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| 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.” |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 17 March 1965 Palm Beach |
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| March 1965 Villa Bel Tramonto Palm Beach |
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| 17 April 1965 Phipps-Schippers Wedding |
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| 30 May 1965 New York to Paris |
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| June 1965 Rome – Florence – Spoleto – Naples – Sicily |
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| Pompei |
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| 31 December 1965 Palm Beach |
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| January 1966 Palm Beach |
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| "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. |
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| 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. |
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| 19 January 1966 |
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| February 1966 |
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| 8 February 1966 |
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| February 1966 Villa Bel Tramonto – Palm Beach |
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| 4 April 1966 Joe & Estee Lauder's reminder for dinner with "Their Royal Highnesses," the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. |
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| April 1966 Villa Bel Tramonto "Dinner at Eight." |
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| April 1966 Villa Bel Tramonto |
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| Ellen Glendinning Ordway's photographs are from the Gayle Abrams Collection. | Augustus Mayhew is the author of Lost in Wonderland: Reflections on Palm Beach |