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| More signs of spring. Photo: JH. |
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| Friday, April 4, 2014. Beautiful day in New York yesterday. Couldn’t ask for it better. Low 60s, blue cloudless skies, sunshine on our faces. Late afternoon the clouds moved in. By early evening by the river, it was getting that chill that sometimes comes in summer but the heat’s behind it. This chill had the ice instead. But beautiful. At lunch I went over to the Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle. Have you been? It’s a wonderful place for children and anyone with a curious imagination. It has its basis in the original creative consciousness which all children have and most adults lose touch with. JH photographed it shortly after it opened. |
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| Paola Bacchini was hosting a luncheon for about forty women and me. Wednesday times four. There were quite a few women I hadn’t seen in some time including my great old (time-wise) friend Beth DeWoody, who is literally peripatetic. The luncheon was in honor of Paola Fendi and Barbara Tober. Fe Fendi was also present. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, the Fendis are both lovely (Italian) ladies. I take it they get on very well. Mother started the business; that gentle almost a wisp of a charming little lady created an international brand has now extended for three generations. Barbara Tober. She was editor-in-chief of that big bridal magazine at Conde Nast, that cash-register magazine, Brides. I think that’s the title. I’ve never read a bridal magazine but it’s like an addiction obsession for a lot of people at a certain age, and no doubt with the New Age marriages, there will be more. Cash registers. |
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| Barbara did that for at least three decades. She and her husband Donald are the going-ist couple on the social circuit. And they’re not exactly adolescents (if you catch my drift). Donald comes home from work and plays the piano every night. Or maybe it’s every morning. He’s been doing this all this life! I play the piano too, and I know the pleasure of being alone at the keyboard, but he’s daily and zen-d out with it. They ride their horses at their place in the country. They travel. They go out, they go dancing, they go skiing, they read, they entertain, and among other philanthropic interests, they -- and especially Barbara -- have had a major hand in creating this fabulous museum. This in the thing about New York, thinking about the Tobers and the Fendis. There are so many amazing individuals and couples (individuals times two) who are both innovative and industrious and their practicing it makes them even better at it. |
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| Recollections made from later in the day. Many years ago, back in the mid-60s, as a very young man first in New York, I pursued an acting career. I took an acting class at the HB (Herbert Berghof) Studio in the Village taught by Lilly Lodge. The 14-year-old Liza Minnelli started in same the class too. She was a little kid, and very nervous. But as you can see, she used it as they say in acting classes, and became Liza. Afterwards I had a year at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Sandy Meisner. That was not easy and I should have known then. But I continued on, determined despite my self-doubts, starting out making the rounds, going to auditions. I did some summer stock and some off—off-Broadway stuff, but nothing of even remote distinction. Then three years into it, there came a moment when I was in working at the Lake Placid Playhouse when during a scene on-stage, I had this “aha!” moment. I realized that I was working with (some) people who were deeply committed to their craft. And I wasn't. You’ve got to be deeply committed. So soon after, I quit that road. |
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| I still have several good friends from those times, and I also had a part time job that became one of the highlights of my early days in New York. It was working with Jimmy Molinski, the headwaiter/maître d’ at Sardi’s restaurant in the heart of Broadway, on West 44th Street. I worked during the dinner hour, 4:30 to 7:30, Monday through Friday, and the lunch hour on matinee days (11 to 2) Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sardi’s was at that time, and for decades before, a mecca for the Broadway community. It was the go-to restaurant for theatre-goers having dinner before and after theatre. It was a large restaurant and packed every night. Beginning at 5:45 p.m., the dinner filled the house until 7:45. Everyone in the theatre business came through those doors and often daily. The greatest stars in the world, the most famous statesmen, politicians, writers, playwrights, composers, actors, legends, silent screen stars too; and movie moguls, playboys, society matrons, lyricist, producers. They all came in daily. Shows rehearsing often took their lunch breaks at Sardi’s with the star cast sitting around a big table in the first section. In the early days back in the 30s and 40s,, Vincent Sardi Sr. (who was succeeded by his son Vincent Jr.) used to feed the actors out of work and let them run a tab and often forget about it if times were tough.
Opening nights on Broadway were always at Sardi’s. They were dressy. Black tie. A red carpet was rolled out on the sidewalk and the limousines pulled up with the photographers flashing. And when the actors from the opening show made their entrance the entire restaurant rose and applauded. An hour and a half later, the delivery boys from the Times would bring over tomorrow’s edition with the review -- which made or killed the rest of the night. My job was to stand by the door (I wore a maroon captain’s jacket – too big and needed a good cleaning, but this was part time), and greet people as they came in, asking them if they had a reservation. If they did, I immediately passed them on to Jimmy standing at his station a couple feet away from me. If they didn’t have a reservation, I politely told them there were tables available on the second floor. That filled up too. If the person were famous – a movie star, politician, writer, etc. – I never bothered to ask but just directed them to Jimmy. I loved the whole thing. I was in the middle of the Big Town. The show biz gossip was part of the ambience too, the talk about shows coming in, the hits, the flops, And the talent, the famous talent, was awesome. There were clamoring crowds, just like the song says.
In those days people dressed for the theatre, and it was time when the fashion was high, and yet in transition. At that moment, Charlotte Ford was one of the most famous heiresses in the world. As famous at a moment as Jackie Kennedy. A famous debutante, coming out at a highly publicized party in Grosse Pointe. She was always in the society and nightlife columns and the weekly newsmagazines for dating playboys and European aristos and even, as her sister likes to recall, Frank Sinatra. She and Anne, who is a couple of years younger, were frequently photographed for the fashion magazines and newspapers. They were fashion “icons” of the era. Charlotte even eventually became a designer and had a fashion collection with offices at 530 Seventh Avenue. In her early 20s she had famously married the Greek ship owner Stavros Niarchos with whom she had a daughter Elena. The marriage ended in divorce. Anne had married an aristocratic Italian charmer, Gianni Uzielli. All of this information was known by probably millions of Americans. Society girls, especially ones with famous family names were always celebrities in the press in both the 19th and the 20th centuries. Aside from movie stars and royalty, they sold newspapers and magazines. Unlike today, they were not in most cases looking for the publicity. The press was looking for it in them. On this particular Spring early evening in 1966, when the three Fords – Mother and daughters -- came through the doors of Sardi’s where I standing ready to greet. It was a stunning sight, and there was nothing for me to say. In my memory’s eye, their entrance was a sudden pearl-ish haze of white and blonde and diamonds and sleek and bouffant. They were both beautiful girls. A Fitzgeraldian swoon for me (remember I was in my early 20s and F. Scott still filled my romantic sense of life in New York). Although they passed by so quickly that I barely had a chance to look at them. |
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| Jimmy, bowing and grinning with pleasure of serving them – these were the real VIPs – extended his left arm and immediately led them to a table in the center of the first section where all the stars were seated and where the diners all took instant notice. Who needed theatre when you could have this? Once they were seated and had ordered, I’d leave my station by the door just to steal a quick glance at all that dazzle. It is probably my memory’s imagination, but it seemed as if their diamonds, their blonde and their dresses were flashing about the room. Fitzgerald couldn’t have turned away from it. |
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Of course, for those of us who follow these things (and we number in the hundreds of millions, maybe billions now), we learned that as it is for the rest of us, life for the Fords had its ups and had its downs. In Charlotte's life and Anne's life, and their parents’ lives, there were divorces, remarriages, divorces, etc, all recorded (sometimes in headlines) in the press and especially the tabloids.
They’re basically two down-home girls brought up in Michigan, in Grosse Pointe where the sensibility of behavior was modesty, humility, and respect. And they exude that in their relationship with each other and with others. They came to New York to make their lives after they finished school like a lot of us. Charlotte’s life and times have taken her to many exotic places and connected to kinds of individuals in the great big world, and made many friends but she’s the same Charlotte to all then and now. Where many of the passing cavalcade of those decades (the 60s and the 70s) have come and gone in other kinds of haze less pearl-ish, and with time marking our lives, the Ford sisters remain close to each other, to their children, their grandchildren and their brother, his wife and their children. It’s the same sensibility that all Americans of a certain age were brought up with.
I don’t think I ever told Charlotte or Anne about that “sighting” that early evening at Sardi’s way back when. I love the memory. It remains so “literary” in my reverie, juxtaposed to the reality of knowing the person behind the image. The Charlotte I know, and I know rather well, is in fact so far from that “image” that was widely presented that it’s kinda funny, as well as ironic. The Fords grew up just like the rest of us. Yes there were differences determined by their socio-economic state, but in terms of the women, they’re still just folks. There were standards of behavior that were inculcated so strongly that they seemed to be part of the psyche. A half century later that way of life is defined as a fantasy called Family Values. In those days there was no name for it. It just was. You could find in the lives of the people on Elm Street in Westfield, Massachusetts where I grew up, as well as along the gold coast of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, or anywhere else in America, for that matter. |
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| This Diary came about because yesterday was Charlotte’s birthday. Her sister Anne always gives a dinner for her and I had been invited to join them. In the afternoon I was making notes for today’s posting but that story about Sardi’s and seeing them that night kept filling my memory’s eye. I was very amused by my very young self taking it all in, and this much older man recalling the thrill of it. When life is a symphony, as sometimes it is, this was one of them. Charlotte. |
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