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| Park Avenue in the 50s. 10 PM. Photo: Jeff Hirsch. |
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| Tuesday, December 31, 2013. New Year’s Eve. Cold out, and getting colder, according to the weatherman, and we might even get some snow tomorrow. The city is quiet, as I reported yesterday. A cabbie told me a lot of people are out of town for the long holiday period. Although I went to have lunch with friends at the French Roast on the West Side at 85th Street and Broadway and you’d never know from quiet in that part of town. A lot of clatter and chatter, the West Side neighborhood is there. French Roast is a bistro and the food (breakfast anyway) is very good. So is the service. And the noise level is pure Noo Yawk. It’s also where JH grabs a bite of grub when he takes a break from the NYSD. The West Side – at least along Broadway from the 60s to the 90s, is not quiet. It’s bustling. |
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| There is nothing comparable on the East Side under these holiday circumstances with the minor exception of the crowds gathered around the Metropolitan Museum between 79th and 84th Streets on Fifth. It’s the reason I like to go over to the West Side on Saturdays – the neighborhood crowds. I made that trip for the second time this week yesterday afternoon to pick up some things at Zabar's – including some caviar, some blinis, some whitefish pate and some crème fraiche. Tonight I am going to dinner with some good friends at Swifty’s – on the very early side – and then I’m finishing off the night at home with three very old friends with whom I’ve spent New Year’s Eve for decades (or at least when I was living on the East Coast). I also bought a few bottles at Sherry-Lehmann of some very reasonably priced (in other words, cheap, French champagne called Lucas Carton (car-tone). I learned about Lucas Carton last year and tried it out on my guests who were all well-versed in champagne (usage). They thought it was wonderful too. It reminds me of the champagne that you get in France which you can drink like water and never worry about the next day.
As wonderful as the man was to watch on the “Tonight Show," there was behind that image a man who could be a nightmare to deal with. Stories about Carson were rife back in the 80s when I lived in Los Angeles. He was very “powerful” in the way that power is acknowledged in the entertainment industry. He brought in a huge late night audience for decades, and big big revenue for the network. He also made a fortune himself. I’m reminded of the last time his predecessor and the man who “chose” him to succeed him, Jack Paar, appeared for the last time as a guest on Carson’s show. It was not long after Carson had divorced his third wife Joanna who reportedly got a $30 million settlement. On the show, Carson asked Paar if he ever “regretted” quitting the show (which is exactly what he did after several years). Paar thought about it for a second and replied: “I regret that I didn’t marry you.” That line, which got a big laugh incidentally, was not entirely off-the-cuff. Paar was an obsessive professional and would never make an appearance on his former stomping ground without writing some lines for himself (which he’d probably tried out in his living room with friends beforehand). No doubt he let Carson know that he’d like to be asked about his “regrets” of leaving this very successful late night show. |
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| The Carson stories that came before this book were often horrible or awful. He was off-camera, in many ways the opposite of the man on-camera. This isn’t so unusual; this is Show Business. But by the time he was settled in Hollywood (having moved the show from New York) he was spoiled, over-indulged as well as burdened with his own demons. Henry Bushkin came to know him very well, as well, if not moreso, than any of his wives (that’s all debatable I know). Their relationship was a very close one but it ended and not harmoniously according to most reports. One of the vagaries of Show Business when you get into the stratosphere of stardom is the ease in which intimate relationships are formed only to be followed by some slight or slights that end in an expression of distrust. This can be blamed on the star and it can be blamed on the “friend” (which could mean: lover, lawyer, maid, driver, bodyguard, brother, sister, etc.) It’s a conundrum that is now classic about a society that is best described cinematically in Billy Wilder’s“Sunset Boulevard.” |
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| Anyway, Jim Mitchell who has toiled on those primrose and gilt-edged paths most of his life is well familiar with the vagaries and their aftermaths. He invited among his guests to join Mr. Bushkin and his fiancée Janet Jordan, Maria Cooper Janis and Pia Lindstrom. Both women are children of Hollywood, daughters of two of its biggest stars of mid-20th century, Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. Both women, are longtime New Yorkers and have never been far from the spotlight (Lindstrom is a longtime television personality and Cooper-Janis is the longtime wife of international piano virtuoso Byron Janis), and nothing they hear or read about that world and that time of their parents’ lives would surprise them. Meanwhile Henry Bushkin has a fascinating best-seller on his hands. |
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| For the next few days of this long end of the year holiday, we’re going to re-run some of our earlier stories about individuals whose lives in many ways characterized the world of Society of the era that preceded ours. It was also the era that preceded all of the Liberation movements including the Women’s Movement and the Gay Liberation. Today, our two entries are about Joanne Connelley, a debutante who was the Cinderella of her era (late 1940s and early 1950s), a life that was snuffed out far too early in the land of Too Much Too Soon, the number one debutante of the late 1940s; and the life of Oskar Dieter Alex von Rosenberg-Redé, 3rd Baron Von Rosenberg-Redé who is remembered as Alexis the Baron de Redé, a prominent French banker, collector and socialite who at the end of his life was associated with the management of the millions of the Rolling Stones. |
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| Before I close, Jeff Hirsch and I would like to thank you for reading the New York Social Diary which is now in the middle of its 14th year on the World Wide Web. The NYSD readers live all over the world in all kinds of towns, cities and villages. It is your readership and appreciation of our work that is our ultimate reward and we thank you again and again for your devotion and encouragement. May this year be the Happiest for all of us. A tall order, unlikely to be filled entirely but one to always bear in mind. |
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Contact DPC here. |