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The
streets were empty on Thanksgiving night.
8:45 PM. Photo: JH.
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A fine
day; some sun in the morning for the annual parade, then some drizzle,
then light rain, and gray,
turning cold by early evening. Perfect, as somehow I always remember
Thanksgiving Day being cold and gray.
At four in the afternoon I went down to The Four Seasons restaurant
to meet David and Helen Gurley Brown and Alice
Mason for our annual
dinner. I think this is the fourth or fifth year together on this
day. For a good part of my life Thanksgiving meant a large get- together
first with family, and then later with friends gathering at my house.
Since the early 90s and my return to New York from California, however,
it’s been one place or another until the Browns extended their
invitation a few years ago.
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Helen
Gurley Brown and David Brown
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At first
the idea of the holiday dinner in a restaurant seemed foreign. But
The Four Seasons does a lovely job and it’s a very homey
affair in those great and tall, now classical Philip Johnson-designed
modern dining rooms. We always sit at a table by the pool. The place
is always filled with a diverse group of New Yorkers – families,
some young, some old, large and small; couples – married, single,
straight, gay; groups of friends, everyone dressed with a modicum
of formality. Everyone starts with a cocktail (David Brown) or champagne
(me and Alice; Helen does not imbibe) and some canapes – caviar
on blinis, crabcakes, salmon. Then there is the pumpkin bisque. Then
they wheel a cart with a picture-perfect roasted turkey right up
to your table and carve it before you, placing the meat of your choice
photo-perfectly on your plate with stuffing, giblets, vegetables,
and cranberries.
It always turns out to be more than I can eat. Leftovers are wrapped
up and put in a Four Seasons bag to be taken home. Desserts are the
traditional (Helen and David had pumpkin pie; Alice and I had a less
traditional Grand Marnier Soufflé). In at four and out at
six. New York at its most civilized. |
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The Pool Room at The Four Seasons |
I’ve
written about them in these pages before and they certainly need
no introduction anyway, but it is always interesting to hear
what’s going on in the Browns’ lives because despite
what some would call advanced age (David’s well into his
eighties), they still get more done in a day than most people
I know who are half, even a third their age.
David, who has produced a number of famous and successful films and plays over
the past thirty or more years, is currently working on a musical version of Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels, which just finished its world premiere production at the Old
Globe Theatre in San Diego. The show is directed by Old Globe’s Artistic
Director, Jack O’Brien, who won the Tony this year for Henry
IV and last
year for Hairspray.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is based on the 1988 film (which was based on the 1964
film “Bedtime Story”) starring Michael Caine and Steve
Martin. The
new musical stars John Lithgow (who also starred in the musical version of “Sweet
Smell of Success” which was also produced by David Brown) and Norbert
Butz in the title roles with Sherie Rene Scott, Joanna Gleason,
Gregory Jbara and Sara Gettelfinger, with music and lyrics by David
Yazbek (The Full Monty) and
a book by Jeffrey Lane, with sets by David Rockwell (Hairspray and the Rocky
Horrow Show).
And such a laff-riot success that it was in San Diego — where they extended
the run a week and were sold-out — including Standing Room for the entire
seven, that it comes to Broadway for previews on January 31st, opening March
3 at the
Imperial Theatre on West 45 Street, with already a $3 million dollar advance.
For ticket information, click
here. |
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Helen
Gurley Brown, as the world knows was the founding editor of Cosmo from
its inception (as a woman’s magazine) for more than three
decades. I asked
her over dinner how that all came about.
“David and I were taking a walk one Sunday in Will Rogers State Park in
Los Angeles,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what I was going
to do professionally and he suggested I write a book about my experiences as
a single woman. In those days (early 1960s) only married women were thought to
have sexual experiences with men, although everyone knew that wasn’t so.
So I wrote Sex and the Single Girl, and it became such a hit that I
got thousands
of letters from women everywhere. I’d sit at my typewriter and dutifully
try to answer each letter, and one day David said ‘why don’t you
start a magazine’ and that way you can answer every letter.”
So, using the best-selling book as a guide, the couple came up with a concept,
shopped it around New York, got no takers until one day they took it to Hearst,
the publisher of Cosmopolitan magazine (where David was Features Editor
in the early 1950s). The magazine was about to go out of business and so they
thought “why
not try something new.” Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan became
the biggest money-making publication in the entire Hearst roster, literally keeping
the company in the black during its hardest times.
Today Helen travels the world launching and overseeing the international edition
of Cosmopolitan. David, who travels with her “as the wife,” said
that the Chinese version is thicker than the New York telephone book.
They celebrated the launch of the Russian version with a party in the Kremlin
for 6000 people and blow-ups of the famous Cosmo covers hung throughout
the former home of the Tsars and the Soviet Politburo. Helen recalled the first
time she
visited Russia during the Soviet regime, and they confiscated her Cosmo at
the airport. Today the Russian version is the biggest selling magazine in Russia
and sells 600,000 copies a month throughout Europe.
The Browns, who also have one of the great marital success stories of
any generation
recently celebrated their 45th anniversary over a “tasting” lunch
at Per Se, the hot new restaurant in the Time-Warner complex. David said the
restaurant is so popular that he had to make the reservation well in advance
and all he could get was a table at noon time on a Saturday. So they went, and
had a wonderful time. Knowing the place is pricey and that Helen doesn’t
believe in extravagance, I asked David what the bill was. “$400” for
the two of them, he answered, adding that they went by car and driver but after
they left the restaurant, Helen insisted they economize a bit, walk across Columbus
Circle and take the bus home up Central Park West.
Helen is famous for taking the bus. Alice Mason suggested that at this day and
age, it might be safer for Helen to travel by taxi or limousine, especially since
she’s provided with one in her business. David concurred but knew it was
a losing argument. Helen said she prefers the bus whenever possible (which is
almost daily). “A cab ride can be $10 and the bus, which is very pleasant,
is only $2.” I didn’t tell her this at dinner, but I remember once,
years ago, before I knew her, being behind her getting on an 8th Avenue bus at
57th Street going uptown. Because she was already the celebrated editor of Cosmo,
I kept looking at her, wondering if indeed it really were she, taking the
bus.
And indeed it was. |
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