 |
|
|
 |
Madison
Square Park.
7:00 PM. Photo: JH.
|
Last Friday was a cold, windy, rainy day in New York. Not an
easy one for finding a cab, but a perfect one for wet shoes,
wet socks and wet feet. With all that in mind and body, I finally
did find a cab a little after eleven in the morning, to take
me about twenty blocks south to the apartment of Kitty
Carlisle Hart for an interview about the upcoming tribute the Metropolitan
Opera Guild is doing in her honor next Sunday, November 21 at
Avery Fisher Hall. The Masters of Ceremony will be two of Mrs.
Hart’s most illustrious (and luscious) confreres in song,
Julie Andrews and Beverly Sills.
 |
Kitty
Carlisle Hart
|
|
Mrs. Hart turned ninety-four this past September
3rd, and has
been in show business for more than seventy of those years. She’s
appeared in movies (with the Marx Brothers — “A
Night At the Opera”), on television (a very long stint
as a panelist on “To Tell The Truth"), on Broadway, at
the Metropolitan Opera, and has been performing in concerts right
up to this
year.
She was married to playwright, producer and director Moss
Hart from 1946 until his death in 1961, with whom she had a son and
a daughter, has written a memoir and served as the New York State
Commissioner of the Arts under Governor Mario Cuomo. She has
lived in her large and spacious apartment for the past forty
years, since the death of her husband. Minnie Cushing
Astor Fosburgh,
who also lived in the same building, found her the apartment.
She’s known everyone and been everywhere and in that time
probably given a thousand interviews and had millions of words
written about her.
So the question in my mind was: what do you ask someone who’s
lived so long, met and worked with so many and seen so much?
Where do you start? Answer: I haven’t a clue.
I’ve met Mrs. Hart several times before, including one
night when our mutual friend Jeanne Lawrence took
us both to see the most recent revival of “Oklahoma” with Patrick
Wilson on Broadway. Mrs. Hart told us that night that she had
attended the first opening of the show sixty years before in
1943. I also interviewed her about thirteen years ago in the
same apartment on a Saturday morning. It was at that time that
I met, very briefly, her houseguest, one Pamela Harriman,
who was up from Washington for an overnight to go to the opera.
Mrs.
Harriman, whom I did not recognize at first, thoroughly demonstrated
her subtle charm (“that makes young farmers desert the
farm,” as Cole Porter once wrote) that morning. And after
Mrs. Harriman bid her hostess good-bye and shot me a quick glance
of what I liked to think/or was self-deluded into thinking was
a fleeting interest.
So with all that and wet feet in mind, I arrived about ten minutes
late to find Mrs. Hart looking very warm and cozy, sitting comfortably
in her large and bright living room, on a comfy looking green
velvet Victorian settee, a perfect vision of theatrical glamour
in a Chinese red silk and embroidered robe.
We talked about the Broadway she was brought up on and in which
she enjoyed a privileged position as wife of one of its most
successful playwrights. And the parties. In those days, theatre
people mixed with society. And at the parties everyone performed.
The great composers all entertained at the piano. She ticked
off her favorites: Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers,
George Gershwin.
Her favorite composer was George Gershwin. He had one waltz that
he’d written that had a girl’s name in the lyric.
Every time he played it for a new girl in his life, he’d
sing the song and insert her name, telling her he’d written
it for her. He was a wonderful dancer too, and even asked the
young Kitty Carlisle to marry him. “But of course, he wasn’t
serious – he just thought he should get married.” However,
he came to an untimely death at thirty-eight.
She liked working with the Marx Brothers. They
were very funny just horsing around, off the cuff. The “show business” in
the lady came out when she referred to those days in Hollywood
working with Groucho and Chico and Harpo.
Off stage Harpo, who painted, was friendly “with the intelligentsia.” Groucho
was very bright too but he was more interested in his work: “priming
the jokes, fixing up the shtick,” as Mrs. Hart put it.
She wasn’t crazy about living in Hollywood. For one thing,
her mother wouldn’t let her date, so there wasn’t
much to do. When she made “Night Of The Opera,” she
recorded her aria beforehand but when it came time to shoot it
and she had to lip-synch it, she didn’t recognize the voice.
She realized that they’d substituted someone else for her
high “C.” Since singing was her forte, she was very
disturbed. Sam Wood, the director, asked her
what was wrong. She said nothing and tried to shoot the scene
again. She couldn’t
do it. Finally she left the set and complained to her agent.
He told her to do nothing for three days. On the third day, they
went to see Irving Thalberg, the producer. “I cried buckets
in his office,” she recalled with a big smile on her face.
They let her sing her own high “C.”
|
|
Hart
to Hart, A Tribute to Kitty Carlisle and Moss Hart |
|
After she
married Moss Hart, who was one of the giants of the American
theatre, she became a prominent member of the New York
theatre world and much of her life revolved around his career
and their family. She started her “gig” on "To Tell
the Truth” in
1956 and worked steadily on it until the 1990s.
She was born in New Orleans, as Catherine Conn. Her mother, who
studied violin in Conservatory took her to the opera at a very
young age. In her youth she took the child to Switzerland to
school, and then to Paris where she studied at the Sorbonne.
Back in America she got her first acting job at the Bucks County
Playhouse when she was in her early 20s. In 1935 national fame
came with the Marx Brothers.
After our conversation, Mrs. Hart gave me a tour of her apartment.
There is a long hallway that serves as a gallery of art and memories.
There are pictures painted by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin,
Noel Coward and several by the artist Beverly
Pepper. There are
theatre posters from Moss Hart’s illustrious career, from
original productions to the revivals – “The Man Who
Came to Dinner,” “Once in A Lifetime,” “My
Fair Lady.” The Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman plays are still
very popular with amateur audiences and sixty, seventy years
later are still bringing in hefty royalties to the heirs.
In another room we looked at mementos and photographs. She showed
me a vintage photograph of a very handsome and distinguished
looking older man of the Victorian era with a well-trimmed greybeard
and beautiful intelligent eyes: her grandfather, Benjamin
Holtzman.
Mr. Holtzman fought in the Civil War, for the Confederacy, the
oldest living survivor of the battle of the Merrimack and the
Monitor, and one of the few Jews to fight for the South. He’d
emigrated to this country in the 1850s and landed in Baltimore.
His first job was working for a dry goods company as a salesman.
One of the family memories was that he sold a necktie to Abraham
Lincoln.
That piece of information really knocked me out. For here I was
with this woman whose life had witnessed so much of American
20th century theatrical history, telling me about her grandfather,
whom she also remembered, who’d fought in the Civil War,
and met Mr. Lincoln. It was a good way to end our perfect interview
and for me to go back out into the rain.
I’ll probably be thinking about that, the grandfather and
Mr. Lincoln, while I’m sitting there in Avery Fisher Hall
next Sunday night, watching this gracious songbird, surrounded
by friends and admirers, paying tribute to her and our history. |
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!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Friday
night in New York. Toni and James Goodale had a reception
for their son and daughter-in-law, Tim and Erin, who were married
last September 18th at a chateau in Lorgues, in Provence. Friday
night’s party was for the New York friends (and probably
some who’d made it to France where they celebrated both in
Lorgues and in St. Tropez.)
It was a very fancy black tie wedding. Rehearsal dinner was held
at a restaurant in Provence called Chez Bruno, very near the wedding
site. The wedding party was made up of 14 groomsmen including the
best man and five bridesmaids one of which was a man who is one
of the bride’s best friends. The bride wore Vera Wang. The
bridesmaids all wore green, different shades and styles, Cocktails
were held out on the beautiful grounds as the sun was setting and
there was a tent for the seated dinner and then a disco tent for
dancing afterwards.
 |
Newlyweds
Erin Chaffee and Tim Goodale
|
|
The bride was
born Erin
Chaffee in Texas but grew up in Holland
and Paris and London. Her parents, Carl and Judy Chaffee, live
in London, Maine and Kenya. Mr. Chaffee who was an executive for
Raytheon
for most of his career is now a systems consultant to airlines
and is semi-retired. The bride worked for several charities in
London before becoming head of Human Resources for a large PR firm
there.
The groom grew up in New York where he attended St.
Bernard's, and then went on to Groton and Yale. His father is one
of the leading
First Amendment and communications lawyers in the United States
and has his own weekly television show for PBS, “Digital
Age.” A
former vice-chairman of the New York Times where he served
as general counsel, he represented the New York Times in
the Daniel
Ellsberg-Pentagon
Papers case, and is now a partner in Debevoise and Plimpton.
The groom’s mother runs Goodale Associates, a fund-raising
consultancy firm, and has more than 20 years ago experience in
fund-raising in the non-profit sector. Prior to starting her
own firm she headed the Ford Foundation’s Research Department
and directed the first development office in New York of her alma
mater, Smith College. She has also chaired the annual PEN gala
for several years.
After Yale the groom went to London to train for the International
Squash Circuit in which he attained the ranking as the third best
American in the world. I got this information from his proud mama,
who also told me that the groom’s maternal grandfather was
a gymnastic champion in his youth, so the boy is keeping the family
athletic legacy going. He also helicopter skis in the winter. Today,
athletically, he is now ranked as the 13th best doubles team in
the USTA 35 and over. For several years he worked for Goldman Sachs
in London although he recently started his own hedge fund with
two partners. The couple are now living in Knightsbridge, London. |
 |
The
Bride and Groom on their wedding day
|
Now,
that said, there were about 245 guests at Friday’s cocktail,
dinner and dancing reception. Peter Duchin and
his orchestra were on hand to keep the merrymakers moving.
Thankfully from my point of view, it wasn’t black tie
although the groom’s mother was dressed for the occasion
in a beautiful raspberry red Oscar de la Renta with
a full ruffled skirt and the bride wore a very sexy full
length strapless fire-engine red Ungaro.
The mother of the groom gave a very funny toast about the anxieties of the mother
worrying that her son by age thirty had still not married after seeing a stream
of young women come and go. Finally, after age thirty-five, he brought a very
beautiful young woman home for Thanksgiving. Her mother, the maternal grandmother
of the groom, took one look and said to Toni Goodale: “THAT’S
IT! SHE’S THE ONE!” And lo, Gramma was right.
The father of the groom, the scholarly personality in the family imparted how
he and the bride’s grandmother shared a fascination with genealogy. On
meeting the two discovered that, in comparing backgrounds, the bride and groom
are actually related! First cousins, thirteen times removed, or thirteenth cousins,
sharing a common grandmother in the 17th century. Heritage!
As you may have gathered from the Goodales’ background, they are a very
dynamic and popular couple in New York and know lots and lots of people, especially
in media and society. I can’t remember all 200 plus but I saw: Mona
Ackerman and Richard Cohen, Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan and Jane Annan,
Meredith and Tom Brokaw, Alexandra Penney and Dennis Ashbaugh, Kevin Buckley
and Gail Lumet, Geraldine Fabrikant and Tim Metz, Annette Tapert, Jimmy Finkelstein
and Pamela Gross, Carolyne Roehm and Simon Penninger, Joe Armstrong, Ben Bradlee
and Sally Quinn and their son Quinn, Marie Brenner, Mr. and Mrs. Steven Brill,
Carol McCall and Joyce Brown, Jenny Conant and Steve Kroft, Joe Conason and Elizabeth
Wagley, Howard and Susan Kaminski, Jonathan Canno and Pierce Roberts, Edward
J. Epstein, Ron Silver, Isabel and Winston Folkes, Betsy and Victor Gotbaum,
Lynn Nesbit, Barbara Goldsmith, Jeffrey Leeds, Tina Brown and Harry Evanas, Candace
Bushnell and Charles Askegard, Katherine Bryan, her son George Gurley, with Hilary
Heard, Betsy and Walter Cronkite, Jonathan and Somers Farkas, Charles Michener;
lots of Goodales – Andrew Goodale, Jennifer Goodale and Mark Russell,
Thomas Goodale, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Goodale, Lynn Sherr, Peggy Siegal, Kathy Sloane,
Rose Styron, Gay and Nan Talese, Amanda Urban and Ken Aueletta, Lally Weymouth
with Charles Gargano, Felicia Taylor, Bob Silvers, William Weld and Leslie Marshall,
Francesca Stanfill and Richard Nye, Nancy and John Novogrod, Liz Robbins and
Doug Johnson, Abe Rosenthal and Shirley Lord, Alexandra and Arthur Schlesinger,
Gerry and Pat Schoenfeld, Sarah Rosenthal, Bill and Wendy Luers, Dr. Dick and
Ellen Levine, Susan Lyne and George Crile, Virginia Mailman, Donald Marroin,
Gifford Miller. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morgenthau and Honor Moore.
Those are the ones I remember.
Mary Hilliard was there taking pictures although
she told me that unlike a lot of parties where the guests are camera
ready and composed for photographer, this group of yakkers were
so busy talking and gnoshing and dancing that it was hard to catch
anybody sitting still. My Digital froze on me, however, and so
I was stuck too. |
|
|
|
|
