I had lunch at Swifty’s with Dennis and Terry Stanfill, their daughter Francesca and our mutual friend Sassy Johnson. The Stanfills are in from Southern California to visit their daughter and son-in-law Dick Ney at their house in Southampton.
The restaurant’s folding door-windows were open because of the warm weather, and we were seated right there by the sidewalk. The belching and rumbling and screeching of the heavy traffic was bamming our ears. New Yorkers tend to forget that out of towners are not used to that cacophony of mechanical screeches, hisses and fits. Although the Stanfills didn’t seem to mind it as much as this writer.
The conversation began with stories about Larry Ashmead, the great book editor who died last Friday (see NYSD 9.7.10 [1]), and from there, serendipitously into the mythic world of Babe Paley, one of the characters in the book I was hired to write for Larry (and never did).
Although she’s probably unknown to most if not all people south of forty or forty-five, Babe Paley was an unusually serene celebrity in her day, an actual icon (as opposed to a press release description) known for her beauty and chic. She lived at a time when the garment industry in New York was a huge employer and its products were crucial to the community’s labor assets. To be a figure of fashion meant many things, not the least of which was industry and government. In other words, Jobs.
The Image of Babe Paley provided that. The woman herself provided endless reams of publicity and decades of table talk. She and her two sisters, Minnie (the eldest) and Betsey (the middle) were famous in America for being the daughters of the fabled neurosurgeon (the first in America) Harvey Cushing, and for marrying three of the richest men in America. Every red blooded American girl’s pre-feminist dream.
Babe Paley was the most famous of the sisters because of her talent for fashion and because she was the goodlooking one. She was considered by some to be more influential than Jackie Onassis, and it may have been so because to this day, like the women at the lunch table today, there remains a vivid interest in her and especially her public image.
Each immediately recalled the time (or times) they “saw” her. A Babe Paley sighting had a most memorable effect on women in New York, right up there with Garbo. Francesca Stanfill recalled the time that Kenneth, the famous hairdresser of that time, telling her that Babe was never sure if she looked right. The great irony of insecurity masking as confidence.
Her beauty was classic but almost cold in most photographs. And not sexy. Nor did she have the reputation for being femme fatale like Pamela Harriman or Jackie. There was an innocence in her eyes that could be interpreted as slightly vacuous. But the camera promotes lies while telling the truth. She did not have the reputation for being intellectually sharp but she was not, however, vacuous. She was a kind and gentle woman, and a fashionable figure, in the historical sense, and many people had great affection for her.
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| Gloria Guinness and Babe Pale with Bill Paley at Truman Capote's black and white masked ball. |
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However, she was a trophy wife of that pre-feminist era, as it were, even if comparable to a great thoroughbred. Her magic was the power of her image, not her brain, nor an achievement of an artist. It began in the same way it begins for young woman today: the camera, borne out of a desire to be seen. Unlike women today, she did not seek it out per se, and her world was not as populated by behemoths of camera lens staring down. She did, however, position herself via the fashion magazines, and soon became an excellent example to promote. It was not the result of a natural diffidence or even modesty, as it never is with society beauties.
The fashion PR empress Eleanor Lambert once told me that Babe Paley’s artistry (and it was real artistry) was composing her outfits. Eleanor said that if you hung each item side by side you’d see a perfect composition of colors, shapes and moods. That always sounds a little airy-fairy to me except Eleanor Lambert was a pro and knew of what she spoke.
At the lunch table yesterday, Sassy recalled the time she was running Halston’s couture and Babe Paley came in to look at some clothes. She wasn’t feeling well (it was the beginning of her fatal illness) and asked Sassy, who was a similar size and shape, to try on a couple of the garments so she could get an idea of what it looked like on.
While Sassy was doing that, Halston – by that time the Studio 54 Halston – an aggressively willing victim of the drug culture and a nasty piece of work when he felt like it in the office – made an insulting remark to Sassy about what she was doing. Halston was frequently abusive toward her in front of his big customers although none of them ever said a word to him about it.
Mrs. Paley, however, in her quiet voice said: “Well Halston, that is a very rude thing to say to Sassy.” Halston, Sassy recalled, was stunned. No one had ever called him on it, and so he had a dose of reality.
I saw Mrs. Paley only once. And very briefly, in 1969 at the campaign headquarters of Carter Burden in an old storefront on 79th and Second Avenue. Burden had just won a city councilmanic seat that night and there was a celebration. He was also married at the time to Amanda, the beautiful daughter of Babe Paley (and Stanley Mortimer). So, Mr. and Mrs. Paley made an appearance at the victory celebration.
By then I was curious to see her because during the campaign all the girls would speak her name with a kind of hushed reverence. It seemed exaggerated but it was sincere. I already knew, of course, that she was considered one of fashion plates of the world.
On this night the place was mobbed with people standing around waiting for the councilman-elect to speak. I noticed her moving through the crowd followed by her husband who looked every inch the tycoon that he was – tanned, blondish silver hair, silver tie, dark suit. His wife's image was very familiar, although she stood out to these eyes not because of her simple, little black dress but because she had a palpable coat of heavy pancake makeup on her face, as if she had just come from an interview on television.
There was also a lethargy to her gait, as if she were exhausted, maybe psychically exhausted. Because of her celebrity, this writer naturally attributed a drama to that presence. It may have been, however, that since she didn’t look either serene or happy that she was just bored and wanted to get to dinner. Coincidentally the one time that Terry Stanfill saw her, she had the same view and same impression.
A few years later Mrs. Paley was diagnosed with lung cancer and died one day after her sixty-third birthday in July 1978. Some who knew her believed that “exhaustion” was because of her illness. Others believed it was her deep disappointment in the way her own life played out. Whatever it was, it was also an element of her lasting charisma, something that would have escaped her thinking.
After lunch I went one block south to Archivia (Lexington between 72nd and 71st) one of my most favorites bookstores and probably a favorite for many other compulsive book-buyers. It’s always a treasure trove of new books you (I) want. Yesterday in front of the counter and trailing into the back of the store were one hundred white shopping bags, each with a copy of The Jewish Odyssey by Marek Halter. Curious, of course, I asked. One customer who bought them for her guests for the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. New York is back in town. Soon the charge of autumn. |
