’ll be screening a few exclusive clips of the semi-reality (isn’t everything?) show over the next few weeks whenever the “Ivy League Crimelord” gang gets together at Michael’s for a sit-down. Here’s the first:

Last night, Art Southampton held its opening night VIP Preview in the Hamptons benefiting the Parrish Art Museum and Southampton Hospital. The evening was sponsored by GRAFF Diamonds, Ruinart Champagne and Maserati, and was the first opportunity for collectors to view and acquire pieces of contemporary and modern art from the 20th and 21st centuries prior to the Fair opening to the public.

Following the overwhelming success of its second edition Art Southampton, the premier international contemporary and modern art fair in the Hamptons, will run through Monday, July 28th.

Steven Bernstein, Nick Korniloff, GRAFF models, Pamela Cohen, Mayor Mark Epley, Brenda Simmons, and Richard Yastrtrzemski.

Among the opening night attendees were Lady Liliana Cavendish, Wilbur and Hilary Geary Ross, Jean Shafiroff, Lucia Hwang Gordon, Denise Wohl, Daniel and Katherine Boulud, Rod and Judy Gilbert, Sarah Herbert Galloway, Robert Chaloner, Cassandra Seidenfeld, Mayor of Southampton Mark Epley, Alexandra Fairweather, and Robert Farber.

This year's number of participants includes 80 galleries. Graff Diamonds, Maserati North America, Ruinart Champagne, Saunders & Associates Saunders & Associates, and Luxe Interiors + Design will join Art Southampton are the Luxury Sponsors.

Opening night scene in the VIP Lounge.

Among the artists showing include talents of the 20th & 21st Centuries: Warhol, Picasso, Freud, Bourgeois, Avery, Kline, Wesselman, Lichtenstein, Sherman, Basquiat, Bochner, Chamberlain, Frankenthaler, Motherwell, , Stella, Botero, Soto, Baechler, Calder, Moore, Avedon, Close, Dali, Fischl, Nevelson, Miro, Johns, Indiana, Dubuffet, Wyeth, Koons, Giacometti, Francis, Mapplethorpe, Lewitt, Bleckner, Mazzucco, Clergue, Man Ray, De Kooning, Banksy, Katz, Ernst, Ruscha, Leger, Matisse,Koons, Nicholson, Baldessari, Lam, Muniz, Chagall and more.

Art Southampton is on the grounds of the Southampton Elks Lodge, located at 605 County Road 39 in Southampton. Click here to apply for VIP access.

Alexandra Fairweather.

Gary Lawrance.

Nick Korniloff, Kathy Boulud, Daniel Boulud, and Pamela Cohen.

Eric Firestone (Eric Firestone Gallery).

Steven Bernstein (Pres. Southampton Hospital) and Nancy Stone.

Mary Ann and Mark Epley.

Karl Emil Willers and Amy Kane.

Barry Meisel with Judy and Rod Gilbert.

Kate Stevens and Phil Crook of Hackelbury Fine Art.

Kevin Berlin and friends.

Wilbur Ross and Hilary Geary Ross.

Wilbur having fun with art.

Kimberly Goff and Tripoli Patterson.

Robert Farber and friend.

Richard Yastrzemski, Robert Chaloner, and Mark Epley.

Robin Segal and Ariel Gale.

Jean Shafiroff, Robert Osterrieth, and Liliana Cavendish.

Lucia Hwong Gordon and Denise Wohl.

Bernice Steinbaum (Pan American Art Projects).

Photographs by Lisa Tamburini (Art Southampton).

Contact DPC here.

Late Sunday morning relaxing. 11:30 AM. Photo: JH.

Monday, July 28, 2014. A very warm, sunny weekend in New York with the humidity levels adding more to the picture than in the previous week. Nevertheless, a beautiful day in New York.

Summer birthdays. Mine was this past Saturday. I’m not sentimental about birthdays although I remember when I was six or seven asking my mother if I could have a birthday party. I don’t know where I got the idea; birthday parties were not numerous in the neighborhood or the family.

Mother acquiesced and somehow members of the family with cousins gathered for the meal (must have been a lunch) and then the tour de force – the cake with candles, wishes and PRESENTS! Somewhere in a photo album – most likely in one of my eldest sister’s photo albums, I’ve seen a picture of little David deadly serious surveying the table. I know it was the presents, and the ice cream and cake that I was checking. Back in those days, cake and ice cream were like Beluga and Cristal to the boy grown up. Now I’m not so sure about the Beluga (although I probably couldn’t resist).

The birthday gang around the table, starting left: Steve Harrison, Marianne Harrison, Jeff Hirsch, Pax Quigley, DPC, Danielle Hirsch, Philip Carlson, Barbara Preminger. We began at 8 and here we are about to close the place after 11.

After that I gave a birthday party for myself when I was thirty-five, and invited about thirty friends. I still don’t know what I was thinking because I’m not a “party” person (ironically, considering my business), but I staged it – also on a weekend – on the terrace of my house in Connecticut. Friends came up from the City and even from Boston. It was 1976 (the year JH was born) and I recall after the meal – the cake and ice cream (and there must have been champagne) – we talked about the Bicentennial of the United States of America, which was being celebrated all over the nation.

The scene of Bday 35 of the terrace at the house in North Stamford (notice the TV aerial) in early Spring of that year where the buds had just begun to appear. It must have been a very warm Saturday. The photo was taken by another long time friend Beth Rudin (DeWoody).

That was the interesting part. I was moderator and asked various guests to talk about what America meant to them. We were the generation that had been through the Liberation movements, the War in Viet Nam, and Richard Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency two years before on August 9, 1974. (ed. note: Carol Joynt, NYSD’s Washington Social Diary correspondent who at that time was one of Walter Cronkite’s three personal writers for the CBS Evening News, recalls that moment in our history on today’s NYSD).

After experiencing all of the aforementioned enormous matters in our nation’s history, it was interesting that my guests – mainly my contemporaries – expressed hopeful and patriotic opinions of our nation and the state we were in. It wasn’t naivete on our parts but more the sense that Change had really occurred in so many ways. The summer had become a respite from its challenges: Gerald Ford, a mild-mannered middle-American from Michigan had become our President and – still unbeknownst to us – a man from Georgia, its former governor named Jimmy Carter would become our President.


	Another longtime friend, illustrator Bob Schulenberg, whom I met through Philip Carlson about the same time, took this photo when I was 25 (you can find his pages on the NYSD archives). This was a "theatrical" shot made to look like I was some very cool guy which I was not at that tender age (or anytime after), having a smoke standing under some Park Avenue apartment building canopy. I'm amazed at how thin I am.

This past Saturday night I invited only old friends to join me, along with JH and his wife Danielle. Philip Carlson and I met in the mid-60s when I was briefly pursuing an acting career in New York and we were in an off-Off-Broadway show together. We became good friends instantly. A year later I realized this “career” was not a good idea – I sorely lacked the dedication that is required.

Philip, however, had landed the lead in an off-Broadway show called “Until the Monkey Comes,” which was a hit. Universal signed him to a contract and he and his new wife moved to Hollywood. The year after that he introduced me and my then-wife Sheila to Barbara Preminger and her then husband Erik Preminger and another friendship sprang for us, which has lasted ever since.

That same year another friend introduced me and my wife to Marianne and Steve Harrison who coincidentally lived around the corner from us on East 89th Street. We too became immediate friends and have remained very close ever since. A decade later, I was then in Los Angeles at the very beginning of a new career as a writer when in 1980, another friend who worked with Pax Quigley at Playboy introduced us. The meeting was a phone call. She called me one midafternoon in summer and we talked for about an hour and became instant friends. These friendships have remained strong ever since – despite all the changes and moves in our individual lives. So everyone at table Saturday night, has known each other for as long also.

JH and I met when he came to work as my assistant when I was editor-in-chief for Judy Price, founder and publisher of Avenue Magazine, in 1998. Jeff was a year out of college and interested in working in magazines. He was an excellent, orderly and good natured assistant who took every assignment and responsibility seriously, often more seriously than I did. Two years later, we both resigned from Avenue on August 15th to start the NYSD, an idea I’d been harboring for years (it was the dotcom boom). He and I have never worked in the same space together and almost seventeen years later we have now a longtime working friendship.

I'd just blown out the candle, having my wish. Danielle Hirsch looks on.

So there was a strong element of family around the table at Swifty’s this past Saturday night. There were no silences about. The natural familiarity we share with each other is a great gift and comfort to all of us. It was rife with conversation (no reserved personalities present) with our table partners, and across the table.

It was a lovely warm night in Manhattan. Swifty’s Robert Caravaggi had seated us at a large round table by the open four-panel window doors that let onto Lexington Avenue. The city was quiet and there was no memorable traffic racket on the avenue, with only a few strollers and dog-walking neighbors passing by. The Swifty’s summer menu hit the spot (among the favorites was a “Cod Taco” and the Cold Poached Salmon), along with the Proseco and Rose wine. It was a great night to “celebrate” a birthday and share the love of friendship which for me is the best present of all. Always.

Which, speaking of birthdays, the Saturday before JH and Danielle were celebrating another birthday, that of JH’s mother Rochelle Hirsch.

The site of JH's mother's birthday din: Le Penguin on Lewis Street in Greenwich, just off Greenwich Avenue.

The namesake at the entrance.

David (JH's pa) and Rochelle Hirsch pre-dinner.

And during dessert, which came with a "Happy Birthday" number (Stevie Wonder's version) performed by the entire waitstaff.

John W. Mazzola, the man who led Lincoln Center for The Performing Arts for twenty years, passed away on Thursday, July 24th here in New York City. He was 86. A lawyer with the firm of Millbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, John joined Lincoln Center in 1962. He became its chief executive officer in 1968. In his long tenure he skillfully steered the expansion of Lincoln Center and its programs, providing access to high quality performing arts to a city depressed by financial hardship.

John Mazzola photographed By Jill Krementz at the Laura Pels Theater on March 24, 2010 on opening night of "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams.

Mr. Mazzola, was the former President and Chief Executive of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Ms. Krementz first met the Mazzola family in 1975 when she photographed his daughter Amy who appeared in her book, A Very Young Dancer. Amy was performing in The Nutcracker as a Polichinelle (who comes out from under Mother Ginger's 40-pound skirt). She also danced, in a pink tutu, in Coppélia ("The Waltz of the Golden Hours").

Amy Mazzola Flynn was tragically hit and killed by an automobile while out for a walk after Thanksgiving dinner with her family on November 24, 2011. She was 48, married and the mother of two young children — James and Christina.

He also increased accessibility to the arts through public and televised concerts. Above all, his family was his overriding theme and connection. As noted in an article written by George Sturm for the Music Associates of America, “[i]t is as if the communion with his wife Sylvia and daughters Alison and Amy…[was] constantly recharging his battery, making it possible for him to make vital, productive and imaginative connections among the countless details of his daily labors.” He was decorated Cavaliere Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana and Officer Ordre des Arts et des Lettres France. He was a member of The Misquamicut Club (RI).

He helped develop the Mostly Mozart Festival, the ''Live From Lincoln Center'' series, the acoustic renovation of Avery Fisher Hall and the Concerned Citizens for the Arts program. He also was a notably successful fund-raiser and lobbyist.

John was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey and was a graduate of Tufts University (1949) and the Fordham Law School (1952). Mr. Mazzola is survived by his wife Sylvia, a former theatrical producer, daughter Alison Mazzola, sister Jane Sharkey, son-in- law Terence “Tad” Flynn, and beloved grandchildren James Davis Flynn and Christina Pleasant Flynn. He was predeceased by his daughter Amy Mazzola Flynn. He will be remembered for his wry wit, storytelling, his love of cooking and entertaining. He loved sailing and the East Beach.

Visitation will be held today, Monday, July 28 from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm at Frank E. Campbell at 1076 Madison Avenue. A Funeral Service will be held on Tuesday, July 29 at 10:30 am at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street, where he served as an usher for many years.

Contact DPC here.

Young love. 4:00 PM. Photo: JH.

July 30, 2014. A perfect summer day, yesterday in New York, bright and sunny with temperatures in the mid- to low-70s, and a soft but strong breeze to move us along.

The social scene in New York is practically non-existent as far as NYSD’s coverage of interest. It’s been moved west to “The Hamptons” -- Southampton, East Hampton, and everything in between and north (Sag Harbor).

For me there’s more time for reading, and for my birthday a friend of mine gave me a book with the message, “It all happened before ...” obviously referring to the state of our world today. The message aroused my curiosity so that I opened just to look, and I’ve been swimming through it with great pleasure – and more than few laughs -- for the past two days.

Juliet Nicolson, author of The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm.

It is called “The Perfect Summer; England 1911 Just Before the Storm” by Juliet Nicolson. Ms. Nicolson is the daughter of the late Nigel Nicolson, the British writer/publisher and politician who died ten years ago at age 87.

Ms. Nicolson is also the granddaughter of two now legendary characters who came of age in the era of the Edwardians – Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Their son Nigel (there was another son Ben) published a famous book about forty years ago about his parents’ marriage called “Portrait of a Marriage.”

In it we learn that both man and wife – who individually led very productive professional lives as writers (and he also a diplomat) – were gay. They also had to varying degrees, active sex lives with their gay partners. Vita – a most fascinating character (captured beautifully in a biography by Victoria Glendenning, published in the late 1960s, called “Vita”) – was a novelist, an essayist and a horticulturalist.

Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, grandparents of the author.

I tell you this because Juliet Nicolson’s book is about the generation of her grandparents and great-grandparents when England was the Empire in the world ruling over 400 million people, and its upperclass – the nobles, the aristocracy – were the one percenters where 1% of the population owned 60% of the country and the average working man’s take-home was about 2 pounds a week (the pound was worth considerably more than it is today, but the average salary for those working was very dear).

The book is set in the summer months of that year when indeed, the weather was especially agreeable – bright and sunny and very warm but often, like our summer in New York this year, not too warm. The subject is the lives of, those who owned and wielded the political power and had for more than a century, and in some cases, centuries.

Lady Churchill, mother of Winston.

George Cornwallis-West became stepfather to Winston Churchill after his father, Lord Randolph died. Cornwallis-West was twenty years younger than Jenny, Lady Churchill, mother of Winston.

The First World War, the Great War which was to decimate these classes of their young men was already, in retrospect, on the horizon. But unbeknownst to all but the shrewdest and most perspicacious in the country’s leadership. Young Winston Churchill had a notion of it – although its devastating effect on his class had to be something even he couldn’t have imagined.

King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, who had died at age 69 the year before (1910) after only eight years on the throne, had long before believed that Germany and his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II were going to be the cause. As a king, he had skillfully done whatever he could both personally and through diplomatic channels to keep that powder keg of a crazy nephew from blowing.

A young Winston Churchill.

Clementine and Winston Churchill.

But as we see in hindsight, it was the end of an era, of a time, of the Victorian Age if you will, of which the Edwardians were the break-out generation. What makes Juliet Nicolson’s social history so fascinating is the break-out generation’s way of breaking out.

The upper class, the ruling class was so rich that many if not all the men didn’t even work. Nor did they lift a finger to do much else since a good 30% of the population worked for them in some form or other of domestic services. The rich owned the land, often had several houses (and castles) covering tens of thousands of income producing acres throughout the country. Much of their lives, when not in London, were shared on these fantastic estates literally living it up as much as possible trying their damnedest to avoid the boredom that comes with nothing but nothing to do but eat, sleep and breathe.


	Edward VII and Alexandra.

	King George and Queen Mary who came to the throne after the death of Edward VII were not "Edwardian" in the sense of behaving and living like so many of their contemporaries. Serious, even dour, they disapproved of much of what went on with the late King's social circles.

Nicolson quotes a wife of a Liberal minister in 1911 about the upper class as “an aggregation of clever, agreeable, often loveable people trying, with desperate seriousness, to make something of a life spared the effort of wage earning.”

And from there the author takes us on a tour of those lives in the city, in the country, at the weekend house parties (which ran from Saturday to Monday) living in a luxury that is beginning to change radically, not unlike the radical changes brought about by the development of computer and digital technology to our world today.

It was the beginning of the automotive age. It was the beginning of what we now take for granted as adequate plumbing, of speed in transportation and communication. It was also the end of the Victorian era, enhanced by the late king for whom the new era was named. The Edwardians were “fast” compared to their forebears. They were the first Moderns and had nothing but time which meant for most of them generally, eating, drinking, sleeping and sex. The servants took care of the rest.

We know now that disaster would soon be upon them, but at the moment their only focus was on pleasure, pleasure and more pleasure. And Nicolson supplies us with all the details of the making, getting and carrying out that pleasure while pretending to live within the boundaries of etiquette and morality. That left a lot of room for “scandals” and hilarity.

A great deal of the social life was around the weekends in the country. With the age of Edward VII, who was Prince of Wales for the first sixty-one years of his life, pleasure was his main pursuit. He had been disallowed by his mother Queen Victoria of knowing much if anything about the work of the monarchy. She wanted it that way, having never believed that he’d make a good king, keeping everything from him right up until the very end of her sixty-four year reign. So instead the Prince, who was a very intelligent man, played and enjoyed himself, living large with wine, women and song, and cards, and travel and breakfasting, lunching and dining.

Everything was according to custom and rules, and everyone followed them. They were, on the face of it, a randy bunch. Marriages were often arranged to enhance families’ longevity and fortune. Women were required to produce heirs to carry on. And men were there to preside over it all.

Nicolson’s book is full of amusing anecdotes about the behavior of this leisure class at the end of not only greatness but its “possessions” and family fortunes, completely unaware of what lay in store. Instead, they were dealing with the vagaries of living it up and obsessing over the most irrelevant.


The eighth Earl of Sandwich.

Dame Nellie Melba.

Lord Charles Beresford.

“….The eighth Earl of Sandwich,” Nicolson writes, “had enough time on his hands to become inordinately distressed by his female guests’ habit of lunching with their hats on. At one of his lunch parties the ladies had scarcely begun to enjoy their sole meuniere when the opera star Dame Nellie Melba, the guest of honour that day, was taken aback to see the butler, sporting a smart bowler over his black suit, approach Lord Sandwich carrying a tweed cap on his silver tray. In vengeful silence Lord Sandwich lifted the cap to his head and pulled it down over his eyebrows, glowering fiercely round the room ...”

“Saturdays-to-Mondays,” the author explains, “were a heaven sent opportunity for sex ...." The writer Arnold Bennett advised that “the most correct honeymoon is an orgy of lust, and if it isn’t it ought to be.”

And ... "In a world of marriages of convenience, one in which divorce was both expensive and ruinous to the reputation, an illicit couple was challenged to find somewhere private to take their clothes off .... At weekend houseparties, at night, the names written on cards clotted into brass holders on bedroom doors were as helpful to lovers as to the maids bringing early morning tea. Assignations confirmed by the squeeze of a hand beneath the bridge table, a whispered exchange over the candle that lit the way up the stairs, a note left (in collusion with the maids) beside the bottled water on the bedside table, or placing of a code-laden flower outside a bedroom door ensured that extra-marital sex went on with ease. Confusions occasionally occurred. Lord Charles Beresford became particularly vigilant after leaping with an exultant “Cock-a-doodle-do!” onto a darkened bed, believing it to contain his lover, only to be vigorously batted away by the much startled Bishop of Chester. At six in the morning a hand-bell rung on each of the bedroom floors gave guests time to return to their own beds before the early morning tea trays arrived."

The author present the rigors of order that accompanied this pleasured existence. For example, the women changed outfits several times a day. A weekend visit often required trunks of clothes to meet the requirements of times of the day.

“A good hour,” Nicolson writes, “was required” for the ladies “for the evening toilette since the fashionable brilliant white skin was achieved with the help of liquid creams and white rice powder, while to indicate sensitivity the naturally bluish-violet veins at neck, temple and cleavage were emphasized with a blue crayon. Elderflowers berries or a cork singed in the flame of a candle darkened eyebrows and eyelashes .... The Daily Sketch printed a series of photographs from an American magazine under the heading ‘Decoys fore the Affections: Beauty’s Artful Aids .... devices to enhance the appearance. Such as: a tightly-wrapped leather chin brace that resembled a dislodged muzzle or a miniature feeding trough hat had slipped to far below the mouth – all to suppress a double chin.

“Wavy locks were created nightly with curling tongs, straight hair being thought to indicate obstinacy. False braids, or chignons known as “rats” were often added, though they only stayed in place properly on rather grubby, sticky hair. Small Silver rings clamped into the nipples deepened, enhanced and raised the cleavage by providing a sort of ledge on which the evening gown rested precariously. Fresh flowers – a carnation or gardenia for a man, a spray of stephanotis for a woman, provided by the Belvoir (pronounced Beever, the castle of the Duke of Rutland) greenhouses and brought round on a silver tray by a servant -- gave the finishing touch."

Violette Manners, the Duchess of Rutland, had an affair with the very handsome newspaper editor Harry Cust who fathered her daughter. It was reported several years ago that the duchess' husband, the duke, "father" of Diana, fathered a girl with one of his maids. That girl was the mother of Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK.

Henry Manners, 8th Duke of Rutland.

Belvoir Castle in the late 19th century. A corner of the castle is still used as the family home of the Manners family and remains the seat of the Dukes of Rutland.

“And so the finest of Edwardian society made their way downstairs for dinner, the men smelling strongly of Mr. Penhaligon’s Hamman Bouquet, undercut by inescapable body odor and cigar smoke, the ladies wafting down in a cloud of lavender and rose-water that helped disguise the whiff of dirty hair, while the rubbing of the unseen rings against the dress afforded a secret frisson of pleasure." And so the fun began.”

The era had its stars among the young just as we do today. Prominent among them was Lady Diana Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland, a beautiful debutante who also had a talent for getting attention (a precursor to the celebrities of today). The Rutlands were a formidable family on the scene, and Diana had two sisters. The Manners sisters were even wilder (according to the times) than their parents, and the siters were known as The Hothouse (or the HOTBED) because of their exotic, undisciplined behavior.

Considered very daring (and exotic), a photograph of Lady Diana Manners taken by her brother, had an effect that could be compared to the effect Paris Hilton's sex video had on the public: it was expressing the portentous change going on in the society.

Lady Diana Manners, later Lady Diana Cooper.

Nicolson explains: “Diana’s group of friends were called “The Corrupt Coterie” (her mother’s friends were known as “The Souls” (still are recorded in history as The Souls) but they referred to themselves as “The Gang.” The Coterie reveled in drink, blasphemy, gambling, drug-taking, chloroform (“clorers”) sniffing, and decadent behavior of every kind imaginable. They were healthy, beautiful and exceptionally clever, and the young men “carried off prizes and fellowships with as much ease as they could win a steeple-chase.”

The author tells us that Lady Diana’s mother, the duchess of Rutland was generally known within her own circle to have ignored her marriage vows. Nearly nineteen years earlier she had enjoyed an affair with Harry Cust, the extremely handsome and clever editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. Diana, though the Duke of Rutland’s daughter, was in fact the result of her mother’s teatime liaison with the charming Harry Cust.

Harry Cust, the handsome and clever editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

All this and I’ve only given you a taste of the first half of the book and looking forward to the pleasure of the rest which I’ll surely finish in a day or two. The book was originally published in hardcover in 2006. I’m reading the paperback which just came out. My friend Jesse Kornbluth over at Headbutler.com happened to review it this past Monday on his site.

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8:30 PM. Photo: JH.

Thursday, July 31, 2014. Amazing. Another beautiful Summer day in New York with temperatures in the mid-70s, lots of sunshine, no humidity, and a wonderful day to be walking in New York.

I went down to Michael’s for lunch. I was about ten minutes late because of the traffic going across down (and the fact that one of the blocks on East 63rd was closed suddenly)(typical of New York traffic now). I was relieved that my guest had not yet arrived. No problem; I don’t mind waiting for people since so many have waited for me. I talked to Michael, to Steve Millington the restaurant’s GM, to Mickey Ateyeh, the jewelry and accessories executive (Angela Cummings, Tiffany, etc.) and Betsy Perry, the writer, who was lunching with her.


	Mickey Ateyeh and Angela Cummings.

Then I took my seat. It was 1:25. I was beginning to get the feeling maybe she wouldn’t show. This is also not a problem for me. I hadn’t been to Michael’s in several days and because it’s one of the ways I get out of the house on weekdays, I was glad to be there, to see everybody and to view the room.

At 1:30, I decided to order just in case. I tried calling my lunch date and couldn’t reach her. No problem. Hoping everything was all right on her end. 1:40, I knew I was going solo. Steve brought me a couple magazines to look at: The Hollywood Reporter and Hamptons. The latter, mainly real estate ads for large houses selling for what used to be considered a great personal fortune and is now considered a shrug. The former (HR) full of items about entertainment executives. Zzzzzz. You had to be there.

I ordered two starters: Heirloom Tomatoes with Burrata and Arugula, a little balsamic vinegar, and Avocado. The avocado’s a side -- I got the idea from Mickey Ateyeh and I love avocado -- it’s my homage to LA where I had an avocado tree just outside my kitchen window. And Prosciutto and Melon with Arrug. Along with the Barbara Bush – iced tea and orange juice, and followed by a cappuccino.

One of my starters: Heirloom Tomatoes with Burrata and Arugula.

1:45, a call from my “lunch guest.” She didn’t have it in her book. That’s happened to me. It’s one of those things I can get slightly freaked out about (standing someone up). In this case, as much as I would have like to have seen my guest, I was perfectly happy taking in the Michael’s scene, eating my light lunch and contemplating the scene.


	Diana Gabaldon and Diane Clehane.

There were agents and publishing people, bankers and PR. Authors – Diane Clehane of mediabistro.com was lunching with Diana Gabaldon, the best selling novelist. Joni Evans (literary agent) was lunching with Suzanne Gluck (literary agent) and Tracy Fisher. Bonnie Fuller and Gerry Byrne were in the bay at Table 1 with Wednesday guests; Roger Friedman, Broadway and Hollywood columnist, blogger, journalist; Alice Mayhew, editor at Simon & Schuster; Andrew Stein; Jerry Inzerillo of Forbes Travel; Dennis Basso at Table 2, next door to me; Harry Benson was lunching with another Forbes editor, Joseph DeAcetis; PR guru Lisa Linden with Christopher Heywood of NYC & Company; Neil Lasher of EMI; Peggy Siegal; Thomas Moore; Andy Sandow of Sandow Media; Michael Appelbaum; Nancy Murray of Louis Vuitton; Steven Stolman with Tom Shea; Vogue’s Susan Plagemann; Kim Bryant of WABC; Patricia Malone; Noble Smith; Roxan Cason; Karen Tarteof Sparks Global Brand Agency; Karen Katzman of Badgely Mischka; David Stern, former head of the NBA; Antonio Weiss; Dini von Mueffling, and dozens more just like ‘em.

It was a very pleasant day, like the weather outside, bright, sunny and quietly cooler.

After lunch I walked up to Bergdorf’s to buy a moisturizer that I’ve been using since I went to a lunch promoting it about ten years ago – ReVive. I’d been invited to the lunch which was at the Tony Ingrao Gallery. I think I was the only man at table. It was clearly for cosmetic editors and their ilk which I’m definitely not. The guy who created this cream, a doctor from Louisville (I think – I could be off on that), explained that it had a certain ingredient that repaired the cells of aging. Okay. I’d never thought about that kind of thing although I have thought more than several times about the business of growing old and/or getting old.

View of Fifth Avenue looking north from East 58th Street at the Apple Cube with the Sherry Netherland directly north of it. 3:15 p.m.

On leaving that day at the Ingrao Gallery, everyone got a goody bag with a jar of the stuff. I’ve never been much of a moisturizer or cosmetically inclined person, but I was fascinated by the “cell repair” ingredient. Not that I’d noticed any cells needing repair. But what really appealed was, the directions said to use very little, just a dot. So I did. I don’t know if it’s made a difference but every morning after I shave, I give the face a little daub of the ReVive and that’s become part of routine ever since. I don’t know if it’s made a difference but somehow I’ve come to the conclusion that it has. Am I kidding myself? Quite possibly. But maybe not.

So I go over to Bergdorf’s where they sell it in the fragrance and cosmetic department on the subterranean floor. I’m not a shopper and I rarely buy anything but I like going into Bergdorf’s because it’s so classy and looks good, and smells good and the staff look like the staff you’d see in the old time department stores – people who know and often even like their merchandise, sophisticated to the needs and imagination of their customers. There’s style everywhere, and taste. And it’s not stupid or tacky. Now you know what I think. The whole cosmetics department is a trip to look at. Mainly women standing, talk with women who are clearly the experts. Women sitting on high chairs getting a touch of some mascara or makeup. There’s a feel in the entire space of Work-in-Progress. It’s kind of an “up” for a change. The ladies at the ReVive booth are friendly and they even gave me a little plastic bag with some samples in them for neck and eyes, etc. I give them to my doormen for their wives. Everybody’s happy.

Leaving Bergdorf’s, I crossed the avenue over to the Apple Cube and the building’s plaza and took this pictures looking up and down the avenue. The plaza is now a traditional gathering place for tourists, shoppers taking a break, kids taking in the scene; hawkers selling bike rides. The Apple Cube brought that; it never was before in all the years it was the (first) GM Building and then the Trump Building. Kind of like a village square in days of old where neighbors congregated. Far from neighborly in that way, it’s still nice and on a bright sunny day like yesterday, getting a little New York fix. At 60th Street, I crossed over to Madison Avenue for a walk up Madison to look at the windows, thinking of you readers who’d like to see what’s fresh and what’s hot. That’ll be for another day, soon.

View of Fifth Avenue looking south from East 59th Street, with the Apple Cube on the left, Bergdorf's on the right, and the Empire State in the distance.

Meanwhile many friends are out of town enjoying their summers by the beach or abroad. I got this photo two days ago from Duane Hampton who took it from her corner window in the Hotel Regina/Europa in Venezia. She added that she was “now at sea near the heel of Italian boot.” Which I took to mean she’s on someone’s boat, or more precisely, yacht.

If I were an envying one, I’d be drooling now because I can’t think of a greater, more heavenly luxury than to be in the sunny Mediterranean (or Adriatic) while across the water we are surrounded by the ancient hills and shorelines, all reassuring us that Mother Nature knows more about heaven than any of us. But those are rare moments, if at all, in one’s life. In Duane’s life right now. Good.

And ... if you’re in town, and if you’re an aficionado of the Dance, Jacob Jonas The Company is premiering its first full-length work, “In a Room On Broad St" at the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater at 405 West 55th Street. Showtimes are August 5th through 7th (Tuesday at 8 p.m., Wednesday at 10 p.m., and Thursday at 5:30 p.m.).

Jacob Jonas The Company is a Los Angeles based creative company that specializes in dance, production, and arts education. To learn more visit www.jacobjonas.com

Contact DPC here.

Beauty and life

"Real Feel"

Hamptons Rewind

Captured

Hot, yesterday in New York

La Fete Nationale

Summertime and vacationtime

Left out in the rain

What’d you say??

Great Departures

American Landscapes

New York scenes

Interesting Inferences

Summer birthdays

The Perfect Summer

Rare moments