Then the rains came

Upper West Side sky. 6:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, April 11, 2013. Beautiful Sunny day, yesterday in New York, with temperatures close to 80 until late afternoon when it suddenly got chillier and with a bit of a wind rustling the budding trees. Then the dark clouds came, gathering from the north and the west, and the day darkened. Then the rains came.

Looking west towards the Hudson River. 5:58 PM.

View from the terrace looking south and then looking north along East End Avenue. 6:20 PM.

Just after noon I went down to Michael’s for the Wednesday lunch, as if on automatic pilot. Traffic was heavy on the Drive, crosstown and everywhere but Fifth Avenue. A lot of tourists. You can tell because they dress much more casually than New Yorkers on Fifth Avenue in the middle of the week. And they are often in a confab with one or two of them holding a map, and someone else explaining. Sometimes they’ll stop someone who looks like a New Yorker (to them) and ask directions. They’re always surprised at how friendly New Yorkers are.

I always wonder what they’re talking about, what they’re looking to see. A couple of years ago, I was walking down Fifth, south of 57th on my way to Michael’s when a good sized crowd of young people were all peering across the street and holding cameras up, anticipating something. I looked over at the Trump Tower and saw nothing but pedestrians moving along. So I asked a girl what they were all looking at.

“Donald Trump! He’s gonna come outta that building!” She was jumping up and down. Really.

Oh. That’s how jaded I am: they’re panting for a look at The Donald. I told him this story the next time I saw him. He smiled. Donald is a professional. So, from what I can gather, are all of his children. The Trumps, like the Ralph Laurens, are exemplary public families, and you can only in the end credit the parents.

Lunch at Michael's with Ann Rapp. Her hat was a big hit with a lot of the women who stopped by the table.

I was yesterday lunching with Ann Rapp who is now an old friend but whom I first met when I returned to New York from California twenty years ago. Ann was born and grew up in Los Angeles and we shared and continue to share a vivid, almost literary nostalgia for the place. In her girlhood she grew up with a lot of the children of the Hollywood stars of the mid-century and it’s “Golden Age.”

Since then Ann has lived in London, Paris and several other locations, some exotic, some rustic, and in the process seems to have met anyone who was alive at the time and in the place where she was present.

She has immense curiosity. She’d walk into a room a great raven-haired beauty, and left having learned something astonishing or fascinating or enlightening, or just met somebody who piqued her interest. She’s an inveterate reader and collector of all kinds of information. She’s one of that rare breed of woman who has all the attributes of a journalist or an author except she's not a writer. So what did we talk about? Everything, everyone, all about the room, backwards, forwards, up down. And the state of things as they are and as they seem.

At table in the Garden Room. Micky Ateyeh, second from right next to Liz Smith, who is talking to Barbara Liberman (far left) and Brinton Taylor Parson.

And the new phrase that came my way via a perspicacious friend in the financial business: normalcy bias. The state of things as they are personally, or as they are perceived depending upon (usually) one’s financial solvency, apparent, real or imagined versus reality.

Michael’s was its usual midweek pandemonium. In the Garden Room Micky Ateyeh and Angela Cummings were hosting a luncheon for about thirty women, and showing Angela’s new line of pearl jewelry which she designed for Assael.

I met Angela a few weeks ago when she was at Michael’s lunching with Micky. She’s a lovely woman, unpresumptuous, gracious, friendly but yet bearing an artist’s reserve. She used to live here in the Northeast but she now lives in Park City, Utah, and it is a different life style as we all know, with a different pace and decibel. The pearls are a new project that she and Micky are working on in tandem. Micky and she have a long history of a business partnership. They met when they were both working at Tiffany.

Micky Ateyeh and Lucy Suarez.

Shirley Lord Rosenthal and Sarah Simms Rosenthal (no relation).

Cindy Lewis and friend.

Fern Mallis and Barbara Liberman.

Christy Ferer. Photos: Steve Millington.

Angela Cummings with her latest pieces for Assael.

So that was the Garden Room. The front room was abuzz. Carl Spielvogel was lunching with Eliot Spitzer; Anthony Shriver was with Anne Hearst and Allison Mazzola. Next to us on one side, Ed Forst; on the other, Greg Kelly and Renato Scotto, the Fox 5 stars. Jimmy Finkelstein was lunching with Janice Min of the Hollywood Reporter. Catherine Saxton was hosting Sharon Sondesand Geoffrey Thomas who were in town for the Marty Richards memorial the other night at the Supper Club. Bob Friedman with Jay Kriegel; Star Jones with Adaora Udoji of NPR and Alexis McGill; Sanford & Stein (David and Lewis); Alice Mayhew; Judy Price. Documentarian Ken Burns with Steven Greenberg;. Also Martin Puris; Andrew Sollinger; Andrew Stein; Michael Kassan; Hearst’s Newell Turner with Michael McGraw of Hearst PR, and Los Angeles interior designer Peter Dunham; Jonathan Resnick, Shelley Zalis. Moving around the room: Lally Weymouth;Wednesday Martin with Amy Tarr; Boaty Boatright with Jane Buffet (Mrs. Jimmy). Eric Bamberger was with Beverly Camhe and a documentary Beverly has produced about Bernie Madoff-- “In God We Trust Who Pays for His Crime.”

You think you know the whole story but this will show you otherwise. It’s opening at the Tribeca Film Festival next week.

Coincidentally, in the Garden Room was a Madoff client Alexandra Penney, who has told her story in “The Bag Lady Papers” in a series of posts for The Daily Beast. Alexandra still has the feathers in her professional cap, however. About 30 years ago she wrote a bestseller called How to Make Love to a Man. After that she created SELF Magazine. When I met her she was at SELF. I pitched her a few ideas and she was very receptive and encouraging. None of them worked out but I gained a friend.

The tables in the Garden Room.

She made a lotta dough along the way. And with it she invested in Bernie Madoff. She was living off the interest when the Good Ship Lollypop sank. But ... like the Sondheim song: she’s still here ...

The Angela Cummings Collection for Assael comprises 25 magnificent pieces. There was a pair of diamond and platinum earrings with a dozen South Sea pearls and over four carats: $12,500. There was a diamond and South Sea pearl necklace in a sea horse shape with 280 round, brilliant-cut diamonds: $375,000.

Some of Angela Cummings' pieces for Assael.

All guests received Angela Cummings' silver seahorse keyring with the tsavorite/precious green stone for the eye and the pearl in the tail.

Catching up. This past Tuesday night with the Social Calendar on overdrive, Liz Peek hosted a cocktail reception for more than 100 guests at the Peeks' Park Avenue penthouse (with terrace to take in a perfect Spring evening outside in the city. Liz’s co-hosts were Pamela Baxter, Joy Herfel Cronin, Julie Greiner, Yaz Hernandez, Jane Hudis. They were celebrating the upcoming 2013 FIT Gala’s honorees George Kaufman, Kay Krill and Stefano Tonchi.

Among those attending: Teri Agins, Yigal Azrouel, Hamish Bowles, Dennis Basso, Mario Buatta, Judy Byrd, Maria Cornejo, Amy Fine Collins, Carole Divet Harting, Chris Del Gatto, Veronica Webb, Joel Frank, Linda Fargo, Michele Gerber Klein, Eleanora Kennedy, Chiu-Ti Jansen, Richard Lambertson, Alexandra Lebenthal, Larry Leeds, Julie Macklowe, Tamara and Minty Mellon, Jonathan Pomerantz, Darcy Rigas, Pete Scotese, Angel Sanchez. Jean Shafiroff, Michael Stanley, Jill Stuart, Daniel Silver and Steven Cox, Carlo Tunioli, Elizabeth and Albert Watson.

The 2013 FIT Gala will be held on Monday, June 10, 2013 at Cipriani 42nd Street.

For more information about the Gala or to purchase tickets contact: Victoria_guranowski@fitnyc.edu or 212.217.4105.

Chairman of the Board of FIT Liz Peek, Honoree Stefano Tonchi, and Catherine Fisher representing Honoree Kay Krill of Ann Inc.

Veronica Webb and Chris Del Gatto.

Angel Sanchez and Liz Peek.

Stefano Tonchi, Amy Fine Collins, and Richard Lambertson.

Linda Fargo.

Minty and Tamara Mellon.

Jill Stuart.

Elizabeth Watson, Albert Watson, Liz Peek, and Hamish Bowles.

Jean Shafiroff, Alexandra Lebenthal, Valerie Salembier, and Julie Macklowe.

Yigal Azrouel.

Daniel Silver, Maria Cornejo, and Steven Cox.

Chris Delgatto, Liz Peek, Jill Stuart, Veronica Webb, and Sophie Theallet.

Also, this past Tuesday, the board of the American Friends of the Paris Opera & Ballet convened a special meeting with Benjamin Millepied, who will be the new Director of Dance at the Paris Opera Ballet, starting in September 2014. Following a lunch and a lively discussion the board posed for this portrait with is release first to NYSD.

Back row, l. to r.: Michele Pesner, Edward Reilly (president), Flavia Gale, (behind bench) James de Givenchy, Hal J. Witt, Randall Bourscheidt, Elisabeth de Kergorlay, Laure Vienot-Tronche (executive director), Steve Pesner, Olivier Aldeano, Marina Couloucoundis, Hugues de Pins. Front row, l. to r.:Marina de Brantes (honorary chairman), Mary Sharp Cronson, Anne H. Bass, Benjamin Millepied, Olivia Flatto (chairman), Serena Lese (vice chairman), Laure Zeckendorf (vice chairman). Photo credit: George H Lewis.

And last Monday night at the Edison Ballroom on 240 West 47th Street, in the heart of the Theater District, they held a Memorial for the late Marty Richards, Broadway and Oscar-winning producer who died last November at the age of 80.

Marty was a Broadway baby, a boy from the Bronx who wanted to make his way on ole Broadway. And giving it his all, playing many roles, plying many talents, he became one of the most successful producers of his generation. He LOVED show business. It was his religion.

So the other night at the Edison, they pulled out all the stops (which is the way Marty would have done it). Chita Rivera was Mistress of Ceremonies at what was a benefit for the New York Center for Children which was co-founded by Marty with his wife Mary Lea, who was a Johnson & Johnson heiress. There was a four course dinner, tributes by Clive Davis, Tom Viola (exec director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS) and Michele Herbert. Rabbi Adam Jacobs delivered the evening’s invocation.

Liz Callaway.

Len Cariou.

Victor Garber.

Dee Hoty.

Sharon Wilkins.

Timatha Kasten.

Marin Mazzie.

Rob Marshall.

The Accidentals.

Chita Rivera.

Jack Noseworthy.

Curtain call.

And then: a rowsah-wowsah of showstoppers from Marty’s Broadway musicals including Chicago, On the Twentieth Cetnury, The Life, Grand Hotel, Sweeney Todd; La Cage Aux Folles, Sweet Smell of Success, the Will Rogers Follies and Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life.

Marty would have loved it. If this were a movie, you’d see his face, sitting up there, bright eyes brimming with tears at the sheer thrill of all that talent putting it all out there just for him, this once and forever Broadway baby. Just for him and, of course, the audience, the beloved audience. He was that kinda guy.