Social Diary 12/1/04 - Last night in New York

Yesterday in New York

At last night's Food Allergy Ball, The Plaza Grand ballroom was decorated like a walk through Central Park, with children ice skating at its entrance, accompanied by a man on an organ. 8:10 PM. Photo: JH.

Last night in New York. They had the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center. I don’t know how many turned out because we didn’t get that far down the avenue but in years past, the estimate was upwards of a million. Meanwhile, at 7 PM, the avenue was jammed with traffic and its sidewalks jammed with pedestrians. The Christmas/ Holiday decorations are out and there are fabulous store windows not to be missed.

Jamee Gregory

In the 21st Century New York, the business of Society is Business. Over at the Cartier Mansion on 52nd and Fifth (with the entire building wrapped in a big red ribbons and a bow with an electrical facsimile of their famous leopard diamond pin ornamenting it, and a facsimile of a tiara cresting over the entrance), there was literally a mob scene with all kinds of the chicest and not-so-chicest people waiting, as if for a blockbuster movie, to get into the party Cartier was throwing for Jamee Gregory and her new book New York Apartments (Rizzoli). The holiday energy has already begun to take hold. There was as much excitement inside as there was on the avenue.

Mrs. Gregory, no stranger to NYSD readers, wife of investment banker Peter Gregory, is very active in philanthropies in New York and also a frequent contributor to lifestyle and shelter magazines. From the looks of last night’s crowd, everyone Jamee Gregory’s ever come in contact with showed up for the champagne, canapes and the book. There was a long line inside of book buyers in one of the main salesrooms where the author was busy autographing.

After a walk-through checking out the crowd, while JH and Digital caught them for posterity (and the NYSD), we joggled along by the showcases of diamonds and rubies and emeralds of bracelets and necklaces and earrings, and by the watches and the gold accessories, toward the front door where we found Houston’s most famous international glamour girl Lynn Wyatt chatting with Cartier’s president Stanislas de Quercize. Mrs. Wyatt’s presence was a measure of the evening’s success: if it’s important in New York, she’s there, always looking like she knows Cartier well, and from way back.

Roger Webster and Muffy Miller

Georgette Mosbacher and Ralph Destino

Kelly Graham and Jon Barman

Heather Cohane and Tom Armstrong

Robert Burke

Sharon Hoge

Dan and Cynthia Lufkin with her daughter

Tony Urrutia with sisters Shelley McLarty and Mary Meehan

Annalu Ponti

Mauro and Francesca Maccioni

Charles Davey (right)

Gail Hilson and Susan Burke

Mario Buatta and Dennis Basso

Amy Fine Collins and Somers Farkas

Mark Gilbertson and Amy Hoadley

Karl Wellner, Chris Meigher, and Jim Zirin

Christian Leone, Fiona Thomas, Samantha Gregory, and Peter Som

Glenda Bailey, Lynn Wyatt, and Stanislas de Quercize

Christine and Steve Schwarzman

Carroll Petrie and John Christensen

From Cartier, we walked, against the crowds up the avenue to the Plaza where Sharyn Mann’s Food Allergy Initiative was staging its 6th annual Food Allergy Ball.

You may have heard this (or read this) from me before, but I’ll repeat the story because it’s a good example of how determination, refusing to take “no” for an answer, and motivation can make a big difference in the lives of many people.

Thomas Keller of Per Se

I met Mrs. Mann six or seven years ago at a benefit gala where we were seated together because, I later learned, she wanted to meet me and pick my brain about an idea she had. She told me she wanted to start a non-profit foundation to combat food allergies. I’d never heard of food allergies that were what I’d think of as serious. Then she told me her daughter has food allergies, and that the Manns almost lost her more than once because of it. (Since then I’ve heard of people dying, and almost instantly, because of a food allergy.)

She told me that night that she had consulted some major public relations people here in town about staging a benefit. Unimpressed with her story, they suggested something small, like a tea, a lecture, little at-home get-togethers. She needed to raise millions for this project. I simply told her to go for it and throw a big fundraiser.

Big fundraisers are almost commonplace in the New York social scene, as readers of NYSD can surmise on their own. And in many cases, they are getting to be so commonplace, so by-the-book, that they are losing their steam and losing their impact. There are people in New York who go to as many as two-dozen a year. Black tie, long dress, get out the jewels, and off you go. Oh, no, not another??!!

Then there are those evenings which are heightened by the urgency of the cause as well as by the creativity of the chairs. Sharyn Mann and her co-chair Todd Slotkin deliver a big, glitzy, gorgeous, exciting (and different) good time every year. Among their co-chairs are Mary and Robert Kennedy Jr. who have a son who has several food allergies and with whom they must be very vigilant; along with Patricia and James Cayne (Mr. Cayne is the chair and CEO of Bear Stearns), and Julia and David Koch, and corporate dinner chair Howard Gittis of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc.

“Newsboy” hawking “newspapers” at the entrance

Every year they honor an important individual in the food business with the Joe Baum Lifetime Achievement Award. This year’s honoree was Thomas Keller, the celebrated owner of the new Per Se and the French Laundry, as well as Bouchon, and Bouchon Las Vegas. They also honored Ron Perelman, Chairman and CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings. With the combination of the honorees and the co-chairs, these people bring out a huge crowd which this year included Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman, Donna Dixon Aykroyd, Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe, David Bouley, Daniel Boulud, Florence and Richard Fabricant, Roxanne and Dean Pallin, Abbey and Steven Braverman, Ben and Elke Gazzara, Drew Nieporent, George Hamilton, David Burke, Howard and Lynette Gittis, Simone and David Levinson, Lori Stokes, and Larry Silverstein.

The Grand Ballroom at The Plaza

The Plaza Grand ballroom was decorated for this year’s ball like a walk through Central Park, with children ice skating at its entrance (from the Ice Theatre of New York, and directed by Douglas Webster), accompanied by a man on an organ. There were violinist and bassists along the grand staircase, serenading the guests as they went in to dinner. There were “newsboys” hawking “newspapers” at the entrances, shouting the headline: $2.9 million raised this year. Since its inception and Sharyn Mann’s tiny but urgent idea, Food Allergy Initiative has raised almost $15 million.

Take a moment to learn; it may be something you NEED to know in matters of life or death:

Through the Food Allergy initiative and Mrs. Mann’s pioneering consciousness-raising, restaurant, hospitals, emergency ambulances, schools and airlines are now often equipped with EpiPens for emergency injections to stave off fatal circumstances.

L. to r.: Sharyn Mann, Robert and Mary Kennedy, and Katie Couric; Lady and British Amb. Lord Parry.

On our way to The Grand Ballrrom

Entering the dining room

A table setting

A table centerpiece

Herb and Svetlana Wachtell with Clara and Larry and Silverstein

Bette Saltzman, Larry and Clara Silverstein, and Esther Koven

L. to r.: Richard and Florence Fabricant, David Burke, Marco Maccioni, and Drew Nieporent; Arthur Bacal and Liana Silverstein.

Sharyn Mann with her mom

Jason Schwalbe

Julian Niccolini

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!

Yesterday afternoon in New York, I went over to Sotheby’s where they were having one of their “writer’s luncheons” in the 8th floor private galleries.

Sotheby’s was jumping. There is a major auction occuring there tonight of “Property from the Collection of Rita & Daniel Fraad.” The Fraad Collection is said to be the most important collection of American art to appear on the market in at least a generation. Assembled over a period of thirty years, it testifies to exceptional connoisseurship.

Maura Moynihan and her book, Yoga Hotel

The couple met when they were teen-agers – he eighteen, she fifteen. He went to Brown, he later to Smith. They married in college in the mid-1930s, but kept the date a secret for many years and had an “official” date of 1938.

Mr. Fraad was a businessman, head of Allied Maintenance (later Ogden Allied Maintenance), a business started by his father. Mrs. Fraad, who took an art class in the 1950s with an artist named Arthur Stern, who was also a well-known art teacher. Mr. Stern would take his students on rounds of the art galleries and Mrs. Fraad soon began to see pictures she loved. After that, each Saturday, she and her husband would have lunch and then look at paintings she had scouted out.

They made their first purchase in 1955 – Albert Pinkham Ryder’s 1890s Landscape. Other acquisitions included works by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Charles Demuth, Luks, Duveneck, Joseph Stella, John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Mary Cassatt, Hopper and Bellows. There were few private collectors of American art at the time and it afforded them access to extraordinary works. Mr. Fraad died in 1987 and his widow passed away earlier this year at 88.

Meanwhile, at the luncheon, we were treated to some of the items going up for auction on Thursday and Friday (December 2nd and 3rd) including the O’Fallon Collection of American Indian Portraits by George Caitlin, one of which was hanging in the dining room where we lunched.

Justin Caldwell from the International Book Department of Sotheby’s read to us from the original manuscript (from a set of a collection of manuscripts of the author) of a novel Truman Capote was writing when he was 19. He’d started it in New York and taken it down to his family’s house in Monroeville, Alabama with the intention of finishing it.

Capote never did finish the novel (which had a reference to his final, unfinished work, Answered Prayers) but he did start another book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, which was published and launched his career and his fame. Capote’s biographer Gerald Clarke was present at this luncheon also.

We were also shown samples of original manuscripts of Sir Isaac Newton which will be on sale at these auctions, and a letter General George Washington wrote in May 1776 about some of his officers, including one whose abilities and commitment he did not think much of. We saw a copy of one of only three existing of Clement Moore’s personally handwritten poem T’was The Night Before Christmas.

"Sixty! Count 'em, Sixty! Let's see some other son of a bitch top that!" Babe Ruth, September 30th, 1927.

Perhaps the most touching item we were shown, however, was a baseball bat. Babe Ruth’s baseball bat – the one he used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium on its grand opening on April 18, 1923. The bat will be sold at auction on Thursday (December 2).

Yankee Stadium, built by the team’s management on land that was acquired from the estate of William Waldorf Astor, father-in-law of the Mrs. Astor, was the largest sports stadium ever built at the time, and had about 64,000 seats.

On opening day, with the Yanks playing the Red Sox, they sold 74,200 tickets (and turned away 25,000). John Philip Sousa marched the Seventh Regiment band playing to the center field flagpole, where the flag was hoisted.

But everyone was there to see the Babe. Heywood Broun wrote that day: “It is reported on good authority that when the Babe first walked out to his position and looked about him he was silent for almost a minute while he tried to find adequate words to express his emotions. Finally he emerged from his creative coma and remarked, ‘Some ball yard.’”

All held their breath when he came up to bat. Before the game the slugger said he would give a year of his life if he could hit a home run in his first game in the new stadium.

The New York Times reported: “The ball came in slowly, but it went out quite rapidly rising on a line and then dipping suddenly from the force behind it. It struck well inside the foul line, eight or ten rows above the low railing in front of the bleachers, and as Ruth circled the bases he received probably the greatest ovation of his career. The biggest crowd rose to its feet and let loose the biggest shout in baseball history. Ruth, jogging over the home plate, grinned broadly, lifted his cap at arm’s length and waved it to the multitude.”

The Yanks beat the Sox 4-1 and on that day, prompted by the bat of Ruth that the great baseball writer Fred Lieb dubbed the new ballpark, “The House that Ruth Built.”

That same year, across the country, to publicize the new stadium, they staged a competition among school boy baseball players. Ruth’s agent, Christy Walsh made an agreement with the Los Angeles Evening Herald to hold an annual home run contest. The high school player finishing the round of eight City League games with the most home runs would receive the bat that the great Bambino used to knock out his first homer, and it would be autographed and donated by the Babe himself.

The Herald sent a special messenger by train to New York to pick up the prize. On its barrel, Babe Ruth added, in his own handwriting with a black fountain pen, “To the Boy Home Run King of Los Angeles, ‘Babe Ruth’ N.Y. May 7th 1923.

Manufacturer characteristics of the Ruth/Orsatti Bat -

Center Label: Louisville Slugger, Louisville, Ky.
Label Description: Hillerich & Bradsby Co. 125 dash dot dash
Bat Weight: 45.5 oz.
Bat Length: 36 inches
Finish: Standard
Wood: Professional Grade Ash

Estimate: $1,000,000.

Two weeks after Ruth hit his homer, and when the dust settled over the home-run competition in Los Angeles, the winner was the “hard hitting little third-sacker and captain of the Manual Arts squad,” Victor Orsatti.”

Young Orsatti later went from high school to USC where he excelled in baseball, football and track and field. He even earned a major league tryout with the St. Louis Cardinals, where his brother Ernie was already on the team. He opted instead for a career in Hollywood, becoming a talent agent (and a very close friend of mogul Louis B. Mayer). Orsatti’s name was linked romantically to Jean Harlow and Sonja Henie. His clients became some of the most famous stars of their time including Judy Garland, Betty Grable, Edward G. Robinson and Mickey Rooney.

The bat remained in his possession for the next sixty-five years, until his death. One day, at the end of his life, he directed a caretaker who had shared the last ten years of his life with him, to a closet in which he kept the bat and the extensive clippings about his acquisition. When Victor Orsatti died in 1978, he bequeathed the bat to his caretaker. In honor of Mr. Orsatti, the caretaker intends to use a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this bat to fund a baseball program at an orphanage in Mexico where she now spends much of her time.