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 A favorite month for us autumnophiles
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| The High Line looking north from the 18th Street entrance. 3:30 PM. Photo: JH. |
November 10, 2009. Fair weather, autumn in New York. No mufflers or overcoats yet. The girls wear their minis over their black leggings and super stilettos.
November is a favorite month for us autumnophiles. Although, standing on my terrace where the impatiens are still hardy and healthy (although relatively bloomless), I’m reminded that as a boy growing up in New England, it was cold by now – see-your-breath cold – and flurries were already beginning to float in.
Last night. Two things. Book Parties and Harry Evans. You know that we cover a lot of book parties, often two or three a week. There can often be very interesting people – besides the latest Likely Suspects – at book parties. Besides, I have a thing about selling books. Not for any profit; it’s more of a fixation. Any book. I’m of the mind that the more we can sell books, the more likely we’ll stay afloat as a society. Sorry, that’s the way I feel.
New York book parties take all kinds of forms, from little soirees in tiny corner bookstores, such as Gloria Vanderbilt doing a reading of her sexual hitherings at the Corner Bookstore on 93rd and Madison, to the big blow-outs like the one at the Plaza on Saturday night for Angella Nazarian and 200 or more well dressed and frequenty bejeweled friends and neighbors. But they are all serious business on many levels. |
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| Sir Harry Evans being interviewed by MSNBC's Mike Barnicle. |
Sir Harry signing books. |
Last night was another. This one for Sir Harold Evans, known around these parts as Harry by the multitudes of media minions and moguls and their entourages (drinks on the house) who follow Evans’ glamorous existence. I say glamorous because there are a lot of us who view being a great newspaper editor, a trenchant journalist-interviewer, an interesting historian and even husband of Tina Brown, as being glamorous, New York style.
For this particular book launch, luck for the NYSD was the presence of our distinguished Associate Editor and photojournalist Jill Krementz covering the evening from her front row seat at the interview.
The Evans-Browns give a lot of book parties too, in their garden maisonette on 57th Street just off Sutton. They often bid dozens, scores, sometimes hundreds to come for drinks and canapés to meet and hear a publishing author. It’s not quite a salon, but it’s something. You may remember a party I attended last summer for Howard Dean who’d just published a book. |
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| The young editor-to-be in his graduation gown. |
Harry and Tina on a perfect summer day. |
Like the general public, I’ve known of Harry Evans (as a reader) only as long as I’ve known of Tina Brown – which at this point is about twenty-five years. They arrived here in the early 80s when she was hired as the third or fourth editor-in-chief of the fairly newly revived Vanity Fair. We all know what happened there.
We soon learned that her husband was not Mr. Tina Brown but in fact a highly regarded former editor of the Times of London, and Sunday Times, who had been fired by that old time press lord/entertainment mogul Rupert Murdoch who’d recently acquired the Times. Here in New York Evans became the editor of the newly created Conde Nast Traveler. Then he became the head of Random House. Between the two, the Brown-Evans easily became one of the “power couples” of New York. |
| The Editor with his paper hot off the press. |
I first saw him in action in the mid-90s when he conducted breakfast forums in then the subterranean restaurant at Barney’s. He’d have a panel of guests, often publishing authors, but also journalists, celebrities, political figures, etc., and they’d have a discussion on a platform (like a boxing ring without the ropes) in the middle of the room.
They started at 8. Full breakfast (very good) at tables for a hundred or more guests and the discussion led by Harry Evans.
He was well dressed but a little rumpled, like he’d already been up for hours working on something in the office. Or just rolled out of bed, take your pick. He has a slight figure, bantam-like in movement with a bit of leaning in to his posture as if he’s about to go into a race. But the personality that sidles up is big and authentic. The personality conducting an interview is penetrating but with furrowed brow and off-handed wit. You can’t decide which side he’s on because he seems to be on both. The journalist like very few. And in charge, despite his almost abashed demeanor.
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| The knighthood of Harry Evans at Buckingham Palace with Lady Evans and family. |
It must be the curiosity, probably that he’s had since he was a kid back in Manchester where his pa worked on the railroad, his ma worked in a mill and the idea of higher education had its natural limitations. Whatever transpired in that childhood which was definitively British working class that curiosity was somehow nurtured and inspired. By late adolescence the boy was on his way to what would be a great career.
In the years here in New York, he’s held several editorial positions on an advisory basis. He’s also written books, particularly (for me) an American history that has an American’s familiarity with the country and culture and a foreigner’s insight and detachment. By this time, although their Englishness is still present, the Brown-Evans have been New Yorkers for twenty-five years.
This is a long road to a book party. I realize I could write about Harry Evans at some length because, like his wife he has had a unique media career in America, and has wielded a lot of influence in a most disarming way: you like it. |
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Photo: DPC. |
Sitting on a windowsill, listening to the Harry Evans interview, I turned around and was astonished to be looking right at, up close, the top of the Paramount Building with its clock and lighted globe, and brilliantly lit, something you can only know from being at eye level and across the street.
It was opened for business 83 years ago, built for Paramount Pictures before the Talkies, and housing their flagship Paramount Theater. First run movies opened there before they hit the nabes. They ran on schedules alternating with big bands, comedy acts and concerts where a young, tousle haired Frank Sinatra first wowed his bobbysoxers, and where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first made ‘em laugh.
It was where they held the world premiere of Elvis Presley’s first film “Love Me Tender.” A very big deal at the time. “Elvis Acts.”
Broadway in first sixty years of the century was the land of ballyhoo, theatre and film entertainment. The major film companies had New York offices either on Broadway or very nearby. Loew’s/MGM had their first run house in their own office building on 45th. Two blocks up was the Palace where all the greats from vaudeville on appeared.
These dozen or so blocks were also the center of the music business – composers, lyricists, record companies, producers, agents. And of course it was the American theatre, Broadway. There were dozens of theaters housing scores of dramas, comedies, musicals and revues, filling the side streets accompanied by neighboring nightclubs, jazz joints, restaurants – a uniquely glitzy nocturne. (All that and the New York Times building which remains nearby.)
Today after the decades of the shouting and the razzmatazz have faded, replaced by the digital, the Paramount Building remains a majestic solo, a major office tower, but also a monument to glorious Americana. So it was kind of disarming to turn away from the room to look out and see This! A kind of thrill to finally see the tower up close, to see how beautiful it looked, and how sweetly it recounts its age and era. |
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Last night’s party was held at Thomson-Reuters’ building on Times Square and 43rd Street. Going there was a New York trip at 6:45 on a weeknight. Those blocks just below 45th and Broadway have been reconfigured so that much of the roadway is closed off to motor vehicles and is reserved for bicycles and for pedestrians who can sit at tables and chat and watch the world go by. They were doing this last night in fair weather November. However, the idea is either ludicrous or far-seeing.
The party was held in what looked like a conference room on the 30th floor. On arrival there was a healthy buffet and an ample bar set out with bartenders. By the time we arrived Harry Evans was being interviewed at the end of the room on a platform, by MSNBC's Mike Barnicle. Frankly it was hard for me to hear much of the conversation which was not nearly as interesting as if he had been conducting it. This was unfortunate because what I did learn for the first time was the depth of his background as a newspaper editor. |
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“If there isn’t any argument, there’s not much of a newspaper.” – Sir Harold Evans, somewhere along the line.
Paper Chase is all about that career, Horatio Alger-like, and especially for a Brit, both brilliant and innovative. Hearing this I was thinking about those breakfast panels he used to conduct fifteen years ago at Barney’s. Asking the questions his reporters asked when they went for their stories. He was putting together tomorrow’s edition. (He said last night everyone was imbued with the same commitment to the paper. “It was ‘our’ paper not ‘my’ paper.” It’s as natural as having printer’s ink on your hands. |
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The other thing that intrigued: I realized that Harry Evans is 81. I never thought much about his age before. He’s just always been there, unchanging. What is it with these New York octogenarians? Barbara Carroll at the Algonquin Sunday is 84! That dowager belle of Broadway, Liz Smith is 86. And they’re so young.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean cosmetic surgery, etc., I mean their heads are young and vital. Except one thing: they know more. They are the kind of people who will always be learning and will always know more. It’s in the passion, the same passion as the poet, or the inventor or the artist; a blessing, and it’s everything.
From the Paper Chase - Writing about his days at the Times: “I still get a high from the fumes of those Saturdays when a vague idea from the beginning of the week – or an investigation started months back – crystallised into a thriller package of story, headline, photograph and graphs; and then the glorious moment when we got our hands on the first copies of the newspaper, expunging all the raw urgent untidiness of the passion and fine-tuning in the making of it. How authoritative everything looked! How delicious the smell of the still warm newsprint! How envious the rivals would be!" |
| Nick Pileggi. |
Nora Ephron whose most recent film is Julie and Julia. |
Simon Schama, internationally acclaimed art scholar and historian. |
Brad Gooch, who is author of a great biography of Flannery O'Connor. |
| Helen Morris Scorsese and Harry Evans. Ms. Morris was a former editor and colleague of Harry's at Random House. |
Former New York City Police Commissioner, William Bratton. |
| Aaron Mankin. |
Film Director Martin Scorsese. |
Harry Evans' assistants Jolene Lescio and Cindy Quillinan. |
| L. to r.: Tina Brown and Jolie Hunt, Global Head of Public Relations for Thomson Reuters. Tina Brown and Thomson Reuters hosted the party; Books on sale; Eric Alterman. |
| Michael Thomas. |
Michael buys a book. |
| Warren and Olivia Hoge. Mr. Hoge is Vice President and Director of External Relations for IPI (International Peace Institute.) |
James Dunn, an actor, and Jessica Barry, a musician who plays the flute. Ms. Barry's father, John Barry worked with Harry on the Sunday Times Insight team. |
| MSNBC's "Morning Joe" team: Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. |
Louis Burgdorf, talent producer for "Morning Joe." |
Robert Zimmerman and Katherine O'Hearn, Executive Producer Amanpour, CNN International. |
| Sir Harry Evans talking with Mika Brzezinski. |
Joe Scarborough and Sir Harry Evans. |
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| Photographs by Jill Krementz. |
Comments? Contact DPC here. |
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