Schools are open again

The tents in Bryant Park. 10:00 PM. Photo: JH.

September 15, 2009. Yesterday was warm and sunny in New York. Schools are open again.

At noontime at the Mandarin Oriental in the Time Warner complex on Columbus Circle, the Center for the Advancement of Women held its 6th annual luncheon benefit “Changing the Landscape for Women” and honored its longtime president Faye Wattleton who is stepping down after 14 years. One of New York’s most beautiful women, Faye co-founded the organization which has become a reputable research-based communication institution for illuminating the challenges women face and the changes needed for their advancement and freedom from discrimination.

Co-chairs for the benefit were: Kofi Annan, Linda Fairstein, HRH Princess Firyal, John Heimann, Maria Cristina Heimann, Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Sherry Lansing, Wynton Marsalis and Deborah Roberts. Special guests were Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Featured entertainment was Lesley Gore and the band Betty.


	Faye Wattleton

Al Roker and Deborah Roberts were the luncheon hosts. The number of prominent people involved in this benefit is a tribute also to its co-founder.

The main mission of the Center is to promote women’s rights and improve the lot of all women not only in the workplace but in academia and in the home. That’s a tall order. Another part of the mission is to conduct and sponsor research to identify issues that are important to women, and to understand how women’s daily experiences in their daily lives affect their larger worldview and place in society.

Faye Wattleton can attract the big names, the movers and shakers. It’s fascinating to consider her organization’s objectives considering the women involved because many are indeed very powerful professionals. Some are formidable individuals.

Although I’ve never worked for any of them, I’ve no doubt they could make a fellow worker, male or female quake in their boots. And no doubt they have. That is not a criterion for power but it is a demonstration of it. I mention this only because the business of “women’s rights” in our time is not as clear as it was forty years ago when some of these girls were first marching (and burning bras while the boys were burning draft cards). At least to the male sensibility it isn’t. Articulating the need for promoting women’s rights can be a more complex argument. Faye Wattleton, whom I do know, can do that.

Meanwhile, on a simpler note. Last night there was a cocktail reception at the Fifth Avenue apartment of John and Susan Gutfreund to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Gutfreund who turned 80 yesterday. Among the guests were Larry and Dalia Leeds. Larry and John have known each other since they were twelve and maybe longer, because their mother’s were friends. I told you, New York is a small town.

A colossal telegram for John from his friend in Omaha, Warren.

Eighty is a remarkable age because we’re brought up to think of it as very old. But then you see these guys (and the girls too) like Gutfreund and Leeds and although they don’t look like spry boys, they are very much in the thick of it.

Also in some cases they know more than the rest of us. Not always of course, but in the case of John Gutfreund, I think I might be right. Among the guests on hand to wish the man well was Billy Salomon who’s somewhere in his nineties. I think it might have been Billy, if not his father, who gave John Gutfreund his first job at Salomon Brothers Hutzler, later Salomon.

The Gutfreund residence has a French grandness to it, which is no accident since Mrs. Gutfreund is a Francophile in the fashion that was popular among New York society women in the Gilded Age. Mrs. Astor went to Paris every year for three or four months. Mrs. Wharton, even longer. The Gutfreunds have a smart apartment on the rue de Grennelle on the Left Bank.


	Gutfreund love birds.

In the New York apartment you don’t feel that you’re in Paris when you’re in the spectacular salon (I think that’s the word), because for one thing you’re looking out over the treetops of Central Park to the west and the east. But it feels Parisian inside. There are also books everywhere. And last night they’d set up a colossal telegram for John from his friend in Omaha, Warren.

I was somewhat preoccupied since I had to be up the street just about the same time, so I didn’t get much chance to talk to many although Bob Fellner gave me a quick tour of John’s “fumaire” – his smoking room where Fellner has shared a cigar and a little tv watching with the man himself.

The room is covered in a dark multicolored pattern of material that I think might be leather, although it looks like fabric. It is masculine fancy as only the French seem to be able to do (I know, I could be wrong about that). Dark shades, browns, maybe mauve, purples (I’m trying to picture it in memory after only a glance). Small, cozy but lavishly elegant. I was told the wallcovering naturally absorbs the smell of cigar so that it doesn’t remain there or anywhere else in the house. I wanted to take a picture to show you, and I did have my camera, but I also knew that John Gutfreund prefers the privacy so my inadequate description will have to suffice. And since it was his birthday, and I was his guest: no picture.

I regret our own penchants for privacy in terms of things like homes. They are documents of our lives. I know that the shelter magazines show us a lot but in reality New York is full of fantastic domiciles that are intriguing reflections of times and personalities. When their lives that occupy them are past, it is all dismantled and redistributed, and the record of that personality and that life is lost in many ways. Especially in New York where everything is temporary.

The Frick Collection, last night at 7:10 PM.

It was a beautiful night out and I was only a few blocks from the Frick where Paul Soros was giving a birthday dinner for his wife Daisy. Daisy’s birthday was last week – the seventh. I think this dinner was scheduled to accommodate all those people who would not have returned from the summer yet.

The guest list was two hundred. The Frick, remember, was once a private house. Of course it has been added on to but nevertheless it is a very grand house. So those who have the rare privilege (and for a price of course) of throwing a private party there, also share with their guests, the sense of being at a dinner in a very grand house full of a vast collection of masterpieces of sculpture and painting.


	The placement/menu.

Walking through the corridor into the drawing room with Holbein and El Greco greeting you in all their splendor is almost otherworldly. Several guests said to me, “I could live here.”

I don’t think so. The Fricks actually lived upstairs most of the time where they had very nice apartments (Elsie de Wolfe was the original decorator), bedrooms, sitting rooms, etc. The main floor was always meant to be a museum. Mr. Frick was busy creating his legacy (and immortality).

After cocktails in the yellow reception room that looks out on the east garden, we were led into the rotunda room which was set up with chairs for a performance – Steve Ross, the cabaret performer/pianist. After his performance of mainly Cole Porter and Noel Coward tunes, a friend of the Soroses conducted the guests in singing Happy Birthday.

Then it was on to dinner. It is a beautiful house for a party and the women were elegantly dressed for it. Men were in black tie. The Soroses are very active in New York philanthropy and have contributed generously to Lincoln Center including it’s Summer Dance Parties on the plaza.

The white-haired Mr. Soros – who among other things is the brother of George – is a very courtly gentleman in manner and movement. There is a dignity about him that rubs off in his presence.

Daisy greeting her guests at the entrance to the house on East 70th Street.

The table centerpiece; that's John Bernbach in the background.

His wife, the birthday girl (they are both Hungarian born and bred), has a big and direct personality. She has a cozy European chic. One of her two sons, both of whom spoke last night, described his mother’s expressions about people as “fabulous,” “wonderful,” “fantastic,” (or something like that) when she liked someone; and when she didn’t, he said, she said nothing. Maybe throw up her arms, or make a shrugging movement. A lot of people laughed at the description because it not only pegs Daisy but also explains why people like her so much. She inspires it.

This particular birthday was a somewhat surprising number to the girl. No one mentioned it. I figured it out because I went to a “major” one ten years ago. I was thinking of all that when I was watching the Soroses speak after dinner in the atrium.

Jeffrey Soros reading a birthday tribute to his mother in the rotunda, with Steve Ross at the piano.

First Paul, who talked about his wife. And then Daisy who talked about her life.
These are people who came to this country out of the Second World War and the Nazis who were their mortal enemies and from whom they escaped. I don’t know how Paul Soros made his fortune but it wasn’t through his brother. And what he and Daisy were able to do was to create interesting, rich lives in the community that is New York. And to give to their adopted home and country.

Their two sons – one of whom lives in London, and the other in Los Angeles, both spoke of their mother with amused fondness as well as a sense of authority. Daisy has authority and it comes with laughter and a smile. It’s the same now that it was ten years ago and probably many before that.

Dinner in the atrium. Glorious Foods; excellent.