Very warm on Sunday with a touch of the muggy to remind us of what summertime could bring.

The Manhattan social scene lost two of its longtime stalwarts in the past week – both men who had long, industrious and youthful lives right up until their mid- to late-eighties – Paul Hallingby and Forrest Perrin.

Paul Hallingby died last Thursday at age 85 after a few years of declining health. Paul was a prominent member of the set briefly known as Nouvelle Society in the roaring 80s in New York. A handsome man, a Southern California surfer who began life without means, he later distinguished himself amongst his peers by two things: he became a very successful Wall Street investment banker, and had six wives.

A native Los Angeleno, Paul attended Stanford and then Harvard Business. But when the world was on the brink of World War II, he left HBS to join the Navy. A nose-to-the-grindstone kind of guy, after the War he married his first wife Allison, with whom he had three children, and worked his way up on Wall Street. In the 1970s he became the head of White, Weld, one of the whitest of the old line white-shoe brokerage firms.

In 1978 he negotiated the sale of White, Weld to Merrill Lynch for $50 million. It’s hard to believe, but less than thirty years ago, fifty million was a very big deal on Wall Street, in fact, it was then one of the biggest deals in the Street’s history.

Two years after the merger, in 1980, Paul moved over to Bear Stearns to become a general partner, and later became managing director emeritus until his death. It was the decade of the “trophy wife,” and Paul had two – Marife Hernandez and Mai Ercklentz. It was during his marriage first to Marife – his fourth wife – and then to Mai, his fifth, that Paul hit his stride socially in New York.

Not a man with many interests outside of business, he loved the diversion of the gala benefits, cocktail and dinner parties, the opera and ballet openings, the summers in Southampton and winters in Lyford Cay where he also maintained homes. He was also a man who loved to gift his wives with major pieces of jewelry.

In the summer of 1993, eleven years into his marriage with Mai, on a Hamptons Jitney ride out to Southampton, Paul happened to meet a young (for him – he was in his early 70s) Manhattan lawyer named Jo Davis, with whom he struck up a friendship.

That chance encounter led to a greater friendship, and before the summer was out, the town (meaning Southampton, and its auxiliary Manhattan demographic) was wondering out loud if this meant the end of the Mai and Paul Hallingby marriage. Answer: it did.

That autumn Aileen Mehle, writing as Suzy in Women’s Wear Daily revealed one day that Paul intended to divorce Mai. Mai later claimed that she had no idea of her husband’s intentions until she’d gone to lunch on the day it came out in Suzy’s column – which she hadn’t yet read – and discovered that everyone at the luncheon was talking about it. I wrote a piece about the troubled triangle called “What’s Love Got To Do With It” in the December/January 1994 issue of Quest magazine.

The divorce from Mai was probably the most contentious of all that Paul had experienced. Although characteristically he behaved toward his soon-to-be estranged partner in a manner that could be most tactfully described as “nonchalant.” There was an oft-repeated anecdote about a previous marriage where he one day told the wife he was going on a business trip. She asked if she could join him. He replied that he already had another woman he was taking with him. The wife then asked: “But don’t you love me?” To which Paul was said to have replied, “Yes, but I love her more.”

With the Mai-Paul divorce there was even contention over the dog – both wanted custody. Then, in New York State, there is the matter of 50-50 division of community property. The Hallingbys owned the three residences which also included a very grand apartment at One Sutton Place South that had previously been owned by an Astor heir, Thornton Wilson, and contained very valuable 18th-century boiserie. Mr. Wilson’s final marriage, incidentally, also ended in that same apartment when his wife moved out while he was away, without informing him of her plans, taking a good deal of his very valuable 18th-century furniture that he had inherited from his 19th-century forebears, and thereby unloading him of much of his patrimony.

Mai Hallingby also learned during the divorce proceedings that the jewelry Paul had given her during the marriage is considered “community property” in New York State. And Paul wanted his share back. The “gifts” were then split between the two, some of which he later sold at auction, and the rest of which went to his new wife. Mai later lost a substantial amount of her remaining collection, after the divorce, when she was robbed in Southampton one fine summer day.

Divorced was granted in 1994 and Paul married Jo Davis, who survives him along with his children by his first marriage.

I first met Forrest Perrin in the 1960s when he was playing at a cocktail party here in New York. Forrest worked for decades on the society circuit as a pianist and orchestra leader.

He started his career as a sandy-haired, soft-spoken Southern boy from Elberton, Georgia playing on local radio in Atlanta when he was eight years old.

After serving in the Army Air Force during the Second World War, he graduated from UCLA where he majored in political science and continued studying music. Earning money playing on the weekends in Palm Springs, which was a mecca for Hollywood personalities in those days, he was hired by Rudy Vallee as an accompanist.

During the 1950s, he and his sister Margaret played on local radio broadcasts in Atlanta, and then moved to New York where they played in nightclubs, at private parties and on ABC Radio’s “Piano Playhouse” which broadcast Sundays on 600 stations nationwide.

When Margaret Perrin returned to Atlanta in 1959, Forrest formed a partnership with Lesley Davison, a composer and lyricist producing shows for Fortune 500 companies. In 1961, when Forrest was in his mid-forties, they married. The couple had two children. Their first born, Wendy Perrin Baker, is the well known travel writer.

In New York, Forrest became a familiar figure as musical accompaniment and director at fashion shows and chic cocktail parties, debutante balls, weddings and dinner dances here in New York. He had a lovely light and witty touch at the keyboard and a vast musical vocabulary. Not surprisingly, his musical personality brought out the singer in a lot of us, including this writer, and also Paul Hallingby who loved popular American tunes, and often hired Forrest to play at his parties.

In all the years I’d known him, Forrest never seemed to age except for his sandy hair greying. It was always an added pleasure to go to an event, hearing wonderful music in the room and seeing that it was Forrest, bespectacled, in his signature black tie, at the piano. It was a sound and a presence which for me always conjured up the lyric “a tinkling piano in the next apartment” (From “These Foolish Things,” Marvell/Strachey/Link).

He was a very kind man, with a sweet yet modest demeanor that belied his resolve as a man and seriousness as a musician. He had the good fortune to have worked all his life (eight decades!) doing something that he loved – although he once told me that the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him was to have married Lesley and raised their two children, Wendy and Christopher, who were the lights of his life. They and two grandchildren survive him.