Overcast, cool-ish

Trinity Churchyard at Wall Street and Broadway. The original burial ground at Trinity Church, which was used by all denominations, includes the graves and memorials of many historic figures, including Alexander Hamilton, William Bradford, Robert Fulton, and Albert Gallatin. 5:00 PM. Photo: JH.

June 18, 2009. Overcast, cool-ish, occasional if brief sunshine, very cool in the evening with some sprinkles and rain predicted for the early morning hours.

If it’s Wednesday it must be Michael’s where I lunched with my friend Nazee Moinian. Michael’s was wall-to-wall: Joe Armstrong with Glamour’s Audrey Hepburn-glam editor Cindi Leive; literary agent Esther Newberg and Jeffrey Toobin; Terry Allen Kramer; at the next table Ann Rapp, Somers Farkas, Jackie Rogers, Debbie Bancroft and New York State’s First Lady Michelle Paterson; Hamilton South, Brendan Berger, Bobby Friedman, the beautiful Melania Trump; Michael Clinton, Thia Breen, Peter Price; Boaty Boatwright and the great Stephen Frears; Mickey Ateyah, Lloyd Grove, Keith Kelly, Herb Allen III, Kerry Kennedy with Susan Reed (editor of Oprah magazine), Chris Meigher and his daughter Elizabeth of Quest magazine, Diane Clehane, Dr. Philip Romero, Andrew Stein, Philip Lattman, Dan Wassong, Suzanne Bracker, Ira Joffe; and at the big round table in the bay: various Bravo “Housewives,” et al. Hoda Kotb was hostess of the table, along with Danielle Straub (New Jersey Housewives), Tamra Barney from Orange County, NeNe Leakes from Atlanta.

I’m sure there are a lot of people out there watching these “Housewives” shows. Evidently the night before last, the Real….New Jersey girls had a rip-roaring bitch-n-catfight on air over one of the “wives” previous professions as a stripper. Which fits right in with the overall theme: bread and circuses. The lady, Danielle Straub was lunching at Michael’s.

Had George Orwell considered that the population would want to be watched rather than think it an intrusion?


	Tricia Wash Smith's latest ...

So far it seems like more women than men are into the game of “being on TV” although I’m sure the boys aren’t that far behind. Yesterday I got an email from Tricia Walsh Smith with a music video she’s written the lyrics for (music by Ruben Gray).

The message with the vid said something about being “sad.” In the vid, we watch Tricia on what looks like the boardwalk of a seaside town somewhere in Europe – maybe England? Pulling her suitcase on wheels, looking forlorn although well pulled together. Tricia is a good looking girl and like any good trouper she’s gonna keep it that way. Actually she doesn’t look that sad to me. I kept thinking to myself: she’s loving this: it’s a movie.

Tricia is a dramatist. A playwright, but also a self-dramatist. Her life is her art. Yes, I know; say what you will, but it’s true. Many if not all of us think of our personal lives as dramatic at times. Many of us never have an experience that isn’t dramatic. I think it’s often how we amuse ourselves, how we pinch ourselves to remind us we’re here. Andy Warhol made that famous prediction about everybody in the future having fifteen minutes of fame. Right now it’s 22 minutes (plus commercials) although women like Tricia Walsh Smith is paring it down to the fifteen or maybe less.

Ms. Smith, you may know was married to Phil Smith, a big theater executive, and they were famously divorced thanks to her penchant for self-promotion and his financial minginess. The whole thing was a tawdry affair and no one came out looking .... Wholesome, or civilized. It was like a lot of divorces: about the money.

Tricia, however, being the creative one created her own little soap opera out of it that you probably watched on YouTube. Now her latest. It’s really the Indie Prod version of a Bravo series. And all cut from the same promise: fame and fortune for us all. And nobody walks. See for yourself. Bette Davis cudda done a lot more with the material, although she’d a probably lit up a few ciggies and had a glass of gin.


Ava in 1985 in her final work as an actress.

Meanwhile, Peter Evans piece in last week’s Guest Diary about his friend, the late Ava Gardner evoked a lot of response. Ava was a very popular woman with her friends and with her fans. This was true with the people who knew her in Hollywood as well as those who knew her later in Europe. It apparently was a combination of her beauty and her down-to-earthiness. Both men and women liked her. And everyone agreed she was one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Among the emails that came in about Ava were two that were especially intriguing to me. The first came from an old high school friend, Lee Ann Prifti, now a longtime resident of San Francisco. She wrote:

A couple of days ago I discovered the article on Ava Gardner, the most beautiful, whom I once met at JFK Airport when James D**** (a well known Hollywood actor at the time) was trying to convince me to change my flight to San Francisco to go with him to Los Angeles.

I felt someone else listening and watching this endeavor with great intensity, and when I instinctively turned around ... the interested party was ... none other than AVA GARDNER!!

She studied my head/looks rather intently… (like being hit with a Mack truck for me – all of 24 yrs. young and with a mane of long, wavy dark hair, just like her). When she calmed herself with the conception that I was not as beautiful as she, she made mention of “Frank” trying to stop her from flying back to Los Angeles to her work in a movie, after she had flown to New York to be with him, and that these conflicts took place in the airport right up until she boarded the plane. She smiled in empathy at me, since I had to be at work the next morning in SF which I was explaining over and over to Jimmy D*****

Ava was still exquisite and I was more dazzled by her, than James D. It took me years to comprehend that she was interested in how I looked, in comparison to her own beauty, at that time. When I read her autobiography, I learned that she was of Irish/Scotch heritage as am I -- with a tall, handsome Greek-god looking Father who became a farmer through family restrictions prevalent in those days.

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	Click to order Nothing Sacred.

Then there’s Michael Vollbracht’s recollection of his “moment” with her in his brilliantly illustrated memoir “Nothing Sacred” (Rizzoli) –

The first film I saw in a movie theater was the one where a statue of Venus comes to life in a department store. Awakened by a kiss from a display clerk, the Goddess of Love then gets to wear great clothes and lip-sync Ogden Nash’s lyrics to Kurt Weill’s hauntingly beautiful “Speak Low.”

I remembered little of this silly piece of fluff until years later in Kansas City, where it appeared some time after dusk on Channel 5. It was then that my mother reminded me of my first encounter with Ava Gardner and that exquisite song.

Twenty years later I escorted Joanna Carson to a Friar’s Club Roast honoring Cary Grant. A post-roast party at the Waldorf Towers apartment of Barbara and Frank Sinatra capped off an evening any film-buff would die for. In one room, surrounded by the Sinatras’ hideous orange and yellow décor were gathered some of the movie greats I first became familiar with on Channel 5. Cary Grant was with his young wife Barbara. Dina Merrill sat next to husband Cliff Robertson, Veronique Peck held hands with Gregory Peck. Ryan O’Neal, as deliciously gorgeous as his lover Farrah, who sat above him on the back of an orange-and-yellow printed loveseat, held court at the far end of the room. Mr. Sinatra placed himself at the doorway. He wore a bad rug on his head. All deferred to him, even Cary Grant. Frank Sinatra looked mean and dangerous.

Illustrations from Michael Vollbracht's "Nothing Sacred" re an anecdote about Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra.

How serendipitous then, the next day crossing Park Avenue at Fifth-sixth Street, walking toward Lexington Avenue, I ... (encountered) the most dangerously beautiful woman on the face of the earth. Out of the Lombardy Hotel walked a small woman with a Corgi on a leather leash. She wore a Burberry raincoat, tied, not belted at the waist, and blue rubber Zori, and her dark hair was mattress-matted. I wore a new Armani jacket and a left-over glow from the evening before. I was, then, handsome and young.

As we passed each other, our eyes met. She stopped. I walked several yards before I turned. There, staring directly at me was our Goddess of Love. Her little dog strained at its leash. I strained for a plan of action. Frank Sinatra’s ex-wife was not moving. I just couldn’t walk back and gush how much I loved her in The Barefoot Contessa. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the knowledge that I was just a faggot in a well-cut jacket, bent and ineffectual. I made a weak gesture. With two fingers at my temple I made a salute. She tugged at the leather leash, gave me a dark look, and moved on. At Park Avenue, she turned again. The woman who had tortured and then jilted the man in the orange mohair sweater, a man who the night before looked as if he really could push a broad through a plate-glass sliding door, saluted back.

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