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 No Leopard for Ava
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| An abandoned shoe in a sidewalk crack. 5:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
July 12, 2010. A beautiful weekend in New York; hot and sunny but not much humidity. Beautiful storm clouds swarming round throughout the days, with forecasters saying “violent rainstorms” on their way, but nary a drop in my neighborhood by the East River. No complaints; a big improvement from last week’s furnace temps.
I stayed in New York this weekend. On Friday night I hosted a little dinner for Peter Rogers at Le Cirque. Le Cirque is its own summer getaway for us canyon dwellers. Sleek and soigné, the food is so fabulous that everyone was as happy as a perfect summer night.
Someone was asking him how he got into the advertising business and came up with slogans like “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good ...” And “What Becomes a Legend Most.” The conversation led to the people he’d worked with and the world of the people he worked with. Someone asked how he got chose those women who were the Blackglama “Legends” and what were they like.
Was there anyone who wouldn’t do it? “Ava Gardner,” he said. He considered her the most naturally beautiful woman on the screen. He has a lot of agreement with many who knew her. One day he learned that she was in New York and staying at a hotel. He called and asked for her and got her. Why was he calling? She wanted to know. “What it would take” to get her to do a “Legends” photoshoot? “Leopard!” she shouted into the phone, and that was that.
He called around and called around (Leopard had been outlawed). No luck. No Ava.
NYSD readers who are familiar with Peter may remember the NYSD HOUSE we did with him at his Connecticut house. Peter sold that less than a month ago and has bought property in the French Quarter in New Orleans. He’s originally from Hattiesburg, and so this is kind of old stomping ground for the old ground stomper himself. Peter also likes change, truth told. What becomes a Legend Most?
At dinner I had the Pasta Primavera which is not on the menu but a Sirio Maccioni classic and like no other privavera. And the Le Cirque salad which also has it own signature so you feel like your having a very healthy and delicious meal. Afterwards we had a selection of the desserts which JH photographed for the record because they were so spectacular. Everyone tried everyone’s so it didn’t seem so bad. |
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| A little bit of this, a little bit of that kept everyone very happy at Le Cirque ... |
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I spent the entire summer last year on the island of Manhattan. And most of the summer before. Both years had mild, almost cool summers and it was like getting away from it all because so many had left town so it was quiet. This could get to be a long time habit if I don’t watch out because I am one of those people who actually likes to stay home, as odd as that may seem if you read this column. It can seem even to me that I go out only so I can write.
For several years I went down to Southampton on weekends. As nice as that was, it eventually seemed like three long rides (going, while there, and coming). I can understand the enthusiasm for it all but if you’re a houseguest, at some point you must comply our of courtesy with their hospitality. Or stay home. I prefer the latter.
I happened to be thinking about Southampton over this past weekend because of something else I am working on.
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| When Southampton was in flower. The new generation of the Old Guard, fathers of the Boomers: Tommy Phipps with Hedy Lamarr at a golf tournament at Shinnecock, circa 1950. From Jean Howard's Jean Howard's Hollywood. |
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I first went out there when I was just out of college and living in New York in the early-to-mid 60s. It had a very special reputation as a kind of the successor to Newport for the latter’s younger generations. In its way, although it was very clubby and upper-crusty, it was cozy too -- because everybody knew everybody and the only outsiders were often houseguests. It also had Irish Roman Catholics too. Like Henry Ford II.
It wasn’t exactly a sleepy town in those days, but close. South Main on a Saturday mid-afternoon was quiet. Maybe a car or two or three and that’s it. People were at the beach. And Day Trippers were only in the Beatles’ song.
In those years, real estate was at its nadir compared to today. There were quite a few large empty houses on the market, at prices that aren’t even credible today, like mid-five figures, if that. The estate section was Old Guard and families, and not so much new. These people all knew each other and their mothers and their cousins. The longtime residents all knew each other as well, and their children and their parents.
One of the town summer doyennes was Mrs. Edgar Leonard who drove herself around without a chauffeur (quite advanced, it was for her). Mrs. Leonard, however, did not know how to put the car in Reverse. So wherever she went she had to park so she could continue moving forward or have someone’s butler turn it around for her. All the merchants in town knew about Adelaide Leonard’s driving skills. She was so used to pulling up in front of the Post Office and parking there that when she saw another car there one day, she asked who was taking up her parking space.
The social life had begun to change there, as elsewhere, with a growing influx of weekend house-sharers (like this writer), college grads, Boomers coming of age and looking upward, who took a share in some house in the village or just outside or down 27 a couple of miles. What the place had to offer everybody was the beaches, some of the most beautiful on the continent.
It was also the era in New York nightlife of the private discotheques like Le Club and L’Interdit (in the Gotham/now Peninsula Hotel), the trendy Ondine and the stupendous Shepheards in the Drake. Out east in Bridgehampton summertimes there was Mitty’s General Store in what looked like an old wood clapboard farmhouse with a front porch, right on Route 27. Inside was a big bar, a large dining room of banquettes and a dance floor.
I met a girl there one night who’d come in with another couple. After they were seated at their banquette I got up the nerve to ask her if she wanted to dance. She looked up at me like I was crazy, looked at her friends, looked back at me, and said “no.” I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to say so I asked if I could sit down. And she said “yes.” A little more than a year later, we got married.
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| Francis Carpenter. Photograph by Ellen Graham. |
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There was another discotheque/nightclub/restaurant in the center of Bridgehampton called The Bulls Head Inn. The Bulls Head was a converted two story house with a large front porch, a bar and lounge, a restaurant and a disco room. It was owned by a very glamorous woman named Mrs. Francis (her “I”) Carpenter who was married to a DuPont heir. Francis Carpenter had a reputation for being quite the glamour girl in the international jet set, known for doing what she wanted and when she wanted, and with whom she wanted, and having a good time while she was at it.
It’s in the timing. The bartender in the lounge/bar was a lean, outdoorsy sort of woman named Pat Hemingway. She was very laid-back, dressed simply in a silk blouse hanging out over some jeans, a gold ring, maybe some gold jangle. Like an Ernest Hemingway Hemingway, not a Mariel Hemingway Hemingway. No actual relation but she look like she could have been on that fishing boat in Cuba, or on Kilimanjaro, or at the bullfights in Spain with Papa. She looked like his kind of woman. And she was friendly toward this very young and eternally curious customer, so I was charmed. In fact, my instincts were not off. She told us that Francis Carpenter had taken her all around the world and that it had been an amazing trip. She looked like she took that trip. I thought of Somerset Maugham. They were his characters.
The lounge at the Bull’s Head had a pianist who sang named Hugh Shannon, who was well known in cabaret circles in the 50s. He was famous for one called “Nina Never Knew.” I once asked Nina Griscom if she knew of it. Nina, who takes a question like that with a suspicious grin, said she did but wasn’t impressed.
Shannon started his gig about 8 or 8:30 as the dinner hour was beginning. He was an older guy (probably 40 to these young eyes) with dark blonde hair, a ruddy complexion that might have come from the booze if not the beach, and he had a light touch and a gentle delivery of a songbook of American tunes.
Somewhere in the 50s, Hugh Shannon caught the eye of a South American socialite named Betty Dodero. Betty was married to a very rich South American -- the man said to have given Aristotle Onassis his start -- Alberto Dodero. The Doderos were very popular and the toast of international society. And then Betty met Hugh. Nina never knew and neither did Betty. She divorced Alberto (with whom she had a family) and married Hugh. Did they live happily ever after? I don’t know. Alberto, however, died shortly thereafter, leaving his billions NOT to Betty.
One more before I go. Then there was another discotheque, the really cool one, in an old converted barn down a dirt road in the woods somewhere east of Bridgehampton. It was called L’Oursin. A nothing looking place when you arrive. Plain wood exterior, surrounded by pine woods. Inside, however, it was a nautical theme straight out of a Hollywood set, over a weathered barn interior with a big dance floor and tables and banquettes by the side. Hanging down over the center of the big dance floor was a massive crystal chandelier, the kind that you see only in a palace. It was said to have been a gift to the owners by the Maharajah of Baroda, who I guess like Southampton too.
Could you get into these places? There was no one working the rope. There was no rope. If there was room, you were in. There was no reason to keep anyone out. Studio 54 was still years away. And so were we. |
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