 |
|
|
 |
Passing
by the Check Room at The Waldorf.
8:15 PM. Photo: JH.
|
Over
at the Waldorf, the American Friends of the Israel Museum held a black
tie gala
and raised $2.2
million for the world-class institution which is the only encyclopedic
museum for art and archaeology in the region. Tovah Feldshuh, currently
starring on Broadway as Golda Meir in “Golda’s Balcony,” performed
a short one-woman show created especially for the gala. James
Snyder,
Director of the Israel Museum, and Mrs. Ronnie Heyman, President
of the American Friends for the Israel Museum, addressed the more
than 540 guests.
 |
The
table settings and stage
|
|
The Israel Museum has among its many treasures the
Dead Sea Scrolls, the world’s most comprehensive collections
of Judaica and Jewish Ethnography, as well as some of the most
important collections
of contemporary art in the world.
Last night’s gala especially celebrated the museum’s
Art Garden with a video presentation showing its most valued pieces.
The garden was designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu
Noguchi and is its best known attraction. Known now simply
as the Art Garden, its genesis lies in a bequest by a once very
famous
American, the showman/songwriter and investor Billy Rose.
Born William Samuel Rosenberg on what was then called the
Lower East Side (now the smart East Village) in 1899, Mr. Rose started
out life working as a stenographer for the Wall Street financier
and later presidential adviser Bernard Baruch, where he acquired
the reputation for being the fastest taker of shorthand in the
world. He went on to find his fortune assisted fortuitously by
the bonds of holy matrimony to the great star of the Ziegfeld
Follies,
Fannie Brice. Brice’s life was later immortalized
in a Broadway musical hit Funny Girl, (which made a star of Barbra
Streisand).
Billy Rose became
a successful popular songwriter (“I Found A Million Dollar
Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store,” “It’s Only
a Paper Moon,” “Me and My Shadow”). He had a
reputation as a “collaborator” of lyrics, although
it was often said that nobody knew just exactly what he wrote and
didn’t write. His biographer Earl Conrad later
wrote that Billy Rose “could feed and toss in a remark and
monkey around, but that others did most of the writing.” Songwriters
tolerated the “credit grab” however because he was
very successful at promoting his songs and everybody made money.
 |
Billy
Rose on the cover of Time
|
|
From songwriting he went on to become a Broadway producer
and theatre and nightclub owner. He produced Jumbo (known
as
Billy Rose’s Jumbo when it was made into a film
in 1962 with
Doris Day) with music and lyrics by Rodgers
and Hart and starring Jimmy Durante and
live elephants on the stage of the Hippodrome
Theatre. He also had a famous nightclub known as Billy Rose’s
Diamond Horseshoe which later inspired a musical film of the same
name starring Betty Grable.
In 1939 at the World’s Fair in New York, he produced Billy
Rose’s Aquacade which starred the most famous Olympic
medal winning swimmer Eleanor Holm in what was
called “a
brilliant girl show of spectacular size and content.” The
show was one of the biggest crowd pleasers at the Fair and after
it closed, he divorced Fannie Brice to marry his star.
In 1943 he produced Carmen Jones with an all-black
cast with music by Georges Bizet (from his score
of Carmen and
lyrics and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. The show was a big
hit and later made into a film by Otto Preminger and starring Dorothy
Dandridge. |
 |
In
the Grand Ballroom of The Waldorf Astoria
|
With
the fortune he made from Broadway, Hollywood and songwriting,
Billy Rose invested in real estate and the stock market and
at the time of his death was the largest single stockholder
in AT&T (back when it was considered the bluest of blue
chips) and the New York Central Railroad (the Vanderbilt
line – also a blue chip in its day).
At the end of his life he owned and lived in the former William Goadby
Low mansion (now the Smithers Institute) on East 93rd Street between
Park and Madison. Broadway habitués could often see him at night riding
home from his theatre (the Billy Rose, named after himself, of course) in his
enormous fully lighted, chauffeur driven Rolls reading the tabloids.
Although he lived grandly in the mansion on 93rd Street and an estate in Mount
Kisco with a large collection of modern art (he commissioned Dali’s
series The Seven Lively Arts, at the time of a Cole Porter show
of the same name which he produced) he was also known to be tight with a buck.
When Eleanor Holm divorced him in the late 1950s and asked for a handsome settlement,
he used his weekly newspaper column (in the Hearst papers) to humiliate her and
ply the public’s sympathy by listing all of the extravagant gifts he’d
bestowed upon her (furs, jewels, etc.). After he divorced Holm he married a woman
named Joyce Berle, a showgirl who’d come into celebrity
by marrying Milton Berle.
When he died at age 66, the world, his world, wondered who would get all those
millions that he controlled so parsimoniously. And the world was a bit surprised
to learn that so much of the fortune was going to ... a museum ... in Israel,
for a sculpture garden, to be named for him, in a final bid for immortality.
Which it was. At the time.
The Art Garden’s name has since been shortened
and relieved of its benefactor’s last wishes
to satisfy orthodox religious opinion which objects to idols being
publicly displayed in the Holy City. I asked several guests last
night if indeed this Art Garden was the same one which was bequeathed
by Billy Rose in the 1960s. No one knew. That it was. But is no
longer. I couldn’t help thinking of the irony, considering
the intentions of that tiny little figure, shrewd but very unpretty
with the piscine face and the brilliant abilities that cast him
as a giant in his world, who insisted that his name precede the
title of all of his productions, reduced in death to a now remote,
even forgotten name. May it be a lesson to all those who follow
in his philanthropic footsteps that nothing is forever. |
 |
Ira
and Inga Rennert
|
|
 |
Mitch
and Nina Davidson
|
|
 |
Tammy
and Randy Winn
|
|
 |
Elaine
Sargent
|
|
 |
Judy
Steinhardt, James Snyder, and Ronnie
Heyman
|
|
 |
Barbara
and Donald Tober
|
|
 |
Barbara
Lane
|
|
 |
Sharyn
and Steve Mann
|
|
 |
Avrom
and Arlene Doft
|
|
 |
Stephen
Lash
|
|
 |
Jerry
and Ruth Turk
|
|
 |
David
Norman
and Martin Zimet
|
|
 |
Paula
Fishman and Renata Zimet
|
|
 |
Noel
Levine
|
|
 |
Michael
and Zena Wiener
|
|
 |
Gail
Propp
|
|
 |
Sheri
and Joan Jedell
|
|
 |
Maria
Finkle and Bernice Schwartz
|
|
 |
Burt
and Joan Resnick with Malcolm Thomson
|
|
 |
Steven
Stern, Simcha Stern, and Marian Wiesel
|
|
 |
Debbie
and Rabbi
Sol Roth
|
|
 |
Larry
and Marilyn Friedland, Betty Bobrow, Franz Kriegisch,
and Malcolm Thomson
|
|
 |
Betsy
Green and Charles Curkin
|
|
 |
Performance
art at the Israel Museum gala
|
|
From
the Waldorf, JH and I went over to Donna Karan’s fabulous
boutique on 68th and Madison where they were celebrating
Karan’s 20th anniversary of her own business.
Some still
remember that the tall and leggy designer, now made fabulously
rich since selling her business to LVMH for hundreds of millions,
started out in the business as an assistant to Anne Klein,
the lady credited by most for creating the design and marketing
concept of designer sportswear for women that revolutionized
the fashion business in the late 1960s. Klein’s life was
cut short by cancer at age 50 in 1974.
So successful was her business that the death was also considered the death
to the business. However, the rangy and genial Karan, who grew up in Queens,
whose mother was a model and whose stepfather was a tailor, was trained
at Parsons, and was named head of a new design team (with Louis
Dell'Olio) to succeed Klein. Donna Karan proved to be an even
greater success than her predecessor. What was unique about Donna Karan
was her ability to take the design franchise of Anne Klein whose look and
style was in many ways compatible to that identified today with a contemporary
of hers, Ralph Lauren, and take it to a whole new design
level. In 1984, the Anne Klein owners backed Karan in her own business
and the rest is a history beyond everybody’s wildest dreams.
There was a very young New York fashion crowd at the boutique last night
as well as the designer, her daughter Gabby and son-in-law GianPaolo
DeFelice, comedienne Sandra Bernhard; Karan’s
former design partner Dell Olio, photographer Gilles Bensimon,
Bernadette Peters, Candy Pratts Price, Linda and Steve Horn, and Lydia
Hearst. |
 |
Jaq
and Louis Dell'Olio
|
|
 |
Bernadette
Peters
|
|
 |
Robert
Verdi
|
|
 |
Gabby
Karan and Alba Clemente
|
|
 |
Lydia
Hearst
|
|
 |
Linda
Horn
|
|
The
scene inside DKNY and on the back terrace |
 |
Sandra
Bernhard
|
|
 |
Shelly
Bromfield, Stephen Bird, and Sandra
Sheppard
|
|
 |
Waris
|
|
 |
Angela
McCluskey and Paul Cantelon
|
|
 |
Gabby
Karan, GianPaolo DeFelice, and Kelly
Bensimon
|
|
 |
Giles
and Kelly Bensimon
|
|
Have
you subscribed to New York Social Diary?
Enter your Email address and
click on subscribe to
receive emails about the activities of NYSD. It's free!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
