No Holds Barred - Stop It!

August 22, 2012, 6:57 am

≫ Next: Society As He Found It: Harry Lehr

By Blair Sabol

I know I am not alone. Recently, everyone is complaining of having a bad summer or at best having "no summer." The devastating heat in the East, the burn-out in the Midwest and now we in the West are on our 11th day of over 110 degrees. Hell has arrived and everyone is in some level of meltdown. And get ready ... the heat is predicted to go way past October. Talk about THE long hot summer.

This is beyond the usual "dog days/daze of August." I hear astrologers predict daily financial wipe outs (the Jamie Dimon descent was just the beginning). Everyone is going up in smoke. There are no "happy days are here again." For many we are in a global denial ... and that's EXHAUSTING!!!. And that is THE word I hear everywhere.

Everyone is feeling spent. Look at the political situation. Talk about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. No one can get it up to care about this race. I think the over amped election of Obama in 2008 and the disappointment of that outcome has truly exhausted many. Two months ago I started feeling dizzy and extremely tired. My doctor insisted it was all "stress related" (what isn't nowadays) and told me to get by the ocean for a few days.

Better than medication I chose my favorite five star resort. The Laguna Ritz Carlton (my foolproof getaway "shrine") did their traditional best to get me the best ocean front suite. I felt safe and sound and cared for until I realized I had chosen to come on one of THE summer "family weekends." Talk about "my bad."

Streams of parents walked around strapped to Lexus SUV sized baby carriages dripping with status shopping bags and baby gear. Others carried their screaming infants in elaborate Kangaroo pouch/sling across their chests and even jogged this way on the beach. The sound of baby wailings pierced through the Pacific Ocean's thunderous waves.

I was awash in the hysteria of a kind of 24/7 Romper Room. I room-serviced all meals to avoid juvenile food fight madness in the coffee shops or restaurant. I was working on filling up "my emotional and physical gas tank" in spite of this scene. Yes, I am a childless, intolerant old bag. So what. I walked down the hotel's pristine hallways and peeked in the rooms and suites and it looked like Al Qaeda had scud-bombed every accommodation. Dirty baby backpacks, sandy boogie boards, and tons of wet cargo pants and sports bras draped the hotel furniture and hung over every balcony.

I felt so badly for the maids and bellmen who were seen cleaning and schlepping barges of belongings about from 6 AM to 10 PM. You talk about exhausted!!! The hotel magically survived this invasion. They always do. After all "Families" are their pricey summer "market" (along with weddings and corporate gatherings). Baby carriage gridlock (8 deep) is the new front desk lineup. Recession? Not here.

At one point I got on an elevator with three 8-year-olds, their nervous systems fresh from the beach, and so they were bouncing rubber balls and flinging Frisbees from the floor to elevator ceiling. I looked longingly at the parents (all actively tuning this out while thumbing their iPhones) and started to say "Could you please handle this" when one of the fathers looked back at me with bleary eyes and a ravaged face and said (before I got to finish my rant) "Please ... we are all so exhausted." What could I I say. Well, I could have said, "So is the world. Mind your damn kids."

But I was too exhausted. Where is Countess Louise J. Esterhazy (dear John Fairchild's character) when you need her. I wished I could have channeled the Countess's "missile mouth" and let them all have it in between floors. Instead I fled like a coward fearful that I would be accused of child abuse. (By the way The Laguna Ritz now welcomes all dogs as guests ... and they have their regular hugely popular "Yappy Hour." The dogs were better behaved and cleaner than anyone.)

My girl friend New York Times writer Susin Fair, who lives in Brooklyn (now "the new Paris"), was so tired of her neighborhood's current hipness that she vacated to Jenkintown for a spell.

Jenkintown? How desperate. Or is it? She happily discovered TJ Maxx was better than Target and I listened to her tell me of her current malaise; "the problem with this kind of heat 'n' fatigue is that it has left me not wanting to shop." Shopping would always snap us out of any ailment or depression. Lately no one I know feels the retail "calling." And it isn't just the "pre-Fall blues." Although all those families I saw at Laguna Beach with babies were shopping up a storm. I noticed the baby carriages were really shopping carts. Somehow "babies and buying" go together. Maybe they even bought their babies. In many cases the kids were buried under the heap of merchandise packed in the carriage.

By the time I returned from my "peaceful getaway" (by the way — I rebooked at The laguna Ritz on Rosh Hashanah week, which the staff assured me would be relatively "kid-free and quiet"), I started to bore all my friends with my daily down 'n' out symptoms from dizzy to heart attack to shingles to atom immune disease to death. You name it and I had it.

One therapist told me I was "physically reflecting the world situation ... you have porous borders." A nice way of saying I was having a nervous breakdown. My best friend sent me a hilarious Bob Newhart YouTube skit. It's a scene where he (as a therapist) tell his psychiatric patient (who tells him of her most ridiculous issue) that she can cure herself with one thought ... and he shouts this line: "STOP IT !" He goes further ... "STOP IT OR ELSE!!"

Why couldn't I have used that line on those kids in the elevator ... and their parents. By the way, well traveled friends of mine insist that in Europe kids are so well mannered and polite. Only in the the USA have parents lost most control and let the kids run amok. Because the parents feel so overwhelmed? Really? (Could this end up being the reason we are becoming a third rate nation? We can't handle ourselves and our families? And we don't care). And believe me, I have tried yelling "STOP IT" to myself when I start compulsively cork screwing into the floor with all my ailments. But let me tell you ... it is even more exhausting putting a positive spin on a mental downhill landslide. Honestly, I am trying to stay upbeat and believe in the power of positive thinking while getting blood workups ... I'm just a bit weary and leery.

Ironically I was thrilled to see the great Gore Vidal ended his life with these final words: "STOP IT." Grant it he said it to his nurse who was stretching (!!!!???) his leg. But I think Gore was saying a lot more than that. I believe he left us with THE mantra of THE moment. Now ... I dare you to use it ...

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Society As He Found It: Harry Lehr

August 23, 2012, 7:18 am

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Society As He Found It; Harry Lehr and Notes from the End of the Gilded Age.

They met one night at the Met. The opera was "Lohengrin." She had heard it many times before but it had already been two years since her young husband died, and she was glad to have the opportunity to get out of her widow's weeds. She was Elizabeth Wharton Drexel Dahlgren, a young mother and widow at 32, and heiress to a Philadelphia banking fortune.

The year was 1900. It was a Monday night when all New York society was in attendance, the Met's Diamond Horseshoe, resplendent with the ladies' diamonds and emeralds sparkling. She was a guest of Mrs. George Gould who had first entertained at dinner that evening at the Gould mansion on Fifth Avenue at 62nd Street. The dinner was long, as was often the fashion, and Mrs. Gould and party arrived during the second act.

The Gould mansion on Fifth Avenue at 62nd Street where Edith Gould held a dinner before the opening of the Opera at the Met.

Mrs. George Gould wearing her famous pearls said to have cost $500,000.

The old Metropolitan Opera House, the scene of that fateful meeting in 1900.

With everyone quietly taking their seats in the Gould box, the young widow noticed a man she didn't recognize who was sitting in the shadows. She couldn't see his face but could tell that he was tall and "powerfully built."

When the lights came up, Edith Gould said to Elizabeth, "I want you to meet the most amusing man in New York ..."

It was the man in the shadows. Elizabeth was struck by his "vivid blue eyes" and "the very spirit of gaiety" in them. In the light she could now see the big man was blond with a winning smile and a "pleasant lazy voice, curiously high pitched."


Young Elizabeth Drexel Dahlgren. She was an innocent young woman like all young women of society in those days, entirely sheltered and bound by rules and manner (and money) that supported that innocence.

The first five minutes of conversation with him confirmed what Edith Gould had said. He was the most amusing man. "Conversation rippled around him," Elizabeth wrote many years later of that night. "It was impossible for anyone to be bored in his company."

His name was Harry Lehr. A young man from a "good family" in Baltimore, a community that prized the decorum of society that he belonged to. However, Harry's father had suffered a reversal of fortune when Harry was still a teenager, and that had changed everything for the boy's future ambitions.

When Elizabeth later asked about him, Edith Gould told her that he had "hardly any money, but he goes everywhere," and that it was "impossible to have a party without him."

Mrs. Gould also said that the men didn't like him very much. "They call him one of 'the little brothers of the rich,' but that's just because they are jealous of his popularity."

The very next day, Harry Lehr came to call, Elizabeth recalled in a memoir "King Lehr and the Gilded Age" published 34 years later in 1935.

"After that he came many times. I was falling under the spell of his charm .... He filled my somber house in West Fifty-sixth Street with gaiety and laughter ... bringing people to see me, arranging parties on the spur of the moment, inviting me out to dine at the house of one or other of his friends," telling her "you are far too young and pretty to remain a disconsolate widow ... I am going to wake you up and teach you how to enjoy life again."

Ava Astor and Harry Lehr, 1902. The first automotive machines as cars were then known, were basically toys for the rich to parade around in for their own amusement. They were not regarded as necessities, and in the early days of manufacturing, until Henry Ford came along, they were like a Hermes handbag: pure luxury, and very modern.

Soon she was seeing Harry Lehr very often. One day in late March, several months after their first meeting, returning from a stay with the George Goulds at their Lakewood, New Jersey estate, he invited Elizabeth to lunch at Sherry's – then the most popular restaurant in New York among the wealthy and the celebrated, and the first restaurant where society women ever went out to lunch.

On their way to Sherry's he told her: "you cannot imagine how important this luncheon party is going to be to me."

She was surprised to see there were other guests: four women – Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, and Mrs. Oliver Belmont (the former Alva Vanderbilt), and no men. They were known in New York social circles as The Big Four, the most powerful women in New York Society, and women whose "power" was taken very seriously.

The dining room at Sherry's where (clockwise from top left) Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, and Mrs. Oliver Belmont (the former Alva Vanderbilt), were formally introduced to Elizabeth Wharton Drexel Dahlgren by Harry Lehr.

Before the lunch was over, Elizabeth overheard Mrs. Oelrichs say to Harry Lehr, "I think she is delightful, Harry. We four are going to take her up. We will make her the fashion. You need have no fear ..."

On their way home, Harry asked Elizabeth to marry him. "You must have guessed I have been in love with you ever since that first evening. I know you don't love me, but you are lonely, you need someone to take care of you. I believe I can make you very happy ..."

Three years before he met Elizabeth, Harry Lehr had been introduced to Caroline Astor -- the Mrs. Astor -- and she was charmed too. She had ruled society for decades with her crowning achievement of the "400" ball given in her famous ballroom with the assistance and advice of another man obsessed with society – Ward McAllister -- first at the house on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue and then at the massive double mansion she shared with her son and his wife and children at 65th and Fifth where Temple Emanu-El stands today.

Caroline Astor's double residence on 65th Street and Fifth Avenue, which she shared with her only son John Jacob IV and his wife Ava and their son and daughter, Vincent and Alice, where the guestlist often grew to a thousand; now the site of Temple Emanu-El.

Mamie Fish's house in Manhattan on 78th and Madison before completion, designed by Stanford White, now the property of Mayor Bloomberg for offices for his philanthropic foundation.

Harry Lehr's charm was his talent to amuse. Although he bore many of the personality traits of Mrs. Astor's late emanuensis, McAllister, Harry was much younger, better looking, and his highly clever ability to amuse, he was fun. Bored older rich women gave him much greater reach, making him far more desirable to have around, since he also "knew" everybody.

It would be difficult to find a comparable personality in today's social circles because in those ancient times, only a century ago, all women lived in a kind of isolation of rules and mores unknown today.


Harry Lehr "knew" everybody, including (from top to bottom): Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; Birdie Fair Vanderbilt; Mamie Fish and Lola Robinson.

Women of wealth did have more mobility than their less fortunate sisters, however, because they ruled the social roost, but they nevertheless lived in a gilded cocoon of wealth and ennui, in a world quite separate from their husbands' lives outside the home.

Mrs. Astor's power was formidable, however, and both male and female bowed and sometimes even quaked to it. By the time she met Harry Lehr, she was almost seventy and had begun to withdraw from the social scene. So the just-on-the-edge irreverence of Harry Lehr was like a breeze of fresh air for the aging dowager. She took him up and everyone followed, especially the aforementioned Mesdames Oelrichs, Gould, Fish and Belmont, as well as many more.

Until he met Elizabeth Drexel, the man earned his living selling champagne to his adoring hostesses. He soon learned that these social connections gave him opportunity to gain greater favors from tailors, hotels, restaurateurs, and other merchants with their eye on promoting their wares. It was understood that wherever he might go, he could let drop just where and from whom he acquired his suits, shoes, shirts, ties, coats, hats, watches, rings and everything else he possessed, all of which was gratis ... for him.

Society was his business. Restaurants such as Sherry's were only too happy to let him entertain with dinners and dances that brought in a good number of Mrs. Astor's "400." Mrs. Fish saw to it through her husband who was head of the Illinois Central Railroad, that he was given free passes (first class of course) to travel. One friend named Tom Wanamaker of the Philadelphia family happily lent him rooms in his large apartment. Doors opened, carpets rolled out and the best champagne flowed in Harry Lehr's life. All he really needed was a lifetime annuity.

The secret of his charm is difficult to imagine in today's sensibilities but basically his métier was not unique, even today. He would be classified in popular parlance as a "walker." He had the ability to "make 'em laugh," to kind of be "one of the girls" and for women and men of leisure and fortune, that was possibly even rarer than for the common man.

Harry Lehr and Charles Greenough at Newport. The two men were said to have had a long intimate relationship unknown to Elizabeth, and later to the woman Greenough married.

Harry Lehr with Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia. The time was also during the last years of the Romanov dynasty as the Bolsheviks were gathering the storms of revolution. The Gilded Age New Yorkers loved the company of royals and titled foreigners.

"Samson's strength lay in his hair. Mine lies in the favor of women," he used to say when congratulating himself on some fresh social conquest. "All I have to do is to keep in their good graces and everything comes to me."

To this end he spent all his time in their company, listened to their confidences, gave them (whenever they sought it) his advice with the same careful consideration, whether the problem was planning a dinner or luring an erring husband back to the fold.

He chose their dresses for them, planned their house parties, taught them how to manage their love affairs and found them husbands. He had a natural ability to insinuate himself flawlessly into their lives. He also related to them as if it he were one of them. He loved getting up in drag and camping the female roles in plays. More than once or twice he expressed his great disappointment that he wasn’t a woman so that he could wear women’s clothes all the time since they were beautiful and a great variety. None of this presumably was something his affianced was aware of, or understood the implications of his sexual politics.


	Elizabeth Lehr's aunt, Mrs. John R. Drexel in her court dress for presentation to the Kaiser Wilhelm II in Berlin..

It seems incredible today that Harry Lehr’s personal likes and fetishes could be kept from the widow Dahlgren since he performed in his campy style and costume habits before the Big Four and others often enough, and with great acceptance and appreciation. But women of society in those days had no awareness of anything about anything or anybody outside their own constricted social worlds.

Elizabeth Drexel did not give Harry Lehr an answer to his proposal immediately. First she went back to Philadelphia to stay with her widowed mother, and invited Harry to come to visit to meet her. Mother was charmed also. Elizabeth was in love, as she recorded in her diary. On her birthday he sent her a rosary of coral and gold in a heart-shaped box with the message: "Every good wish to you today from my heart."

Soon after, she accepted his proposal although she recorded in her diary that she was "rather hurt and disappointed to find that Harry was infinitely more interested in the precise details of the fortune my father had left me more than anything else."

She repeated what must have been the magic words for him: "My dear, you won't have to worry over money; you know I will give you everything, as much as ever you want," including financial arrangements to take care of his beloved mother.

It was then he made clear (with a laugh), "I live not on my wits but on my wit. I make a career of being popular."

Elizabeth remained deeply impressed by the power of his compelling charm. They were married in the Cathedral in Philadelphia with all of fashionable New Yorkers in attendance. The bride, however, noticed a change in the air on that day. The "gaiety," she later wrote, "seemed to have gone out of the vivid blue eyes, leaving the spirit of mockery that had once so fascinated me." She felt a "vague sense of foreboding, as though a cold hand had been laid on me." He was nervous.

After the wedding, the couple traveled to he Stafford Hotel in Baltimore for their wedding night. There, in her suite, she dressed in a rose brocade gown, pinned with a diamond brooch, awaited her groom to appear from his room.


Mrs. and Mr. Harry Lehr on their wedding trip, 1901.

Elizabeth Drexel Lehr in her official court dress for her presentation to the Kaiser in Berlin. It was Harry's "fame" that brought them this opportunity to rub elbows with the German emperor, grandson of Queen Victoria -- a very great experience for a New York society woman, and no different from a comparable contemporary today hobnobbing with the British royals.

The dining room of their suite had been laid with "sheaves of crimson roses," filling the room with their fragrance. "Caviar, quails in aspic, his favorite brand of champagne, the cabinet of cigars I had bought for him, along with the gold and enamel watch set besides his plate."

The maid came in, "flushed, eyes downcast ... Madame the maitre d'hotel tells me that Mr. Lehr has just given orders to serve him dinner in his own room. He says that you will dine alone."

A few minutes later Harry appeared. Face pale, laughter gone from his eyes, he sat down, facing his wife ...

"There are some things I must say to you and it is better that I should say them now at the very beginning so that there an be no misunderstandings between us. You have heard my orders to the servants, I presume?

"Well I intend that they shall be carried out for the rest of our life together. In public I will be to you everything that a most devoted husband should be to his wife. You shall never complain of my conduct in this respect. I will give you courtesy, respect and apparently devotion. But you must expect nothing more from me. When we are alone I do not intend to keep up the miserable pretense, the farce of love and sentiment.
"Our marriage will never be a marriage in anything but in name. I do not love you. I can never love you. I can school myself to be polite to you but that is all. The less we see of one another except in the presence of others, the better."

"But why did you marry me?" the bride asked.

The groomed laughed. "Dear lady, do you really know so little of the world that you have never heard of people being married for their money, or did you imagine that your charms placed you above such a fate? I must tell you the unflattering truth that your money is your only asset in my eyes. I married you because the only person on earth I love is my mother. I want above everything to keep her in comfort. Your father's fortune will enable me to do so. But there is a limit to sacrifice. I cannot condemn myself to the misery of playing the role of adoring lover for the rest of my life."

He added: "After all, at least I am being honest with you. How many men in New York, how many among our own friends have entered their wives rooms on their wedding night with exactly my state of mind but they prefer hypocrisy to the truth. If I am never your lover when we are alone, at least I will not neglect and humiliate you in public. What is more, you will actually gain by marrying me. You will have a wonderful position in society. As my wife, all doors will be open to you.

"If you will try to accustom yourself to the position, and realize from the start that there is no romance and never can be any between us, I believe that we shall get along quite well together. But for God's sake leave me alone. Do not come near me except when we are in public, or you will force me to repeat to you the brutal truth that you are actually repulsive to me ..."

Newport Casino Tennis Club.

Tennis at Newport Casino.

And so began the life of Elizabeth Drexel and Harry Lehr. The bride was crushed by the humiliation her husband passed on to her on her bridal night. She suddenly felt trapped because her mother, to whom she was devoted, so highly disapproved of divorce that anyone who did divorce in her circle was then eternally banned from her company. Furthermore Elizabeth had no outlet, nothing, no one to confide in. His secret was now her secret, although she still had no idea what his secret was except that women were "repulsive" to him.

On signing he was given an allowance of $25,000 a year ($750,000 in today's dollars) and all living, traveling, real estate and additional expenses paid by his wife. Their first summer together they rented a house in Newport where they were feted by all the society queens.

Newport was the most important social location in America at the time. For although New York was the center, Newport was small enough to make the social restrictions apparent to everyone including the aspiring newcomers.

Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island. The mansion on the far right is Miramar, designed by Horace Trumbauer, commissioned by George Elkins Widener in 1911. Mr. Widener and his son went down on the RMS Titanic and never saw the house which was completed in 1915. His widow, Eleanor Widener, later married Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice, and the family occupied the house until 1956 when it was sold for $156,000. That owners family sold the house again at auction a few years ago for $17.5 million. The wood frame house to the left of Miramar was built in 1866 for a New York merchant Charles Anthony. It was sold in 1889 to Ogden Mills who renovated and expanded the house extensively. Next to that is the "Ames Villa" built in 1869 for Boston financier Thomas F. Cushing in the Stick Style and known as "New Lodge." In 1916 the house was sold to Frederick Ames, who with his wife transformed it into its present Classical Revival style. In 1931 Jessie Woolworth Donahue bought it and renamed it "Rock Cliff. The brick mansion known as "Rough Point" on the point was built for Frederick Vanderbilt, a brother of Willie K. Sr., who built Marble House, and Cornelius II, who built The Breakers, and later acquired by James B. Duke, who left it to his daughter Doris, who kept it all her life.

Alva Vanderbilt's Marble House. Completed in 1893-4. After she divorced Willie K. Vanderbilt and married OHP Belmont, she moved to his Belcourt Castle down the avenue, but kept Marble House which she resumed using after Belmont's untimely death in 1908.

Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs' Rosecliff. The house used as Gatsby's in the Robert Redford version of the Scott Fitzgerald's novel. Mrs. Oelrichs was the eldest daughter of a prospector who hit the big time with a share of the Comstock Lode, the greatest North American silver mine ever. Her younger sister Birdie married Alva Vanderbilt's older son, William K., Jr.

Harry Lehr soon became the social arbiter as well as the court jester to all who entered. He was generous with his advice to those who wished to enter (and were, in his mind, eligible). He was generous also to young men and women who wanted to marry outside their social stations, assisting them with advice and mediating between them with the parents to make their unions possible. Everything that Harry Lehr did in these relationships only strengthened his position as an arbiter, and friend to all.

The marriage provided him with the means to live like a rich man but also provided his wife the social connections – which she probably could have cultivated herself with her family background and fortune – that she appreciated. She abided by his rules and eventually found freedom in them – she was free to come and go as she pleased, and the great variety of relationships that he made both in the United States and in Europe seemed to have enhanced her life also.


	Mrs. Henry Lehr (nee Elizabeth Drexel), later Lady Decies; by Giovanni Boldini, 1905.

There was a love affair of hers that emerged during the early years with a man she identified only as Mr. X in her memoir. When her mother died, twelve years after she and Harry married, she made the initial moves to divorce him, but unfortunately Mr. X died shortly thereafter. After Mr. X's death, Elizabeth decided to divorce anyway but Harry's pleading with her not to somehow affected her decision and she remained.

It was, by her account, the way he had explained it on the wedding night. In public he was caring and solicitous, but when they were alone, he was separate. He played the piano, however, and loved playing in the near dark. His music, she recalled, belied the harsh side that she had been exposed to.

By the second decade of their marriage, the couple began spending more time in Paris where Elizabeth acquired a beautiful house in the Seventh. The First World War intruded and Elizabeth became an active volunteer nurse and subsidized an ambulance in her friend Anne Morgan's ambulance corps.

After the war, the couple spent more and more time away from America and Newport. In the mid-1920s Harry, then in his mid-50s fell ill with a brain tumor. His affliction changed everything for him including his ability to amuse. All pretenses of joie de vivre were gone. When his wife made attempts to cheer him up, to draw that old sense of humor out of him, he responded "no no Bessie, La commedia e finita." Those were the last coherent words he ever uttered to her.

After more than one surgery, in the late 1920, he traveled back to Baltimore to Johns-Hopkins for medical care. On the third of January, 1929, three months before his sixtieth birthday, Harry Lehr died in Baltimore.

His wife was thousands of miles away in France at the time, staying with Alva Belmont's daughter Consuelo and her husband Jacques Balsan. After his death, she found his diaries which had always been locked away. In them she found his truth. "'I can never love any woman,' he often said to me. 'Women are actually repulsive to me ...' It had been true."

Lord and Lady Decies after their civil marriage, May 25, 1936.

Elizabeth, Lady Decies in the robes she wore at the coronation of George VI, 1937.

To anyone today, it would be apparent from the beginning that Harry Lehr was gay, in fact what used to be called before the days of liberation, a "screaming queen." In the Gilded Age, his behavior was revealing to many men but the clinical designation of "homosexual" was not known, especially to women who were used to the masculine pose that excluded women from everything but the sex act and domestic activity. The Big Four, those powerful women who adored Harry Lehr, liked him because he shared their interests and took them seriously. Except for what the men in their lives could bring them in the way of material goods, Harry's male contribution was far more interesting and engaging than the macho attitude they had to live with. Harry Lehr knew this. It was, in a very real way, his saving grace, and grace it was. Although somewhere in there it was his sadness too.

Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, despite her protestations in her volume on life with Harry Lehr, seemed to be comfortable accommodating her husband's rules and behavior. Her life was interesting and as it turns out, she was a remarkable social documentarian and writer. Her portraits of that time and the players, describe the world precisely, leaving her a kind of Saint-Simon of her era. In 1936, she remarried to a Lord Decies who was the widower coincidentally, of Vivien, Lady Decies, nee Vivien Gould, daughter of Edith Gould – the lady who introduced Elizabeth Drexel to Harry Lehr, all those years before at the Metropolitan Opera House on that fateful night in 1900.

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Schulenberg's Page

August 27, 2012, 6:57 am

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BUILDING ON GREENWICH AVENUE — 7-23-61.

8/27/12. Today iS Bob Schulenberg's birthday, and to celebrate with him, we're running some of his sketchbook drawings from his first days in New York IN 1961.

Schulenberg grew up in Los Angeles and Fresno and went to UCLA. When he was in his mid-20s he got himself together and made the big jump (always a big one even when we're too young to know it) to move to New York and pursue a career as an illustrator.

In those days, late '50s, early '60s, illustration was hot along with advertising. Creativity in illustration, photography and copywriting were transforming the American market into what was perhaps its most exciting era of the century, and New York was the happening place.


	One of Bob's sketchbooks.

He got himself a job at Ellington & Company Advertising and settled into his first apartment at 16 Gay Street in the Village. Endlessly curious and almost always with sketchbook under arm (or open to draw) everything about the city excited his eye.

The first time we met, in 1966, he had his sketchbook with him, and so it was in all of the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of times we've seen over dinner or coffee or lunch or drinks, no matter where, no matter the time of day.

Schulenberg's sketchbooks were his calendar and his "diary" although when I first met him, they were also his method of the young artist practicing his craft with the pen or pencil. A lot of his social life away from his drawing board, meeting up with friends for coffee or drinks, is recorded in the hundreds of books he's accumulated over the years.

These drawings featured here on this page are from his earliest days in New York. This sketchbook runs from July 14, 1961 to December 13, 1961. This selection is appropriately from this time of year. When you met him, wherever it was, he was often sitting with a cup of coffee, sketchbook open, busy taking it all in and practicing his art on the surrounding environment or the street scene, or the subway.

Conversation at table never really interrupted. A brilliant conversationalist, he also just kept drawing away, taking a quick break for his coffee. or the meal set before him.

The following are delicious examples of his work that all the years later still intrigue and fascinate ...

SIXTH AVENUE AT 46TH STREET — 7-28-61.

BRASSERIE — 7-28-61.

CAROLE AT THE BRASSERIE — 7-28-61.

JULIUS'— 7-28-61.

WASHINGTON SQUARE TREE — 7-29-61.

MR. WAFFLES' ICE CREAM PARLOUR — 8-2-61.

ON 44TH ST. DURING RAIN — 8-3-61.

LADIES IN WASHINGTON SQUARE WITH DOG PATSY — 8-6-61.

"UPSTAIRS AT THE DUPLEX" — 8-6-61.

PLAZA HOTEL "PALM COURT" — 8-7-61.

SAN REMO — 8-8-61.

BRASSERIE — 8-10-61.

SUBWAY — 8-15-61.

MR. WAFFLES ICE CREAM PARLOUR — 8-25-61.

TREVA SILVERMAN.

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No Holds Barred: Lost on me

September 6, 2012, 6:47 am

≫ Next: Schulenberg's Page - Fall 1929

≪ Previous: Schulenberg's Page

By Blair Sabol

It's that time of year again when fashion magazines appear as big as phone books with hundreds of ad pages dedicated to handbags, eyeglasses and name brand items resembling porno spreads.

Nobody even cares about that shock value anymore, as we are so immune to nudity, vulgarity and hardcore merchandising. And speaking of hardcore hard sell, we are about to enter Fashion Week and Fashion Night Out (now celebrated worldwide) when the entire fashion industry ramps it up and over to get us all engaged.

I get it! But truthfully I am of an age (65) and living in a place (Arizona) where unfortunately I am automatically missing this boat. "Fashion" is now officially lost on me. (That may be a good thing.) But I don't think I am alone. Most women my age and a bit younger (obviously we are not "the market" of the moment) are really only interested in "affordable clothing" — a boring but true story.

I understand that "Fashion" is strictly for any rich gal under the age of 40 and preferably from Russia or Brazil (be they "escorts" or millionaires). Clearly they are the ones who can teeter on the double decker "heel-less" platforms and seem to do just fine sausage wrapped into the $8,000 Gucci mini-dresses (even though their thighs are the size of a linebackers). More importantly, they are the ones with all the dough, no shame and no taste to pull the whole look off. And personal taste is what our culture currently lacks.

I don't mind being out of the "High Fashion" loop, but who doesn't enjoy looking at great designs worn with terrific style by personalities who really live it and breathe it? Real "style icons" use to be "masters" in the art of dressing. I remember when we all lived for a "sighting" of Jackie O, Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Nan Kempner, Pat Buckley, CZ Guest, Chessy Rayner. These names and more were the original "Fashion Icons." They all lived the lives and had the clothes.

These were Sondheim's"ladies who lunch ... another day, another 1000 dollars." And we celebrated their classy presentation. They all set the bar. NO matter what our little lots in life, no matter our ages, they captured our interest. Their boat sized low heeled shoes, their modest Gucci bamboo handled bags, their Galanos or Courrèges knee length sheaths. We took note of it all in detail (WWD helped us with its daily "Eye" accounts, and we all once read that paper religiously).

Clockwise from top left: Jackie O; Marella Agnell (in Courrèges); Nan Kempner; Gloria Guinness (with Bill and Babe Paley); Babe Paley.

The designers designed, the "icons" bought, and we merely followed their lead. They had TASTE! Even in the off "bohemian" moment of The Seventies we had Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux to amuse us.

But these Fashion Icons were more than just their clothes. They had delicious stories behind their appearances. There were lovers, and rich men, lost fortunes, greedy, lousy children, murders, and broken hearts. (Compared to today's "fashionistas" who have a series of rehab visits and a few YouTube’d sex tapes to call "history").


Yves Saint Laurent with Betty Catroux and Loulou de la Falaise.

And other than some smart department store salesgirls guiding them, they all dressed for and by themselves. There were no stylists getting six figure incomes telling them what labels to wear. There were less Red Carpets and more street action. These Fashion Icons actually walked the sidewalks. No hidden SUV curbside "drop-offs" for them!

Sure this was a different time. Few of them really worked and most were jetsetting about the world in high style. Nowadays ... everybody works and everyone can jet set themselves anywhere (G Fours or Economy) and we never looked worse.

I keep asking and looking about for today's version of "tastemakers" and Fashion Icons. No one can help me. Yes, we have Lady Gaga and Daphne Guinness. But excuse me ... they are NOT "icons" ... they are "freak shows" and entertainment (Madonna is already passé in that category). I hear anemic votes for Kate Middleton (sweet and simple but no showstopper), Michelle Obama (too hit or miss), Tilda Swinton (original, but maybe too much of an acquired taste). Someone even mentioned Tory Burch as the new Brooke Astor (how or why?).

And then we land face down into The Kardashians (Bruce Jenner included) and belly up with any of those Bravo TV housewives. This is a tragic evolvement in the state of taste. In our current culture there is no one to look to and nothing to dress for. We are leaderless. Much like our politics. I fault the rise of the "star stylists" who dress everyone the same and the designers "branding" themselves out of all originality.

Just cause you can sell belts on Home Shopping and create blazers for a Ford car commercial and you have separate couture and Target/H&M lines, does not make you a creative genius. It makes you RICH! But not brilliant. It's called "Trash for Cash."

Branding on all levels has diluted and killed style. Everyone is a "brand" — the stars, the designers, the stylists, the magazines, the limos, the hairdressers and makeup people, the lawyers, the agents. And everyone looks homogenized. Not even a porn-directed ad can gain you favor. Nothing looks all that novel. Then again many of us have "seen it all." Or so it feels. Even the high end hookers or "escorts" get old and tired and end up looking like a regular Long Island (NOT even a Bravo TV version) housewife. As I said ... you have to look to the South American "girls" to get the real cutting edge. Who can keep up.


	Clockwise from top left: a vest from Scoop, a cashmere sweater from J.Crew, a Galo boot.

	Jane Birkin with her original "Birkin."

This all leaves me and many of my "stylish" New York City gal pals in the dust. I did a poll and most of my NYC friends never look at fashion mags anymore (unless at the manicurist or doctor’s office) and they ignore all of the Fashion Week reports. But make no mistake ... they are not bag ladies. They are still in there pitching visually, and they still like to shop (as sport) and "check it all out."

Most all of them told me they are not buying as much as they used to although every one of them just started to shop this week. They buy "modestly and classically" ... $125 (standard price range) "pieces"; a vest from Scoop, a cashmere sweater or skirt from J.Crew, the high/low hoodie or jacket from Zara, maybe a "sensible interesting" Galo boot, and always a decent walking, if not "running," shoe (no one could give a vote to Louboutin since everyone seems to suffer from heel spurs and Plantar fasciitis).

All of them have kept their their "good stuff" from years ago and some will spring at a few quality vintage stores. Jewelry and bags can even be gotten on "the street”! But again leave it to The South American brigade to spring $31,000 for that hot pink Birkin bag. Now all of my "tasty" New Yorkers insist they are not ready to go gently into style's goodnight of "sad sack."

They want to look and feel good in their own way (Iris Apfel excluded here). But they can't stay current or even care to in today's fashion frenzy. As writer Gay Talese said about his own fashion sense: "People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate YOU are still alive?"

These women agree. My 70-year-old astrologer friend Elizabeth Karaman explained it this way; "Look, we are all dressing to survive and prevail and look decent. We may not have the legs or cash or grand places to go like we once did but we still want to look attractive and we all like the actual diversion of shopping. To say it doesn't matter is dishonest. In New York City you are seen constantly. We all live on the street for better or worse. It all matters."

"A huge change is coming in The Fall. The economy and the election will have a huge effect on people's clothing. Heels and hemlines will really come down much lower ... wait and see."

Every one of these ladies mourns the passing of any real quality "Stylista" (not today's horrid versions called "fashionistas") who had the guts and the glamour in their very own DNA to show us how it is all done. Although designer Zandra Rhodes recently said, "It's not so much about your clothes. You must own your own personality. That and jewelry will conquer anything." Agreed.

Then we have Karl Lagerfeld weighing in with “There is so much nonsense about fashion. People buy clothes because they want to look good. Not for any deep psychological needs."

Then why do so many women look so awful? Many buy clothes that are so age inappropriate to stay desperately "on trend" and what is "on trend"? Looking like Gaga or porn stars or at best "lesbian chic" (a rising understated "classy" visual all their own)? Maybe we should quickly get some "deep psychological needs.”

When I was in New York last June, I kept seeing women at 8 AM walking down the street wearing sleeveless mini length cocktail dresses (baring fleshy upper arms and a "fresh set" of over-the-hill-boobs) with hems too short, heels too high and looking like they were auditioning for a Fox News Anchor position or a weather girl. Is everyone becoming "Girls Gone Wild"? What would Babe Paley say? What happened here?

So in the end I turn to dear Diana Vreeland (don't miss the new documentary on her, "The Eyes Love to Travel") to say it like it is: "Style is everything. It helps you get up in the morning. It helps you get down the stairs. It's a way of life. Without it — you're nobody."

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Schulenberg's Page - Fall 1929

September 17, 2012, 3:10 pm

≫ Next: Part XX of the Ellen Frazer Ordway Collection

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Fall 1929. The news of the collections from Paris.
Illustrations by Bob Schulenberg

... Winter clothes are going to be about the most uncasual you ever saw. Except for those few lucky individuals whose measurements check well against a list of perfect proportions, the women who plan to wear any French clothes, or copies ... are going to have a struggle ...

Patou says we are supposed to look like spindles .... He puts daytime skirts far enough below the knees to get a long-legged look; evening dresses hit the ankles ... touch the floor at the back ... some of the evening wraps trail the ground ... in elegance with hems edged with silver fox.

There are few extremes in the new Molyneux collection. Molyneux skirts are just sufficiently longer than last season’s to cover the in-curve of the calf. Waistlines are placed everywhere; the trickiest dresses have a belt at the normal waistline and another a few inches below.

No one is quite like Schiaparelli. Who else would think of going the whole hog on this high-waistline business, and of putting the leather belts on tweed skirts a few inches below the top? The skirts have no plackets but are run through at the top with an elastic two inches wide.

... Schiaparelli blouses are of heavy crepe de Chine, instead of tricot .... Sometimes the scarf is separate .... The knitted sweaters are grander than usual .... There are some exciting blouses of smock blue toile de soie, made in one with the panties that serve as petticoat and underwear at the same time.

... Something will have to be done about girdles. If skirts lengthen, many will roll their stocks as of yore and discard girdles and belts altogether. It is certain that the slight roll that occurs even around the waists of slim people who wear girdles will never, never do if waistlines are in again.

... Paris mannequins are wearing their hair waved softly back from the face, with clusters of curls, or other softness, either below and behind the ears or extending all the way across the back. I wouldn’t be surprised even if frizzy hair and bangs returned upon us. It wouldn’t happen immediately.

Fashion from the New Yorker, August 1929.

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Part XX of the Ellen Frazer Ordway Collection

October 4, 2012, 7:39 am

≫ Next: Remembering John Galliher

≪ Previous: Schulenberg's Page - Fall 1929

February 1962. The Big Top at the Everglades Club, Palm Beach. Before the club's annual circus party, a children's matinee performance was staged. After the excitement of the trapeze finale, "youngsters, parents, grandparents, and governesses" were served refreshments in the Orange Gardens. Amidst the lion tamer and the dancing pony, Billy Marshall and the Everglades Club orchestra provided the clashing cymbals and drum rolls. Several hours later, club members filled the lakefront grandstands for a repeat performance of Cirque de Everglades Club.

The Center Ring:Palm Beach, September 1961-April 1962
By Augustus Mayhew

With the Newport house shuttered for the winter, Lou and Ellen Ordway returned to Palm Beach. As Mr. Ordway’s health remained a concern, Lou and Ellen spent the season with family and close friends. On the afternoon of 31 December 1961 on El Bravo Way, Orator Woodward hosted an afternoon Twist party. At year’s end, Palm Beachers were still as crazed as the rest of the nation, installing at-home Twist rooms with mirrored walls and dancing-until-dawn in local Twist contests. Early that evening on North Ocean Boulevard, George and Dawn Coleman gave a dinner for friends who would reconverge later at Ta-boo for the annual Coconuts soiree. Down at the Bath & Tennis Club, the New Year’s Eve Mardi Gras masked ball kept several hundred swirling on the dance floor. While at the venerable Everglades Club’s black-tie dinner-dance, 700 members were spellbound by the party’s “Della Robbia motif.”

On the international front, Palm Beach continued as a focus for headlines, however far west of the Iron Curtain, especially since Joseph Kennedy’s stroke on 19 December 1961 prompted increased visits by the First Family. In Cold War developments, “The New Year has dawned in an air of guarded optimism,” read a 1 January 1962 AP headline. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stated, “The main achievement of 1961 was that for most of the planet there was no war.” And, in what may now sound incongruous, the era’s Russian newspapers characterized the USA as “the doomed world of capitalism that will never be able to defend itself,” or at least according to an English translation.

Here are a few more images from Ellen Ordway’s historic photograph collection of Palm Beach’s social menagerie.

25 September 1961
Newport to Greenwich

“We stayed with the Reventlows in Greenwich.”

Pineholm Farm. Court (Kurt) and Peggy Reventlow's house, Greenwich.

Pineholm Farm. A view of the main house, from across the pool.

October 1961
The Greenbrier. White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

"We spent ten days at The Greenbrier."

The Greenbrier. Between 1958 and 1961, the Department of Defense built a more than 100,000-square-foot top-secret nuclear fallout shelter-bunker at The Greenbrier to accommodate Congress, staff, and their families, in case of a missile attack.

The Greenbrier.

The Greenbrier, lobby. Dorothy Draper's colorful interior.

The Greenbrier.

1 November 1961
Palm Beach

"Lulu Balcom's birthday party."

Happy Birthday Lulu! In May 1949, Lucille "Lulu" Parsons married Ronald Balcom at a quiet Palm Beach ceremony where only her daughter Lucille Margaret Vanderbilt and father J. Lester Parsons were present. Fourteen years earlier, Lulu had married explorer and big game hunter George Vanderbilt, the son of Margaret Emerson and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who inherited $20 million during the couple's honeymoon. Their ten-year marriage ended in a Miami divorce.

November 1961
Villa Bel Tramonto

"Angie Ilyinsky brings the kids over for a swim."

Angela Ilyinsky.

Timmy Ilyinsky.

Ann Ilyinsky.

Johnny Duke.

Johnny Duke and December Duke.

David Frazer and Delia Duke.

Randy Frazer, Johnny Duke, and December Duke.

Betty Ordway Dunn and her daughter Cordelia Duke.

"The kids' table" at Villa Bel Tramonto.

Then & Now

Left, Dorothy Dear Metzger Hutton and E. F. Hutton photographed in 1939. Married in 1935, the couple is pictured on the right in 1961.

Left, Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, c. 1940; right, Mme. Balsan on Worth Avenue, 1961.

Left, Dolly O'Brien, c. 1935; right, Laura "Dolly" Hylan Heminway Fleischmann O'Brien Dorelis seen on Worth Avenue, 1961.

2 December 1961
Lunch at the Everglades Club & Dinner at Villa Del Tramonto

"Lucius Ordway and Dorothy Hutton celebrate their birthdays."

Everglades Club, golf terrace dining room. Left, Dr. W. T. Foley, Lou's doctor, joins Ellen Ordway, Verner and Gaggy Reed, and Dorothy Hutton for lunch. Along with Lou Ordway and Joseph Kennedy, the eminent Dr. Foley was a physician for the royal family of Sikkim.

"Dinner at Villa Bel Tramonto."

"The crowd."

"Dorothy Hutton brought a gift."

Gaggy Reed, Ronald Balcom, and Vanderburgh Johnstone. Dr. Foley's back can be seen in the white dinner jacket.

Michael Phipps and Verner Reed.

At table. Chris Dunphy and Edie Huntington have a few words between courses.

Florence Cudahy (Mrs. Vaughan) Spalding and Chris Dunphy. Chicagoans Flo Spalding and Alice Stearns were sisters. Their father Edward Cudahy was in the meat-packing industry, having bought part of the Armour interests and then built it into a competitive interest.

8 December 1961

St. Edward Catholic Church, North County Road. Seated in the back seat, President John F. Kennedy and assistant David Powers, along with Secret Service agents leave the church after attending a weekend service. Rose Kennedy's father John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a longtime Palm Beacher, was one of the founders of St. Edward Catholic Church. Courtesy Cecil W. Stoughton, Official White House Photographs, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

December 1961

December 1961
Everglades Club

Verner Reed.

Gladys "Gaggy" Q. Reed.

December 1961

14-year-old Cordelia Duke on her way to the Junior Assembly at the Bath & Tennis Club.

Christmas 1961

Christmas card. Gertrude Legendre, Medway Plantation.

Christmas card. Chalet Aurora, Klosters. Lulu and Ron Balcom.

New Year's Eve, 1961
The Coconuts, Tahitian Room at Ta-boo

The Coconuts, invitation. 1961.

The Coconuts. Mollie Phipps, Michael Phipps, and Ellen Ordway.

The Coconuts. Loel Guinness, Gloria Guinness, and Milton Holden.

Ellen Ordway, Lou Ordway, and Dorothy Hutton.

Around Palm Beach, 1961

Wall Street scion Bertrand Taylor Jr. and his wife Olive McClure Taylor take a night out away from Hobe Sound with the Obolenskys. Bertrand Taylor's sister was Countess Dorothy di Frasso who died of a heart attack in 1954 aboard a train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Reportedly, she attended a series of parties "popping nitroglycerin pills like popcorn." Actor Clifton Webb discovered the Countess in her roomette "lying on the berth, attired in black-sequined evening gown, full-length mink coat, and a $100,000 diamond necklace."

Paul and Angela Ilyinsky.

Ellen Ordway, Worth Avenue.

February 1962

35th Annual Kiwanis benefit. Palm Beach.

Far left, Lou Ordway, his son-in-law Richard Dunn, and daughter Betty Ordway Dunn, at Villa Bel Tramonto.

"Hobe Sound for lunch …"

Sally Gowen. Her husband, railroad scion James E. Gowen, was president and chairman of the Girard Trust Company, Philadelphia, until 1960 when he retired.

Mary Pierce Withers Runnells. Married to Pullman Company scion Clive Runnells, Mary Runnells spent the winter season needlepointing in Hobe Sound when she wasn't in Lake Forest, Santa Barbara, or Bar Harbor. During the 1970s, author Patrick Dennis (Little Me & Auntie Mame) worked as Mary Runnells' butler in Hobe Sound and Lake Forest. His escapades are chronicled in a biography of Dennis (aka Edward E. Tanner III) titled Uncle Mame published in 2001. In Palm Beach, Patrick Dennis also worked as a butler for Stanton Griffis and Ray Kroc.

27 January 1962

Vita Serena, Clarendon Avenue, Palm Beach. President John F. Kennedy visits with King Saud bin Abdul-Aziz on the loggia at Vita Serena, the South Ocean Boulevard oceanfront estate the king leased from Jean Flagler Matthews for the month during his recovery from an eye operation. "A special area for the women of the household was curtained off and made ready for strictly feminine occupancy according to Moslem custom," reported The Palm Beach Daily News. The king's entourage was housed at The Colony Hotel and the Palm Beach Towers. Courtesy Cecil W. Stoughton, Official White House Photographs-Public Domain, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

8 February 1962

Los Incas, Invitation. The Honorable Stanton Griffis and Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Sanford's dinner for King Saud. Keeping to Moslem tradition, no alcohol was served and there was no smoking during the event.

Mary Sanford's dinner for King Saud competed for headlines with Jayne Mansfield's "night on a tiny coral reef" surrounded by sharks.

Ellen Ordway. Publicity photograph for Good Samaritan Ball.

February 1962

Tiara Ball Committee, 1962. Orange Gardens, Everglades Club.

March 1962
Tiara Ball, Everglades Club

Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Mary Sanford. Tiara Ball, Palm Beach. Marylou, the former Marie Louise Schroeder, and Sonny Whitney were married in the Indian Treaty Room at the El Ranch-O-Tel Motel in Carson City, Nevada following his Nevada divorce from Eleanor Searle. After a financial settlement was negotiated with the 3rd Mrs. Whitney, Marylou and Sonny were re-married in Bel-Air, according to press reports.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lucius P. Ordway. Tiara Ball, Everglades Club.

February 1962
The Circus Party at the Everglades Club

Mollie Williams Frazer with her youngest Master Lucius Ordway Frazer arrive at the Everglades Club with Maureen Kassatly and her son and Master Eddie Kassatly for the afternoon circus performance. Today Ed Kassatly still owns the family's linen-and-lingerie shop, known as the oldest store on Worth Avenue. Kassatly's began in Southampton before opening 89 years ago on Worth Avenue. The Long Island shop closed 25 years ago.

Everglades Club. The lion tamer leads his Palm Beach cats through their routines.

Everglades Club. The dancing pony performs.

Everglades Club. The high-wire walker appears to be accompanied by the orchestra's accordion player.

Everglades Club. The trapeze artists high above the club's parking lot with the royal palm trees.

February 1962
Villa Bel Tramonto

"John and Leslie Ordway come for two weeks …"

John and Leslie Ordway.

Betty Ordway Dunn and her sister-in-law Leslie Ordway.

Richard Dunn takes a look through a telescope as his wife Betty and sister-in-law Leslie Ordway lounge.

March 1962

Isabel Dodge Sloane, obituary.

Isabel Dodge Sloane (1896-1962) and Ellen Glendinning Frazer. Worth Avenue, Palm Beach. c, 1940. Ellen and Isabel were lifelong friends.

April 1962

Mike Phipps' helicopter at the ready for a bird's-eye view of Palm Beach.

The Phipps helicopter at the North County Road Phipps estate.

Villa Bel Tramonto, aerial view, The Ordway manse, looking from the lakefront southeast towards the ocean.

Villa Bel Tramonto. Aerial view, looking north, northwest, c. 1932. A designated local landmark designed by Treanor & Fatio, the Banyan Road lakeside villa was built for Lou Ordway and his first wife Josephine Green Ordway. Courtesy Robert Yarnall Richie Photo Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

From Mike Phipps' helicopter, a view of Villa Bel Tramonto, north and west elevations, from the lakefront looking southeast towards the ocean. Peggy Reventlow's sculpture can be seen between the pool and the lake.

Ellen Ordway's photographs are from the Collection of
Gayle Abrams©.

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Remembering John Galliher

December 28, 2012, 2:54 pm

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≪ Previous: Part XX of the Ellen Frazer Ordway Collection

Friday, December 28, 2012. Cold, but not brutally; dry and the weather man forecasting snow over the weekend.

Ten years ago, a week ago, Johnny Galliher died here in New York “peacefully in his sleep,” according to his death notice in the New York Times. He was eighty-eight, and so now this is the 98th anniversary of his birth.

I ran into a mutual friend, Billy Norwich, a couple days ago and he reminded me of this date, and told me that he’d just re-read the “memoriam” I wrote about John a few days after he died. I’d forgotten about the piece and so I went back to look to see what I had written (and how it had held up) ten years ago.

He was a most unusual person; the likes of which I’d never met before. Although no stranger to the world known as “Society” in the 20th century, he was the kind of character you’d read about in a novel but never the type you’d ever hope or think to meet.

In his world he was an “extra” man, a man of leisure, what some today would refer to – thoroughly inadequately – as a “walker.”

I met him in the 1980s at a dinner in Los Angeles at the house of Billy McCarty-Cooper (see archive). Our mutual friend, Luis Estevez, had told me beforehand that I was going to meet “the chic-est man” I’d ever known. The description intrigued me because I had no idea how you’d define someone as such. What did that mean? What would that be like? What did they talk about? How did they look? You think of women as chic, but not so much in the case of men.

After that heralding description, I was expecting some kind of spectacle of such – chic. In person, he was a sophisticated, worldly looking man, of a certain later age (early 70s), well-groomed and well-dressed although not remarkably, and otherwise courteous, friendly and congenial. Elegant might have been a more apt word to the eye.

We became friends after that dinner, and when I moved back to New York, he’d occasionally invite me to a small lunch or dinner he’d have at his apartment on East 69th Street (and later on 63rd) when he’d gather six or eight friends for a simple meal (cooked himself) and a lot of talk, often amusing.

I soon learned that he’d led a very cosmopolitan life since the 1940s in London, Paris, New York and early on in Los Angeles. He’d met and known the rich and the famous of the world of that era, now many historical names, and he seemed to have made his way not in any profession, but in the business of being a “good man to have around.”

Thinking back on him now, I see that I’d had the privilege of knowing a man who was born into, grew up in, and lived among those privileged classes – what I think of as the “ghee” of the leisure class, and carved out an interesting life for himself.

It was a world of formality: rules, etiquette and pleasure. Anything goes but watch yourself. To its real connoisseurs, it was a talent. John Galliher possessed that talent. He wasn’t known to have a profession. He’d had, over time, a couple of close associations (boyfriends in today’s parlance) and was well provided for at the time, and perhaps later. But he was always his own man, at the center of his world.

However, there was also something of a mystery about him (often explained in terms of the boyfriends) because while he lived well, he wasn’t an “income earner,” and if there were inheritance, it wasn’t notable. He lived somewhat frugally when I knew him, but comfortably. He was often invited because he was good company. Later in his life he spent a few weeks in winter in Gstaad, guest of his friends Bill and Pat Buckley, or in Lyford Cay or Palm Beach, or California with other friends who had houses there.

After he died, he surprised, even shocked many by leaving bequests totalling almost $2 million. He left each of 35 friends – from all walks of life – $25,000 tax-free. Many of those friends were people who could use, indeed, needed that gift. This came as a great shock to many of these friends. The remainder of his estate was divided between City Harvest, God's Love We Deliver and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. What does that tell you?

His small fortune was also a surprise for obvious reasons. The mystery man remained so, even in memory. I concluded that the secret was: he had been a spy, that he’d worked in intelligence in those days after the War and perhaps longer. I'd come to that conclusion because it was surprising what a wide variety of acquaintances he had. They ranged from movie stars and tycoons, to European politicians, dukes, duchesses, to authors, to artists, as well as not a few ordinary working stiffs. He was comfortable with all, and all with him. Because he was, above all, a gentleman.

John Galliher aboard Jacques Sarlie's yacht off Greece, 1965. Courtesy of James H. Douglas.

January 7, 2003 — John Galliher died in his sleep on the Saturday before Christmas at his apartment on East 63rd Street here in New York. He was eighty-eight and had been ailing with pancreatic cancer, a condition he learned about a little less than five months before. He told very few about his condition. He accepted it, put his house in order, even to the point of writing his death notice which appeared a few days later in the New York Times stating that he had "died peacefully."

He was known to his multitude of friends down through the decades, as Johnny, Johnny Galliher (pronounced Gal-yer), or occasionally Johnny G. He was a most unusual man -- a unique combination of characteristics and qualities easily said but rarely so in life -- difficult to define. His old friend of more than fifty years, Tony Hail, the San Francisco interior designer, had put it most succinctly for the many friends who survived him. He was fun to know.

He was exceptionally gentlemanly person, the kind of man who if he didnt have something nice to say (or amusing, which might be more like it with him), he said nothing. Ever. Yet he navigated skillfully, and with pleasure, for more than sixty years through a world where bitchery and malice can be commonplace and lethal. Instead, for him there was often a smile on his face, or if not, then the obvious promise of one.

He was born in Washington, D.C. on May 24, 1914, the second son of five children. Of all the children, only his older brother Joseph survived him. The Gallihers were a prominent family of Anglo extraction. He was handsome, from childhood to manhood. He was not tall -- about five-nine -- but slender, almost slight but sinewy, and with a thick head of curly black hair that turned a white grey in his later year, and bright blue eyes.

By the time he was a teen-ager, the coltishly handsome young man was a favorite of one of Washingtons leading hostesses, Evalyn Walsh McLean, the fabled owner of the Hope Diamond, and her daughter, also named Evalyn. He and young Evalyn often went out together, and if the evening were formal, her mother would often insist that she wear the Hope Diamond. As soon as they were away from the house, young Evalyn would take it off and give to John to put in his pocket. The whole transaction, he recalled seventy years later, made him very nervous. He was firstly worried about possibly losing the legendary rock that was worth a small fortune and secondly, (or maybe even firstly) he was afraid that its reputation for bringing tragedy and loss would affect him too.

After graduation from high school, he took his degree at Lehigh University. He served in Europe during the Second World War as a naval officer with the rank of lieutenant. After the War, he moved to Los Angeles, where he shared a house in Beverly Hills with Diana Barrymore, daughter of John Barrymore and Michael Strange (a nom de plume for Oelrichs).

Evalyn Walsh McLean wearing the Hope.

Diana Barrymore.

By his early twenties, mainly through his early relationships with the McLeans (young Evalyn committed suicide with an overdose in 1946 and the elder Evalyn lost most of her fortune by then), and with Diana Barrymore, Johns path in life was beginning to take direction.

It was on a sidewalk in Beverly Hills, where one day he ran into Lady Mendl, Elsie de Wolfe, whom hed already known. Learning that he was new in town, she asked if there were anyone hed like to meet. He told her he couldnt think of anybody, that hed already met so many. Then he thought of Garbo, already a legend.

That might be difficult, John later recalled Lady Mendl saying.

A few days later, he got a call from Lady Mendl s secretary: Lady Mendl was inviting John for cocktails (as they called it in those days) the following Tuesday at 5:30. He expressed his regrets to the secretary, but he already had a previous engagement on that day. Break it, she said emphatically and sotte voce.

So he did. The following Tuesday at the appointed time, he went over to Lady Mendls Mediterranean villa on Lexington Road behind the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he arrived he found waiting: Lady Mendl, Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo.

Elsie de Wolfe.

Greta Garbo.

His relationship with Garbo, is emblematic of Johns social career. All kinds of people were attracted to his company. He saw her many times after that first meeting, although rarely, if ever, the result of his seeking her out. Garbo, he knew, as did everyone who came in contact with her, was highly unavailable to anyone who had any expectations of her presence, or company.

There was the time when both John and Garbo were guests on producer Sam Spiegels yacht in the Mediterranean in the 1950s. It so happened both he and she were early risers, and the first thing both did was to take a swim before breakfast. Theyd bump into one another leaving their respective cabins for the swim. Only a nod was exchanged, however, and other than that, never a word. Garbo also liked to swim in the nude, something that John blithely ignored for her sake, swimming just far enough ahead of her. When finished both would return to their cabins without uttering a word.

Later at breakfast, however, with everyone present, theyd exchange their first words. Good Morning Miss G. Good Morning Mr. G.

Gilbert and Kitty Miller.

Johnny on the Lido, 1953. Courtesy of Luis Estevez.

Garbos terse and monumental diffidence always made John laugh in recollection. Later in the 1950s hed always see her at Kitty and Gilbert Millers on New Years Eve. The Millers party was the most popular and glamorous New Years event in those days. The Millers -- she was the daughter of investment banker Jules Bache, and he was the famous Broadway producer and theatre manager -- brought out movie stars, society, the artists, the writers and theatre folk. Formal and dressy. Forty or fifty would be invited to dinner, complete with Viennese musicians in uniform playing. After dinner, the chairs and tables would be moved away, a hundred more guests would arrive, the band would play and the night would begin.

Garbo would come. One year, just before midnight, John encountered her just as she was leaving. But where are you going to go? he asked, Its not even midnight.

I think Im going to go to Times Square, she whispered languidly in her legendary Swedish accent, to pick up a sailor.

John, in the recounting, always burst out in a quick laugh. Garbos wit, to make something very simple seem absurd, always amused him. He had a great affinity for just that point of view, often saw it around him, and often had a laugh over it.

In 1948, he went to work in Paris for the Marshall Plan and worked out of (if not for) the Department of Protocol in the American Embassy. He was living a charmed life; it was thus to remain for the rest of his life. He walked with a brisk, unassuming gait, an almost-jaunt, and an almost musical swing to his arms. There was often a smile on his face, and also always the characteristic kindly wrinkles in his brow.

He was already displaying a mature, yet rare talent, the talent for enjoying life. An elegant young man in his mid-thirties, he knew and/or met everybody, from Cocteau and Gertrude Stein to the Windsors, and everybody in between. There were Rothschilds and Mona von Bismarck (Mrs. Harrison Williams), there was Cole Porter and Elsa Maxwell and Noel Coward and Errol Flynn and Rock Hudson. He dined at Marie Laure Noailles. All the world was coming to Paris.


	Fulco Verdura.

	Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan.

	Marie Laure Noailles.

John was entertained and was entertained by Barbara Hutton and her cousin Jimmy Donahue, with Fulco Verdura, with Elsa Schiaparelli, Arturo and Patricia Lopez-Wilshaw, Aly Khan, Rita Hayworth, Daisy Fellowes, Porfirio Rubirosa.

He was very popular with everyone. He had a kind of luminous notoriety for having a great allure, for being highly desirable in many ways. Not only was he charming, handsome and fun to be with, but he also had a great reputation as a lover. Of both sexes. More than a few reveled in the telling of Diana Barrymores famous description of him being well-bred and well everything else.

He lived in Paris for fifteen years in, according to Tony Hail, a very attractively decorated apartment on the rue de Burgoyne, which he acquired through the assistance of Donald Bloomingdale of the New York department store family. He entertained often at parties populated by the rich, the celebrated, the powerful and occasionally the notorious.

Paris in those days was, he recalled to me several years ago, the best place in the world to be, the most exciting, creative era. Everyone wanted to go there. There were many different sectors of Paris life that one could see. We can safely assume he saw them all.

In the following years, his life took on the pattern of early jetsetters, traveling frequently between Paris, London and New York, with trips to the resorts, to yachts on the Mediterranean, to Mexico, to Jamaica. At one point, he kept the apartment in Paris, a house in London and an apartment in New York. He worked for a time with Hubert de Givenchy at the beginning of his design career. Givenchy did not speak English and John spoke French beautifully. With his linguistic and social talents he served as a liaison for the rising designer.

By his forties, he was a man of the world, a man about town, to be found at the best places, on the best yachts, present at all the famous parties that seemed even more fabulous after the regeneration of Europe from the ashes of war. He recalled that the celebrated de Bestigui party in Venice in the 1950s is legendary only because of the spectacular entrance of the costumes that made the party.

It was a lifetime of being a very popular, highly sought after, highly enigmatic individual. He was a mystery to most who knew him, all his life and even with those whod know him for decades. He wasnt so much secretive as he was inclined to be discreet in a way that is almost unknown in todays world. There are many who make the claim but few who actually accommodate the title. John was one of the very few.

John in costume. The Sheik in dark glasses, at the "Adam and Eve Fiesta" given by Betty and Luis Estevez in Acapulco, 1959. From left to right: Francois Arnal, Countess Marina Cicogna, Romy Aguirre Naon, JG, and Luis Estevez. Courtesy of Luis Estevez.

"The Sheik" with Fran Stark, Acapulco, 1959. Courtesy of Luis Estevez.

That discretion was reflected in his dress, his décor and his social behavior. He was always a gent in his attitude and bearing toward others, always unfailingly courteous and kindly toward everybody. This rare quality is even rarer in the circles John traveled in most of the time. And because he lived such a long life, he had seen many rise from often humble beginnings right up to the royal tastes they acquired along with the fortunes they accumulated or married into. Hed also seen many fall from grace and, with his incisive sensitivity, he often sympathized.

He did not divulge or break confidences, and he had many to keep. One might learn how he felt about someone or something only by observing his reaction carefully, if he were to laugh, or lower his chin and turn his face away with a wave of the hand a very characteristic action.

He was also not one to reveal or express judgment about the private behavior of others. All of that was very tiresome and disagreeable to him. On the other hand, there was a moment in his Paris days right after the War, when, for reasons of security he shared with his superiors his knowledge of an affair the wife of a very important American general was having with a high ranking married Frenchman.

After fifteen years of living in Paris, he bought a house in London in Chester Square in the 1960s. It is said that in the following years, he bought and re-did several houses, making a tidy sum from the business. It was also known that he was not a wealthy man, or from a wealthy family, and that he had no apparent employment. This only added to his mystery.

While the haute monde and the demimondaine were always in proximity in John Gallihers world, there were also the worlds of the arts, of the theatre and show business (he loved music and was a very close friend of Lena Horne and Bobby Short, to name only two among many).


	Pat Buckley.

About twenty years ago, having given up his Paris apartment, he also sold his properties in London and consolidated his life to a small but pleasantly appointed apartment on East 69th Street off Madison Avenue. Until his premature death of AIDS in 1991, he often visited his friend Billy McCarty-Cooper in California. He continued to travel frequently to visit friends in Europe or the Mediterranean. In his later years he made annual trips to see his friend Sybilla Clark in Lyford Cay, or Pat and William Buckley in Gstaad, Beatrix Patino on the Algarve.

Up until a few years ago hed travel to London two or three times a year to see his friends and to see his tailor, and less occasionally on to Paris to see old friends. Although no one thought of him as a rich man, he was well known to be rich in friends, some of whom bestowed their riches on him. When Billy McCarty-Cooper knew he was dying he settled an annuity of $50,000 a year on John for the rest of his life, in thanks for Johns generous friendship at the beginning of McCartys adult life.

It was a very orderly life, well-managed and always tempered by a natural self-control. If he had drunk much earlier in life, (which I find hard to imagine), by his sixties, he was very temperate. He loved telling the story of being invited to dinner at the house of Edie Goetz (pronounced Gets) in Holmby Hills. Mrs. Goetz, the eldest daughter of Louis B. Mayer, was a true princess of Hollywood and known (and rightfully so) for her very elegant and grand dinner parties well-populated with glamorous movie stars, surrounded by a splendid art collection.

Seated on Mrs. Goetz right, as he told the story, he tasted his red wine and mused to his hostess: Very good, what is it? To which his hostess matter-of-factly replied, Baccarat."

Edie Goetz in the library of her Holmby Hills mansion with its Billy Haines designed library.

In New York, as the years accumulated, he always remained the ideal extra man. He kept up with the times, always aware of the changing tastes, cognizant of the changing crowds and attitudes. He did not suffer fools gladly and did not accommodate rudeness. Instead he avoided both whenever possible, and when not, he removed himself as quickly as possible.

Like a lot of people who grow older successfully, he was always interested in the company and the fashions of younger people; so much so that he was never at loss for the company of new people who wanted to be with him, for he continued to fascinate in the same way he had all his life.

His life always seemed as organized as it was unique. He made everything look effortless including the natural burden of growing old. It must have at times taken great effort on the part of a man who lived, like his friend and mentor Cole Porter, what appeared to be the life of a hedonist.

John Galliher and Nan Kempner in 2002. Photo: ©Patrick McMullan.

He loved to play cards, and it was at the card table that a different side of Johnny Galliher came out. For this man whod made an art of living a life unfettered by temperament hated to lose. Though the games were most often played for money, a penny a point, a dollar a point, and it was never a question of stakes. He simply hated losing and could get very angry, openly at his partner if he thought theyd played an especially bad hand. His temper at losing was so out of character that friends easily sloughed it off with a laugh, albeit sometimes feigned. For they always remained cowed by it.

In these last few years, he was often seen around New York, very often invited, very often attending theatre, movies, opera, ballet. Three times a week he walked the thirty or so blocks from his apartment on East 63rd Street (acquired in the mid 1990s) to the pool in the Asphalt Green on York and 92nd Street, have an hours swim, and walk back home. To the world, it seemed that although age had come to John Galliher, the levity of youth remained his. So it came as a surprise to those who knew him, to learn that just before the Christmas holiday, he had been gravely ill and had died.

He lived fairly comfortably, with style, although modestly, the last years of his life. Many will be surprised to learn that he left an estate of more than $1.5 million.

He went to sleep that Saturday night in his apartment and he never woke up. Hed avoided hospitalization throughout his brief illness and although he accepted very few invitations in the last few weeks, three days before his death, he did make a lunch at La Grenouille of a young close friend hed acquired in the last few years.

He loved life and it loved him back with grace, many good friends and many good times.

↧

Here's to Judy

January 3, 2013, 6:01 am

≫ Next: Chapter XXII: Resort Life, September 1962 – May 1963

≪ Previous: Remembering John Galliher

Among my souvenirs, a photo of me and Judy Green arriving at a dinner during the holiday season
in 1997.

Thursday, January 3, 2013. Very cold in New York, just like the weatherman “predicted.”

Our revival this past Monday of the In Memoriam piece I wrote about John Galliher ten years ago, and this holiday time of year reminded us of another great friend to many in New York, Judy Green -- who died a little more than a year before John on September 14, 2001, in her Park Avenue apartment, three days after 9/11.

It’s been more than a decade and I very often think of her. When walking up Park Avenue past 62nd Street, I always look up at her windows, imagining that she is still there and getting ready for her evening – because she always had something going on, something to do, people to see.

I’d met her several years before, and we briefly had a time when she got the idea in her head that I should be her husband. She would often introduce me to people as her husband. It was ironic, and funny, and not something either one of us would have been suited for, but she liked the idea at the time. We were, in some ways, kindred spirits. She was also one of those personalities that once she’d befriended you, you became part of her life. And she liked having fun, a good time, an interesting time.

There are many people who knew her, who were friendly with her even since childhood, who still think of that energy, that laughter’, and especially at this time of year, those parties she gave so gladly.

She was big on Christmas. Although she was Jewish by birth, she tended to openly turn away from her Jewish-ness. It was a mindset that admired the WASP-ish sensibilities, even when she thought them tiresome or dull. The Christmas season was her cup of tea.

In the early '80s, after her husband died, having sold her property in Westchester, she moved into town fulltime in the big apartment on Park Avenue. It was ideal for her gatherings. At Christmastime, Robert Isabell, then the sensational party designer, did the place up in Ultimate Christmasland. With wreathes and ribbons and silver and gold; pine boughs, holly, mistletoe, the tree, the lights, and then the guests – maybe 150 – with the hors d’oeuvres provided by Vincent Minuto of Hampton Domestics.

People loved these parties because it was a mob scene, a cacophony of the New York social ladder from society matrons to her bookie. There was always a fire in the fireplace and Christmas songs to go with the American songbook (Sinatra) on the sound system. One year, the pine boughs caught fire from a spark from the fireplace, and the fire department evacuated the entire party from the building. A half hour later, fire out, everyone returned and the party started up again. That was Judy Green. Never say never when it comes to a banquet.

The following is the article I wrote about Judy, three days after her death ...

First published September 17, 2001— Judy Green died last Friday morning 8/14/01 about 3 a.m. in her Park Avenue apartment where she lived and entertained at countless dinners, parties and receptions for the past twenty years. Her friend Ann Downey was by her side. She had had a ten-month battle with pancreatic and liver cancer. It is not clear to me when she learned the finality of her affliction but I know that for several months up until very recently, possibly even a few hours or even a few minutes before her death, she thought she'd triumph and defeat the disease. I know that from things I've heard from the very few who'd been in contact with her and because I knew her. She was a fighter. To the bitter end. She was a competitive woman by nature, deeply competitive, and life was in many ways a race, a race to stay in. Death was a losing. An admission of losing.

I met her only eight years ago when I came back to New York from living in Los Angeles. I'd been writing social-historical pieces for Quest. One day at a luncheon of some mutual friends, Dominick Dunne told me that Judy Green wanted to meet me and would I mind if she called me. The whole idea of someone wanting to meet me and asking if they could call was entirely flattering.

I'd heard of her, although only in passing. In the '60s and '70s, Judy and Bill Green had a big country estate in Mount Kisco where they often entertained and were part of a then dazzling set that included Frank and Barbara Sinatra, Ann and Morton Downey, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf, Rosalind Russell and Freddie Brisson, Claudette Colbert, Pamela and Leland Hayward, among others. I knew this only from the pages of W, and from the columns of Liz Smith and Suzy. I knew also that she'd written a couple of novels that created quite a stir amongst the same social set. From the outside looking in, it appeared to be a very glamorous life among the rich, the glitterati and the literati.

Coincidentally, a few days after Dominick had told me about Judy, I went to a luncheon given by Heather Cohane, who then owned Quest, at a now defunct restaurant on East 80th Street. Judy Green was among the guests. I introduced myself. She was quite curious to see this man who'd she'd been reading but had never met or seen. For some reason she imagined me to be different in appearance and age. Again, all very flattering.

At her invitation, I called a couple days later and we made a date to meet for drinks one late afternoon at her apartment on Park and 62nd. I'd never had the experience of someone wanting to meet me because they'd liked what I'd written. Although, of course, I had experienced the opposite more than once. Or twice. So it was a very intriguing, especially since I had no idea what her personality was like or what our conversation would be like.

Tete-a-tete with writer Anthony-Haden Guest at one of her parties.

The day before our meeting I happened to mention to Gerald Clarke, the Capote and Judy Garland biographer, that I was going to meet Judy Green. He said: "Oh you'll have fun. She loves to give parties and she'll invite you to her parties." In New York, the idea of going to parties (up until this past week -- 9/11), the possibility of meeting new and interesting people is, for many of us, part of what city life is all about.

The Green apartment, decorated by her great friend Ann Downey, was large, plush and glamorously ornamented, and welcoming, with a large wood-paneled living room, a boldly rich red "library" (with a red Rothko over the sofa, a Warhol of Judy over the bar commode, and a Dufy on the opposite wall). It was a real New York apartment in a way that can only exist in New York. The kind where you'd imagine the rich and the famous pass through.

And they had. The tables on either side of the sofa were crowded with silver-framed photographs of the glamorous and rich and famous friends. Men, women and children. Dressed for summer, dressed for grand evenings; on yachts, by the sea, under palm trees. Sinatra relaxing poolside with his wife. Princess Grace with Judy's late husband Bill Green; Truman Capote in his Studio 54 garb, the society columnist Suzy, looking very sportif, under a cabana, adjusting an earring, looking very much like a movie star, Andy Warhol waving, Rosalind Russell laughing, Irving Lazar beaming. The photographs of a golden life, a life of leisure. At least on first sight.

Judy and I sat and talked that afternoon for about three hours. We talked about the people we knew in common. We talked about books, authors we liked, books we hadn't read. She was full of information, details about New Yorkers, Hollywood people, actors, authors, artists. I liked her right away. Her conversation had an "insider's" quality; she was privy to the other side, and often the underside, of the lives so many of the rich and famous who were only familiar to me as "names." The stuff that gets categorized (initially anyway) as gossip. To a writer, (or to me anyway), stories, anecdotes for sake of insight or for sake of titillation about the rich and the famous are irresistibly compelling. Especially if the teller is well informed.

That and my endless curiosity, combined with her welcoming personality, created an instant bond between us.

She was a small woman, probably no more than five-four. Blonde at this age, a brunette earlier on. Perpetually tanned (from frequent trips to Palm Beach in the wintertime and Europe and the Hamptons in the summer). She often wore red, or black. She was not a fashion maven, and although she had the perfunctory fur coats and accessories, and always looked "turned out," she cared little about it. She had by then been a widow, young, for fourteen years. Mother of a daughter Christina (now married to Lloyd Gerry) and a son Nicholas. She'd had a sparkling, if not brilliant career as a novelist. Irving Lazar was her first agent and Bob Gottlieb was her editor.

She was born and brought up in New York, on Central Park West, daughter of a wealthy businessman. From an early age she moved in the social circles of the Our Crowd families, as well as tycoons of publishing and show business. She was a very pretty girl. Author/historian Barbara Goldsmith recalled meeting Judy when she was seventeen, "at a Christmas ball Mrs. Arthur Lehman gave for her grandchildren the Buttenweiser, Loeb, Bernhard kids. She was wearing a lemon yellow dress and she was so beautiful, with those cat's eyes and cameo face (before the sun, before Bill Green, before books and articles and people like Swifty)."

She was very proud of and duly impressed by the fact that she was related, on her mother's side, to Dorothy Fields, the great Broadway lyricist. Judy, too, was very facile with words, and loved to, and often did, whip up a witty and clever lyric or poem for a friend or an occasion.

When she was in her late 20s, she married a businessman named Bill Green, a man almost twice her age, and who had a previous marriage. Green was, as I said, a very close friend of Sinatra's, as well as Edgar Bronfman, the Seagrams heir, with whom he had close business connections. By this time Judy had already published her first novel and embarked on her literary-social career. The combination of friends that the two brought to the marriage provided an energetic, peripatetic and rich social life, that characterized the marriage. In his late sixties, Bill Green died suddenly of congestive heart failure, having been stricken while they were staying with Claudette Colbert at her house in Barbados.

Christmas at Chez Green 2000.

That's DPC surveying the crowd.

The dessert table.

Bill Green's death left Judy a rich and independent woman. She wrote three more books and became a popular hostess on the New York scene. As bright and well-read as she was, she had a tireless interest in social life. She loved the camaraderie. She loved the variety and changeability of city life. She loved the rich and the glamorous. She loved the nightlife. She also loved presiding over the festivities, Auntie Mame-like in her role.

She was not a quiet, behind the scenes kind of hostess. She loved music although she could never sing on key and she loved stirring things up to something resembling a near-frenzy of excitement. The effect, however, was near-Hollywood movie version of a New York party, where the world Wall Street, Broadway, Hollywood, and publishing got together with a few other types, such as bookies and very well kept mistresses. Her rooms were full of laughter, music, frequent entertainment, gabbing, gossiping and the noise of people having a good time.


	Judy at Restaurant Daniel in October, 2000.

	Judy with DPC, and her Yorkshire Terrier, Lulu, 1998.

A graduate of Vassar, she had many of the qualities associated with New York girls of her generation. She was worldly and sophisticated. From Herman Wouk (Marjorie Morningstar) to Mary McCarthy (The Group), she moved easily among all kinds of New Yorkers of privilege and connections, with no authority but a warmth with which she insinuated herself into many people's lives. She loved life.

Many friends were acquired by many, through Judy.

She loved people, especially creative people, or brilliant people, or powerful people. She loved theatre people and movie people. She read their books, saw their shows, their movies. When you got to know her, you got to know someone who could be bossy at times, or possessive, or even petulant, especially if she thought she was missing out on something. She had an intelligence as "sharp as a knife," as one friend put it. "And like a sharp knife, she could cut too."

Yet she was magnanimous and generous to her friends with her assets, and quick to share. A friend in sudden financial straits could call her anytime and a check for five or ten thousand would be waiting with her doorman within the hour, no questions asked and no time limit on the loan. If she thought you needed something, she wouldn't wait to be asked, but offered instead. One famous authoress once borrowed several thousand dollars from her, and shortly thereafter fell out with her. Riffs with Judy could happen. However, the woman never spoke to her again, and Judy was never repaid. Her only regret was the sad loss of friendship.

She was very energetic. A late night party, even with a lot of drinking going on, and she could do her share, didn't stop her from being up the following morning by seven or eight at the very latest. She read everything all the periodicals, all the newspapers, all the gossip columns, and all the latest bestsellers. She remembered everything that passed through her eyes and ears and never forgot. An inveterate sports fan, she loved betting on the football games, the big tournaments, the horses, the gaming tables. Her limit, which she rarely approached, was always ten thousand. Like many women of her means and energy, she never turned down an opportunity to travel and saw much of the world many times.

The sportswoman at Joe and Joan Cullman's fishing camp in Canada, 1998.

It was a big personality with lots of laughter and lots of wit. Not unusually, it could also be a very willful personality, at times prone to the temptations of envy or self-centered interests that often seem to come with the territory of being bright, talented, rich and a woman, in what was still basically a man's world. She could have married again after Bill Green's death, but she preferred the independence. She preferred being able to make her own decisions financially. She preferred being able to pick up the check and share the wealth. Her large apartment was often home away from home to friends in from Europe or other parts of the country.

Last November (2000) she suddenly fell ill with a mysterious pain that was too much to bear. All kinds of tests discovered tumors. Whatever she was told, she chose to tell almost none of her myriad friends and acquaintances that she was suffering, and possibly very ill. The single picture of Judy in the red dress was taken at the last party she gave in her apartment last December 2000. She'd given two Christmas parties last year: one for a couple dozen friends that included dinner and then another for about two hundred fifty. The big party especially was vintage Judy. A wide array of New York turned out (as seen in NYSD 12/00) to meet and greet and see their hostess. Very few knew anything about what she was facing; and all her great fears remained covered by her smile and her laughter.

A couple of weeks later she started her treatments. The whole process was a terrifying one for her although few saw her experiencing it, as indeed many never knew, until her death, that she was ill. She chose instead to withdraw from the world. Phone calls were not returned, invitations were turned down without explanation.

Friends were confounded and concerned, but to no avail. Stories went around that she was very ill. The stories angered her. That, to her, suggested defeat. She was adamant. She was determined to "beat it." Her condition worsened over the following months. Then she found a doctor who gave her a special experimental treatment which had produced positive results for others. She took it, and by last summer it looked like she was making almost miraculous progress.


	July crossing Madison Avenue on August 2, 2001.

By August, she was convinced that she was on the road to recovery. For the first time in months she began to see certain friends for lunch or for dinner. Everyone, who knew of her battle, was amazed at her resilience. She bought a house in Bridgehampton. Then she went down to her friend Ann Downey's house in Palm Beach to rest and continue her treatments. She called me for the first time in months to tell me her good news. We made plans to see each other when she returned to New York after Labor Day.

However, within days, her condition suddenly reversed itself. It was there in Palm Beach that she collapsed. She was brought back up to New York a couple of weeks ago, and checked into a hospital. A few days later she returned to her apartment. Despite the agony, she remained defiantly steadfast. And then on Thursday, she ran out of time; she left us.

Responding to an email I'd written to Barbara Goldsmith about Judy, she wrote back what so many of her friends must be thinking about her now:

Ever since I received your Email I've been thinking of that song:

I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days
I thought would never end
... but I always thought that I'd see you
one more time again.

I won't.
We won't.

↧

Chapter XXII: Resort Life, September 1962 – May 1963

January 4, 2013, 6:36 am

≫ Next: A Temple for the Arts

≪ Previous: Here's to Judy

February 1963. LIFE. Lilly Pulitzer's shift from socialite to a celebrated fashion designer was captured by a LIFE magazine story that declared "Almost single- handedly Lilly Pulitzer has created a dress fad that is sweeping the country — a design she calls the "Lilly." She made it originally for herself just to keep cool and comfortable in."

Palm Beach: The Barefoot Tycoon & Mike and Molly Phipps put up a new house
By Augustus Mayhew

September 1962
Marineland, Florida

Driving back to Palm Beach, Lou and Ellen visit Marineland. At the time, the attraction was still primarily owned by their friend C. V. "Sonny" Whitney.

Marineland, Florida. First conceived as "Marine Studios" in 1938 as an open-air oceanarium to film marine life by founders, CV "Sonny" Whitney, Douglas Burden, Sherman Pratt, and Ilya Tolstoy, it was later called Marineland. The tourist attraction and marine lab is located in North Florida, immediately south of St. Augustine.

The porpoise entertains for lunch.

In 1974 the University of Florida opened the experimental Whitney Marine Laboratory on property adjacent to Marineland that today has lost much of its original allure.

October 1962
Palm Beach

" Visit with the Balcoms …"

Lulu Balcom.

Lulu Balcom's house on Everglades Island.

"Le Petite Season is on …"

"Dinner on Banyan Road"

Lulu Balcom and George Coleman.

Ron Balcom, Chris Dunphy, and Lulu Balcom.

Coconut Grove
Richard and Betty Dunn's house, 3800 Matheson Drive

"Introducing Elizabeth Dunn …" Cordelia Duke, Josephine Duke, Liz Dunn, and December Duke.

John Duke with Leslie.

Josephine Duke with Jasmine.

December Duke and friend.

December Duke teaches an old dog a new trick.

29 October 1962

Lou And Ellen Ordway to Columbia Presbyterian, New York.

"Lou spends 31 days at Presbyterian Hospital having an operation on his lung. On Wednesday November 30thm we fly back to PB."

November 1962
Palm Beach

Lou and Ellen Ordway serve as honorary chairmen of the 36th annual Kiwanis benefit.

December 1962

"Hunter Marston and Tom Evans come for lunch…"

"Duke clan gathering …" Cordelia Drexel Biddle Duke Robertson and her grandchildren converge at Cable Beach.

31 December 1962
Coconuts at Ta-boo

Lou Ordway and Ellen Ordway.

Lou Ordway, Ellen Ordway, and Jock McLean.

January 1963

Forence "Flo" and Earl E. T. Smith. In 1962 Mr. Smith wrote The Fourth Floor: An Account of the Castro Communist Revolution, a chronicle of his role as US ambassador to Cuba. Flo Smith died in 1965.

"We helicopter to Seminole…"

Gaggy Reed at Seminole Golf Club.

January 1963

Pat Coogan and her mother Leslie Ordway.

Leslie Ordway's first husband makes the news.

January 1963

Then & Now

Elizabeth Altemus, 1937 as Mrs. John H. Whitney & 1962 as Mrs. Cloyce Tippett.

January 1963

Richard Dunn and Vernon (Moose) Taylor.

"Mrs. Ann Taylor arrives from Denver to visit the children." Right, Betty Ordway Dunn.

Ann Taylor.

Gloria Ordway.

February 1963

"LIFE magazine did a story on Lily Pulitzer …"

Lilly Pulitzer with her daughters Minnie and Liza.

March 1963

A letter from "The Duchess and Edward …"

Binks Bingham.

Lou Ordway and Bea Lillie.

Polly Howe comes for a visit.

Villa Bel Tramonto.

Jane Sanford Panza. Sister of Laddie Sanford and Gertrude LeGendre, Jane Sanford Panza was married to an Italian diplomat.

Lou and Ellen Ordway.

April 1963

"Grover Loening flies in to play a little golf with us and Ellen Gerry …"

June 1963

"What is so nice as a day in June. We go to see the new house Mike and Molly Phipps are building in Palm Beach and then we fly up to their ranch."

Lou Ordway and Molly Phipps. John Volk designed the Phipps' new house on the family's remaining parcel that extended from North County Road to North Lake Way.

Lou Ordway and Mike Phipps at the construction site.

Mike and Molly Phipps' new house under construction between North County Road and North Lake Way.

Mike and Molly Phipps' house, under construction on North County Road, Palm Beach.

The Phipps Old Westbury Ranch, near Stuart, Martin County, north of Palm Beach.

Lou Ordway with Mike and Molly Phipps at the Old Westbury Ranch where the Phipps' former Palm Beach guest house designed by Volk became the ranch's main house.

Phipps Old Westbury Ranch, Martin County.

Phipps Old Westbury Ranch. "Even the cows are interested in us…"

Ellen Ordway's photographs are from the Collection of
Gayle Abrams©.

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↧

A Temple for the Arts

January 14, 2013, 6:43 am

≫ Next: Palm Beach - 1937

≪ Previous: Chapter XXII: Resort Life, September 1962 – May 1963

5th green, Kebo Valley Club, Bar Harbor, c. 1915.

Summer Society in Bar Harbor
by Brad Emerson

Summer Society needs its amusements, and Gilded Age Bar Harbor was no exception. Golf came first, as it often does. With the founding of the Kebo Valley Club in 1888, Bar Harbor was in the vanguard of the newly popular sport in America. The new club, with six holes designed by H.C. Leeds, was stated to be "cultivation of athletic sports and furnishing innocent amusement for the public for reasonable compensation."

Or at least that segment of the public listed in a new publication called The Social Register, started only two years earlier. With this, the transformation of Bar Harbor from hotel resort to fashionable summer colony had begun in earnest, and Society was off and swinging, literally.

First Kebo Valley Clubhouse, designed by Wilson Eyre.

The new clubhouse was designed by the Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre in a suitably picturesque style — the marble splendors of Newport were not for Bar Harbor yet. The separation of hotel visitors and the new cottage society, in their large and elaborate villas, was well underway, and by June 1890, The New York Times reported:


	Horse show at Kebo Valley.

“Kebo Valley aims to lead in things social, and is certainly in a way a sort of focus, though its claim cannot be said to be generally acknowledged yet. The transient people do not take kindly to it, as it tends to take away from the prestige of social affairs in the village. Nor are the cottage people by any means unanimous in its favor. It is for one thing, a bit away from the centre of things ...”

Whatever aversion the summer colony had to traveling a mile from town soon abated, and in addition to golf, Kebo offered tennis, hosted Bar Harbor’s early horse shows, and contained a theater suitable for dances and performances, including the amateur theatricals and tableaux so loved by Society of a simpler time.

The club lawns and verandas also served an all important function as a place to be seen in the afternoon, just as the Swimming Club on the West Street shore provided a morning promenade as the members of the colony swam to music from the Boston Symphony Players.

In 1899, the clubhouse at Kebo burned. A new clubhouse was built, but lacked the performance space of the old, and by 1905 a few leaders of the summer community decided that the time had come to build for the Arts the same quality of facility as those already provided for the Amusements Yachting, Golf, Tennis and Alcohol.

Society on afternoon Parade at Second Kebo Valley Clubhouse (Maine Historic Preservation Commission).

No longer considered too far from town, a site for the Arts Building was secured on Eagle Lake Road, at the very edge of one of the Kebo Valley Club’s putting green, which would double as an outdoor amphitheater.

Five prominent members of the summer colony stepped forward with funds Mrs. Henry Dimock, sister of W.C. Whitney, George W. Vanderbilt, George B. Dorr, who would become a founder also of Acadia National Park, Fifth Avenue Hotel heir Henry Lane Eno, and Mrs. Robert Abbe, wife of the pioneer radiologist.

Mrs. Henry Dimock.

George W. Vanderbilt.

In addition to his support of the Building of Arts, George B. Dorr was the founder of Acadia National Park.

Their architect was Guy Lowell, a fashionable country house architect who also designed the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. With the inevitable logic of a volunteer committee, it was decided that a Greek temple under the pine trees would provided the most appropriate setting for the high culture they envisioned.

This temple was built not of stone, but stucco over wood, “finished to represent Parian marble," and the red Venetian tile roof was supported by “the largest wooden columns ever turned in Maine.” Copies of the Parthenon Friezes, imported from Paris, were mounted on the facade. Inside, the walls and ceiling of the stage adapted the principles of the sounding boards of the great German concert halls, and the natural lighting was provided “from the top after the manner of the ancient Greek shrines.”

Building of Arts, Bar Harbor, ca. 1910 (Jesup Memorial Library).

Building of Arts, Bar Harbor, 1915 (Bar Harbor Historical Society).

Arriving for a performance at the Building of Arts (Maine Historic Preservation Commission).

A golden proscenium curtain of elaborately embroidered English damask, specially woven for the building was donated by Mrs. John Inness Kane and George Vanderbilt. The building immediately attracted national attention, with Owen Wister writing an article for Century, and a large spread in The Architectural Review.

The opening concert on June 13, 1907 featured Emma Eames, then one of the world’s leading lyric sopranos. She was followed over the years by many others of the world’s great the violinists Kreisler, Zimbalist and Kneisel, singers Alma Gluck and Roger de Bruyn, pianists Paderewski, Schelling, and Iturbe, conductors Damrosch and Stowkowski, and monologists Ruth Draper and Cornelia Otis Skinner. Acting troupes such as the Washington Square Players and The Theatre Workshop performed Bar Harbor seasons, as did local stock companies like the Surry Players, sponsored by Mrs. Ethelbert Nevin, whose numbers included a young actor named Henry Fonda.

The Auditorium at the Building of Arts, with the 'Golden Curtain' donated by Mrs. John Inness Kane and George Vanderbilt (Maine Historic Preservation Commission).

The Kneisel Quartet.

A New York Times photo of the Washington Square Players at the Building of Arts.

High Culture was not the only venue at the Building of Arts, and flower shows, including the Bar Harbor Sweet Pea competition were held there, as well as well as ‘serious’ lectures and art exhibits.

And of course, Society has always loved dress up, and in the early years many amateur tableaux were featured, including a 1909 Greek pageant arranged by the ever artistic Mrs. Albert Clifford Barney, featuring members of the summer colony, including assorted Endicotts, Schieffelins, Gurnees, de Kovens, Pinchots and Welds, traipsing about the grounds in diaphanous garb, acting the story of the love of Egeria for the mortal Strephon. At another, in 1915, members of society recreated favorite portraits.

Greek Festival held at the Building of Arts in Bar Harbor in 1920 (Bar Harbor Historical Society).

The young widow Mrs. John Jacob Astor was a Reynolds beauty in picture hat, a Miss Maull balanced Mrs. Astor as a Gainsborough, Miss Mary Canfield and John J. Emery, Jr. were a Watteau Shepard and Shepardess, Mrs. Ernest Schelling reenacted a Polish Farm scene with costumes she’d brought from Poland, and the family proud Albert Eugene Gallatin portrayed his own grandfather in a Gilbert Stuart Portrait. It was an innocent era.

In those days before Tanglewood and the Pops, the Boston Symphony lay idle in the summer, and a number of the musicians, as the Boston Symphony Players, would spend the summer in Bar Harbor, playing at the Swimming Club pool during the morning swim, and popular tunes at parties and dances in the evenings (This franchise was to receive serious competition when a young bandleader named Meyer Davis broke onto the Bar Harbor scene and his eventually became the orchestra of choice from Bar Harbor to Palm Beach.)

But in the meantime, golf and art continued to merge at the edge of the Kebo Greens, and the Symphony Players provided background music for a ladies putting tournament.

The Building of Arts and Kebo Golf Course, Frenchman's Bay and Porcupine Islands in the distance (Maine Historic Preservation Commission).

For all the glamour of its featured performers, perhaps the most extraordinary performance at the Building of Arts there was not seen by the public. In 1916, Meyer Davis was playing of an evening at the fashionable Malvern Hotel. In her memoirs, Mrs. Davis recounts watching the orchestra through a glass door behind the ballroom stage when she suddenly witnessed a most extraordinary little scene. A compact man, dapper in a pearl gray suit, entered the back of the room, and rather than taking a seat, as she expected, he suddenly, unseen by the others focused on the band, broke into a little gavotte. Entranced, she made inquiries, and to her astonishment, the man proved to be the great dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

The Malvern Hotel, where Nijinsky danced as the Meyer Davis orchestra played.

Nijinsky out of character and in Till Eulenspiegel.

Unable to go to Europe that summer as World War I raged on, Serge Diaghelev sent Nijinsky to spend the summer at the Malvern, where it was hoped the fresh air and relative isolation of Bar Harbor would inspire the dancer to complete his new (and as fate had it, last) ballet, “Till Eulenspiegel.” Rest and isolation were relative concepts with Nijinsky and his wife, after one evening’s round of argument, took a car and drove aimlessly for two hours in the middle of the night, returning at dawn.

There is no record of a public performance by Nijinsky in Bar Harbor that summer, the Building of Arts became his rehearsal space, and there the ballet was choreographed for its opening in New York that winter. He was joined there by set and costume designer Robert Edmond Jones and by Paul Magriel, who wrote that "invitations to the great houses of Bar Harbor showered upon me like gold,” in the hope that the great dancer could be lured along with him, but Nijinsky rarely went out in society, rehearsing by day and working on the designs by evening.

Robert Edmond Jones's costume design for Till Eulenspeigel.

Robert Edmond Jones's set for Till Eulenspiegel.

A fashion critic ponders Till Eulenspiegel's impact on fashion (Reading Eagle).

The Great Depression came, and the Building of Arts soldiered on for awhile. New donors were found, impresario Timothee Adamowski continued to book important performers, but the clock was running out. The Surry Players performed Aristophanes’ ‘The Birds’ in the outdoor amphitheater in July of 1935.

The coverage in the New York Times the next day was far more concerned with the quality of the audience than of the play. Notably absent from the impressive listing of names Mrs. Reginald de Koven, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Mrs. J. West Roosevelt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mrs. Gerrish Milliken, Mrs. Shepard Fabbri, and others, were husbands, who may have been back at the office in New York, or more likely, on their yachts or the golf course next to the amphitheater, where one assumes that the occasional cry of ‘fore’ punctuated the Greek chorus.

The New York Times gives more coverage to the audience than to the play.

In 1941, as America entered World War II, an exhibit was held at the Building of Arts for benefit of the American British Art Center, featuring Cecil Beaton’s then unpublished series “London’s Honorable Scars,” recent London war posters, and 25 sketches by J.M.W Turner. By the next season, Bar Harbor gas rationing had made remote Bar Harbor difficult of access, and the colony was a virtual ghost town, with many cottages shuttered, as some had been since the Depression.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had been among those who had quietly made up the Building of Arts deficit for years, and he had now taken stronger action, as the structure was about to be sold by the town for tax liens. Through his agent, Serenus Rodick, whose ancestors had built the largest of Bar Harbor’s early hotels, Rockefeller quietly purchased the building for $500, hoping to secure its future as a center for culture on the island.

President Taft NOT attending a performance at the Building of Arts.

By 1944, Rockefeller felt that adequate support was not forthcoming, and sold the building. It was acquired by Consuella de Sides, a pupil of Baba Ram Dass, who intended to make it once again a center of performance. In October 1947, the great forest fire that swept Bar Harbor in that driest of seasons swept across the Kebo Greens, destroying both the clubhouse and the Building of Arts. Bar Harbor’s temple for the high arts had lasted but forty years.

Kebo Valley Club survives, its golf course the eighth oldest in the country. The ‘Elbow Hole,” where President Taft carded 27 in the shadow of the Building of Arts, where he was not attending a performance, is now the 17th, and nearby, at the edge of the woods are the broad steps of the Building of Arts, leading nowhere.

↧

Palm Beach - 1937

March 7, 2013, 6:03 am

≫ Next: Chapter XXIII: Resort Life, July 1963-August 1963

≪ Previous: A Temple for the Arts

January 1937. A youthful Roderick "Rory" Cameron photographed lounging by the pool at Blythedunes where Harrison and Mona Williams were entertaining houseguests from Newport, New York, London, and Paris. Heir to a shipping fortune, in later life Rory Cameron became a prolific author, photographer, and designer — one of the 20th century's most celebrated aesthetes, if not "the man with perfect taste" — perhaps best-known for Villa La Fiorentina, once considered among the great houses of the world.

Palm Beach 1937
By Augustus Mayhew

“Happy bedlam” wrote social columnist Nancy Randolph in describing the 1937 Palm Beach season at the same time pointing out to her Palm Beach Daily News readers of the prevailing conservative undercurrent: “The trouble is this colony remembers the resort’s supreme Silliest Seasons of 1928 and 1929 when the stratosphere was the limit and the Eddie F. Huttons imported circuses and Broadway plays.” A decade later, the smart set appeared content with dinner party place cards rather than no-holds-barred costumed bacchanals. By then, the Huttons were divorced and Battle Creek’s cereal heiress turned ambassador’s wife was ensconced in Joseph Stalin’s Russia.

February 1937. Jane Sanford – Mario Pansa, newspaper wedding announcement.

At that moment, Palm Beach was awhirl with fetes for Jane Sanford’s marriage to Italian diplomat Mario Pansa at Villa Marina. As well, the cottage colony was atwitter about the news surrounding the Wallis Simpson-Duke of Windsor affair since Mrs. Simpson had filed for divorce during the final months of 1936.

On 20 January 1937 The New York Times reported Rory Cameron had arrived in Palm Beach from London as a house guest of Harrison and Mona Williams. By then, Cameron’s serial-widowed multi-titled Australian mother Enid Lindeman Cameron Cavendish was married to her third husband Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness and 2nd Baron Furness. A fortnight earlier, Sir Cecil Beaton had checked into Blythedunes, photographing Mona Williams for his upcoming exhibit at the Carroll Carstairs gallery in New York.

Down South Ocean Boulevard, Wallis Simpson’s old school friend Ellen Yuille Blair, whose sister Burks was Mrs. Carroll Carstairs, and her family were spending the season at their new ocean-to-lake estate designed by Treanor & Fatio with interior decor by Ruby Ross Woods and her new assistant Billy Baldwin. At Concha Marina, America’s most famous horsewoman Isabel Dodge Sloane was entertaining Eleanor and Maurice Fatio while preparing for a large dinner celebrating the Sanford-Pansa nuptials.

In Midtown at Casa dei Leoni, Ellen Glendinning Ordway’s mother Elizabeth Glendinning was hosting her first season of open houses without her husband Philadelphia financier Col. Robert Glendinning who died the previous spring. In March 1935, in order to spare the Everglades Club from a public foreclosure sale, Glendinning became one of the few shareholders of the Everglades Protective Syndicate that owned the club and its extensive real estate holdings until a decade later when the club became completely member-owned.

Here are some of Ellen Glendinning Ordway’s snapshots of the 1937 Palm Beach season at Bythedunes, Concha Marina, Casa dei Leoni, and the Blairs’ new villa.

1 January 1937

1 January 1937. Palm Beach Daily News, headline. "Love and friendship are worth a kingdom," stated the Duke of Windsor, as the ex-king took time to "greet a chimney sweep and pet a pink pig" on New Year's Eve.

Blythedunes
515 North County Road

Blythedunes, 1930s aerial. Photo courtesy Robert Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

A year before Paris Singer and Addison Mizner arrived in Palm Beach and popularized the Everglades Club’s ecclesiastical Spanish design, Dun & Bradstreet scion Robert Dun Douglass retained architect H. Hastings Mundy to design Blythedunes, a Tuscan-style stucco house on North Ocean Boulevard located north of Wells Road and south of the Palm Beach Country Club.

Although Alice and Robert Douglass’ U-shaped house had few decorative elements, its substantial size gave it comparable standing with the Phipps family’s Heamaw and Villa Artemis, the North End’s only other considerable oceanfront houses built by and designed by Vizcaya’s architect F. Burrall Hoffman.

Blythedunes, 1917. Views of the original entrance patio when it was owned by Robert and Alice Douglass.

Approached from North Ocean Boulevard when it ran in front of the house, the main entrance to the house was placed on the south side, reached by a flight of stairs leading to a wrought-iron gate that opened onto a central patio. The living and dining rooms were parallel to the ocean allowing spectacular views while opening onto the open courtyard. The north wing included the kitchen and service areas, enlarged in 1922 by architect Marion Sims Wyeth.

In April 1930 Robert Dunn Douglass sold Blythedunes for $350,000 to Harrison and Mona Williams. While they looked at houses, the Williamses took a seasonal rental further north up the ocean at La Guerida, the old Rodman Wanamaker place that Joe and Rose Kennedy bought in 1933. In New York, Williams and his second wife Margaret Edmona“Mona” Travis Strader Schlesinger Bush Williams, later Countess von Bismarck the Kentucky Countess, were ensconced at 1130 Fifth Avenue. When they were not aboard their yacht Warrior, they were at their Long Island estate, Paris townhouse, or at Il Fortino, their villa on Capri.

The popular New York-Palm Beach Treanor & Fatio architectural firm was immediately retained by the couple to draw up the plans to enlarge and renovate Blythedunes. Syrie Maugham was called in to refresh the interior. Until the house was finished in January 1931, Harrison and Mona continued to stay at La Guerida when they were in Palm Beach.

Blythedunes, entrance.

Although North Ocean Boulevard was closed following the Hurricane of 1928 and Bythedunes was now approached from North County Road, the new plans kept the original gated entrance through the patio. But rather than keeping the original Tuscan farmhouse ambiance, the architect introduced a grander scale, transforming the old living room into a reception hall, and abandoned the Tuscan motif, preferring a more modern 1930s British Colonial style.

Further additions included an expansive new southern wing with a 38-foot by 28-foot dining room, a 28-foot by 50-foot drawing room, a new loggia, pool, and guest suites. The resulting 28-room house set on five acres made for one of Palm Beach’s largest estates.

Blythedunes, pool.

In March 1936 Harrison Williams bought The Towers, the Mizner-designed estate adjacent to the north of Blythedunes from the William Wood estate. Mr. Wood, the “woolen king,” had committed suicide. Then, Williams sold it to Atwater Kent. According to various stories, during the late 1940s the Williamses invited newlyweds Charles and Jayne Larkin Wrightsman to stay with them while they looked for houses; nothing they saw measured up to Blythedunes.

In December 1947, the Wrightsmans bought Blythedunes for $170,000. This began the final chapter for the house. In 1985 Jayne Wrightsman sold Blythedunes to Leslie Wexner for $10 million. Within days, Wexner demolished it.

Harrison Williams, the chairman of Blythedunes, photographed in the tennis pavilion.

By the time the enigmatic Harrison Charles Williams (1873-1953) married the much-younger Mona Strader Schlesinger Bush in 1926, the Ohio-born utilities kingpin's various pyramidal investment holdings had combined assets of more than $2.8 billion, controlling as much as one-sixth of the nation's electric and power companies. Having survived the stock market's 1929 downward spiral, Williams wasn't pinched until the passage of the Public Utilities Holding Act in 1935 limiting his ownership to below the prescribed 10 percent.

However low-profile his corporate holdings, Williams and his wife Mona, "the best dressed woman in the world," traveled aboard their over-sized steam yacht the Warrior, making for a noticeable arrival at their every port-of-call. But, as too often the case, Williams lost a protracted multi-million judgment in 1952 and was convicted of having looted his companies since 1927. While his conviction was reversed on appeal due to the statute of limitations, his estate made a nominal settlement that still allowed his widow generous funds to keep her lifestyle afloat.

Mona Williams, at the tennis pavilion.

Mona Williams photographed with her puppy in the garden at Blythedunes.

Mona Williams at work on her needlepoint

Mona Williams takes a break from her needlepoint.

Mona Williams standing in the garden at Blythedunes.

After World War II, Mona Williams' interest in fashion waned, "In summer I'm usually in shorts and an old shirt; when its colder, I put on an old pair of trousers," she told a reporter.

Golf and tennis enthusiast Louise Iselin and Mona Williams at Blythedunes.

The daughter of Ernest Iselin, Louise Iselin was heir to the vast Iselin investment banking, railroad, coal, and steel fortune.

George Kamir. Visiting from Paris, Kamir and Pauline Munn Doyle won the annual wheelchair race at the Everglades Club.

"Marion Tiffany would speak to no one. She was enthralled in this book, actually titled "The Case of the Lucky Legs." Marion Tiffany was a Newport Tiffany, not of the New York shop or art-glass Tiffanys. She was the great-granddaughter of Oliver Hazard Perry and granddaughter of sugar king Theodore Havemeyer; her grandmother Isabella Perry Tiffany was August Belmont's cousin. Marion Tiffany's father Perry Tiffany had married Marie Havemeyer in 1893; they divorced in 1902.

"Marion Tiffany is persuaded to swim." Marion Tiffany paddling around the pool at Blythedunes. At the time, her brother Belmont Tiffany was married to Annie Cameron, Rory Cameron's aunt.

Rory Cameron. Cameron's grandfather Canadian-born Sir Roderick William Cameron founded the R. W. Cameron shipping line; his father Roderick McLeod Cameron died the year after he was born. After the war, Cameron and his mother bought Villa Fiorentina in the South of France and began the arduous work of restoring and renovating it, creating an iconic architectural landmark. Ever since, the result has been praised by architectural and style magazines, and several Internet blogs, The Devoted Classicist among them, celebrated for its incomparable taste and innovative approach to décor. In 1969, Suzy, the renowned investigative journalist, reported Cameron and his mother Lady Kenmare sold their 23-acre Cote d'Azur estate La Fiorentina for $2 million to Harding Lawrence, president of Braniff, and his wife ad exec Mary Wells who brought Billy Baldwin in to give it some added flourish.

Rory Cameron wakes up from a nap around the pool at Blythedunes.

Rory Cameron checks over his camera. Cameron's photographs were featured in several of his travel books. Educated at French, English, Swiss, Egyptian, and German schools, among Cameron's books: The Golden Riviera, My Travel's History, Equator Farm, Shadows from India: An Architectural Album, The Golden Haze: Captain Cook in the South Pacific, Shells, Time of the Mango Flowers, Viceroyalties of the West: The Spanish Empire in Latin America, and Australia: History and Horizons.

Concha Marina
Jungle Road at South Ocean Boulevard

In 1921 architect Addison Mizner had designed and built Concha Marina for himself. The following season New York broker George Sloane and his wife Detroit auto heiress Isabel Dodge Sloane bought it from him.

Concha Marina, pool.

Isabel Dodge Sloane.

Marka Truesdale Loening. Following her divorce from Grover Loening, she married Felix du Pont Jr.

Winifred "Winnie" Dodge Seyburn holding a cigarette and one of her sister Isabel's six-week-old "prize puppies."

Winifred "Peggy" Seyburn, the daugher of Winifred and niece of Isabel. Following her divorce from Ed McIlvain, she married George Cheston. Peggy Cheston was the subject of 11.8.10: New York Social Diary.

Winifred Dodge Seyburn.

Larry Waterbury (behind the puff of smoke).

Maurice Fatio & Isabel Dodge Sloane at the bar, Concha Marina.

Dinner at Concha Marina. Eleanor Fatio, Isabel Dodge Sloane, Maurice Fatio, and Ed McIlvain. The following year, Mr. McIlvain married Isabel Sloane's niece Peggy Seyburn.

31 January 1937

"Italy stands with Hitler and Germany," read the 31 January 1937 headline.

Ellen & Wolcott Blair's villa
South Ocean Boulevard
Treanor & Fatio, architect. Ruby Ross Woods and Billy Baldwin, interior decoration

Ellen Yuille Blair & Wolcott Blair on the terrace.

Ellen Blair having a relaxed thoughtful moment.

Wolcott Blair at the pool. Behind him, two islands he donated as preserves.

Villa Blair, looking east towards the pool loggia.

Villa Blair. Looking up from the pool area towards the main house.

Villa Blair, living room. Ruby Ross Woods and her assistant Billy Baldwin are credited with the interior decor.

Villa Blair, living room.

Villa Blair.

Ellen Blair sunning and ready for a close-up.

Villa Blair, a view to the west.

Villa Blair, a view across the pool to the west.

Villa Blair. Watson Blair, Josephine Ordway, the first Mrs. Lucius P. Ordway, Wolcott Blair, and Ellen Blair.

Casa dei Leoni
450 Worth Avenue

Elizabeth Glendinning.

Viola "Ollie" Carstairs. The widow of Daniel H. Carstairs, she and her husband had commissioned Addison Mizner to design their Palm Beach house at 260 North Ocean Boulevard in 1923, located just a few blocks north of the Warden House, built for their Philadelphia friend William Gray Warden.

Libby Marston Marvel. In 1936 Elizabeth Jennie Marston, Hunter Marston's daughter, married Robert Marvel, son of Josiah Marvel of Wilmington.

Morris Legendre. At the time, Morris Legendre operated a chain of movie theaters in North Carolina, Florida, and South Carolina headquartered in Summerville S. C. In 1938, Legendre married Nancy Newbold whose sister Janet "the most beautiful woman in New York" was Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart and the former Mrs. Allan A. Ryan Jr.

Mrs. Edward Browning.

Ollie Carstairs, Tom Dickson, Kitty Dickson, and Elizabeth Glendinning.

Ollie Carstairs.

Edward "Teddy" Browning, of Philadelphia, Newport, & Bar Harbor.

Hunter Marston. When not in New York, Watch Hill, or visiting Palm Beach, the Hunter Marstons were on Jupiter Island. An international banker and General Foods director, Marston was a founder of the Dixie Cup Company.

Gulf Stream Golf Club
Gulf Stream

'The great modern bridge …" Looking north towards Manalapan, crossing the then Boynton Bridge, now called the Boynton Inlet, linking Manalapan with Ocean Ridge and Gulf Stream.

"Isabel after golf on the clubhouse porch." Isabel Dodge Sloane at the Gulf Stream Golf Club.

Mrs. James Noyes Wallace at the Gulf Stream Golf Club. One of the earliest of the New York-Southampton set to build a house a Gulf Stream, the Wallaces' Mediterranean-styled estate located south of the club was designed by Marion Sims Wyeth.

Palm Beach-1937

Newell Tilton & Eddie McIlvain photographed at Tilton's Wine & Spirit Shop, 337 Worth Avenue. The wine shop's tasting bar opened onto Via Mizner and later became known as the popular Alley Bar. Mr. McIlvain, secretary of the Everglades Club in 1934, married Peggy Seyburn in 1938.

Wearing the latest frock and white gloves, Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway photographed strolling on fashionable Worth Avenue.

"Prize Night at The Patio." Isabel Dodge Sloane, Peggy Seyburn, and Ellen Glendinning Frazer make the scene at The Patio nightclub on North County Road.

Isabel Dodge Sloane & Ellen Glendinning Frazer. Worth Avenue, January 1937.

Louise Warburton sunning at the Palm Beach Swimming Club. In 1931 C. Egerton Warburton, grandson of John Wanamaker, married actress Louise Garnett, nee Marie Louise Hatch. Mr. Warburton's first wife Elizabeth Peltz married his cousin Capt. John Wanamaker. By 1939, Louise and Egerton were in divorce court. But before the divorce was finalized, Louise committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.

The Warburton-Wanamaker marital woes, "a family affair," made national news.

Fred Perry-Ellsworth Vines exhibition three-set tennis match was staged at the Everglades Club.

Mary Munn & Frances Munn. The Munn sisters in Palm Beach. The following year, Frances became Mrs. George F. Baker; a decade later, Mary was styled as Countess of Bessborough following her marriage to Viscount Eric Duncannon.

Pauline Munn Doyle and her father Charlie Munn. On 1 February 1937 at the Palm Beach County courthouse, Mrs. Doyle filed for divorce, claiming desertion. Two years later, Pauline Munn died in Paris of a "short illness."

Dennie Boardman and Vivian Dixon, of "Palm Beach, Boston, & Gotham."

February 1937. Jane Sanford – Mario Pansa, newspaper wedding announcement.

3 February 1937. Jane Sanford and Italian diplomat Mario Pansa were married at Villa Marina. Mr. Pansa accidentally drowned in 1946.

4 February 1937.

1 April 1937. The 1937 Season comes to a close with the headline "Duke of Windsor plans a simple wedding" buried beneath "Il Duce ready to aid Franco, Defies Russia."

1 April 1937. In keeping with the 1930s subdued manner, "Duke of Windsor lives in the Fashion of a Hermit."

Palm Beach – 1937. A final look.

Palm Beach – 1937. The view from Casa dei Leoni looking southeast across the basin towards the Everglades Club golf course.

Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway's photographs are courtesy of the Lucius Ordway Frazer Collection©.

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↧

Chapter XXIII: Resort Life, July 1963-August 1963

March 22, 2013, 7:32 am

≫ Next: Chapter XXIV: Resort Life, October 1963 – March 1964

≪ Previous: Palm Beach - 1937

August 1963. Katharine "Kit" Ordway and her brother Lucius P. Ordway wait for the plane that will take Lou and Ellen back to Newport after a long weekend visit at Kit's Bridgehampton house. Seldom photographed, Kit Ordway was second only to the Rockefeller family in her philanthropic concerns for conservation efforts, becoming one of The Nature Conservancy's earliest and most generous supporters.

Finishing Touches: Newport & Bridgehampton
By Augustus Mayhew

Lou Ordway and his sister Katharine Ordway grew up together on St. Paul’s mansion row atop Summit Avenue. Their shared memories inspired scenarios for neighbor F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories and novels. The weekend reunion would be the Ordways’ last visit before Lou returned to Palm Beach for what became his final season. Also, some views of Newport’s summer of ‘63 when local swells attempted to acquire the estate next to Hammersmith Farm as a Summer White House for President and Mrs. Kennedy. Ever gracious, JFK did not accept the proposal, saying the family spent so little time in Newport for such a great expense. Nonetheless, the Kennedys proceeded with a deposit to lease a Newport house for the following summer, never realized due to the tragic events of November 1963.

I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came. — President John F. Kennedy, Remarks at the America’s Cup Dinner, The Breakers, Newport. 14 September 1962.

Milestones

May 1963. "A Letter from Cairo." Bokara Legendre and her mother Gertrude Legendre.

Dorothy Hutton. Although never possessed with the larger-than-life character of Marjorie Post, E. F. Hutton's second wife, Dorothy Hutton made significant charitable contributions following Mr. Hutton's death in July 1962.

8 May 1963. "My great friend." Ann du Pont. Obituary.

9 May 1963. Ann du Pont. Obituary.

11 July 1963. Jay Cooke. Obituary. Ellen Ordway's brother-in-law Jay Cooke died.

Monmouth House. Somerset, England. "Lesly and John Ordway report from Monmouth House."

July 1963
Newport

"1 July 1963. We arrive in Newport."

Newport. The Cliff Walk from Marble House to Barclay Square where Lou and Ellen Ordway's oceanfront cottage was located.

Newport. Aerial panorama.

Verner & Gaggy Reed's pool house. "Back to the old swimming hole."

"Jimmy Van Alen comes for coffee." Gaggy Reed, Lou Ordway, and Jimmy Van Alen.

A classic car show? No, it's the Newport Country Club parking lot during the 1963 Men's Invitational Golf Foursome.

Peggy Toland and Jonsie Toland.

Ned McLean and Buddie Palmer.

Mollie McLean, the former Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, and Edward T. Bedford "Buddy" Davie.

Ned McLean and Ellen Ordway.

Reggie Boardman.

Dickie Reventlow.

12-18 August 1963
Annual Invitation Tennis Tournament, Newport Casino

Arthur Krock (1909-1974). An influential Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist for many years, Arthur Krock's column "In the Nation" was a must-read. His wife Martha Granger Blair was a Washington society columnist. After retiring from the NYT editorial board in 1966, Mr. Krock wrote Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line. The extensive Arthur Krock Papers can be found at Princeton University's Mudd Manuscript Library.

Candy Van Alen.

Jimmy Van Alen.

Gaggy Reed.

Leslie Bogert Crawford and card sharp John Crawford. In 1957, Mr. Crawford won all five national team titles in contract bridge.

Frank Taylor and Johnny Crawford.

Dorothy Hutton. " Now Ellen, don't take my picture." "Oh well!"

August 1963
Bridgehampton

"Lou visits his sister Katharine in Bridgehampton …"

Lou Ordway and Katharine "Kit" Ordway.

Lou Ordway and Kit Ordway walk around Kit's house. The Umbrella House was designed in 1959 "with charm and playfulness" by Alexander Knox as the architect's own year-round Bridgehampton house. Associated with the firm LaFarge, Knox & Murphy, Knox designed the 1,800 square-foot "transparent" keyhole-shaped house with a distinctive twelve-sided glass pavilion topped by a unique umbrella-shaped roof divided into pleated triangular sections. Described as a "modernist transparent tent" in a 14 June 1959 feature in the NYT, the pavilion's roof was composed of Duraply, a wood utilized in boatbuilding and was topped with a plastic finial-like skylight.

Umbrella House. The 12-sided glass pavilion.

Umbrella House. Glass pavilion, detail.

Inside the multi-sided pavilion, Kit and Lou Ordway.

"Cousins Jimmie and Dottie Mills pay a call …"

Lou Ordway and Dorothy "Dottie" Ordway Mills. The daughter of Samuel G. Ordway, Dottie and Jimmy Mills were married in 1938 and lived in NYC and Bridgehampton.

Charles James "Jimmy" Mills (1913-1986).

Lou Ordway and Dorothy Ordway Mills.

"The Mills Brothers." Samuel Ordway Mills and George Partridge Mills.

Kit Ordway. However Midwest their origins, Lou and Katharine both left modernist legacies: Lou and his brother donated the Lucius Ordway Arts Building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at Florida Southern College; Katharine's substantial Modern art collection makes up the Katharine Ordway Art Collection at Yale University.

Kit Ordway. A noted ecologist and philanthropist, longtime Weston resident Katharine Ordway established the Goodhill Foundation in 1960. Ordway's contributions are said to have protected more than 119 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide. The Ordway Prairie Preserve System includes more than 30,000 acres of prairies in several Midwestern states.

The dining alcove, located in the breezeway between the glass pavilion and the bedrooms, featured a horseshoe-shaped kitchen and was framed by sliding-glass walls that opened onto the patio and terrace.

Lou Ordway in the glass pavilion.

Glass pavilion, fireplace. The iron cylinder fireplace was encased in an outer steel shell, set-in a marble base and topped with a marble disk.

The Glass Pavilion. The "transparent tent" was protected by bamboo fencing and interior bamboo blinds.

The Umbrella House. Bridgehampton.

Lucius "Lou" Ordway and Katharine "Kit" Ordway. East Hampton Airport. Good-bye.

Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway's photographs are courtesy of the Lucius Ordway Frazer Collection©.

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Chapter XXIV: Resort Life, October 1963 – March 1964

April 19, 2013, 6:57 am

≫ Next: Chapter XXV: Resort Life, March-April 1964

≪ Previous: Chapter XXIII: Resort Life, July 1963-August 1963

Stephen "Stevie" Hopkins Hensel's paintings and Peggy Reventlow's sculptures were shown at the Palm Beach Galleries on Worth Avenue. With his work already in museum and private collections, Stevie Hensel had held his first one-man show in March 1956 at the Worth Avenue Gallery, presented by Mrs. Duggett Benson and Mrs. Archibald Rayner. Countess Reventlow and Hensel's works were described as "elegant and strikingly individualistic."

Chapter XXIV: Resort Life, October 1963 – March 1964
Palm Beach: A Death in the Family
By Augustus Mayhew

Before we say good-bye to Lou Ordway, here is a look back to a welcome for a new puppy, a birthday dinner, a round of golf, Christmas at home with family, and New Year's Eve at Ta-boó with friends. Here is a brief glimpse at the time when Ellen Ordway lost the love of her life and the nation lost a president, those tragic unexplainable days in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy's assassination changed the world.

October 1963
Palm Beach

"Introducing Miss Pamela Ordway."

"A message from Paris …" Ellen's friend Ludmila Vlasto, directrice generale of the Théâtre Bruyére from 1954 to 1970.

October 1963

"Ron and Lulu Balcom joins us in a visit to Mike and Molly Phipps's new house and Nicky and Bunny du Pont's new house on the ocean …"

450 North County Road, front entrance. Mike and Molly Phipps' new house, under construction.

Mike Phipps, Lou Ordway, and Ron Balcom.

450 North County Road, south elevation.

977 North Ocean Boulevard, west elevation, entrance facing North Ocean Boulevard. Nick and Bunny du Pont's new house. John Volk, architect; Valerian Rybar, interior décor.

977 North Ocean Boulevard. Lulu Balcom, Lou Ordway, & Ron Balcom.

October 1963
Naples

"Lou and I with the Dunns and a few Dukes join Rippie and Jan Frazer for the annual Naples gala, Swamp Buggy Races and Fiesta."

"Our Palm Beach to Naples plane …"

An aerial view of Naples before landing.

The Duke-Dunn spectators await the gala parade of swamp buggies. While today's Naples shares an ambience of sophistication much like Palm Beach, back then the annual Swamp Buggy Festival held at the beginning of hunting season in the town's" Mile O' Mud" was a popular event.

The Naples annual Swamp Buggy Parade still packs the grandstands, a tradition that began in 1949. Lower left. Miss Swamp Buggy who was treated to a mud bath in the "deepest muckiest part of the Mile O'Mud."

"We fly back to Palm Beach before the races finish …"

November 1963
Palm Beach

Good Samaritan Hospital benefit, newspaper article featuring committee members.

November 1963
Villa Bel Tramonto - Palm Beach

"Lulu Balcom's birthday dinner …"

Chris Dunphy and Dawn Coleman warm up to Pamela.

Left to right, George Coleman, Lulu Balcom, Lou Ordway, Dawn Coleman, Ron Balcom, & Chris Dunphy.

"Happy Birthday Lulu!"

November 1963

"Verner Z. Reed arrives back in Palm Beach …"

22 November 1963

The Palm Beach Times, newspaper headline. "President Kennedy Assassinated."

"The President is Assassinated as Dallas Multitude Hails Him. Suspect Pulled Screaming From Theatre; Find Rifle."

23 November 1963

Miami Herald, newspaper headline. "Kennedy Dead: Pro-Castro Subject is Seized; Johnson Sworn as President."

Monday, 2 December 1963, 12:30 p.m.
Palm Beach Par Three Golf Course

"Lou Ordway's birthday party invitation …"

Nancy Johnstone and Lou Ordway arrive at the golf club; closed for Lou's birthday party.

Palm Beach Par Three Golf Club, 2345 South Ocean Boulevard.

The luncheon tent was set up next to the golf clubhouse.

George Coleman, Lorelle McCarver Hearst, and Ellen Ordway. The second Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr., divorced in 1948, writer Lorelle Hearst bought a house in the North End of Palm Beach in 1963. For many years, Hearst was a columnist for the Palm Beach Daily News.

Lou Ordway and Linda Page Iglehart. In 1947 ten-goal poloist Stewart Iglehart and Linda Page were married at Iglehart's oceanfront villa La Centinela in Gulf Stream designed by Treanor & Fatio.

Durie Shevlin.

Durie Shevlin and Ambassador Stanton Griffis. From 1947 until 1952, Griffis served as US Ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Argentina, and Spain. In 1969, Griffis donated one-half interest of his Palm Beach house at 231 El Vedado to Cornell University. Griffis died in 1974, the year following his brief marriage to Elizabeth Blakemore. Although there was a pre-nup, according to court documents, Griffis' widow became involved for several years in "novel and difficult" protracted litigation with his son Nixon Griffis over "destroyed codicils." In 1986, with the estate settled, Ambassador Griffis' widow married his former assistant Jay Rutherfurd.

Dorothy Hurt Meacham Eyre Price, Diana "Dysie" Marion Wing Davie, and Robert "Bob" Wickser. Part of the Southampton-Palm Beach set, Dorothy Price's twin sister Margaret "Peggy" was married to Ellen Ordway's first husband Persifor Frazer III. Dysie Davie's mother was married to Air Marshal Reginald Marix, travel connoisseur Nigel Marix's father. Mr. Wickser was a prominent poloist.

Lou and Ellen Ordway.

Florence Cudahy Spaulding and E. T. Bedford "Buddy" Davie. Sportsman Buddy Davie was named for his grandfather Standard Oil director Edward T. Bedford. Chicago heiress Florence Spaulding bought Casa dei Leoni in 1945 from Ellen Ordway and her sister and brother.

Van Johnstone.

Chris "Mr. Golf" Dunphy.

December 1963

"Buddy and Dysie come for dinner."

Married in 1959, Buddy and Dysie Davie were once described as "among the most interesting couples in Palm Beach." Dysie and Buddy opened a custom jewelry and objet d'arts shop at 343 Worth Avenue In 1966.

"… and then bridge." Buddy Davie, Dysie Davie, and Lou Ordway.

Christmas 1963

Christmas card. "Merry Xmas, Harvey Ladew." In 1939 Maryland bon vivant bachelor Harvey S. Ladew paid $25,000 for the John S. Phipps beach house in Gulf Stream. Mr. Ladew's sister Elise Ladew married to W. R. Grace III, the son of the former NYC mayor. A member-at-large of the Garden Club of America, Mr. Ladew's Maryland estate opened to the public in 1971 as the Ladew Topiary Gardens, considered by the GCA as "the most outstanding topiary garden in America."

Christmas card. "We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Edward and Wallis."

25 December 1963
Villa Bel Tramonto, Christmas Luncheon

Sally Armour and Susie Armour.

Bess Armour and John Ordway.

"The Old Table, the Young Table, and the Teenagers."

December 1963
Debutante Invitation

Invitation, Nine Cooke Emlen's debutante party. Nina Emlen was Ellen Ordway's great-niece.

31 December 1963
Pre-Coconuts Party

"Before going to The Coconuts party on New Year's Eve, I gave this gay and happy party." Left, Peter Ordway and Buddy Davie. Right, Dysie Davie, Gloria Ordway, and Lou Ordway.

John Ordway and Dysie Davie.

Leslie Ordway.

31 December 1963
The Coconuts Party, Taboó

Ephemera, Coconuts Party. 1963.

List of Hosts. Coconuts Party, 1963.

Ogden Phipps, Kirsten Oleson, Wendy Vanderbilt, and Daniel Topping Jr.

Molly and Mike Phipps.

Anita Young and Beverly A. Bogert.

January 1964
Worth Avenue

Worth Avenue was the subject of a magazine article illustrated with some of Palm Beach's local fixtures. Described in 1964 as "where important people of the world meet and do their important shopping," Worth Avenue's 1964 season included the Bill Blass Spring Collection at Martha's, Elizabeth Arden's collection at the Everglades Club tombola fashion show, and Ed Ronan's Coffee House.

Magazine photograph. Worth Avenue, looking west towards the Everglades Club.

Charles Wrightsman and his neighbor Anita Young.

Charles Munn and Milton "Doc" Holden.

Mrs. Alfonso Fanjul and her son Pepe Fanjul.

Lilly Pulitzer and Peter Pulitzer.

Ellen Glendinning Ordway with a Morris Minor 1000 Traveller Woodie Wagon.

February 1963
Palm Beach

Invitation. Reventlow-Hensel opening at Palm Beach Galleries.

Newspaper article. Peggy Reventlow (Countess Court H. Reventlow).

The color photographs are Reventlow's work at the Ordways' Villa Bel Tramonto.

Lucius P. Ordway with Jimbo and Pamela. "Lou not feeling well is cared for "round" the clock."

2 March 1964
Palm Beach

"My dear Lou died."

Palm Beach Post, newspaper article. A tribute for Lou Ordway written by columnist Bob Balfe. "Ordway had been big about everything he did … He was an expert in finance, a quiet member of high society, a tireless worker in charitable campaigns … We hope he knew how many of us appreciated him"

Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway's photographs are courtesy of the Lucius Ordway Frazer Collection©.

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Chapter XXV: Resort Life, March-April 1964

August 8, 2013, 3:55 pm

≫ Next: Resort Life: Chapter XXVI, 1964-1965

≪ Previous: Chapter XXIV: Resort Life, October 1963 – March 1964

April, 1964. 977 North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach. Bunny du Pont and Sid Luft wait for a Polaroid to develop while waiting for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to arrive for lunch. In the throes of a separation and contentious divorce from his wife Judy Garland, impresario Sid Luft and his "old school friend" Nicholas du Pont were reported in discussions related to the import of innovative construction materials from Europe.

Chapter XXV: From Medway Plantation to Palm Beach's Barefoot House
By Augustus Mayhew

"As much as everything changes, nothing is different," wrote Ellen Glendinning Ordway on a page in her photograph collection. And yet, the loss of her husband Lou Ordway must have been immeasurable. Married for only more than a decade, Lou and Ellen had traveled in the same close circles for more than 30 years. And, as in 1948 when Ellen spent a week at Medway Plantation with Gertrude Legendre following the loss of her husband Sidney, Ellen and her daughter Bettina returned to Medway's refuge after Lou's death. Her photographs capture Medway's great romance. Then, once family and old friends departed, Ellen found herself at Villa Bel Tramonto in the middle of the Palm Beach season — Bess McGrath was arriving from Ireland. the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were scheduled for their own "mini-season," and Nicky and Bunny du Pont finished their new sensational oceanfront house ... "As much as everything changes, nothing is different."

March 1964

Medway Plantation
Berkeley County, South Carolina

Known as the oldest masonry house in South Carolina, Medway Plantation's main house was built c. 1686, rebuilt in 1704 with additions in 1855, and completely renovated in 1929 when Gertrude and Sidney Legendre bought the property. The Historic Charleston Foundation was granted an 82-acre easement for the grounds surrounding the main house. The Wetlands America Trust was conveyed an easement for the remaining acreage to be preserved for hunting, fishing, and recreational uses.

The three-story 6,200 square-foot main house features six bedrooms, pine floors, ten-foot ceilings, and two staircases.

The main house at Medway Plantation.

"This is where we were "housed." Medway Plantation is composed of several guest houses and numerous outbuildings.

Main house, side elevation. "The original front door facing the river."

The Main house at Medway Plantation. The Medway Institute, Bokara Legendre, trustee, recently sold Medway Plantation for $11 million to Greek shipping tycoon Gregory Callimanopulos. Some had believed the 6,700-acre landmark might never be sold because of the restrictive-use easements Bokara's mother Gertrude Legendre had placed on the property. But surprisingly, the new owner shared many of the Legendre family's same interests. First placed on the market eight years ago for $25 million, the discounted selling price nonetheless marks the largest residential sale in South Carolina's Low Country history.

Jane Sanford Pansa. Main house, living room. Following her 1937 marriage to Italian diplomat Mario Pansa, Jane Pansa had lived in Europe during the war. Because of her marriage to an Axis member, she reportedly had to wait almost a decade to receive another American passport. Her husband died of an accidental drowning in 1946, according to published reports.

"Six years of work."

Main house, living room.

Bettina Frazer Dale.

Medway Plantation, walled garden.

Medway Plantation, within the walled garden. Marylou Whitney and Gertrude Legendre.

Medway Plantation, living room.

Medway Plantation, dining room, with a portrait of Sidney Legendre (1903-1948).

Medway Plantation, dining room – china cabinet.

Medway Plantation, trophy-gun room.

Lakeside log cabin, patio. Ellen Ordway's daughter Bettina Frazer Dale and Dot Kelleher. From the landing dock on the Back River, Medway Plantation is one hour by boat to Charleston.

Log Cabin, patio. "Peter and Landine Sanford Manigault come for lunch."

Lakefront lodge built in the log cabin style on the Home Reserve. At lunch, heads of table, far left, Billy Baldwin; far right, Gertrude Sanford Legendre. To the left of Mr. Baldwin, Marylou Whitney.

Left to right, Bettina Frazer Dale (back) Billy Baldwin and Marylou Whitney.

Mulberry Plantation, Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

Mulberry Plantation.

"A visit in the Land Rover to Spring grove." Spring Grove was one of the three plantations that made up Medway Plantation's 6,700+ acres.

Gertrude Legendre and Bettina Frazer Dale walking in the cypress gardens at Medway.

Medway Plantation, Cypress gardens.

March 1964

Phipps Estate – Michael & Molly Phipps' house
450 North County Road, Palm Beach. John Volk, architect

"Bess McGrath arrives from Ireland and gives Pamela the once over."

"Then, we call to see how the Phipps house is progressing."

450 North County Road, façade. North elevation.

Bess McGrath walking with Jimbo and Pamela.

Ho Kelland and Bess McGrath.

Susan "Susie" Phipps Cochran with Master John "Jay" Shaffer Phipps Cochran.

Michael and Molly Phipps arrive at 450 North County Road by helicopter from their ranch and thoroughbred training center in Martin County.

Mike Phipps landing in his approx. 20-acre backyard, then known as the largest residential estate on Palm Beach. Today the main house sits on ten lots within the 32-lot Phipps Estates subdivision platted in 1995.

Molly and Michael Phipps alight from the chopper.

Dr. William Sayad, a longtime Palm Beach resident and an ear, nose, and throat specialist, was aboard the chopper with his movie camera. An Everglades Club member and Golfview Road resident, Iranian-born Dr. Sayad was best known as the Kennedy family's physician.

Mike and Molly Phipps.

From afar, Mike Phipps and Ho Kelland standing on a south elevation balcony; below right, Bess McGrath.

Forty-five years later, Casa Phippsberger's south elevation and second-level balconies.

Back in 1964, Mike Phipps and Ho Kelland perched on a south elevation balcony.

450 North County Road, south elevation.

April 1964

Villa Bel Tramonto
241 Banyan Road, Palm Beach
Treanor & Fatio, architect

'An informal luncheon for Wallis, Duchess of Windsor."

Genevieve "Bunny" du Pont, Suzanne "Suzy" Anderson Gardner, and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor.

Bunny du Pont & Suzy Gardner. The Windsors were staying with Arthur and Suzy Gardner at their South Ocean Boulevard house deigned by Howard Major.

Ambassador Arthur Gardner. A former US Ambassador to Cuba (1953-1957), when Gardner resigned President Eisenhower replaced him with fellow Palm Beacher Earl E. T. Smith.

Nicholas "Nicky" du Pont. Mr. du Pont's parents the Eugene duPonts were frequent Palm Beach and Boca Raton seasonal visitors. In one of the more celebrated weddings during the 1930s, his sister Ethel du Pont married Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. the same year he wed Genevieve 'Bunny" Estes in Jacksonville. Sadly, following the Roosevelts' divorce and her second marriage to Benjamin Warren, Ethel du Pont Roosevelt Warren committed suicide in May 1965.

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, and Ellen Yuille Blair. The duchess (Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson) and Ellen Blair were school chums at Oldfields School in Maryland. ("I know everything so I don't listen!" is written on the pillow to the right of the Duchess of Windsor's shoulder.)

Edward, Duke of Windsor, and Wolcott Blair.

April 1964

Casuarina – Nicholas "Nicky" & Genevieve "Bunny" du Pont's house
977 North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach. John Volk architect - Valerian Rybar, interior decoration

"A visit at Nicky and Bunny du Pont's new house. Now completed."

977 North Ocean Boulevard, façade entrance. Situated on one-acre of direct oceanfront, Bunny and Nicky du Pont's house was approached by a protected driveway leading into a motor court. Known by the duPonts as Casuarina, fashion arbiter Eugenia Sheppard called it "The Barefoot House."

977 North Ocean Boulevard, multi-leveled front entrance.

Living room. When Valerian Rybar, the world's most expensive decorator to the world's wealthiest, died in 1990, Bunny du Pont told The New York Times, ''He combined taste and drama in a very unique way,'' Mrs. DuPont recalled. ''And unlike many designers, Valerian was versatile. He could go from the most lavish and elaborate schemes to something simple and clean-cut.''

Valerian Rybar's colorful interior for Nick and Bunny du Pont was photographed by Horst and featured in Vogue in 1965.

A view from the living room towards the ocean. Despite not having any formal training in interior decoration, Valerian Rybar's clients included Suzy, Guy and Marie-Helene de Rothschild, Prentice Cobb Hale, Herbert Von Karajan, Antenor and Beatriz Patino, Samuel and Mitzi Newhouse, Sao Schlumberger, Christina Onassis, and Stavros Niarchos. More commercial projects involved the Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, a Valentino salon, Paris, El Morocco nightclub, New York, and the Tres Vidas resort, Acapulco.

Ambassador Stanton Griffis, Nicky du Pont, and Sid Luft. Mr. Luft and Mr. du Pont were "old school friends" involved in several business transactions. Mr. Luft does not appear to have the same tailor as Nicky du Pont.

"Setting an entirely new trend, colors and furniture have been grouped to invite relation amidst tropical splendor," wrote Suzy in the March 1964 Palm Beach Daily News, describing Rybar's work at the du Ponts' new house.

Bedroom, view towards the ocean. Said to be born in Sarajevo to a Hungarian father and Viennese mother, Valerian Stux Rybar's eclectic personal history included "a fancy school in Vienna," law school in Stockholm, and a seven-year marriage to Aileen Guinness Plunket.

Bedroom. According to his own biography, Mr. Rybar worked as a package designer for Elizabeth Arden in New York before setting out as his own designer.

Guest bedroom. "It's the concept that counts," Rybar told an interviewer in 1977.

Guest bedroom. In his New York apartment, Rybar installed stainless steel floors, velvet folding chairs, a mink-tail rug, and marble-topped steel tables, according to a 1977 interview.

Bunny du Pont shows Stanton Griffis the courtyard pool.

The dining area. In 1968 Mr. Rybar and his partner Jean-Francois Daigre formed Valerian Rybar and Daigre Design Corporation with New York and Paris bureaus.

Dining area, wall tapestry.

Stanton Griffis and Suzy Gardner.

The royals arrive. Nicky du Pont greets the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, Nicky du Pont, and Edward, Duke of Windsor.

The royals arrive, time for the Polaroid. Sid Luft and Bunny du Pont.

Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway's photographs are courtesy of the Lucius Ordway Frazer Collection©.

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Resort Life: Chapter XXVI, 1964-1965

August 15, 2013, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Resort Life: Chapter XVII, 1965-1966

≪ Previous: Chapter XXV: Resort Life, March-April 1964

August, 1964. John F. "John-John" Kennedy. Jr. Bailey's Beach, Newport.

Resort Life: Chapter XXVI 1964-1965
Palm Beach – Paris – London - Newport – Fishers Island
By Augustus Mayhew

In July 1964, Jackie Kennedy announced plans to move from Washington to New York. After spending part of the summer in Hyannis Port, the Kennedy children joined their mother in Newport at Annandale Farm adjoining her mother's Hammersmith Farm. During the second week of August, Jackie was off on an Adriatic cruise aboard Charles Wrightsman's yacht Radiant; the children remained in Newport.

As Jackie and her sister Lee Radziwill disembarked from the Wrightsman yacht and made their way to Porto Ercole, Ellen Ordway was already settled in for a Newport summer, having returned from a jaunt to France and England. She took her daughter Bettina Dale back to Normandy where she spent many childhood seaside summers. But before heading to the Cote Fleurie, it is tee time with HRH at The Breakers.

May 1964
The Breakers - Palm Beach

Bunny du Pont, Duke of Windsor, and Manolo Santeiro. Manolo and his wife Bibi were members of Palm Beach's Cuban colony. Bibi Santeiro was one of the three Aspuru sisters. Julia Aspuru was married to Enrique Rousseau before her marriage to Charles Amory and Rousseau's marriage to Lilly Pulitzer who had divorced Amory's half-brother Peter Pulitzer. Lourdes Aspuru Musso moved to Monte Carlo following her marriage to Joseph Bernstein. For many years, the sisters operated the Salon Francais on Via Mizner.

Bunny du Pont, HRH, and Ellen Ordway.

Manolo Santeiro.

"HRH, 70 years old."

Villa Bel Tramonto
Palm Beach

Bokara Legendre. "Miss Bokara Legendre arrived in the resort this week from Medway Plantation for an extended visit with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Sanford, at Los Incas their oceanfront villa. 8 May 1964," Palm Beach Daily News.

Gayle Dale. Ellen's granddaughter, Gayle's engagement to Joel Jennings was announced during the summer of 1964.

Hobe Sound

"A visit with Tom Evans in Hobe Sound."

An afternoon in Hobe Sound with Gertrude Legendre and her daughter Bokara.

Gertrude Legendre, Bokara Legendre, and Tom Evans.

28 May 1964
New York to Paris

"Bettina, Bobbie Dale, & I left NYC at 12 mid-day & 6 hrs. & 40 minutes later … wheels down at Orly Airport in Paris."

Orly Airport, Paris. May, 1964.

"Where even the money is beautiful …"

Invitation. Christian Dior. 30, Avenue Montaigne.

Christian Dior. 30, Avenue Montaigne. Paris.

Musée du Louvre, Paris. Mona Lisa. Oil on panel, c. 1503. Leonardo da Vinci, artist.

Menu cover. Lido Cabaret – Restaurant. Champs Elysées, Paris.

Chateau de Malmaison. Located seven miles from Paris, Empress Josephine bought the 150-acre chateau in 1797. It served as headquarters for the French government from 1800 to 1802.

Chateau de Malmaison. Napoleon's "Cabinet de Travail."

Postcard. Versailles.

Normandy Hotel, Deauville. "We spent a few days at the Normandy Hotel."

June 1964

Houlgate, Normandy, Cote Fleurie. Ellen shows her daughter the Glendinning family's summer house in France. Left: Chez Dubonnet – Les Mouettes, "The Dubonnets, Emilie, Andre and family, lived next door to us." Right: The Glendinning's summer house in Normandy. Ellen wrote of Les Sorbiers, "Our house, where so many years of my childhood summers were spent."

The American War Memorial at Normandy.

Statue. Omaha Beach Memorial, Normandy. "The Spirit of American Youth," a 22-foot bronze sculpture is the memorial's centerpiece.

Mont Saint-Michel.

La Mére Poulard. Mont Saint-Michel. "The best brandied omelet in the world."

"We drove to Fontainebleau and lunched at Le Grand Veneur." Pictured above, Ellen's daughter and son-in-law, Bettina and Bobby Dale, Ludmilla Vlasto, founder of Théâtre la Bruyére, and Colette Moliere.

Alex "Nittey."

Château de Fontainebleau.

Maillot. The garden at Ludmilla Vlasto's house, once owned by Cezanne.

Maillot. Ludmilla Vlasto's house, a view from what is said to be one of Cezanne's studios.

London

Ritz Hotel. "Bobby and Bettina Dale in our suite at The Ritz."

"John and Leslie come in from the country to see us … John is very busy on the phone trying to find out why his Rolls-Royce has not been delivered."

10 June 1964
12 Cadogan Court - London
Luncheon with Gloria Ordway

Bettina Dale and Gloria Ordway in the living room of Gloria's London accommodations, since divorced from Peter Ordway.

12 Cadogan Court, London.

June 1964

Barney Beresford.

Barney Beresford and John Ordway, "…still waiting for his Rolls Royce."

June 1964

Luncheon with Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Cotesworth Slessor and Lady Hermione Guinness Slessor
Somerset

"Luncheon with cocktails in the garden."

Air Marshal Slessor and John Ordway, "looking at his watch waiting for delivery of his own Rolls-Royce."

15 June 1964

"We returned to the United States."

June 1964
Newport

One Barclay Square, Newport. The Ordway cottage.

Pamela entertains Jane Marvel Scott.

Jane Pickens Langley. A popular stage and television entertainer and Newport personality, Langley had married Russell Clark and businessman William C. Langley before her 1977 marriage to Walter Hoving, who headed Tiffany & Company and, at one time, Bonwit Teller.

Investment banker Howard Bell and Polly Howe.

Persifor Frazer III. Ellen Ordway's first husband; they divorced in 1934.

Margaret 'Peggy" Isham Frazer.

Dot Rogers and Howard Cushing.

Polly Howe.

Mary Cushing

"At the America's Cup races …"

Nelson Aldrich and Alice Stearns.

Alice Stearns and Aleeta McBean.

"The US Navy invites you to the America's Cup Race 1964."

The US Navy's accommodation included everything but ...

... heat. "Things got colder and colder and colder."

Banking scion Eugene W. "Bill" Sexton Jr., right front, relief helmsman and tactician, for the yacht American Eagle during the America's Cup competition. A Choate-Yale alum, Stetson was associated with Brown Brothers Harriman, Chemical Bank, and the NYSE firm Winslow, Cohu & Stetson.

Kathryna Ray Stetson, right, and her husband yachtsman Bill Stetson later settled in Hobe Sound.

"At Bailey's Beach." Polly Howe, George Earle, and Alice Stearns.

Bailey's Beach. Polly Howe.

Bailey's Beach. Jane Marvel Scott and Alice Stearns.

August 1964
Fishers Island, New York

Chocomount
Chez Gertrude Legendre

Gertrude Sanford Legendre. "All big business is conducted in the morning before breakfast."

Georgie Rutherford.

Ellen Ordway and Gertrude Legendre.

Ellen Ordway.

Ginevra "Ginnie" Pirie. Readers may recall Pirie and author F. Scott Fitzgerald's friendship was immortalized in several of his novels.

Ginevra King Pirie.

John T. Pirie and Peggy Carey.

Peggy Carey.

Augustus 1964
Fishers Island

Luncheon at Dougie Boocock's house. Glenn Winnett Boocock, known as Dougie to her friends, was the widow of Kenyon Boocock who died from a fall in 1961, his parents having died tragically in the most unusual of circumstances. A member of the Colony Club and the Fishers Island Club, she served as managing director of The Metropolitan Opera from 1976-1985, according to The New York Times.

Dougie Boocock, standing right. "Lobsters on the grill."

Peggy Carey.

Betty Matthiessen, right.

December 1964

Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
March 1877- 6 December 1964

The lower right photograph was taken in the formal drawing room at Mme. Balsam's Lakeview House, 319 El Vedado, Palm Beach.

Newspaper article. "Legend lives after Balsan Rites."

"Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, First Poor Little Rich Girl."

December 1964
Villa Bel Tramonto - Palm Beach

Villa Bel Tramonto. Ellen Ordway, center, with family and friends celebrate the wedding of her granddaughter Gayle to Joel Jennings.

Villa Bel Tramonto. Ellen Ordway's son and grandson, Persifor "Perkie" Frazer IV and Persifor "Pokie" Frazer V.

Villa Bel Tramonto. Chris Dunphy and Gayle Glendinning Dale, on becoming Mrs. Joel Jennings.

Beneath volleys of rice, Gayle and Joel Jennings leave Villa Bel Tramonto for their honeymoon.

Milestones

10 January 1965

"Dolly O'Brien passes … and so does an era."

Newspaper article and obituary. "Good-bye Dolly."

24 January 1965

Sir Winston Churchill died.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 -1965).

February 1965
Palm Beach

"Michael and Mollie Phipps move in to their new home."

Mike Phipps.

Peggy Scott-Duff.

Elaine "Nonie" Phipps and "Ho Kelland."

Nonie Phipps, at the buffet.

The Phipps house, North Lake Way & County Road. At the luncheon, Peggy Scott Duff, "Ho Kelland," an unidentified gentleman to the left head of table, and to the right with her back to the camera but reflected in the front is Mollie Phipps mother, Mrs. William Thomas Lane, Bombay and London.

Next: Chapter XXVII: 1965
Nancy Lancaster sunbathes at Lyford Cay, Cornelia Guest christened, Nonie Phipps marries Tom Schippers & Ellen and Gert head to Spoleto and visit Tom and Nonie, crowned "La Regina di Spoleto."

Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway's photographs are courtesy of the Lucius Ordway Frazer Collection©.

Click herefor NYSD Contents

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Resort Life: Chapter XVII, 1965-1966

August 22, 2013, 6:18 am

≫ Next: Palm Beach Social Diary

≪ Previous: Resort Life: Chapter XXVI, 1964-1965

March 1965. Lyford Cay Club. Nancy Lancaster pops by for some afternoon sun, pictured above with Gertrude Legendre. Among the 20th century's most legendary designers and gardeners, Nancy Perkins Field Tree Lancaster was the co-owner of the prominent Colefax and Fowler firm, often credited for introducing the "English country house decor." Department store heir Henry Field, Lancaster's first husband, died shortly after their marriage. Then, she married Field's cousin Ronald Tree. The couple's divorce in 1947 allowed Tree to marry Marietta Peabody. Her third marriage to Claude Lancaster was also short-lived. The niece of Nancy Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, the American-born designer was a lifelong Anglophile whose homes and projects inspired a generation to embrace chintz, bold colors and a chic mix of styles.

Resort Life: Chapter XVII, 1965-1966
Lyford Cay-Palm Beach-Paris-Italy
By Augustus Mayhew

In 2009 Jamee Gregory took NYSD readers for a holiday jaunt Past the Pink Gates of Lyford Cay Club. More than 40 years earlier, in March 1965, Ellen Ordway joined her friend Gertrude Legendre for a few days of waves and watercress at this private enclave located on the western end of New Providence Island, Bahamas. Back in Palm Beach, Winston and C.Z. Guest have invited friends to join them for the christening of their daughter Cornelia at the Royal Poinciana Chapel. Up on North County Road, no sooner did Mike and Molly Phipps move into their new Volk-designed house, when their daughter Nonie married orchestra conductor wunderkind Maestro Thomas Schippers. A few months later, Ellen and Gert join the newlyweds in Spoleto where Nonie is acknowledged the “Queen of Spoleto.” Following Ellen’s return, there is lunch with Cheray and Peter Duchin, an afternoon at Lillian and Ogden Phipps’ lakefront “little Moorish palace,” and an evening at Joe and Estee Lauder’s for dinner with “Their Royal Highnesses.”

Lyford Cay Club. Private. Members Only.

Here are some images from the Sixties when the pursuit of pleasure flourished.

March 1965
Lyford Cay Club
In 1954 E. P. Taylor, a Canadian industrialist and racing enthusiast, bought Lyford Cay from Sir Harold Christie, a Bahamian developer, to create a private international resort. To be certain only the right people became club members, Taylor hired Henry Montgomery, a well-connected heir to an English brewery fortune, to offer building lots to the jet set, including Prince Rainier III of Monaco, Stavros Niarchos, Henry Ford II, and the Aga Khan. Until the club was sold to its members in 1971, Taylor ran Lyford like his own private realm deciding on the minutest of details.

Lyford Cay Club. Aerial, 1965. The Lyford Cay Property Association determines the rules for any of the club's existing or future land development.

Lyford Cay Club. Aerial view. 1965.

Lyford Cay Club. Main entrance.

"Our villa that Gertrude and I are sharing with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hollenberg."

Lyford Cay Club, villa façade.

Lyford Cay Club. "Our interiors."

"Dodie and Charlie Hollenberg."

Gertrude Legendre.

"Our villa from the sea side."

Gertrude Legendre.

"Dodie in the water."

Lunch at the Lyford Cay Club. May 1965. Charlie, Dodie, and Gertrude.

Marjory Clark.

Dot Rogers.

Gertrude Legendre.

Dodie and Harry King.

March 1965
Old Fort Bay, New Providence, Nassau
C. Suydam Cutting estate

Following the death of her husband, noted financier James Cox Brady, Helen Brady married noted explorer C. Suydam Cutting. When not at their estate in New Jersey, among the first Americans to enter Tibet, having tea with the Dalai Lama, or set off on some obscure expedition in Borneo or Tanzania, the Cuttings were at home at their 35-acre Old Fort Bay estate in the Bahamas near the Lyford Cay Club.

Old Fort is said to have been an early 18th century “pirate stronghold” before being occupied by the Spanish, and later, the British. The former “crude hunting lodge” was transformed into more of a Spanish hacienda “with hand-carved ceilings and furniture from Cuba” by architect Phillip Tracey after the Bradys acquired it in 1926, according to a March 1928 issue of Country Life magazine.

Old Fort Bay's beach front has a South Seas ambience.

In 1961, Helen McMahon Brady Cutting died and Suydam Cutting married Mary Pyne Filley. The Cuttings lived at Old Fort until his death in 1972. Today Old Fort is being developed as a resort enclave with the main house utilized as a club house. A descendant from several of New York’s most formidable Knickerbocker families and famous for being the first Westerner to ever enter the Forbidden City in Lhasa, Tibet, as well as introducing the Lhasa Apso breed to the United States in 1933, C. Suydam Cutting’s papers are part of the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Field Museum of Natural History.

The Cutting's historic main house at Old Fort Bay became a seven-bedroom Spanish-style hacienda during the late 1920s when it was owned by James Cox Brady and his third wife Helen McMahon Brady. Today it is The Historic and Exclusive Club at Old Fort.

Explorer and author C. Suydam Cutting gives Gertrude Legendre a tour of the property. Cutting is the author of Fire Ox and Other Years, about his travels in Tibet and Nepal.

The renowned C. Suydam Cutting.

The murals in the loggia of the main house at Old Fort Bay.

With Gertrude Legendre sunbathing, style icon Nancy Lancaster is camera-ready.

The 2nd Mrs. C. Suydam Cutting, Mary Pyne Filley.

C. Suydam Cutting entertaining at Old Fort.

17 March 1965
Palm Beach

Invitation. Cornelia Cochrane Guest's christening at Royal Poinciana Chapel with a buffet lunch following at Montsorrel, Anita Young's then recently completed house on North Ocean Boulevard, now presently an undesignated architectural landmark owned by Nelson and Claudia Peltz. "Ferro Non Gladio" appears to translate as "By iron, not sword."

Miss Bey, Cornelia Guest, Woolworth "Wooly" Donahue, and his fourth wife, former Super Circus star Mary Hartline Carlson Donahue, today a resident of Hillsboro, Illinois.

Colette Henri, Vincent Draddy, and C. Z. Guest.

Miss Bey, Cornelia Guest, Chris Dunphy, and Ellen Blair (back with hat).

Buddy and Dysie Davie.

Melissa Bingham (left).

Mary and Woolworth Donahue. After Wooly's death in 1972, his widow sold Casa Nana and continued to live in Palm Beach.

The christening ceremony, as photographed around Mary Donahue. Left standing, it appears to be Miss Bey, Alexander Guest, C.Z. Guest, the 2nd Mrs. Winston Guest, Winston F. C. Guest. To the right standing, does appear to be someone holding Cornelia Guest, as well as Lorelle Hearst and Chris Dunphy, who "stood as godparents."

Melissa Bingham leaving the chapel.

March 1965
Villa Bel Tramonto
Palm Beach

Elaine "Nonie" Phipps and Bess McGrath.

Nonie Phipps and Bess McGrath. Bess smokes while Nonie looks at Ellen Ordway's collection of photographs.

"Bess and I bicycle up to Phipps for lunch."

Michael and Molly Phipps house, 450 North County Road, a view of the south elevation, looking northeast.

The Phipps house, façade facing north. First, at 450 North County Road; today entered on North Lake Way.

Author Ethel Petit Roche and Muriel Lane, Molly's mother.

Molly Phipps.

Muriel Lane.

Lunch appears to be served in an enclosed porch in the southwest corner overlooking the pool

"Molly spent the entire afternoon picking burrs off the dog."

"Hours later, Molly is still finding burrs."

Susie Phipps Cochran. Portrait by Alejo Vidal-Quadras.

17 April 1965
Phipps-Schippers Wedding

"Nonie Phipps wed to Met conductor Tommy Schippers."

"The wedding that everybody in Palm Beach and New York was waiting for took place yesterday when heiress Nonie Phipps married New York's handsomest opera and symphony conductor Tommy Schippers." — Suzy Knickerbocker.

Vogue magazine. The Phipps – Schippers wedding.

Vogue magazine featured several pages of wedding photographs. Above, a view of the intimate ceremony with 25 guests, with Mrs. Frederick Melhado (Lydia Buhl Mann), matron of honor, and Earl McGrath, best man.

30 May 1965
New York to Paris

"Gertie Legendre and I took off for Italy." But first, a stop in Paris ...

1 June 1965. Invitation. American Embassy, Paris.

2 June 1965. Paris. Théatre de la Michodiére.

June 1965
Rome – Florence – Spoleto – Naples – Sicily

Map of Italy showing the Ordway-Legendre expedition route.

"In Rome, Gert bought a Volkswagen station wagon. Loaded her up and drove on a gorgeous autostrada to Florence."

The LV being loaded up into the VW.

"The equal to our Howard Johnson's. These Pavesi restaurants straddle the parkways ..."

Florence. Grand Hotel Villa Medici.

Spoleto. Hotel Gattapone was popularized by Giancarlo Menotti during the Spoleto festival, founded in 1958.

Spoleto. Gertrude Legendre and Thomas Schippers.

Spoleto. A terraced street.

"The Schippers live on the top floor of the villa straight ahead that Gert is photographing."

"Nonie got up from her sick bed to have us for dinner."

Nonie Phipps Schippers and her latest needlepoint project.

Ellen Ordway, Thomas Schippers, and Nonie Phipps Schippers.

"Gert is studying the phrase book before speaking with the waiter."

The waiter approaches.

"La Regina di Spoleto." Nonie Phipps became the "la nuova regina di Festival di Due Mundi ..."

Nonie Phipps Schippers, Maestro Thomas Schippers, and Wally Toscanini, a daughter of Arturo Toscanini.

Pompei

Pompei. House of the Vettii, mural. " ... still beautiful and gorgeously cleared of lava ... never cease being amazed by it."

Pompei. Mural.

31 December 1965
Palm Beach

Leslie and John Ordway at Villa Bel Tramonto before heading to the Coconuts party at Taboó. "Are you OKing her dance card, John?"

New Year's Eve, 1965. The Coconut hosts line up for a photographer.

January 1966
Palm Beach

Bokara Legendre did a television show at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse in Palm Beach.

"Bokara has a lunch at Villa Bel Tramonto …"

Ellen Ordway was my Godmother .... Peter Duchin had his orchestra in the next room to where I did interviews and whenever a guest was late or didn't show up, I pulled him off the bandstand and interviewed him. I had great people on the TV show like Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, and people in politics and social life. It was lots of fun I'm sure we had a good time giving the lunch I just don't remember it! — Bokara Legendre, April 2013.

Archie Peck and Peter Duchin.

Cheray and Peter Duchin.

Peter Duchin.

Cheray Duchin.

Cheray and Peter Duchin.

Peter and Cheray Duchin.

January 1966
Manana Point, 1486 North Lake Way, Palm Beach

“Lill and Ogden Phipps’ little Moorish palace ...”

On 17 January 1966 columnist Lorelle Hearst reported Lillian Phipps hosted a lunch for Gloria Guinness and Truman Capote at her lakeside Moorish estate, describing it as “a state of superb beauty and variety.” Hearst described other Phipps parties as having “butlers coming out your ears.” Manana Point was designed for Grover and Marka Loening in the Modernist style in 1934 by Treanor & Fatio. The Loenings divorced in 1940. Nine years later, Loening sold the 19-room house on 3.5 acres with 335 feet of waterfront to Jell-O heir Talmadge Woodward and his wife Mollie, Mr. Woodward died in 1955. Later, architect Marion Sims Wyeth transformed it into a Moorish-style house, adding Islamic arches, barrel tile, and colorful geometric tiles, according to Kim Mockler in his book Maurice Fatio, Palm Beach Architect.

The front entrance to the Ogden and Lillian Phipps house on North Lake Way, now owned by their son Ogden Mills Phipps and his wife Andrea.

The incomparable Lillian Bostwick McKim Phipps.

The Ogden and Lillian Phipps house, 1486 North Lake Way. Front entrance.

On the lakefront patio, a guest points up to the house's added barrel tile roof and colorful tile work.

A Bostwick family member beneath the umbrella.

Allison Clark.

Gates Davison was Lillian Phipps' frequent croquet partner.

Lillian Bostwick McKim Phipps.

A Bostwick family member.

The Phipps house, 1486 North Lake Way.

Phipps house, North Lake Way.

Phipps house.

19 January 1966

Obituary for John Gilman Ordway, Ellen's brother-in-law, who also spent winters at Palm Beach.

February 1966

Mike Phipps portrayed by Palm Beach's favorite caricature artist Zito.

8 February 1966

Gladys "Gaggy" Quentell Reed (1902-1966).

Obituary, Gladys Quentell Reed. Ellen's good friend Gaggy Reed died.

February 1966
Villa Bel Tramonto – Palm Beach

William "Willy" Randolph Hearst Jr.

Court (Kurt) Reventlow and Bess McGrath.

Peggy Reventlow.

Tom Schippers and Nonie Phipps Schippers.

" … bridge with Emily Fosdick, Tom Schippers, and Ellen Blair."

4 April 1966
Joe & Estee Lauder's reminder for dinner with "Their Royal Highnesses," the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Invitation reminder. The Lauders' black-tie dinner for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Dinner menu & Place setting. 4 April 1966. Lauder dinner for Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

April 1966
Villa Bel Tramonto

"Dinner at Eight."

Dorothy Hurt Meacham Eyre, Chris Dunphy, Alfonso and Lillian Fanjul, Ellen Ordway with Pamela, and Dorothy and Charles Munn.

Ellen Ordway and Lillian Fanjul.

April 1966
Villa Bel Tramonto

Trafford Klots, portrait artist at work. An American portraitist of Dutch descent and noted landscape painter, Klots was represented by Palm Beach Galleries.

Trafford Klots, portrait artist.

April 1966. Oil portrait. Ellen Glendinning Ordway at Villa Bel Tramonto.

April 1966. At easel, Trafford Klots brushing up a work in progress, Jimbo posing for the camera, and Ellen Ordway sitting for her portrait.

Ellen Glendinning Ordway's photographs are from the
Gayle Abrams Collection.

Augustus Mayhew is the author of Lost in Wonderland: Reflections on Palm Beach

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Palm Beach Social Diary

November 1, 2013, 7:19 am

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≪ Previous: Resort Life: Chapter XVII, 1965-1966

Everglades Club, original façade. Pen and ink sketch. The Palm Beach Post, 1919. This sketch of the Everglades Club's original façade became a familiar sight at the top of The Post's social page.

Remaking History:
Paris Singer & the Everglades Club, 1918-1932
By Augustus Mayhew

No matter how thorough Palm Beach’s past was documented, filtering fact from fiction can prove a daunting task to anyone interested in exploring the resort’s hybrid genre of reality. Time and again, social historians must rely on revised memoirs, third wives, feuds, after-dinner speakers, hearsay, and deadline items dashed off by Cholly Knickerbocker rather than vetted scientific research articles found in peer-reviewed journals. Palm Beach’s gilded altered state is an uncommon escape from reality where bigger-than-life characters in super-sized settings have been more likely the focus of Hollywood’s screwball comedies rather than scholarly chronicles. Among them, there is probably no more elusive subject than Paris Singer and no greater social and architectural defining moment than the building of the Everglades Club. Topics so extensively written about, that it is generally assumed everything about them has already been reported.

For the most part, because Paris Singer died unexpectedly at a relatively young age, various recollections of his life are the secondary subject matter of other people’s biographies, inclined to portray him either as an impulsive martinet or a well-mannered autocrat. These characterizations resulted in a romanticized version of events, whether recalling his relationship with the mercurial Isadora Duncan or recounting his last hurrah on Palm Beach.

Paris Singer (1867-1932). Though described at the time of his death as "one of the most picturesque and important figures in the history of Palm Beach," Singer's local legacy was obscured when the crash of his real estate developments undermined and destabilized the Everglades Club's financial future. Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Having amassed a fortune much greater than his sizeable inheritance, Singer was consumed by euphoria from Florida’s Land Boom of the 1920s. Ultimately, Paris Singer may have been the man who “ … made Palm Beach beautiful,” introduced the work of architect Addison Mizner, built the Everglades Club, and began the transformation of Worth Avenue into a world-class destination, but his imprudent real estate dealings relegated him to the town’s rogue’s gallery rather than its pantheon of visionaries.

By 1918, Paris Singer and the Singer family’s global triumphs and moral transgressions were headline news for more than sixty years.

Nonetheless, when Singer began buying property on both sides of Lake Worth, a local paper commented that “… he was not known in these quarters.” The inventive sewing machine heir’s Palm Beach chapter usually opens with a weary Paris Singer and a down-on-his-luck Addison Mizner, much like Samuel Beckett characters, arriving on Palm Beach accompanied by a nurse to die of social ennui. The nurse is a reference to Joan Bates (aka Joan Balsh and Anne Charlotte Bates), with whom Singer began an affair in 1912, following his “infatuation” with Isadora Duncan.

In March 1918, Singer was still married to his second wife, making the reference to Bates as his and Mizner’s nurse more of a humorous nod to the era’s decorum than actual fact. During that period, Bates was shuttling from New York to England and France, overseeing Singer's properties that had been turned into Red Cross hospitals until after the war ended. The Singer-Bates-Mizner triangle tale grew more complicated perhaps when Mizner fell ill while a houseguest at Singer’s villa on Peruvian Avenue. In a 1918 letter to Mary Fanton Roberts, editor of The Touchstone Magazine, a robust energetic Paris Singer appears to refute details of the more popular story.

“Dearest Mary … I have but rather a time with Addison Mizner who came here with me because of a bad leg. He got pneumonia on the 3rd day of his visit and the house is now organized like a hospital, day and night with nurses and a doctor twice a day. The weather here is all for him and he is now out of danger but it was “touch and go.” There are very few people here so far but the trains seem to come in as before the war with dining cars, etc. … A man coming here to see Mizner the other day says he talked to Isadora in Washington? Is she back in the East again?— Mary Fanton Roberts papers, American Arts Archive, Smithsonian Institution.

This letter is among the considerable documents now available to researchers, not referenced in Donald Curl’s influential book Mizner’s Florida published in 1984, that enhance and expand, as well as contradict, our knowledge of Paris Singer and the genesis of the Everglades Club. These previously unpublished contemporaneous resources stored at The Smithsonian’s American Arts Archive are handwritten and typed letters and telegrams written by Paris Singer, Joan Singer, and Singer’s son Cecil Singer, postmarked Palm Beach, New York, London, Paris, and St. Jean, Cap Ferrat.

Yet, missing pieces still remain, making my research a work in progress. I have had to postpone my jaunt to the Torquay Library in Paignton where I could more closely review more detailed archival materials on the Singer family. Since the March 1918 issues of The Palm Beach Post that would have reported on Singer’s first acquisitions for the club site are not available, I relied on articles published in The Palm Beach Post during the first week of April 1918 that refer to Singer’s acquisitions the previous month.

The Palm Beach Daily News stopped daily publication for the season on 24 March 1918, just as Paris Singer was acquiring the club sites. In my review of the Palm Beach Daily News issues published during January-February-March 1918 that I was able to read, some have faded beyond recognition, I found no mention of Paris Singer or Addison Mizner. Berlin-based architect Luisa Hutton, a great-granddaughter of Paris Singer, granted me permission to include several Singer family photographs. Because of the US government shutdown, correspondence with various institutions was not possible.

Nevertheless, here is a look back when Paris Singer was the King of Palm Beach and the Everglades Club replaced Cocoanut Grove cakewalks and The Beach Club as the cottage colony’s social centerpiece.

Paris Singer & the Singer Family

By 1885, the Singer Manufacturing Company had sold more than six million sewing machines. The worldwide phenomenon was founded by Paris Singer's prodigious father Isaac M. Singer (1811-1875) and his partner Edward Clark. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Calling card, c. 1920. Mary Fanton Roberts Papers. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institute.

Paris Singer, an architect-engineer? Having curated the Historical Society of Palm Beach County's voluminous archive more than a decade ago and been a close friend of Mizner scholar Donald Curl, author of Mizner's Florida, I cannot recall any reference or mention of Singer as a professional architect-engineer. Singer's numerous patent registrations and his active interests in automotive and aeronautical endeavors indicate expertise in the field of engineering. In addition to Singer's studies at Caius College, Cambridge, Singer may have studied architecture in Paris, according to available records at the Torquay Library:

"During his early twenties Paris Singer found time to study architecture, probably at the fashionable Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and obtained a degree, though he assumed the role of patron rather than practitioner in later life. Nevertheless he is recorded as the architect of No. 3 Cadogan Gate, the large annex behind his mansion in London's Sloane Street, which apparently bore a brass plate engraved "P. E. Singer – Architect" on the mews entrance door about 1900."Torquay Natural History Society's Transactions and Proceedings. Paris Singer: A Life Portrait, by John R. A. Wilson.

Oldway House, Paignton. With a theater and ballroom at their 100-room mansion on the English Riviera, the Singer family enjoyed elaborate at-home tableau vivants, nurturing Paris Singer's lifelong predilection for pageants and costume parties. Singer and E. Clarence Jones, the first vice-president of the Everglades Club, are credited with reviving society's interest in elaborate costume parties, following the popularity of the club's annual Fancy Dress Ball. Courtesy Singer Family.

Paris Singer's wife, Cecilia "Lily" Graham Singer, and his daughter, Winnaretta Singer. Courtesy Singer family.

Paris Singer, family genealogy. Following the publicized 1877 will contest over Isaac Merritt Singer's estate, Isabella Eugenie Boyer Singer, the 3rd and last married wife, was declared the legal widow, making her children the estate's richest heirs. Thus far, I have been unable to find another reference to Henriette Marais, listed as Paris Singer's first wife. Other resources, note Cecilia "Lily" Graham Singer as his first wife. Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Paris and Lily Graham Singer, c. 1887. Courtesy Singer Family.

Social Register. Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

8 March 1918

Palm Beach Daily News, newspaper headlines. 8 March 1918. During the weeks Paris Singer began buying property to build a convalescent facility for shell-shocked soldiers on Worth Avenue, Palm Beach residents were waking-up to the latest World War I updates and the local sporting scene. Along with staging various benefits to aid the war effort, the local social set, led by Tessie Oelrichs and Eva Stotesbury, was raising funds to build Good Samaritan Hospital.

Building the Everglades Club

Although the Everglades Club's signature building has long been regarded a stylistic departure from the existing landscape, my latest findings point towards the clubhouse's aesthetic composition as more harmonious with the era's emerging cultural milieu. Even so, the Everglades Club remains a legendary architectural milestone, however it might have been inspired by its nearby predecessors — Vizcaya, the Moorish lakeside J. B. Elwell mansion on Seabreeze Avenue, the Italian villa built on South Ocean Boulevard, Casa Apava, the Tuscan-styled oceanfront house on North County Road, or the often overlooked under-appreciated, Spanish-style Beaux-Arts Building & Promenade on North Lake Trail by architect August Geiger.

James Deering.

Paul Chalfin, Deering’s major domo.

After a review of the accessible resources, in my opinion, Mizner formulated a design plan for Singer that was influenced by, if not borrowed from, the grandeur and splendor found at Vizcaya. Shortly after Singer and Mizner returned from a weekend visit in March 1918 with Charles Deering and James Deering in South Miami, Singer announced plans for the clubhouse’s magnificent Old World look, to be built “ … as if it had been there for centuries.” Two weeks before Singer and Mizner’s jaunt, James Deering had checked into The Breakers. During that same time frame, Paul Chalfin, Deering’s major domo and designer, was ensconced in Palm Beach, having opened a studio on a houseboat tied up at the Beaux Arts docks on North Lake Trail.

Although the aesthetic mix of Singer’s original clubhouse appears to visually contrast with the Deering mansion’s more formally-modeled Italian facade and elevations, both buildings contained much the same ensembles of courtyards, loggias, and arcades. Though Mizner may have later said he was inspired by a cloistered Spanish monastery, the Everglades Club was first described as a fusion of Spanish and Italian features. In the original plan, Mizner included a Venetian Landing outfitted with gondolas along the club’s lakefront with its ecclesiastical bell tower.

And, if you always thought the Everglades Club began as a secret social cartel, you will be disappointed to learn there was no one more forthcoming than Paris Singer. As the club became the nucleus for his and Mizner’s real estate developments, Singer wanted the world to know the club’s who’s who. Not only did the club circulate its daily events schedule, golf and tennis results, and luncheon party guest lists and centerpieces, but it also disclosed the names of every newly elected member, publishing them in Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, and New York newspapers.

Prior narratives put the spotlight primarily on architect Addison Mizner rather than the patron, Paris Singer. I have not included information gleaned from essays or books written by club members, Mizner’s autobiographical The Many Mizners (1932) and the architect’s unpublished second volume of his autobiography (1933), or from Donald Curl’s informative Mizner’s Florida. It isn’t that I suppose these works inaccurate or regard Mizner’s recollections as capricious, even though he was known as a lively raconteur. Instead, I have attempted to reflect the temper of a certain era within a minimal framework by providing a chronicle that relies less on the lenience of predisposition and circumspection of memory.

On the following pages, I crafted a construction chronology to simplify and refine the club’s building history, combining the clubhouse’s complex adaptation of Spanish and Italian architectural elements with its functional evolution from the Touchstone Convalescent Club for Soldiers & Sailors to the exclusive Everglades Club. By focusing on the building process as it happened, rather than narrative summaries grounded on memoirs and anecdotal recollections, the unfolding account sharpens appreciation for the various factors in creating the club as a multifaceted composite. The timeline format’s sequential structure offers a clarity not found in narrative formats, too often held together by facts either condensed or lost at the expense of telling a more engaging story. Below each date, the story’s headline appears in italics, followed by a brief abstract of the article.

31 March 1918
“Paris Singer’s real estate plans”

In the last ten days, Paris Singer has spent $250,000 on eight parcels in Palm Beach. He has an architect and a lawyer and is incorporating a holding company to manage, develop, and build on the land. During the past week, Singer painted his cottage Chinese colors and placed a six-foot stuffed alligator on the roof, most likely a curio from the nearby alligator farm. (According to an April 1917 issue of The Palm Beach Post, Singer acquired his Peruvian Avenue house the previous month). Also, M. Nichols of Greenwich began construction on an Italian villa on an oceanfront parcel south of the Wigwam, the Croker estate, on South Ocean Boulevard.

1 April 1918
“Americans enter battle with dauntless allies”

Palm Beach Post, headlines. 1 April 1918. As Singer acquired property in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, the US was expanding its involvement in the war, as "Americans enter battle with dauntless allies."

2 April 1918
"Socially Speaking"

A local social column reports Paris Singer and his architect Addison Mizner (spelled Meisner) have returned to Palm Beach from a weekend in Miami. Singer and Mizner were guests of Charles Deering and James Deering in South Miami. The previous season, Deering's younger brother James Deering had completed Vizcaya, a waterfront estate located in South Miami. Upon his return, Singer announced his Palm Beach clubhouse would be built in the Old World style, as if it had always been there, much like Vizcaya.

The Architectural Review. July 1917. However described as remote, Vizcaya was already a considerable architectural presence and social landmark when Singer and Mizner began building the Everglades Club. Vizcaya's architect F. Burrall Hoffman, whose parents were among the Everglades Club's earliest members, had designed oceanfront houses on Palm Beach for the Phipps family several years before Singer conceived the club.

Vizcaya, James Deering estate. Miami, 1916-1917. F. Burrall Hoffman, architect. Paul Chalfin, interior design. In 1919, Hoffman, Chalfin, and Robert Winthrop Chandler, Vizcaya's mural artist, stayed at the Everglades Club while they worked on the music room addition at Joseph Riter's Al Poniente on North Lake Way. Courtesy Library of Congress.

4 April 1918
"Villas for US soldiers"

Paris Singer and Addison Mizner (spelled Mizener) left Palm Beach and returned to New York after Mr. Singer spent the past three weeks investing $250,000 in building sites. Singer plans ten large country homes for wounded soldiers.

5 April 1918
"Paris Singer purchases still another valuable waterfront"

The Palm Beach Post, headlines. 5 April 1918. Paris Singer has completed a half-dozen deals in the past month. The largest transaction from the Royal Palm Improvement Company. Singer bought from City Builders an additional 660 feet of oceanfront adjacent to his present property. The land was previously owned by H. F. Hammon and H.G. Wheeler. Singer buys Lone Cabbage Island.

25 April 1918
“Paris Singer will build ten villas and turn them over to the government”

In two months,Paris Singer has invested $250,000 in Palm Beach real estate. He plans a “miniature Venice” on Lone Cabbage Island. Along Worth Avenue, the lakefront will feature two sets of villas. The Continental villas will be at the disposal of allied nations. The Palm Beach villas will be open to the U. S. government. Paris Singer has four sons fighting in the war. Singer has spent the last two weeks at the Ritz-Carlton in New York with his architect Addison Mizner (spelled Meisner), making plans for Palm Beach. The ten villas will be offered for free use to aid the recovery of wounded officers in France. Singer’s Oldway mansion was turned into a 600-bed Red Cross hospital, directed by a committee headed by the Duchess of Marlborough and Mrs. John Jacob Astor. His London house is a 60-room hospital. His house in Paris is a 50-bed hospital. Singer’s French Riviera house was also converted for the military’s use.

Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough.

Mrs. John Jacob Astor (Madeleine Talmage Force).

Singer announces everything in Palm Beach is to be Spanish or Italian architecture, or a combination of the two. He plans to carve Cabbage Island into six islands, working up a “Venetian effect.” To the south of the Convalescent Colony, he will develop the existing jungle into a park with trails and a lakefront restaurant. Singer believes “all improvements must blend with natural scenery.” There will be “no big white houses with glaring red roofs.” A month earlier, Singer had visited Vizcaya, the Deering place in Miami, that inspired his Palm Beach site. He will not build “something laid out with a yardstick,” but instead, “… something that looks old, like it has always been there, with soft colors.”

3 May 1918
“Paris Singer here to start work on Convalescent Colony”

Paris Singer arrives in Palm Beach accompanied by architect Addison Mizner. Together they will superintend the construction of the convalescent colony for wounded American soldiers. The colony will be located on nineteen lots in Royal Park, bounded on the south and west by Lake Drive, by Coconut Row on the east, and Peruvian Avenue on the north. Some of the lots face the yacht basin.

Singer and Mizner open an office on Gardenia Street in West Palm Beach, opposite the Lainhart and Potter Lumber Company, where they place orders for the construction materials needed for several villas. The colony will accommodate “only such men in need of the invigorating influences of this climate.” The Touchstone organization sponsors a national “Back to Health Movement for our Wounded Men.”

The architect is Addison Mizner (spelled Meisner), of New York, a Californian associated with “some of the most attractive buildings in America.” Mr. Singer has spent part of the past two winters at Palm Beach. Singer says, “Lake Worth is studded with islands and the scenery is beyond words, beautiful.” The soldiers’ recovery will be stimulated by “deep-sea fishing, wild pig hunting, alligator hunting, and wild duck shooting.” Dr. A. Thompson Downs, of Saratoga Springs and formerly physician at The Breakers, will be the resident physician and prescribe treatments for the recovering soldiers.

6 May 1918
Western Union Telegram

Paris Singer sends magazine editor Mary Fanton Roberts a telegram saying “…Mizner does interesting picture of club. Would make good magazine cover in Fall. Sending it. Love, Paris”

July 1918
The New York Times reports the American Red Cross Hospital in Paignton, located at Oldway House, the country home of Paris Singer, is the finest hospital for the wounded in England. Queen Mary visits.

Oldway House. Paignton, England. After acquiring The Wigwam, the main pavilion of his father's estate, Paris Singer transformed it into an English adaptation of Versailles. In 1927, Oldway became the Torbay Country Club. After World War II, the Singer family sold Oldway to the Torbay Council for civic and public use. Unable to pay for Oldway's much-needed restoration, the Torbay Council sold the historic landmark in 2012 to the Akkeron development group that is converting it into a 55-room boutique hotel and spa.

Oldway House. Paris Singer's study. Courtesy of the Singer Family.

15 July 1918
“Paris Singer tells of his Palm Beach development plans”

Singer tells of spending millions for his “loving donation to the cause of democracy.” The July issue of The Touchstone Magazine features drawings of the new Palm Beach facility. Few knew of Singer in Palm Beach before he began acquiring property in March. First, the project was known as convalescent hospital. In the article, Singer described Mizner as “the well-known and genial New York architect who is now staying in Palm Beach all the time to devote to this project.” Singer “banishes” the idea that the project will be “profit-making.” Instead, it will be patriotic and humanitarian. Classes will be offered by The Touchstone Magazine in October to ladies in New York who want to be useful companions to the wounded veterans in Palm Beach.

24 July 1918
“Tile made in Tunis 2,000 years ago will be used in club”

Palatial home for soldiers and sailors will soon be under construction; greenhouses and gardens are being gotten underway. Tunisian tiles are stored in a warehouse in West Palm Beach. Architect Addison Mizner explained that “Tunis was the Palm Beach of its day.” Construction of the villas is underway but the clubhouse has yet to start. A dredge is digging in front of the basin. Five greenhouses have been erected in the heart of the jungle as thousands of crotons are being rooted. Singer purchased a nearby farm that will supply the clubhouse with fresh dairy products and produce. The article states “wonders” have been accomplished since construction of the villas began two months ago.

The Touchstone Magazine, advertisement. 1918-1919.

3 August 1918
“Singer may go to California; wants no troubles with labor.”“Patriotic carpenters will return to work on Paris Singer contract”

When construction workers strike and demand a raise in their daily minimum wage, the local Labor Council agrees to exempt the Singer project in Palm Beach, giving in to the argument that it is a patriotic undertaking.

“Wealthy philanthropist buys more property”

On the west side of Lake Worth, Paris Singer buys the Gables Hotel that will accommodate “sixty French widows and their children.” The widowed French women will help “nurse the wounded men.”

7 September 1918
“Palm Beach as a Fountain of Youth …”

The Touchstone War Work, as Singer’s project is termed, is in progress with eight villas now nearly completed. The Clubhouse foundation has been laid at the gateway to the famous Florida jungle. The Clubhouse will be semi-tropical in style and is being built not to furnish hospital rooms and treatment but for men discharged from hospitals not yet ready to face life. The purpose of the facility is to fulfill the need for peace and calm in their lives. The club will provide happiness and entertainment, a release from responsibility with a variety of joy. The alligator pens remain to the south of the greenhouses where Mizner was rooting crotons. The Clubhouse has been renamed the Everglades Rod and Gun Club.

Fall 1918
The Touchstone Magazine

The Touchstone Magazine. 1918. Owned and financed by Paris Singer, The Touchstone Magazine was a New York-based arts publication that promoted Singer's Palm Beach establishment as a refuge for shell-shock veterans. Editor and co-owner Mary Fanton Roberts, also a close friend of Isadora Duncan's, featured a series of articles about shell shock veterans and published Mizner's earliest drawings for the planned facility.

14 September 1918
“Old World treasures gathered by Singer”

Singer announces Clubhouse will feature antique doors, furniture, and tile from “ancient Troy that Helen may have walked on.” Also, to be installed will be 400-year-old doors with the heads of saints, and male and female figures in the upper panel. Mizner stages an exhibit of rare furniture pieces at Speer Pharmacy on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. The artifacts and furnishings will be installed in the clubhouse now under construction.

October 1918
“First Shell-Shock Club in America for Soldiers and Sailors”

The Touchstone Magazine places a one-page ad in International Studio magazine illustrated with a watercolor of the clubhouse, offering subscribers several issues on the subject of helping wounded veterans, especially shell-shock victims.

13 October 1918

The Palm Beach Post, headlines. 13 October 1918. "Germany accepts armistice terms."

27 October 1918
“Wonderful artistic effects achieved in architecture of Paris Singer’s homes for convalescent soldiers.”

Addison Mizner's colony of villas revel in color: pale blue, pale green, warm orange, a plain white, a warmer blue, and over all, a red, but not too red tile, weather-worn and studiously irregular. Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Everglades Club & Villas. c. 1918-1919. A view of the villas along Worth Avenue facing the basin, looking southeast towards the completed clubhouse. Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

The Clubhouse is described as "a blend of feudal, Medieval, Spanish, and Italian in delicious harmony." The structure's ambiance is "of a high and venerable pile like a monastery." The dining room measures 70 by 40 and the roof measures 40 feet from its lowest point to the massive beams. The living room is 85 by 44 with a fireplace 6.5 feet high, "large enough to roast an ox." The structure suggests barons and monks. Also, ladies rooms, cloak rooms, a club office, musicians' balconies with narrow-arched doorways. The plans include an Orange Court and a double-terrace angled, the lower of which will form a true Venetian landing stage overlooking Lake Worth. The tower is 30-foot square whose two uppermost floors will contain apartments for Mr. Singer and Mr. Mizner. Twelve bedrooms are located west of the tower. According to the story, Mizner "makes the most pretentious efforts of his predecessors appear inappropriate and commonplace."

Everglades Club, floor plan. 1918-1919.

The Touchstone Magazine. 1918-1919.

1 December 1918
“Paris Singer here for a few days”

ParisSinger along with Frederic Roosevelt Scovel, secretary of the new club, arrived to look over interests at the Everglades Club. Scovel’s mother Maria Roosevelt Scovel was a cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt. Scovel’s father Edward Scovel was titled Chevalier by the king of Italy.

11 December 1918
“Mr. Paris Singer divorced after 30 years”

Newspaper item. December 1918. During the Singer v. Singer divorce, filed on the grounds of misconduct and desertion, the former Mrs. Singer said she and Paris married 24 October 1887 in Hobart, Tasmania, before taking up residence in England. She testified she and her husband separated in 1910. At the time, she did not file for divorce because she "thought it better for the sake of the children." Court testimony by Martha Smart, Joan Bates' maid, and Florence Taylor, Paris Singer's cook-housekeeper, revealed details of the couple's most intimate affair.

Note: According to several Isadora Duncan biographers and court documents, the Singer-Duncan "infatuation" ended by 1912, though Singer still gave Isadora financial assistance for her various artistic projects. He remained concerned about Duncan's welfare especially following the tragic accidental drowning in 1913 of their three-year-old son Patrick Singer. Previously, when Singer reportedly stayed at The Breakers, he was visited by Isadora Duncan, who "stopped over on her way to South America." Some say Duncan never recovered from the loss of her children; she died in 1927. Since 1912, Singer had lived openly with Miss Joan Bates in London, Paris, New York, and Palm Beach until his divorce from Cecilia "Lily" Singer in 1918. Soon after, in 1919, Joan became his third wife, called "the bride of the season" by a Palm Beach social columnist.

Portrait of Cecilia "Lily" Henrietta Augusta Graham Singer. From a portrait of Paul Matheny, c. 1895. Mrs. Graham Singer attended her former husband's funeral in June 1932. Courtesy of the Singer family.

15 December 1918
“Paris Singer buys large tract in Royal Park”

Sydney Maddock sold Paris Singer a tract in Royal Park. The article does not detail the precise location.

22 December 1918
“Palatial homes for shell-shocked convalescent soldiers built by Singer nearing completion”

The article states,“The main clubhouse suggests a castle.” The clubhouse utilizes quaint antiquities from Spain and Italy, such as the iron doors at the entrance on Worth Avenue. Upon entering, cloakrooms are located for men and women. The cloak room is the only room provide for women, for this is to be a man’s club. Ahead, looking through the building is a view to the south of the orange court and to the west to the lake and the island, also a part of this enterprise. The lounging room and the dining room are high-ceilinged and paneled. These rooms evoke recollections of Washington Irving’s Alhambra or of old English inns. Decorated beams reproduce the period long past. The first floor also includes a model kitchen and servant’s quarters. The villas are described as “Homes for Heroes.” The gardens are a half-mile south of the clubhouse. The dairy is “on the mainland, two miles distant.”

1919

17 Jan 1919
“Everglades Club for Convalescent Soldiers Most Complete of its Kind in the United States”

With residences in Devonshire, St. Cloud, and the French Riviera, Paris Singer has invested $1 million into the Palm Beach project. Singer states club will not be charitable or a moneymaker but an institution. The facility is set on 70 acres plus a nearby 140-acre farm to supply the club. The club features a dining room with service for 150-200, large living room, several reception rooms, and 12 bedrooms and baths for residential members. Seven villas each with seven bedrooms and living rooms are nearby with one occupied by a resident physician, Dr. Sherman Downs, of Saratoga Springs. The club offers a fleet of motor boats, tennis courts and a nearby log cabin, where hunting parties can hunt turkey, quail and deer. A golf course will be constructed later.

25 Jan 1919
“Everglades Club opens on February 4”

The Busoni Orchestra from New York will arrive in Palm Beach on 1 February 1919. The club will offer members boating, fishing, dancing, and a tea dansant from 3 to 6. The club’s president Paris Singer is reported to be indisposed and may not make opening. The club’s officers are: E. Clarence Jones, vice-president; T. T. Reese, treasurer; F. Roosevelt Scovel, secretary. The Board of Governors members are: Pierre Barbey, Harlan Kent Bolton, William Lawrence Green, Lewis Quentin Jones, Frederick P. Moore, E. Clarence Jones, Walter J. Mitchell, Henry C. Phipps, T. T. Reese, Paris Singer, Joseph E. Speidel, J. Frederick Pierson, and Edward T. Stotesbury.

29 January 1919
The club israpidly nearing completion. The front of the club is lined with wheelchairs. The stucco villas are complete. The Yellow Villa will be occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte; the White Villa by Mrs. Charles B. Alexander and her daughter Mary Crocker; and, the Green Villa reserved for Lt. Earl C. Horan and Mr. and Mrs. F. Roosevelt Scovel. There is already a membership of 100 names with new names constantly proposed. Nelson Slater is occupying the apartment in the Club Tower over Addison Mizner’s. Three of five motorboats are now in commission with Capt. Wilson Rowan in command. The Club maintains its own “Tuileries” in West Palm Beach. The club’s tiles are also manufactured in West Palm Beach. The Everglades Club was “Made in America,” said Paris Singer.

Everglades Club, 1919. The club's original façade on Worth Avenue. Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

30 January 1919

February 1919
Palm Beach Life Magazine

February 1919. Paris Singer hosts a pre-opening lunch at the Palm Beach Country Club with the club's charter members and its first honorary member W. H. Beardsley, president of the Florida East Coast Railway and Hotel Company. Because the Everglades Club was not incorporated until 1924, there are not believed to be any recorded minutes of the club's organizational meetings between 1919 and 1923.

4 February 1919
Everglades Club's Opening Afternoon Event

Everglades Club, February 1919. Addison Mizner hosts the club's "first big party" with Mr. Irving Berlin at the piano.

4 February 1919
Opening Evening Event

"The First 100"

As it was believed it would take at least five years for European resorts to recover from the devastation of the war, the Everglades Club enjoyed almost instantaneous popularity.

16 February 1919

The New York Sun reports the Everglades Club has 125 members, among them, Reginald Boardman, Charles F. Choate, Richard Croker, Fulton Cutting, James Deering, George Peabody Gardner, and John Rutherfurd.

19 February 1919

The New York Tribune reports “The largest social affair of the season was the opening of the Everglades Club the other night … There are fancy canoes, sailboats, fast motor boats, servants with turbans and sashes, and, in fact, every touch known to the stage which the development smacks strongly of. It has cost about half million dollars, in addition to the real estate.” Also, “The handsome new club, erected for the use of French officers, caught fire during a housewarming a few nights ago but the damage was slight. The blaze occurred at dinner time. The diners rushed to the street but returned to finish their meal. A dinner was being given for Mrs. Vernon Booth of Chicago. The guests included Stanley Mortimer, Grafton Pyne, Mrs. Quincy Shaw 2nd, John B. Kitchen, Robert Toland, Mr. and Mrs. John Rutherfurd, and Mr. and Mrs. William Lawrence Green.

5 Mar 1919
Sketch of Club with image captioned “Now open for convalescent army officers.”

5 March 1919
“Society Leaders at Palm Beach”

The newspaper edition I was able to access featured a badly damaged photograph taken 4 February 1919 in the club’s Court of the Oranges headlined: "Eight ladies considered society’s leaders." The photograph included Mrs. Walter Mitchell, Mrs. Harlan Bolton, Mrs. Pierre Barbey, Mrs. John F. Harris, Mrs. E. T. Stotesbury, Mrs. Joseph Speidel, Mrs. William Lawrence Green, and Mrs. Lewis Quentin Jones.

6 Mar 1919
“New members at the Everglades Club”

New members include: From New York, Francis Burrall Hoffman Jr., Phillip Stevenson, Marion S. Wyeth, Leonard Thomas, William Gammell, James Byrne, and David Forgan; Philadelphia, John F. Kelly; and Lenox, Courtland Field Bishop. Paris Singer has been “absent for some time,” as he is in New York at the Everglades Club office located at the Anderson Galleries at 58th Street and Park Avenue.

18 March 1919

After a first season of nine weeks, the club will close 29 March. The club has grown from 100 to 300 annual subscribers. The club’s sixty-odd rooms have been completely occupied with many applications refused because of lack of room. Additions to be made before next season include a golf course and four or five clay tennis courts. The club will be open from 15 December 1919 -15 April 1920.

5 Apr 1919
“Paris Singer buys Hotel Arches”

Singer pays $25,000 for hotel located on the oceanfront at Australian Avenue. Singer sells 200-feet of oceanfront north of Gus’ Baths for $45,000.

6 Apr 1919
“Elks buy Gables Hotel from Paris Singer”

In West Palm Beach, the ever patriotic Paris Singer sells a hotel on the west side of Lake Worth. He once planned to use the Gables Hotel as an adjunct to the Touchstone Convalescent Club.

8 June 1919
“Everglades Club enlarged in three sections”

During the season, the Everglades Club had “three applications for every room.” Fifteen additional sleeping rooms are being added to the south side of the club. Another addition on the northeast side is being extended east to house 300 lockers for golfers, 200 for men and 100 for women, and showers. Across the street, the club will add a garage to accommodate 40 or more cars, with servants’ quarters above. To the south of the clubhouse, the old Jungle Trail is being cleared for the golf course.

22 December 1919
“Opening of Everglades Club today marks beginning of Palm Beach season”

“Paris Singer and F. Roosevelt Scovel arrive today to open the Everglades Club for the season.” R. F. Denzler, of Piping Rock, club manager, arrived two weeks ago. Nine-hole links will be ready at first of the year.

1920

5 Jan 1920

The club’s first chef was a Swiss cook named “Sheible.” The first Maitre’d was also Swiss, R. A. Sulzer. Following the 1919 and 1920 seasons, Chef Jacques Lescarboura arrived and stayed until 1925 when Cesare Innocenti became club chef. Two of six davenports arrived for placement in the Living Room. The sofas are old gold in color with splashes of mauve and blue flowers. The club announced that Thursday and Sunday nights were $5 prix fixe dinner-deluxe and dancing nights. Afternoon tea dances will be held on Wednesday and Saturday from 4pm to 6pm. On gala nights, dinner appears to have been served at 8:30; supper service at 1:00 am. Breakfast also served.

A menu from one of the club’s dinner deluxe evenings “… served in true medieval fashion at long tables with gorgeous old tapestries and crimson and gold altar cloths.”

Grapefruit Cocktail
Celery Olives
Crème Portuguese
Filet of Striped Bass Colbert
Medallions of Beef Bouquetiere
Salade Everglades
Meringue Glace Chantilly
Café Special Petits Fours

8 Jan 1920

Foremost dramatist Percy Mackaye is staying at the Everglades Club. Singer receiving congratulations on recent marriage to Joan Bates; he is expected to arrive today. Singer’s son Cecil Singer has arrived at the club for the season.

Annie Charlotte "Joan" Bates Singer. Courtesy of the Singer family.

14 January 1920

In legal matters, Paris Singer’s Ocean and Lake Company reclaims Lone Cabbage Island as part of its acquisition of the Hiriam F. Hammon tract. By the later part of the month, it will be standing room only at the Everglades Club. There have been many changes and improvements over the summer and fall. The nine-hole golf course will soon be played on. Work progresses on the clay tennis courts. Sherwood Aldrich is in residence at White Villa. Also, in residence at the club are mural artist Robert Astor Chandler who is working on murals for Joseph Riter at Al Poniente and architect F. Burrall Hoffman, who is designing Reiter’s music room that will become home for the first events by the resort’s Society of the Arts. Chandler designed the murals at Vizcaya; Hoffman was Vizcaya’s principal architect. Singer’s nephew Fred Singer arrives from Paris. The club adds a Ladies Association Annual Membership. Because of the club’s popularity, board meetings are being held almost every few mornings to consider additional new members known as either annual or temporary subscribers.

The club’s officers are: Paris Singer, president; E. Clarence Jones and E. T. Stotesbury, vice-presidents; Martin Sweeney, secretary and treasurer. The board of governors are: Pierre Lorillard Barbey, Harlan K. Bolton, William Laurence Green; John F. Harris, E. Clarence Jones, Lewis Quentin Jones, Frederick P. Moore, J. Frederic Pierson, H. C. Phipps, Henry T. Sloane, all of New York; Edward Crozer, Charles Munn, E. T. Stotesbury, Philadelphia; T. T. Reese, Palm Beach; Joseph Speidel, West Virginia; and Walter J. Mitchell, Manchester–by-the-Sea.

17 Jan 1920

New club members include: From New York, Leroy Baldwin, Thomas Barbour, James F. Carlisle, Edward Clark Crossett, John Edwin Deitz, Winthrop Dwight, Robert L. Ireland, Percy Mackaye, Edward Martin, Evander Schley, and Cecil Singer. Chicago: William Waller Jr., Robert C. Wheeler. Others: Col. Richard O. Davies, Henry F. du Pont, Frank Griswold, William P. Snyder, William G. Warden, Robert Webb (West Palm Beach) and George W. Wightman.

The nine-hole golf course will open soon, designed by Seth Rayner and Charles Blair MacDonald.

20 January 1920

Mrs. F. Roosevelt Scovel hosted a luncheon at the Everglades Club to honor Mrs. Paris Singer. Mrs. Scovel was the former Vivian Sartorius, second cousin to President Theodore Roosevelt and granddaughter of President Ulysses S. Grant.

3 Feb 1920
“Everglades Club golf course opens tomorrow”

4 Feb 1920
“Everglades Cub course opens – Nine-Hole Links ready for play…”

William Robertson is the club’s first golf professional. The course is 2,830 yards; par for the course is 39.

4 February 1920

The club’s 1st Anniversary is celebrated with a golf exhibition, followed by a tea reception and dance. The following annual subscribers were added: From New York, James Anyon, Cooper Bryce, Hamilton Carhart, Bayard Dominick, Robert Dougherty, Thomas Eastman, Henry Kipp, Henry H. Rogers, Arthur Punnett, James Punnett, and John J. Watson Jr.; Charles Pillsbury, Minneapolis; Jerome Wideman, West Palm Beach; A. E. Dietrich, Millbrook; Jonathan Godfrey, Bridgeport; R. I. Huntzinger, Greenwich; C. Bai Lihune, Chicago; and Lord Queenborough, London.

4 Feb 1920

Sketch image announces the club’s advantages “Modern Laundry and Dairy Farm.”

17 February 1920

Among the subscribers at the tea and dance celebrating the club’s first anniversary and opening of the golf course were: Mr. and Mrs. Richard Croker, Mr. J. Horace Harding, Sherwood Aldrich, Lord and Lady Queenborough, Mrs. Whitney Lyon, M. and Mrs. William Thaw, Mr. and Mrs. Leland Sterry, Michael P. Grace, and Dr. and Mrs. Landon Humphreys.

2 March 1920

At a meeting held 23 February 1920, the following new subscribers were elected:

New York: Howard Cole, Conde Nast, A. R. Pierson, Herbert Pulitzer, J. Ernest Richards, William Rhinelander Stewart Jr., Edward Tinker, and Sidney Whelan; Neil Bertson, Flint; Harold J. Bryant, Lake Forest; Waldo Bryant, Bridgeport;NY; George Crawford, Pittsburg; Irenee du Pont, Wilmington; James Elverson Jr., Philadelphia; W. J. Matheson, Florida; and Lloyd Thayer, San Francisco.

Temporary subscribers elected were:

New York: Clifford Brokaw, Howard Brokaw, Herbert Harriman, John Inman, Ferdinand Jelke, A. V. Otergren, Orme Wilson, and John S. Wise Jr. Also, Henry Darlington, Newark; Harry Holloway, Philadelphia; F. Wilson Pritchett, Philadelphia; Michael Van Beuren, Newport; and John B. Warren, Philadelphia. Among the temporary annual subscribers elected were: Gen. P. D. Fitzgerald, London; John K. Branch, Richmond; Lawrence Fuller, Philadelphia; Capt. Cyril Hargraves, London; and Eugene Levering, Baltimore.

Thursday evenings were appointed Venetian Fete nights, complete with melodious Italian singers and a fleet of gondolas.

16 March 1920

Among the most recent subscribers elected: Sam Bell, Philadelphia; Arthur W. Butler, New York; R. Hugh Carleton, Long Island; Walter Carpenter Jr., Wilmington; T. DeWitt Cuyler, Philadelphia; Edward C. Dale, Philadelphia; Dr. James A. Draper, Wilmington, H. Wilfred Dupuy, Philadelphia; F. W. Fuller, Springfield; Lord A. Levison Gower, London; Robert Goelet, NYC; Sydney Hutchinson, Philadelphia; Ogden Reid, New York.

1921

2 Jan 1921
“Everglades Club opens”

Chef Jacques Lescarboura returns with “a galaxy of gourmet and epicure delights.” Dr. Sherman Downs, club physician, is in residence. The club has a “welcome foreign atmosphere.” By 7 January 1921, the club has a waiting list of members and for accommodations.

Everglades Club, aerial, 1921. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Everglades Club. View of the Maisonettes and tennis courts, looking east. State of Florida Archives.

The Court of Oranges was also called the "Breakfast Room." Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

May 1921

Singer Addition. Palm Beach. The plat for Singer Place, now known as Middle Road. At the very least, the Town Council should revisit its impulsive decision made in January 1936 at the request of Mrs. Lorenzo Woodhouse that turned Singer Place into Middle Road, forever removing the Singer name from the streets of Palm Beach.

1922

14 Mar 1922

Annual members elected: Clarence Dillon and Col. L. H. Slocum. Women members elected were Mrs. Felix du Pont and Mrs. Arthur Brockle.

14 June 1922

Villa les Rochers. The Singer villa in the South of France. Courtesy of the Singer family.

In a letter to Mary and Bill Roberts in New York, Joan Singer invited the couple to Palm Beach the following winter and updates them on the Singers’ latest comings-and-goings from Villa les Rochers in St. Jean, Cap Ferrat. “Poor Paris has been quite ill with grippe and congestion of the lungs with a temperature of 104 for two or three days and an abnormally high blood pressure… He came downstairs yesterday for the first time in three weeks. It has made him awfully weak but with this lovely sunshine he will be getting strong again and we are planning to be in Paris by the 24th and then to England and Oldway House at Devonshire … Addison is expected here in July when we hope for great things.”

1923

2 January 1923

The Everglades Club’s informal opening will be 3 January 1923 because so many members have yet to arrive and the absence of the president. The club formally opens 8 January 1923 when the orchestra arrives. Gala nights reserved for Thursday and Sunday nights. During the 1923 season, the club expects many distinguished diplomatic and foreign visitors.

E. T. Stotesbury, vice-president of the Everglades Club in 1923.

Pierre Lorillard Barbey, board of governors.

Of the club’s many changes and improvements suggesting an ancient Spanish monastery, Paris Singer “… has made Palm Beach beautiful with the magic of his taste and money.” Since the need diminished for accommodations for officers following the armistice, the Everglades Club has since become an exclusive residential club. Members are elected at weekly board meetings held on Mondays during the season. The club’s officers for the 1923 season are: Paris Singer, president; E. Clarence Jones and E. T. Stotesbury, vice-presidents; Martin Sweeney, secretary and treasurer. The board of governors: Pierre Lorillard Barbey, William Laurence Green; John F Harris, E. Clarence Jones, Lewis Quentin Jones, H. C. Phipps, Henry T. Sloane, all of New York; Edward Crozer, Charles Munn, E. T. Stotesbury, Philadelphia; T. T. Reese, Palm Beach; Joseph Speidel, West Virginia; and Walter J. Mitchell, Manchester–by-the-Sea.

Paris Singer arrives January 8 to open his Chinese Villa on Peruvian Avenue. The opening dinner will introduce the sales force from the club’s parent company, The Ocean and Lake Realty Company. The 18-hole golf course features a new stucco golf and tennis clubhouse with a view of the course lake. Martin L. Hampton is the architect of golf club house. The club’s tennis manager is James Bevans; the golf director is William Robertson.

The new maisonettes overlook the tennis courts with a wide loggia on the second floor. The club’s maisonettes apartment tenants included: John Sanford, Alice DeLamar, Mrs. Lorenzo Woodhouse, Mr. Irenee du Pont, and Herbert M. Cowperthwaite. Singer’s Golf View Development Company has built bijou houses of unique architecture each of a different color on Golfview Road designed by architect Marion Sims Wyeth. Each house features three master bedrooms and baths, adequate servants’ quarters, and large living room. In addition, the Jay Carlisles have already moved in. Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Hutton and Mr. and Mrs. David McCullough already occupy their houses. Nearby, Singer Place is a broad boulevard offering large lots and lots between 2nd (Gulfstream Road) and 3rd Streets (Via Marina) and between Ocean Boulevard and County Road.

Martin Sweeney begins his third season as the club’s manager. A beautiful new Bridge Room has been added on the ground floor entered from the left side of the loggia. The bridge room features colored theatrical gauze curtains with green wool embroidery and the necessary soft lighting that affords winning a game of bridge. A new seawall on the southwest of club’s lakefront, allowed for a new fill-in area to make a large garden plot. The Great Hall has new light fixtures with yellow parchment shades on the great iron chandeliers making the light softer.

On Worth Avenue east of the clubhouse, the Everglades Arcade Shops open with Jay Thorpe, Exotic Gardens, Miss Flora Darrah Silver, Palm Beach Decorative Society, Wood, Edey & Slater and William Baumgarten, Max Littwitz lace shop, Ladd & Webb, real estate, Edward F. Foley, photographer, Louis McCarthy, gowns, Gontran, hairdresser, a barber shop, and Western Union.

The club’s staff includes: A. D. Tunnecliffe, superintendent; Jacques Lescarboura, chef; Maitre’d Frank Walfel; James Bevans, tennis director, William Robertson, golf manager, and C. D. Miller, gardener.

Everglades Club, 1923. Golf clubhouse. Martin Luther Hampton, architect. Courtesy State of Florida Archives.

17 June 1923

In a letter to Mary Fanton Roberts, Joan Singer relates the work being done on their villa at St. Jean. “Paris has bought a lot more property and the scheme is to be much bigger than Palm Beach! The new villa is unfinished but well on its way and we hope to be occupying it in October. We are getting furniture into the rooms that are furnished and Addison is expected here in July when we hope for great things. Paris is busy from morning to night and is well except for his high blood pressure for now as a result of his stupendous energy. … Cecil and Laura are coming down July 7.”

1924

8 Mar 1924
“Paris Singer to retire; Give up control of Everglades Club.”

Apparently, this New York Times headline was premature.

1925

1 May 1925
“The Beginning of the End …”

Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

4 June 1925
“Singer obtains $1.5 million more beach to the North. Adds Blue Heron tract of 5,200 feet to enormous holdings beyond inlet.”

“Millionaire clubman” Paris Singer plans Mizner-designed Blue Heron Beach Inn to accommodate “thousands of pleasure-seekers.” Plans include a yacht basin and deepening the inlet for sea-going yachts.

24 September 1925
“Singer to build costly theater for Palm Beach. Ziegfeld will stage Follies this winter.”

Singer announces plans for a Venetian-style theater to be built on the lakefront south of the Everglades Club. Pending its completion, Singer has engaged Joseph Urban to redesign his Club Montmartre on Royal Palm Way to showcase Flo Ziegfeld’s “Palm Beach Follies,” described as a “high-styled amusement.” Ziegfeld adds that Palm Beach will host the first international beauty contest in search of a “Modern Cleopatra.”

15 December 1925

Everglades Club, 15 December 1925. Finishing touches are placed on the club's new façade and additions. In December 1925, the club's junior associate members could be elected regular members except they could not introduce guests, use the club before 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, or until after church on Sunday. Dues were $50 if single; $150, if married.

31 Dec 1925

The Everglades Club opens on New Year’s Eve. The Maisonettes, Everglades Arcade and several cottages along Worth Avenue are completely occupied. And now, perhaps the greatest improvements can be found in building across from the Everglades Club. A façade and tower were joined by a group of twenty shops with apartments above (Via Mizner).

The club’s Main Building has altered its own entrance and added apartments extending east towards the arcade of shops. In the rear, additional apartments add to the capacity. There is a welcome addition to the south side where the loggia facing the patio is now a beautiful room with a sliding roof that members may engage for private parties. The roof of the ballroom/living room forms a beautiful roof garden with rare shrubs, trees, vases, and jardinières. The roof garden is reached from the apartment above by a flight of tiled steps and set aside for the exclusive use of Paris Singer whose apartment it adjoins.

At the club’s southwest, the domed Moorish roof of the loggia has achieved a full story height dominating the apartment built especially for Mr. and Mrs. Harris Hammond. The apartment overlooks the golf course and gardens on one side and the Singer’s garden on the other.

Everglades Club, addition. 1925.

The center of the patio itself has a tiled oblong fountain with a goldfish pond lined with green tile and an octagonal tile top arising from the base in which a beautiful symmetrical orange tree has been planted. A wonderful pile of Tunisian tiles in the loggia denotes they are to be used for completely tiling this space overlooking the patio.

The new addition to the front of the club facing Worth Avenue is reached by a beautiful circular staircase leading to the private apartments of Mr. and Mrs. James Donahue and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Beaver Strassburger, these now having been completed. Mr. Strassburger is president of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

During the summer, the dining room was completely redecorated. Exquisite mural decorations by Achille Angeli have transformed it. The decorations depict the Spanish Armada on the north wall, on the left of the panel being the inscription, “ On May 13th there sailed from the port … And on the other side of the panel, this inscription, “Under instructions from Fillippa II, the great Armada was held at Sea…”

Everglades Club, dining room mural additions. 1925. State of Florida Archives.

The smaller private dining room beyond has frescoes of orange trees combined with Spanish crests. The entire wall above the paneling of these two rooms was decorated by the master, Achille Angeli. It seems like a veritable antique.

The Great Hall, the comfortable lounge and card rooms beyond, and the great Orange Gardens with their terraced dancing floors remain unchanged. But to the south of the club, there are beautiful new gardens adjoining the golf links. Rising from the corner of the gardens is a beautiful great building which contains a studio atop and the apartments of English artist Oswald Birley.

The club’s manager is London Wallick; Chef Cesare Innocenti; and doorman, Jock Dempsey.

Across from the clubhouse on Worth Avenue, the six-story office building on Via Parigi is completed. The tenants are :1st floor, Grace Hyde’s hat shop; 2nd floor, La Tienda, Duchesse de Richelieu’s antique import shop that will furnish the Blue Heron Inn; 3rd floor, Palm Beach Ocean Realty; 4th floor, H. C. Orrick, banker from Toledo; 5th floor, A. J. Drexel Biddle Jr.; 6th floor, Ocean and Lake Realty. Mortimer Singer, son of Franklin Singer, is appointed club’s honorary secretary.

Club policies remain unchanged, “… being more than ever like smart French and English clubs.” The entrance to the club has changed so members will receive mail and cashiers in new offices giving onto the loggia on the entrance floor. The club’s architectural features are of “best London clubs.”

Golf course architect Seth Raynor. USGA Archives.

The club’s Gala Nights will be on Thursday and Sunday featuring the Meyer Davis orchestra. A House Committee was created to bring members closer with suggestions and complaints. The Board added Bylaw IV enabling “a few desirable young men, whose occupations prevent them from fully using the club, to become junior associate subscribers. The Club will close for the season on 15 April.

The Seminole Golf Course has been built with 18 holes ready to play. This season there is a golf pavilion containing dining rooms, sitting rooms, locker rooms, and a caddie house. Seth Raynor is the architect of golf course located along the Intracoastal Waterway six miles north of Palm Beach.

New kitchens have been built for the club. A covered carriage entrance port cochere has been added on east side, together with a visitor’s reception area. A new private ballroom or banqueting hall has been built at the east end of the east patio. Two nine-room cottages, plus three maisonettes have been added. If the embargo on construction is not too severe, eight club cottages with be refurbished in the Spanish style. A new barber shop was built and two new garages added. Via Parigi contains twenty stores. The club’s harbor has been dredged thoroughly, cleaned, and the bottom blasted to six feet. Paris Singer purchased Gus’s Bath along the oceanfront at Worth Avenue, reserving a part of it as a private swim club for Everglades Club members.

During the 1925 – 1926 season, there was anavalanche of requests for membership. Maisonette leases have been extended to: W. Jackson Crispin, Cecil Singer, Princess Polignac, (aka Winaretta Singer, Paris Singer’s sister); and George Singer. The cottages are occupied by Felix Doubleday, Leonard Schultze and Fullerton Weaver. Apartments on Via Parigi are leased to Maurice Fatio and artist William Van Dresser. Via Parigi has softly tinted walls in cream, eau de Nile, blue, and cream with a half-timbered effect. The winding pedestrian street has a lovely plaza.

1926

5 March 1926

Newspaper item, "Paris Singer opens new bridge." With his son Paris Graham Singer behind the wheel of the family's Citroen ATV, Paris Singer is seated in the front seat. Singer's son and daughter, George and Winaretta are in the back seat with their sister-in-law Mrs. Cecil Singer and George's son, Master Paris George Sartorius Singer. "Approximately one thousand men are daily at work in my two developments and this number will be added to rather than depleted. My developments are purely the expansion of Palm Beach … I have been proceeding with the utmost caution …" Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

1927

9 April 1927
"Florida authorities allege huge fraud. Singer bailed after arrest."

While Paris Singer was exonerated of criminal fraud, numerous civil suits were filed by investors against him and his Palm Beach Ocean Realty Company. These suits alleged Singer made off with more than $1.5 million under false pretenses. Eventually, Singer lost these cases and liens were file against his various interests.

Blue Heron Inn, abandoned construction site. Located at was then the far north North End of Palm Beach, now Singer Island, the shell of Paris Singer's "last hurrah" was finally demolished in 1940. Having financed his Palm Beach Ocean developments from mortgage bonds placed on the Everglades Club, Singer and his companies faced numerous civil suits. State of Florida Archives.

30 April 1927
"Mr. Singer explains .."

Letter, Paris Singer to Mary Fanton Roberts and her husband Bill Roberts. 30 April 1927 Mary Fanton Roberts papers (1880-1956), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Letter, page two. Paris Singer to Mary Fanton Roberts and her husband Bill Roberts. 30 April 1927. Mary Fanton Roberts papers (1880-1956), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

6 March 1930
"The last dance …"

Everglades Club, invitation. 6 March 1930. Courtesy Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

The aftermath

Shortly after the Fancy Dress Ball at the Everglades Club, Paris and Joan Singer left Palm Beach, where they had spent their final season in a rental cottage on Seaspray Avenue. For a time, they encamped on a houseboat on The Nile before heading back to London. Several months after a Palm Beach County court lodged a $1.5 million lien against Singer, already in tenuous health, he died of heart failure in a London hotel room on 23 June 1932. He was entombed in the Singer family vault in Paignton.

Singer’s sons Cecil and George Singer represented the family’s interest in dealings with the Everglades Club. Cecil Singer succeeded his father as the club’s president for the 1933 season. In August 1933, Cecil and the bond holders placed the Everglades Club’s real estate in receivership appointing local realtor John L Webb as their receiver. Singer, his brother Paris Graham Singer, and the family’s various Devon and Vosges syndicates of Canada (holders of stock and notes of the club’s parent company), filed a suit alleging the Everglades Club owned them more than $200,000, claiming officers of the club fraudulently appropriated money. They also filed a damage suit to recover $375,000 in promissory notes, recorded in March 1928 Following the Singer family’s lawsuit against the club, the club’s members, including Hugh Dillman and John Shephard, filed for involuntary bankruptcy of the club itself. Columnist Cholly Knickerbocker reported an “explosion in the Everglades Club, as far as management policy.” Nonetheless, the club’s directors explored various options for the club to continue operation.

In January 1934, James Cromwell advocated opening the club to the public between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am each day except Thursday and Sunday. A vote was taken and nine governors voted favorably with one voting against the suggestion. It was decided to ask the Receiver to petition the court for such authority. Several weeks later, Charlton Yarnall reported the court would not approve the open night policy because it might affect the solicitation of new members. Charlie Munn suggested members be permitted to issue invitational cards permitting guests to use the Orange Gardens during prescribed times. Also, Yarnall proposed a Committee of Ladies be formed for the purpose of sponsoring teas in the Orange Gardens on Saturday afternoons. Both the Munn plan and Yarnall’s suggestions were approved. At one juncture, club members considered selling the club to the Town of Palm Beach.

After years of acrimonious wrangling, the club’s future was finally settled in January 1936 when a group of club members formed The Everglades Protective Syndicate, acquiring the club and its real estate holdings for $450,000 from the trusteeship held by the Central Farmers Trust and H. C. Rorick. A decade later, the Everglades Club became member-owned when, reportedly, each of its 800 members paid $1,000 to become an equal shareholder of the club and its holdings..

Addison Mizner died 5 February 1933, several months after his patron, Paris Singer.

Paris Singer’s third wife Joan died 4 February 1946 at the Singer estate in St. Jean, Cap Ferrat.

Paris Singer set new standards for Palm Beach; he believed Palm Beach always deserved better. Just as Henry Flagler’s and E. R. Bradley’s flaws have been overlooked, Paris Singer’s numerous contributions outweigh his faults. His legacy deserves a reassessment.

“Paris Singer has become almost legendary in the famous resort, which probably owes to him more than to anyone else its place in the sun.”

“Palm Beach Pioneer, Paris Singer dies of a heart ailment,” The Palm Beach Post, 25 June 1932.

Sources:
Historical Society of Palm Beach County
New York Sun - New York Tribune - New York Times
Palm Beach Daily News - Palm Beach Post
Mary Fanton Roberts papers (1880-1956), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
The Touchstone Magazine - Torquay Library

Augustus Mayhew is the author ofLost in Wonderland – Reflections on Palm Beach.

↧

No Holds Barred - The REAL New Year's Eve

November 5, 2013, 6:56 am

≫ Next: Resort Life: Chapter XXVIII, 1965-1966

≪ Previous: Palm Beach Social Diary

Halloween as the REAL New Year's Eve
By Blair Sabol

I always think of Halloween as the REAL New Years Eve. It always feels like the end of every year. It’s about this moment when people start saying, “let’s wait till after January to ... (fill in the blank).

Even in my Southwest location, “Day of the Dead” is a celebratory, colorful, graveyard Big Finale! But this year’s “Orange is the new Black” festivities feels very different. Halloween costume sales were down — even pumpkin patch and leaf changing trips have been off.

There’s a horrible holiday hustle that started early October for Black Friday. Macy’s is opening Thanksgiving Day along with Target and Walmart and everyone else is in their door buster sale bonanza. Desperation is in the air.

My astrologer Michael Lutin has been reporting (due to some multiple eclipse action) that our culture isn’t even depressed (that was last year) and that “we are now way past that, we are ‘flat-lined’.” He calls it “Zilchville” — we are neither here nor there as a third-rate nation and a 10th-rate culture! We are now lost in translation. Jobs are dumping while the Dow is dancing.

We are caught in an odd cross current and no one cares. Denial now rules. So does Xanax. Is this a new form of Rome burning? Or are we merely stuck in neutral for safety’s sake? Certainly our cultural bar has been set so low — we no longer even have a bar.

Fashion pals have complained to me that they are not eating as much and juicing more. Living on empty. The stores, runways, on-line and catalog shopping hold nothing for no one. Everyone is sticking with last year’s black puffer jackets, lean jeans, riding boots and ponytails through baseball hats.

Merchants are already sensing a lackluster holiday season — no matter how low that 92-inch flatscreen is priced. In fact, all those giant sales appear to be so old news that no one “can get it up” to care anymore. Diversion no longer “calls” us.

Maybe ~~next~~ last year ...

And speaking of “getting it up,” it was reported two weeks ago that the 16-30-year-old “New Japan (45% of women) are not interested and despise all sexual contact.” More than a quarter of the men feel the same and this trend is now taking hold in Asia, Europe and America!

People are marrying much later or not at all. It seems the girls are more taken with job ambition while the guys are just “going along for the ride” in a passive state. Celibacy has become the hot alternative. No wonder the new Pope is now such a rock star — he has tapped into a real market for himself! According to this Japanese report, many would rather go home alone and masturbate than pal around and get it on with anyone else.


Britney Spears whipping ... Nicki Minaj bra-less ... and Rihanna filling in with whatever exposed body part she can.

Lady Gaga is flat-lined.

Last week USA Today had a front page piece on the shock of “Selling Sex: Has Show Biz pressure gone too far?” After all we have “Britney Spears whipping women on leashes; Nicki Minaj bra-less and spilling out on The Ellen Show, and Rihanna fills in with whatever exposed body part she can.”

One wonders if it is actually affecting the kids, let alone the public since we have seen it all for so long. Porn performances are merely the daily fare of late. I have a theory that performers like Miley and Rihanna are not all that hot to trot behind the Red Carpet. It is all about marketing and narcissism.

Madonna was the first to teach us all that. But unlike Marilyn Monroe who really was looking for love in all the wrong places — none of these current Sex Bombs seem to be working the casting couches or even tapping into high level senators and billionaires. Face it, they are too busy working their naked asses off and then dumping into rehab. Who wants to spend the time actually getting laid? Now ... that’s WORK!

While the performers are into such “shock and awe” — the audience is into “drop and roll.” Last week the new much heralded designer of Schiaparelli Couture — Marco Zanini insisted, “Shock value is now irrelevant. We’ve seen too much of it. Lady Gaga is flat-lined.” Actually I recently heard Lady Gaga was helping performance artist Marina Abramovic open a cultural/Art/Spa/Retreat/Institute. Even though Gaga stripped down to nothing in a show last week she recently had hip surgery — at 27. Obviously “over twerking” has become an occupational hazard.

And then we have comments from 67-year-old Sex Goddess Suzanne Somers (formally the ditzy, booby “Chrissy” of Three’s Company): “Miley is just young ... I’m actually admiring what she’s doing. It’s her brand of sex, drugs and rock ’n roll — that’s where she wants to go.”

This said by a businesswoman who is currently selling hormones to women over 60 to inspire them to get their periods back and to get laid as much as possible. Somers must be drowning in her own “Boogie Night” hot tub as many of these women are struggling with cancer threatening (hormone related) ailments and feel guilty about NOT wanting to “twerk-text” their lubricated vaginas to anyone at this time in their lives.


	Who's the “Man-ager"?

Meanwhile getting nude to be noticed has left feminist Gloria Steinem feeling “Women have to make these decisions. I think we need to change the culture — not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.” Unless you are The Kardashians.

According to rumors — it’s not just a “break up” going on with The Jenners. It might be about setting a new world record for role reversal; as Bruce becomes more of a woman (too much plastic surgery) Chris has become more of a “Man-ager” in her family empire. (Japan, are you watching and learning?) After all there is already a huge interest in women wearing men’s clothes this year. And this is NOT about lipstick lesbians.

Perhaps the only couple left still working the “traditional roles” is ironically Kim Kardashian (the new blonde siren who made a record of appearing on 5 major news magazine covers in one week) who continues to twitter pictures of her naked ass as a “new mom.” While Kanye majors in trash mouthing to crowds while his entourage gets arrested. Are they the new “Liz and Dick?”

Interesting that as our culture suffers from a case of “the Blahs,” violence and rage are on the rise in films and TV. Meanwhile porn has taken a hit and a slide with the recent HIV outbreak and scare.

Just where are the predicted “good times”? Forget the joke of Obamacare and the stupidity of our government shutdowns. No one really cares about any of that. And certainly no one wants to become a political leader or go into politics anymore. Who honestly wants to do that?

Oprah already taught us well that to have your own talk show/reality show is FAR more powerful. Clearly Ronan Sinatra Farrow got THAT message with his own new MSNBC talk show.

And this is all on top of Alan Greenspan recently announcing, “our politics is broke.” No kidding. Then again, Obamacare was THE artistic reason “Breaking Bad” caught all of our hearts and minds. Remember it was about a mild mannered chemistry teacher from Albuquerque turned “meth cooker” to pay for his outrageously expensive cancer treatment. And look what happened to that “flatlined” White Family.

A doctor told me the current "blah" feeling might be “the calm before the freak-out.” An impending explosion of “fear and loathing” (where is Hunter S. Thompson when you need him). He said that though Ativan and Xanax are being used at an all-time high, and "most of it isn’t even working for patients anymore.”

Well — this would go along with the rise of Zombies and Walking Dead. Maybe this deluxe tune-out is the reason pedophilia has become so prevalent. Since we are all so comatose, what new insanity could possibly get our attention?

Well ... here’s a stretch. Something really caught my sleepy eye last week. There is a fashion line starting out in Santa Barbara called “Best Dressed Monk” (www.bestdressedmonk.com). You are going to hear plenty about it. At the moment it’s only for men but women’s designs are coming (and they will not be the pretentious minimal layers of Eileen Fisher or the flame-out fad of Lululemon). These are simple and elegant jackets, trousers, shirts, scarves and luggage made of great rich colored silk and cottons and wools.

Think Armani after a month in Tibet!! The price point is moderate to high — $195 for shirts and $700 for jackets. Married founder/designers Kira and Allen Gold have not just landed on a line, but a real reflection and philosophy of our times. This is NOT a look for just yoga teacher trainers, kale juicers, and green tea advocates. Best Dressed Monk has an exquisite genuineness to it.

As Allen sees it, “the focus of menswear for years has been personal power, authority and wealth. Think Don Draper ... but today’s man no longer needs that illusion of power. His worth is not all about appearances — It is more a statement of what lies within. It is now all about how a guy carries himself — how he is in relationships, what his overall character is and thus his personal choice in how he presents himself.”

A selection of Best Dressed Monk goodies ...

Obviously Gold did his own extensive spiritual trek and self-exploration He is 53 and knows from which he speaks and doesn't resemble Hugh Jackman or George Clooney."Years ago in order for people to get to know their inner selves or even 'God' they would leave society ... becoming monks or nuns. They denounced the world. I don't think that's true anymore" (Even the Dali Lama "works" and does meets and greets, Bar Mitzvahs and weddings).

"I think people want to find that connection in themselves as themselves in society." Gold adds, "So if you think you are real and enlightened ... at least dress the part. You don't have to be a closet weekend monk or yogi — just show up as You — the world needs You."

Wow! After reading the Best Dressed Monk’s credo — I’m all for putting my money on Celibacy Chic!

So all you fashionable Shock Jock and Jockettes ... zip up your pants and tuck in your “Ya-Yas” and “Ta-Tas” cause the party’s over, and you’re a bore!!! Let’s all go home ... alone, find our true selves, and start dressing authentically classy.

Click herefor NYSD Contents

↧

Resort Life: Chapter XXVIII, 1965-1966

November 8, 2013, 6:15 am

≫ Next: Resort Life, Chapter XXIX: 1965-1966

≪ Previous: No Holds Barred - The REAL New Year's Eve

July, 1965. Northeast Harbor, Maine. "Philadelphia on the Rocks" savors its Down East saltwater feasts without table settings and place cards.

Resort Life: Chapter XXVIII, 1965-1966
Sicily, Ischia, Northeast Harbor, Fishers Island, and Palm Beach
By Augustus Mayhew

Ellen Glendinning Ordway gave up the grandeur of Newport for the rustic pleasures of Down East. For her, since the passing of her husband Lou Ordway, the comforts of being close to family and old friends held more appeal than the endless rounds of golf and tennis matches. So, Ellen sold the Barclay Square oceanfront house in Newport and bought a rambling two-story cottage in Northeast Harbor.

But before unpacking the lobster forks, we rejoin Ellen and Gertrude Sanford Legendre in their trek through Italy following a stay with Tom and Nonie Schippers in Spoleto. After Pompeii, they headed to Sicily's magnificent ruins and secluded resorts. Then, to the Marina di Ischia where they boarded the Westward,Drayton "Draidie" Cochran's schooner. As you probably recall, Cochran's son John was married to Nonie's sister Susie Phipps.

Back home, Ellen, along with her dogs, Jim and Pamela, settled in to Mt. Desert's Red Book before heading back to Newport where the moving vans were waiting. Then, a stop at Chocomount on Fishers Island with Gert Legendre before returning to Palm Beach.

June 1965
Sicily

Palermo. Gertrude Legendre waiting for the car … and waiting. "Our car is the last one off the boat."

"Cargo is loaded onto painted wagons and decorated mules."

After everything else was carted off, the Legendre-Ordway VW wagon was the last vehicle off the ship.

Grand Hotel Villa Igiea. Salia Belmonte, Palermo. "We spend three days here at this beautiful villa on the sea.

Grand Hotel Villa Igiea. "The view from our room."

"Gertrude trying to paint the view."

Agrigento. Valle dei Templi, Temple of Concordia. 440-430, BC. From Palermo, Gertrude and Ellen drove 120 kms. across the island to Agrigento on the south coast.

A goat herder holds back his flock on the road to Siricusa.

A Sicilian express wagon makes a delivery.

Palma di Montechiaro.

11 June 1965

11 June 1965. An Italcable from Tom Evans in Florence.

Viale Paradiso, Siricusa. Teatro Greco. 5th century, BC.

Taormina.

Taomina Mare. Villa Saint'Andrea. "We like it here so much, we stayed several days.

Taomina Mare. Villa Saint'Andrea.

Palermo to Naples ferry. "Here we go again …"

Naples. Hotel Excelsior. "We stayed here before boarding the boat to Ischia to visit Draidie Cochran."

Ischia

Ischia harbor.

Westward, Oyster Bay. Drayton Cochran's 125-foot staysail schooner with 7,000-feet of sail area docked at Ischia.

Aboard the Westward. Drayton Cochran (1909-1987) and Gertrude Legendre. From a long-established New York-North Shore-Palm Beach family, Cochran's mother Mabel Taylor added marriages to Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst as well as James Cameron Clark, following her divorce from sportsman Gifford Cochran. Drayton Cochran was involved in marine archeology in the Mediterranean for various museums, exploring sites of underwater Roman, Greek and Venetian shipwrecks. Later, he donated the Westward to the Woods Hole Institute. In 1960, Cochran's son John, from a previous marriage to Margaret "Mardie" Lawrence, married Susie Phipps.

Saville Ryan. The great-granddaughter of tycoon Thomas Fortune Ryan, Saville Ryan's father Theodore S. Ryan served as a state senator from Connecticut.

Gifford Cochran, age two, named for his grandfather and whose uncle was also Gifford Cochran, with his father Drayton Cochran. Today, Gifford Cochran heads up GWC Design in Bozeman.

Ischia. Ellen Ordway, Gifford W. Cochran, Annmarie Menz Cochran (1922-2010), and Drayton Cochran. Following her divorce from Worthington Johnson, Menz married Drayton Cochran, developing her talent as a painter and jewelry designer as they sailed around the world.

Ischia. Annmarie Cochran, Gifford Cochran, Drayton Cochran, and Gertrude Legendre.

24 June 1965
Rome to Newport

June 1965
Chew-Wanamaker wedding
Chestnut Hill

Anne Chew married John Rodman Wanamaker. Ellen's niece Nina Cooke Emlen was the maid of honor.

9 July 1965
Northeast Harbor

"My new cozy summer place."

Borderlea, Northeast Harbor, Maine.

The flower and vegetable garden at Borderlea.

The porch at Borderlea.

Borderlea.

Northeast Harbor Swim Club

Gay Robb-Smith, Jane Scott, "Kaa" (Katherine Thompson) Wood, and James Cromwell (1896-1990). In 1967, Kaa Wood made tragic headlines when she was found bludgeoned to death in her Chestnut Hill mansion only months after her brother James Thompson, the Thai "Silk King and former CIA director in Bangkok, went missing and was never found. Despite an in-depth investigation, no clues were ever uncovered as to who killed her. Four years later, her son, his mother's principal heir, committed suicide. Perhaps best known for his marriages to Delphine Dodge and Doris Duke, James Cromwell's mother Eva Stotesbury was Philadelphia's legendary "last of the dowagers." His sister Louise Cromwell Brooks' crossed-swords wedding to General Douglas MacArthur, although a highlight of the 1922 season in Palm Beach, ended in a Reno divorce six years later.

Mrs. Lippincott and "Tubby" Jackson.

Gay Robb-Smith and Jane Scott.

Laura Wayne Pepper.

Josie Hatfield.

Laura Pepper with her grandson Monty Lewis.

George Garrett and George Evelyn Harrison.

Augusta Harrison.

Suzanne Whitman.

"Bob and Edie Huntington come for a visit."

Edie and Bob Huntington arrive from Palm Beach aboard the Fei-Seen.

Ethel Garrett and Edie Huntington aboard the Fei-Seen.

Edie Huntington and Pixie Glendinning.

Laura Pepper.

Hallett Johnson. In 1950, Ellen's niece Mary-Ellen "Melon" Cooke married Hallett Johnson, the son of a career diplomat who, among his many foreign posts, was US Ambassador to Costa Rica.

Mary Ellen "Melon" Cooke Johnson was Ellen Glendinning Ordway's niece.

Hallett Johnson III.

"We visit the Grassi House in Seal Harbor."

Ettore Grassi House, Seal Harbor. Lucius Ordway Frazer.

Grassi House, Seal Harbor.

Labor Day weekend, 1965

"A picnic with Boo and Luke Hopkins."

Kitty "Boo" Hopkins and Luke Hopkins. Hopkins was chairman of the Maryland National Bank.

Laura Pepper.

16 September 1965

Western Union Telegram. George and Augusta Harrison have their first child, "Gussie."

Chocomount
Fishers Island

Gertrude Legendre peruses Ellen Ordway's photograph collection.

Ron Balcom and Lulu Balcom with their "catch of the day.".

The Balcom's catch was the main course for dinner.

Hope Haines and Georgie Rutherford.

Lulu Balcom, Georgie Rutherfurd, and Hope Haines.

"Lulu and Ron with yet another catch of the day."

September 1965
Newport

"The Newport house has sold and the moving vans arrive … some things are heading to Northeast Harbor, others back to Palm Beach."

One Barclay Square, Newport. Moving day at the Ordway cottage.

September 1965
Palm Beach

"The Hoopla of Café Society," Palm Beach Daily News. A Lorelle Hearst column explores "Café Society.".

1 November 1965
Palm Beach

"Lorelle Hearst Observes." Palm Beach Daily News, social column.

10 November 1965
Palm Beach Daily News

Mrs. Earl E. T. "Flo" Smith dies.

Next: Chapter XXIX, Thanksgiving at Medway Plantation, dinner in Palm Beach with Bing & Kathy Crosby & Boca Grande with the du Ponts.

Ellen Glendinning Ordway's photographs are from the Collection of Gayle Abrams.

Augustus Mayhew is the author ofLost in Wonderland – Reflections on Palm Beach.

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Resort Life, Chapter XXIX: 1965-1966

November 15, 2013, 3:15 pm

≫ Next: No Holds Barred: Go Big or Go Home

≪ Previous: Resort Life: Chapter XXVIII, 1965-1966

Palm Beach, 1966.

Resort Life, Chapter XXIX: 1965-1966
High Society: Medway Plantation + Palm Beach + Boca Grande
By Augustus Mayhew

As C. K. Dexter DeHaven in the 1956 film High Society, Bing Crosby could have well-played his own persona — someone who was comfortable being rich and famous. Crosby was a friend, business partner, and golf pal of Palm Beacher and Oklahoma oil tycoon George Coleman. During the 1960s, the popular singer-actor-golfer became a frequent guest at the Seminole Club golf course and some of Palm Beach’s very special gatherings. And whether having drinks and dinner with Bing andKathy Crosby, poolside lunch with Harry and Ruth du Pont in Boca Grande, or brunch with her lifelong friend Gertrude Legendre on the patio of the lakeside log cabin at Medway Plantation, Ellen Ordway had her camera loaded with unlimited rolls of film. Ellen delighted in photographing her swell well-known friends. However, probably even more, she enjoyed snapping her dogs, shooting the lions and tigers at Lion Country Safari, and recording every step and splash of her grands and great-grands. Her photograph albums can now be appreciated by her great-great grandchildren who only need to turn the pages of her remarkable photographic odyssey to rediscover that now lost treasure, the Great American Family.

Here is a look back at life during the era of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

November 1965
Thanksgiving at Medway Plantation

Medway Plantation. "Thanksgiving week at Medway …"

Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Ethel Shields Darlington Garrett, and Tom Evans.

The Honorable George Garrett and Tom Evans.

Billy Baldwin.

Peter and Landine Legendre Manigault with their children, Wendy Wood, Gabrielle Manigault (on "Birthday Girl"), Peter Manigault, Landine Legendre Manigault and Peter (Sandy) Wood. Described as "the quintessential Charlestonian," Peter Manigault (1927-2004) headed the family's newspaper and media conglomerate. His son Pierre, who would later marry Elizabeth Van Allen, became chairman of the Evening Post Publishing Company in 2004.

Gabrielle Manigault.

Mother and daughter, Landine Legendre Manigault and Gertrude Sanford Legendre.

The Manigaults with their children. L-r, Landine, Wendy Wood, Peter Manigault, Sandy Wood (on "Birthday Girl") and Gabrielle.

Bob Montgomery and Ethel Garrett.

George Gallowher and Elizabeth "Betty" Bleecker Carey Matthiessen.

Duck hunting at 5:30 a.m.

Duck hunting at Medway Plantation.

Billy Baldwin.

Fashion appropriate Gertrude Legendre and George Garrett.

Katharine White "Babs" Caulkins and George Gallowher. A noted big-game hunter, explorer, and gardener, Babs Caulkins' first marriage to naturalist and explorer William Douglas Burden ended in divorce. A co-founder of Marineland with Sonny Whitney, Mr. Burden was the grandson of W. D. Sloane and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane. Her second marriage was to Dan Platt Caulkins in 1939. She recorded an album in 1958 that included Noel Coward's "Chase Me Charlie," and "There's Something Fishy about the French."

Jimmie Snowden and Gertrude Legendre. Cameras at the ready.

Marie and Jimmie Snowden, New York, Southampton, and Palm Beach. Snowden's father James Hastings Snowden was a notable Oklahoma oil baron.

Marie Snowden, banker Dan Platt Caulkins, and Jimmie Snowden. During the Eisenhower administration, Caulkins (Princeton '26) served as a White House director for national security affairs.

Babs Calkins and George Gallowher.

December 1965
Palm Beach

Loel Guinness and his grandchildren, Loel and Alexandra, arrive at the Miami Seaquarium. A school friend lived next door to the Guinness' Manalapan estate. Her family enjoyed nothing more than when the Guinness' took off or landed their helicopter.

December Duke. "December and Josie came up from Coconut Grove for a holiday party."

Josephine "Josie" Duke.

March 1966
Duchess of Needlepoint – Ellen Ordway
Palm Beach Life magazine article by Betty Raveson

Ellen Ordway, "Duchess of Needlepoint," at Villa Bel Tramonto.

Duchess of Needlepoint.

Alice in Wonderland needlepoint screen, Villa Bel Tramonto.

"Lady Dunraven 'Nancy' and Melissa Yuille come for supper."

Lady Dunraven (Nancy Yuille) and Bettina Dale. In 1934, Yuille married the 6th Earl of Dunraven in the courtyard at Louwana, the Gurnee Munn-Louise Wanamaker Munn estate, that was being leased for the season by her sister Ellen Yuille Blair (Mrs. Wolcott Blair).

Melissa Yuille Bingham (Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham).

"George and Augusta Harrison drop by ..."

Augusta "Gussie" Harrison. A close friend of Truman Capote's, Harrison's life and personality were considered one of Capote's inspirations for Holly Golightly, one of the author's most iconic characters. A well-known model in New York and known for her eccentric parties, Capote was a good friend. Her first marriage to Tom Higgins ended in a 1952 divorce. Twelve years later, as Augusta Hall Cutter, she married prominent Virginian and Palm Beach resident George Evelyn Harrison, a close friend and neighbor of the Ordways.

George Evelyn Harrison. Harrison married Augusta after divorcing Phyllis Dickinson whose parents the Philemon Dickinsons were part of the Chestnut Hill-Palm Beach circle.

Former sugar baron George Fowler, gallerist Malcolm Vallance, and Perky Frazer. Mr. Fowler's father was the prominent British sugar plantation owner in Cuba.

George Fowler and Ellen Ordway.

"Around town"

Bokara Legendre. Everglades Club golf course.

Taking in a close-up of Mike Phipps' helicopter are Master Lucius O. Frazer, Perky Frazer, Randy Frazer, Bettina Dale, and Mollie Frazer.

Bess McGrath and Lady Cowdray (far right) join Randy Frazer, Verner Reed, Perky Frazer, and Lucius O Frazer on their Lake Trail bike ride.

"Happy little rays of sunshine." Ellen Ordway, Channing Hare, and Lillian Bostwick Phipps.

March 1966
George and Dawn Coleman's dinner for Bing and Kathy Crosby
1029 North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach

Mrs. George L. Coleman Sr., Kathy Crosby, and George L. Coleman Jr. Mrs. Coleman Sr.'s late husband acquired an Oklahoma mining fortune. At one time, it was said Coleman controlled the world lead and zinc market. When his son George Jr. developed an interest in golf, he built his son a nine-hole course in the family's backyard. Longtime golfing pals and business partners George Coleman, who was a founder of Pennzoil, and crooner Bing Crosby, along with Barry Van Gerbig and Virgil Sherrill, were part owners of the San Francisco Seals, a National League hockey team.

Victoria Fairbanks Van Gerbig, Barend ("Barry") Van Gerbig 2nd, and Van Gerbig's godfather, Bing Crosby. The daughter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Lee Fairbanks, Victoria Fairbanks and Van Gerbig married in December 1965. The son of Howell and Dorothy Fell Van Gerbig and grandson of Mrs. Ogden Mills, Van Gerbig's first marriage to Lois Hochschwender ended in divorce.

Mary Lee (Mrs. Douglas) Fairbanks Jr., Michael Phipps, and Dawn Loomis Coleman.

Mary Lee (Mrs. Douglas) Fairbanks Jr. and Mollie Phipps.

Victoria Fairbanks Van Gerbig, Bess McGrath, and Tony Heminway.

"Bess, Bing and Michael."

Legendary golfer Ben Hogan. A friend of Barry Van Gerbig's for more than 30 years, Van Gerbig wrote Ben Hogan at Seminole for Golf magazine: "Every February he'd come to Seminole Golf Club, in South Florida, where I was a young member in my 20s, and he'd spend six weeks there … Some time later Hogan said to me, 'The things you have, this life you have, you haven't earned it. It's time for you to become your own man.' When he was finished — and he was brief — he said, "Are we O.K.?" What he said I needed to hear. Soon after, Victoria and I moved to London and I got a master's degree in medical psychology and became involved in the early hospice movement. I started to call Hogan Ben … Hogan died in 1997. I wish he could have known my current wife, Ginny, a former Seminole manager. She's my Valerie Hogan . Ben would have loved her. In my 69 years I have not loved many people, but I loved Hogan. He felt my pain and saw my promise. I'll go to my grave grateful to him. He treated me like the son he never had. I needed that, and I guess he did too." 8 June 2009, Golf.

Victoria Van Gerbig and George Coleman. Coleman and Ben Hogan enjoyed driving golf balls into the ocean in Coleman's backyard. Mr. Coleman was said to "own five percent of everything." His first wife Elizabeth Fullerton married William W. Crocker, scion of the California railroad banking fortune. When Crocker died in 1964, she became embroiled in a will contest with her step children when they learned she inherited half of their father's multi-multi-million estate. Nonetheless, she went on to marry the Duke of Manchester.

Bing Crosby and Michael Phipps.

Tony Heminway, Ben Hogan, Bess McGrath, and Valerie Hogan.

Bess McGrath, Limerick-Biarritz-Palm Beach.

"We drop by and visit with Lil Phipps."

Kathryn "Kathy" Grant Crosby. Actress Kathy Crosby was 23 when she married 53-year-old Bing in 1957, a marriage that was subject of her book A Very Good Life, My Life with Bing.

The terrace at Ogden and Lil Phipps' Moorish-style villa at 1486 North Lake Way.

Bess's scarf and Kathy Crosby at the Phipps house on North Lake Way.

Palm Beach Daily News. Seminole Club golf tournament. George Coleman, Bing Crosby, Virgil Sherill, Barry Van Gerbig, and Chris Dunphy.

"Bing and Kathy come for dinner at chez Ordway"

Ellen Ordway and Bing Crosby.

Kathy Crosby, Bing Crosby, and Perky Frazer.

Ellen Ordway, Bess McGrath, Bing Crosby, and Lady Dunraven (Nancy Yuille).

Bing Crosby and Lady Dunraven.

Mollie Phipps.

"Kit Ordway comes for supper."

Katharine "Kit" Ordway and Bess McGrath. Whether the Katharine Ordway Natural History prairie in Minnesota, the Katharine Ordway Preserve in Weston, or the Katharine Ordway Gallery at Yale, Kit Ordway was among of the nation's most generous conservationists and philanthropists. When she died in 1979, the remaining $500 million Ordway trust was split between twelve grandchildren, according to published reports.

"Buddy and Dysie come by to walk the dogs."

E. T. Bedford "Buddy" Davie.

"Buddy, Dysie, the dogs …"

Villa Bel Tramonto
Banyan Road

Dysie Davie.

Bridget Ordway (Mrs. Peter Ordway).

"I fly down to Lantana with Mike and Mollie in the helicopter."

"The Shrimp Palace," Ellen's name for Mike and Mollie Phipps' house on North Lake Way.

The Par-3 Golf Course, President of Palm Beach condominium, and Ibis Island, looking northeast from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean.

"Blair House (lower left) and The Breakers beach, looking northwest across The Breakers golf course." Today, the oceanfront house to the left of the beach cabanas at 115 South Flagler Drive, designed by Marion Wyeth, is one of the Lauder family houses, adjacent to 126 South Ocean Boulevard.

The Ordway house. Villa Bel Tramonto, Banyan Road.

Charles Munn. Sketch by Zito.

"Tea time with Mollie's mother …"

Muriel Lane at Mike and Mollie Phipps' house. Mrs. Lane was Mollie Phipps' mother.

Author Ethel Petit Roche and Muriel Lane. Roche's husband was the author Arthur Somers Roche. Her best-known novels are The Rich are Always With Us and Move Over- A Novel of our Better Classes.

"John and Leslie come for a visit."

Ellen Ordway, John Ordway, and Leslie Ordway. Everglades Club golf course.

John Ordway with his aunt, Kit Ordway.

Betty Ordway Duke Dunn and Bridget Ordway, Peter Ordway's wife.

December Duke.

Peter Reed. The son of Ellen's good friends Verner and the late Gaggy Reed, Peter and his wife Polly "stop by for a visit."

Polly Reed.

Peter and Polly Reed's boat. "They plan to sail to Europe."

The bow of the Reed's boat.

Polly Reed.

Winona Hunt works on her needlepoint.

Winona Bell Hunt. Her fashion-forward Worth Avenue shop was a Palm beach institution, introducing many Italian designers to the resort, especially Emilio Pucci.

March 1966
Boca Grande

"Ethel Garrett and I fly to Boca Grande to spend a few days with Sid and Jane Scott."

Boca Grande. Sid and Jane Scott's cottage.

Henry Burling Thompson (1897-1984). The following year, Thompson's younger brother Jim Thompson, the Thai silk king and former CIA bureau head, would make international headlines when he went missing during a trip to Malaysia. Several months later, his sister Kaa (Katherine) Thompson Wood was found murdered in her Main Line mansion. Both cases went unsolved.

Martha Chalfant Wheelwright Thompson. Following Henry Thompson's divorce from Mary Noyes White, he married Martha Wheelwright in 1946.

Mrs. Ruth (Henry Francis "Harry") du Pont and Sid Scott. Ruth and Harry duPont maintained homes in Manhattan, Southampton, Boca Grande, and at Winterthur. The du Ponts' mansion at Winterthur was opened to the public in 1951, becoming a notable landmark museum.

Henry Francis "Harry" duPont (1880-1969), Ethel Garrett, and "Adelaide."

Laura Pepper and Jane Scott.

Harry du Pont. After Winterthur opened as a museum, he and his wife Ruth moved to a smaller house nearby. Mr. du Pont assisted Jacqueline Kennedy with her makeover of The White House. He is the subject of a book written by his daughter Ruth Lord, Henry F. du Pont and Winterthur: A Daughter's Portrait.

D. Luke Hopkins.

Kitty Hopkins.

Charles Harding. Heir to a Massachusetts textile fortune, the Harding family's Palm Beach house Chiora was one of the early oceanfront mansions. His brother Henry Harding was a noted Palm Beach architect.

Laura Pepper and Charles Harding.

"Lunch at George and Deo Weymouth's house."

Boca Grande. George and Deo Weymouth's house.

Boca Grande. George and Deo Weymouth house, tile plaque.

George Tyler Weymouth and Laura Pepper.

Laura Pepper and Sid Scott.

"Sid showing a painting by Deo."

Dulcinea "Deo" Ophelia Payne du Pont Weymouth. Deo Weymouth was the oldest of Eugene Eleuthere du Pont Jr. and Catherine Moxham du Pont's four daughters. An accomplished artist, her son George Alexis "Frolic" Weymouth became a well-known painter and portrait artist who helped establish the Brandywine River Museum. The Weymouths were part of the Wilmington-Boca Grande-Fishers Island set.

Next: Resort Life, Chapter XXX: Paris, Biarritz, UK, Ireland, and Northeast Harbor

June 1966. Hotel du Palais, Biarritz. "Good morning from Nonie and Tommy Schippers."

Ellen Glendinning Ordway's photographs are from the
Gayle Abrams Collection.

Augustus Mayhew is the author of Lost in Wonderland: Reflections on Palm Beach

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