12.6.07: Dinner Parties | New York Social Diary

Dinner Parties

Snow dust settles alongside the house that Stanford White designed for Joseph Pulitzer based on the Palazzos Pesaro and Rezzonico in Venice, completed in 1903. Mr. Pulitzer died in 1911. 2:00 PM. Photo: JH.

New York had heavy grey skies yesterday and then in the late afternoon there were snow flurries and it was cold.

There were two very prominent and important dinner parties hosted by two very prominent women in New York last night. I was at one of them.


	Peter Rogers and Casey Ribicoff

Casey Ribicoff, the very chic and soigné and popular widow of the late US Senator from Connecticut (and former Governor also) arranged a birthday party for herself. Yesterday, December 5th was her birthday. I don’t know if Casey is your typical female Sagittarius but she’s definitely a very popular kid on the block of life. I don’t know who was there but I’m sure if I saw the guest list we’d recognize more than a few of the names.

Because she’s got a wide array of friends and admirers. She took over the Four Seasons grille room and entertained 50 (or was it 60?) of these nearest and dearest, who could read like a Who’s Who depending on where you’re from. Casey.

Mrs. Ribicoff always looks the way she looks in this picture of her. She is one of those rare ones for whom impeccable is not just a word, it’s a point of view, and even a modus vivendi. She is one of those individuals unique to metropolitan life who knows. The cosmopolitan woman. Part country, part city girl, woman of the world who’s tread alongside highly in the corridors of power and kept her eye on the ball at all times. Casey takes people on their terms and leaves them thusly. It’s a treat to be around and so it must have been that Mrs. Ribicoff was feted by the many admirers so pleased to celebrate that date with her. They were in her thrall, and rightfully so.

Just 20 blocks north, Alice Mason, the doyenne of Upper East Private Residential Real Estate had her annual Holiday dinner greeting her guests in her red gallery and her red pailletted Galanos. Alice, as readers of the NYSD know – if they didn’t already know, is famous in New York for two things: for her expertise and shrewdness as a real estate broker and for her dinner parties.

Dominique Richard and Alice Mason

Zooey, very energetic and charming and slightly confined during the goings-on

Alice has been giving her dinners for close to a half century, and the party was the guests. Alice, with her shrewd eye and endless curiosity, has entertained literally thousands of people from all walks of prominence in New York. Her guestbooks are historical documents, references of this past half century in New York in the dynamic of its hey-day.

For years her dinners had the signature of her interests at the time. Marilyn Monroe was an early client when show business people were verboten in many of the better buildings. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt was a pal and client who always called Alice “Fluffy” or”Fluff.” Many Presidents have come to dine in Alice’s rooms. Many candidates have curried favor.

She raised $1.5 million from fifteen couples one night at a dinner for the first-running Bill Clinton and Al Gore. She raised more for Jimmy Carter than any other individual. She also brokered many of the changes that occurred in the social acceptance of individuals in New York cooperative apartment houses.

Once upon a time there was an Alice Mason dinner every three or four weeks and the world came to her door to break bread with the world who came to her door.

From Arab sheiks to Wall Street titans, from media tycoons and their messengers, movie stars, and famous authors. Aileen Mehle writing as “Suzy” recorded the goings-on in her inimitable and shrewd wit, casting the Mason dinners as one of the most sought after invitations in New York.

The late Norman Mailer, no socialite, loved Alice’s black tie dinners where eight were purposedly placed at a table for six, because he knew he was going to meet people and have conversation.

There were 40 for dinner, a reduction of a third of the traditional Alice Mason list. From her guestbook of hundreds she invited people who’d been there before. The result was people seeing people they knew and maybe rarely saw, people out there in the Big World of New York taking it all in.

So last night at Alice Mason’s was, as it always is, about the spirited conversation from the moment one arrives for cocktails until one enters the elevator to leave. At my table which included Roz Jacobs, Pat Altschul, Victor Shafferman, Jeanne Lawrence, John Dizard, Mario Buatta the conversation was about the financial markets and was most intense. Mr. Dizard who writes a column for the Financial Times led the way. Most interesting but little took notice on the news was that Jeanne Lawrence, who divides her time between here and San Francisco, is planning to move to Shanghai for a good part of each year.

The list: Besides those at my table, Mona Ackerman and Richard Cohen, Soon-Yi and Woody Allen, Joe Armstrong, Norberto Bilgoraj, Katherine Bryan, Doug Cramer, Carmen Dell'Orifice, Barbara Goldsmith, Olivia and Warren Hoge, Kenneth Jay Lane, Pablo Manzoni, David Margolick, Christopher Mason, Boaz Mazor, Laura Montalban, Lee Radziwill, Ann Rapp, Bridget Restivo, Dominique Richard (Alice’s daughter), Carolyne Roehm and Simon Pinniger, Dr. Brian Saltzman, Charlie Scheips, Maurice Sonnenberg, Nan and Gay Talese and Wendy Vanderbilt (the eldest daughter of the late, aforementioned Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt). As you can see, there are a lot of writers and creative people on Alice’s lists and always an infusion of creative lives. The talkers talking.

Mid-dinner Warren Hoge got up to toast our hostess, recalling that he could still remember the “first” time he was invited to Alice Mason’s (and how he was single at the time), and how he’d met Presidents there and dined with the best of them. Last night was a kind of homecoming, an observance of a tradition, a gift from our hostess.