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Playground
of P.S. 11 on 21st street between 7th and 8th Avenues.
Last Tuesday at 4:45 PM. Photo: JH.
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Sunday
was a balmy, beautiful November day in New York and
about 35,000 people from all over the world were in town
to run in the
35th annual New York Marathon. More than 100 countries were represented.
Newsday reported that there were even evangelists who’d
come to reach the “unsaved.” One of them, Jimmy
Larkin from
Staten Island, believes the Second Coming of Jesus will take
place in seven years. He was quoted as saying “The whole
world is basically here,” and that therefore “It’s
a good opportunity to reach them.” I’m no authority
on Second Comings but Mr. Larkin is right about one thing: the
whole world
is here in New York. All day, everyday. Because the whole world lives
here. And living together in peace, or a reasonable facsimile thereof;
proving something that so few people are aware of: it can be done.
Because of the route of the Marathon through the five boroughs, it
was a particularly quiet day in the City traffic-wise. For one thing
it was hard to get around. And for those who were away for the weekend,
it was hard traveling once back in Manhattan. I went out a seven
o’clock to have an early dinner at Swifty’s with Nikki
Haskell (StarCaps). There were very few cars on the road.
Swifty’s was jumping. One table over
from us was Sir
Anthony O’Reilly, the Irish media titan who was once
head of HJ Heinz and now apart from his newspaper business continues
to be drawn to
brands with household names including Waterford Wedgewood, which
he also owns.
When he took his table he was carrying a coffee table
book on Wedgewood. Sir Anthony, who is tall, white-haired and with
a ruddy complexion looks like a Cary Grant prototype,
the kind of guy you’d expect to own a yacht, or a racing stable
or a mansion in Palm Beach, or all of the above. Or play that kind
of a part in
the movie. Except that his friendly hello revealed he was real.
At the table on the other side of us, dining with his wife and friends,
was a real Hollywood titan (although I doubt he’d ever think
of himself in such terms), Robert Benton, screenwriter-director-producer
— Kramer Vs Kramer, Superman, The Movie; The Late Show,
Places in the Heart, What’s Up Doc (screenplay); and Bonnie
and Clyde (screenplay), to name only a few.
One table down from him, while we’re on the subject of Hollywood,
was Niki Dantine Bautzer Kuelpman and Marti
Stevens. Interesting
Lives Dept.: Niki Kuelpman who is the widow of both actor Helmut
Dantine,
and the
famous Hollywood lawyer Greg Bautzer who represented a wide array of
Hollywood’s
fabled personalities including Bugsy Siegal, Joan Crawford and Howard
Hughes.
His widow is now married to Darrell Kuelpman, the director of the
Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, which now
owns Hughes’ famous “Spruce Goose.” Mrs. Kuelpman
and Ms. Stevens are the daughters of Nicholas Schenck who in his
day,
as chairman
of Loew’s Inc.
(movie theatres and MGM Studios) was possibly the most powerful man
in the so-called Golden Age of the movies.
And at the next table: Jim Kaufman with Brownie
McLean in from Palm
Beach. Moving right along across the room, Muriel (Mickey) Siebert,
the first woman to ever own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange,
with friends; next to them Evelyn and Leonard Lauder with
friends, and next to them Nancy Holmes, in from
Texas, with Tommy
Corcoran, Randy Jones, and Ann Hoover in
from Oklahoma City (who is a daily reader of NYSD). Tommy, who’d
spent the weekend in Litchfield County at the country house of his
friend Joan
Rivers,
told me it
took them
an hour to go from the West Side to the East Side once they were
back in town, because of the Marathon. |
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Retrospective. On
Election Day JH and I went down to the Maya
Stendhal Gallery at
525 West 20th Street. That part of town is the middle of nowhere
to this writer. I’m always amazed at how remote these art
galleries seem and yet how popular they are. Ms. Stendahl is a
striking young woman, small, erect, olive skinned, dark-haired
with an authority to her walk and her bearing. Her father started
the family off in the gallery business twenty years ago in SoHo.
Chelsea, of course, is now the place to be. The gallery space is
large and airy and white, with light wood floors.
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Circus by
Marc Chagall to be exhibited at
Maya Stendhal Gallery
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There is one very large main gallery hung with paintings by Saul
Chase whose
exhibit is just finishing up. In a smaller room, maybe twelve by sixteen, off
the main gallery was an exhibition of smaller Saul Chase paintings, a series
that was part of the exhibit and which has since sold for $250,000.
This week, from November 11th (opening reception from 6 to 9), through
December 8th, they are having an exhibition featuring an intimate
collection of oil paintings
by Marc Chagall, created in the last half of his extensive oeuvre.
Provoked
by memories of his homeland and inspired by his surroundings in France, Marc
Chagall
Paintings 1940 – 1980 showcases the artist’s fusion of fantasy, nostalgia
and religion into otherworldly images.
Maya has extended an invitation to the readers of NYSD so if you'd like to drop
by
this Thursday for the opening reception,
please
RSVP to gallery@mayastendhalgallery.com and
just mention that NYSD referred you.
We left the gallery about four that afternoon. Again, not unlike
yesterday, because it was Election Day, New York was somewhat quieter than the
usual weekday. The weather was balmy also, although it was overcast. JH and I
walked across 21st Street several blocks east, taking in the beauty of Chelsea,
now
one
of
the oldest parts of the City, where there are still many buildings and houses
dating
back
a hundred and fifty to two hundred years. The metropolitan foliage lining these
streets, albeit sparse compared to the countryside, was still with us, its yellowed
leaves lapping and dappling the sidewalks. It was somehow easy to lend my imagination
to the atmosphere and feeling for life behind those doors, of New York in an
age now long gone by. |
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