Social Diary 11/28/05 - Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving Weekend

A quiet weekend in the park. Photo: JH.

Typical weather for the northeast. Cloudy and grey, sometimes sunny and moderate to heavy snow falling to the north. Manhattan was very quiet, as the exodus began on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Peter Cary, Paige, and Alexandra Peterson

The night before, Thanksgiving Eve, my friend the artist Paige Peterson and her children, Alexandra and Peter Cary Peterson hosted their 10th annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner party at her Central Park West apartment. They were kind enough to invite me but I regretted, living on the far easternmost avenue on the island and in no mood to battle traffic on a night before the holiday.

Every year, Paige gathers a good group of friends (“ages 3 to 93”) to savor a hearty late autumn dinner and to get in the approaching holiday spirit. It’s a family affair by now (nuclear and otherwise), new friends, old friends, and their families, celebrating New York cameraderie along with the opportunity to gaze at Paige’s diverse art collection, which includes several stunning examples of her own work.

Paige Peterson creations

After the repast, everyone naturally in need of some exercise, took a wind-blown three-block stroll down to the corner of 81st Street and CPW to watch the balloons being inflated for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s a big production, as you can imagine, and draws a big crowd who go as much out of curiosity as to honor the tradition of ushering in the holiday.

Good intentions department. JH and I were going to go over to Central Park West and 77th Street on Thanksgiving morn to get some pictures of the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving parade float embarking. I was going to call him at 8 a.m. so that we could meet at the entrance to the Park and walk over to CPW. At nine the phone woke me; it was he calling me. Too late.

Mid-afternoon, Thanksgiving Day, I took a cab down to The Four Seasons restaurant on East 52nd Street in the Seagram’s Building for my annual dinner with David and Helen Gurley Brown and Alice Mason. This is the fifth or sixth year I’ve been a guest of the Browns for this dinner. We always have the same table by the azure colored pool. There’s always a big crowd in this vast, yet coolly elegant Philip Johnson-designed restaurant which, more than forty years after its launch is still classically fresh and new. A gathering place for the sophisticated and the powerful on the average weekdays, there’s definitely a family feeling on this holiday. All kinds of families – large, small, couples, foursomes, old friends, new friends, lovers, partners…and family.

Mr. Johnson’s sensibility provides an atmosphere of calm, space and comfort. Alex von Bidder and Julian Niccolini, the restaurant’s owners, provide a brilliant traditional fare which includes pumpkin bisque and pumpkin pie (if you want it). Seating begins at noon and the last seating is at 8 pm.

We always order the traditional dinner, and so a perfectly roasted bird for four (with large appetites) is wheeled up to our table within minutes of ordering, and carved before us so that everyone gets the meat they want (white or dark) along with the dressing, the yams, the green beans and the wine or champagne.

We were out by six and within a half hour I was home and finishing Joan Haislip’s Madame Du Barry; the Wages of Beauty” (Tauris Parke Paperbacks). I’d read a biography of Louis XV’s last mistress years ago, and only heard about this one recently when I was talking to someone about the Julie Baumgold novel “The Diamond.” I picked it up, curious to see how my perceptions of that time and this particular character had changed, as so many other ways of thinking change with age.

Joan Jakobson and Nile Rodgers

Nancy Hunt and John Jakobson

Gordon Travers, Dr. Elizabeth Beautyman, and Alexandra Peterson

Ingrid Rossellini and Nicholas Callaway

Jeff Sharpe, Nicholas Wapshott, Bobby Zarem, and Dr. Doug Steinbrech

David Kleinberg and Monie Begley

Marco, Michael, and Carin Mei Heumann

Peter Cary Peterson with his godmother, Priscilla Ratazzi Whittle

Richard Aborn, Francesca Aborn, Ingrid Rossellini, and Philippee de Louvrier

Bruce Colley with Teresa

Abe Rosenthal and Shirley Lord

Suzanne Maas and Christy Ferer

Tina and Tim Keane

Bruce Levingston, Peter Brown, and Abe Rosenthal

Peter Cary Peterson, Christopher Cerf, Tina Keane, and Lisa Weisman

Alexandra Peterson and Nancy Hunt

Joan Jakobson, Philippe de Louvrier, and Suzanne Maas

Nile Rodgers, Bill Berner, and Christopher Cerf

A gaggle of girls

Tim Keane with Jack Peterson

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Last Monday night while I was over at Cipriani 42nd Street observing many of New York’s power women assembling to create a new philanthropy for raising the consciousness of menopause, over at the Paris Theatre on 58th Street just off Fifth (right next to Bergdorf Goodman), they were holding a glittering world premiere for the Merchant-Ivory production of James Ivory’s film “The White Countess,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, benefiting Dr. Roger Lobo’s Research at the Columbia University Medical Center.

Ralph Fienes

Eleanora Kennedy, Nancy Missett, and Connie Milstein hosted this glamorous event which was star studded with such guests as the film’s stars – Ralph Fienes, Natasha Richardson, and Vanessa Redgrave (who is also, as you know, the mother of Ms. Richardson), Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote the screenplay, and the film’s director Mr. Ivory).

After the screening, the fabulous guests made a quick stroll across the avenue and up to the Metropolitan Club for a seated dinner. On the list: again, the director, the stars, as well as Lynn Redgrave, Susan and John Gutfreund (friends of the director), Claudia Cohen, Clive Davis, Warren and Olivia Hoge, Tom Hollander, Kirsten Johnson, Erica Jong, Michael Kennedy (the hostess’ husband), Jenny Conant and Steve Kroft, Betty Bacall, Christine Baranski, Candice Bergen and Marshall Rose, Ross Bleckner, Anne Cox Chambers, Liz Cho, Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Niven, Joan Ganz Cooney and Pete Peterson, Marie Brenner, Allison Sarofim, Priscilla and Chris Whittle, Stanley Tucci, Adrienne and Ghighi Vittadini, Ivana Lowell, Clara Bingham, Nancy and John Novogrod, and Judy Taubman.