Socialites on the Brink. On hearing the term those harried and coddled ones, the least tolerant of misperceptions of themselves, can stiffen, bridle and bristle. Philanthropist, I hear some say: “call me a philanthropist.” Nowadays that’s the word. And in many cases it’s just as meaningless as the term socialite. Meaningless but not without definition. At least it’s not social climber. Who would wanna word like that attached to their moniker, as Walter Winchell used to ask.

The word “socialite” came into the language about 75 years ago at the very zenith of the Roaring 20s. Or just past it. All those people (with all of that money) socializing. Socialite according to your dictionary is a “socially prominent person.” Socially prominent is easy to define: you’re out there, like a privileged one, and people are noticing.

Old Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, nee Grace Wilson, considered by her in-laws to be so much the living end in the socialite department that they disinherited their son, her husband.

At its inception, back in the “good ole days,” the word “socialite” also was a reference that a Mrs. Astor or a Mrs. Vanderbilt would have derided or declined because it often referred to newcomers on the scene who were certainly not “clubbable” or Social Register. “Socialite” was a catch-all term and mainly found in the tabloids where no self-respecting socialite would want her name found. Or at least would not want it known that she wanted her name found (people have always liked a little attention here and there, no matter what they protest).

By the 1940s, those early “socialites,” subject of the gossip columns, dreadful and vulgar as some might have thought them to be once upon a time, were the new generation. The word took on some gravity, thankfully. Even Vanderbilts and Astors were called socialities without their breaking out in a rash. Interestingly, Rockefellers were rarely referred to as socialites. They were just Rockefellers. As in “rich as Rockefeller.”

Dorothy Hart Hearst (later Hirshon), the first Mrs. William Paley, provoked and guided her husband's now famous art collection and orchestrated his social ascent.

By the 1950s, “society” had grown so out of hand in the eyes of the Brahmins, as in aristocrats of Boston or Philadelphia, that one of them, a very witty and bemused man named Cleveland Amory wrote a book about the brouhaha called: “Who Killed Society?” Mr. Amory had the family name to claim authority for his theory of Who Did It.

The author was from a fine old Boston family that went way back to when they first discovered the bean and the cod when the Anglos known as Puritans and Pilgrims came over and helped themselves to the Native Americans’ land. In Mr. Amory’s day, Bostonians considered all New Yorkers, and they meant all – even those horsey lockjawvians out in Locust Valley, vulgarians. Forget “socialites.” Although, as it is with New Yorkers, they didn’t care.

Mr. Amory’s “theory” (and actually he wasn’t in any way pompous enough to have regarded his observation as a theory) was that “publicity” is what did Society in. Bigtime. He even coined a word for the social affliction (although obviously it didn’t catch on): publiciety.

An authentic Boston Brahmin born Lucy Cochrane, the international celebrity CZ Guest, Vicountess of Publicity, unabashed, unannoyed and always ready for a good time.

All this scrambling for “publicity” was tarnishing the gilded halls of tut-tut and all that. Nevertheless, in Mr. Amory’s day, and thankfully for his career as a writer, if not his standing as an autocrat, everything in society changed and so he had something to write a best-seller about.

Socialites became CZ Guest. Or vice versa. And she was from one of those old Boston families, so she knew, but she became a New Yorker and she didn’t give a damn too. And she made the cover of TIME, along with Einstein, Henry Ford and Rev. Norman Vincent Peale. Talk about publicity.

In his book, Mr. Amory even made a List of just exactly WHO in “publiciety” killed society, his society. High on that list were the Cushing Sisters -- Minnie, Betsey and Barbara, always known as Babe (as in “the baby”). The sisters were famous in their day for marrying rich and prominent men. Astor, Whitney and Paley (and Roosevelt, Mortimer and Fosburgh, if you want to be exact). All socially prominent, all…ahem…socialites in one circa or another. For this the fashionable sisters were “accused” (I’m being hyperbolic, so cool off) of “killing” society. As they say in Manhattan, “oy.”

But then came the Kennedys. Or more specifically Jack Kennedy. Or even more specifically Jack and Jackie Kennedy. 1961: the world turned. The world of society that is. Youth and beauty and money, and honey who wouldn’t want it. Before that time the Kennedys were a nationally prominent wealthy family, thanks to the family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy who made the fortune and served as a Franklin Roosevelt Ambassador to the Court of St. James. But Joseph P. Kennedy had something of a bad reputation for a variety reasons (and business ventures), most specifically was that he was an Irish Catholic from Boston. A no-no if there ever was one. Back then when the Establishment was spelled W-A-S-P.

Victims of Betrayal: Bill and Babe Paley with their intimate friend Truman Capote at their villa in Round Hill, Jamaica. Twenty years later Capote would write a short story for Esquire magazine, "Cote Basque 1965," that would publicly humiliate the couple with detailed innuendo and subsequently destroy Capote's "place" in their society. Marilyn Monroe with Elsa Maxwell, the internationally famous-social party giver.

But: the irrepressible Joe and his wife Rose had a whole flock of handsome, smart, dynamic and in some cases witty children. So when Jack Kennedy made it to the White House, all those years of social prominence and publiciety that the old man had cultivated, gathered and nurtured, came together. And what was it that came together? The forces of money, media attention and prestigious social connections to the rich, the powerful and (and this is important) the movie stars: society today. By then the Kennedy family was sitting at the pinnacle of power in the United States and therefore, in a very real way, the world. Everybody wanted to know the Kennedys.

The effect that Jack and Jackie Kennedy had on their generation was to alter its sense of self. During their brief time at the center, they were elements in infusing the country with a richer, more sensitive, brighter sense of self. Powerful, if, albeit, brief.

After the Assassination when Jackie Kennedy moved with her two young children to New York, the center of what is social in America, she became its queen. There were others, of course such as Brooke Astor, who’d married an Astor and been left a fortune with the specific objective of giving it away to the city and was just beginning her ascent. There was Babe Paley, who died young at 62. There was her elder sister Betsey Whitney who eschewed publicity and many of the people who came with it preferring an ascetic role as grande dame. There was (and still is) Jayne Wrightsman, a little girl from the Midwest (Michigan) who, with her mother, said to have been a one-time tavern-keeper, moved to Los Angeles and the land of American-Can-Do.

Poor Little Rich Girls at El Morocco: Woolworth Heiress, Barbara Hutton, the first "poor little rich girl" and publicly referred to as "rich bitch" with Herbie Klotz. Doris Duke with her new husband Porfirio (Rubi) Rubirosa who had also been married to, or would subsequently marry, Barbara Hutton. To paraphrase Katharine Hepburn who said of Astaire and Rogers, "she gave him sex and he gave her class." In this case the two girls, Barbara and Doris, he (Rubi) gave them sex, and they gave him money.

Mrs. Wrightsman later married an older and very very rich Mr. Wrightsman. Together, through their gilded social ascent (big houses, big apartments, big yachts, big couture, big deal) and deeply cultivated career as collectors of 18th century French furniture and decorative art and then its subsequent donation to the Metropolitan Museum, they became the Wrightsmans. And now at this time in our history, the Mrs. Wrightsman remains the dowager queen of New York Society (although it’s a safe bet almost no one under forty in the same New York Society has ever even heard of her).

And how powerful is Mrs. Wrightsman? Well, among the vey rich, there is power and then there is power. Mrs. Wrightsman has that. There was a time when a very famous couturier, one of the most successful, and definitely one of the richest in the world, decided he wanted a pied-a-terre in New York and in a specific building on Fifth Avenue.

Someone had put the bug in his ear: live here and live in heaven. One of the top three residential co-ops on Fifth. When he told an adviser that he wanted to make the purchase (full floor) he was told he was wasting his time. But why? The mercurial dress-designer wanted to know. Because Mrs. Wrightsman will not have you, he was told. But why? The mercurial one insisted, responding: Mrs. Wrightsman wears my clothes. Yes, but you are her dressmaker. She doesn’t want to share her elevator with her dressmaker, was the adviser’s response.

The divine designer was incensed. That’s absurd, he retorted. And? He never got into the building. Was it true about the dressmaker and the elevator and Mrs. Wrightsman? Will we ever know? Certainly Madam Wrightsman will not say.

Now almost all those girls are gone from the pavilion. Had Mrs. Onassis lived a longer life, as might have been expected, she no doubt would continue to reign as the queen of the socialites, although most likely she too would have abhorred the word assigned to her personage.

Witness to the inception of Camelot: Jacqueline Bouvier and Senator John F. Kennedy cutting their wedding cake in Newport, Rhode Island 1953.

But she changed everything, with her presence, her style and ultimately her self-regard and so she’s without peer anyway. At the end of her life she lived with a very bright and clever (and wealthy) man who was also married and had a wife living across the Park. No judgments were ever made in Mrs. Onassis’ disfavor, so great was her social power.

Nevertheless, that social power was directly tied to a genesis that was enhance by ... publicity. Just as Cleveland Amory observed a half century ago. And, it is still is. The current crop of 20 and 30-somethings that grace the social pages (and the party picture pages of NYSD) such as Tinsley and Olivia, and Fabiola and Dayssi and Melissa and Marisa and Celerie and Bettina and scores and scores more, not to mention the 40- and 50-somethings who run the committees and issue the calls, these girls, these women are all the babes of publicity. And their society is at a place not unlike the place it was at back in the day when “socialite” came into the vernacular, courtesy of the tabloids (media). Everything old is new again. Until it isn’t.

Today’s society is still driven by The Money. The difference between the world of 1930 and now is The Media. Back then it was in its infancy. Like the internet today. Television changed the rules economically, however, where mere reporters and presshounds became “journalists” and then pop stars, earning multimillion dollar incomes and play in the twilight with the banker-gods. Or is it hedge-fund gods?

The fame game and the bold-faced names, when translated into dollars (or euros, or pounds), the exponents of publicity, now makes society. For whatever it is. Until it changes into philanthropy, which we all will be needing more of if you read the papers, watch TV (and go on the internet).

Autumn in New York. It was a rainy, grey and gusty weekend with the leaves now being freed from the branches by the winds blowing in off the rivers. On Saturday it rained. About noontime there was torrential downpour in the Village. JH called me from the street in his neighborhood down there and I could hear the rain pounding the pavement all the way through his cell phone. While up there, three miles to the north as the crowd flies, there was a light sprinkle and then some timid sunshine.

The latest New York Review of Books arrived in the mail. I read a review by Bill McKibben about several new books on the global changes from global warming. Mr. Gore’s film (which I have not seen but have been told is almost too scary to watch) is now out-of-date according to the latest data. Men and women are discussing how to arouse public concern to institute changes needed to (possibly, no guarantee) protect ourselves. It sounds like it’ll take At Least a tsunami. Or twenty.

We are at a time in our human history, according to those who are watching these changes, beyond comparison. Somewhere in the Bible I recall it says that all that happens has happened before. This is one of those times that harkens up such thoughts. Rank and radical change thanks to Mother Nature will be more than a harsh mistress.

Changes. Those of us of a certain age are old enough to have witnessed the transformation of Halloween into a kid’s party, street-trekking, trick-or-treating in the neighborhood in almost a national holiday. The holiday that dare not speak its name. Showing its face is quite another thing.

When I was a kid in the innocent (for the kids anyway) years right after the Second World War, when more Americans lived in neighborhoods (by which I mean, they knew their neighbors names and often even to talk to), Halloween was the second or third most exciting day of the year. Maybe the fourth or fifth if you consider school letting out for summer vacation. We cleaned out pumpkins and carved faces on them and planted a candle inside and put them in the front window on the front porch.

Halloween parties were for kids. There were games like pin the tail on the donkey (I told you we were innocent) and dunking for apples in a galvanized tub full of water. And there were the costumes. I don’t recall any brilliant costuming from my childhood. Cinderella. The Lone Ranger. Tonto. Casper the Friendly Ghost. I remember one year I put a big old sheet over my head, one with two holes cut out for the eyes, and I went on my trick-or-treating way.

With the autumn leaves sometimes ankle high on the sidewalks and roadways, us posses of children with our trick-or-treat bags went on our happy way rustling through them. Almost every house in the neighborhood would have a light at the door, signaling we were welcome. Except for Mrs. Couch. Mrs. Couch was the crabby old lady (she must have been all of forty) who never had a stray leaf lying on her green green grass that no kid was allowed to set foot on for fear she’d come out the door and yell at you. So we skipped the crabby old Mrs. Couch (and hoped she wouldn’t come out and yell at us). We always stayed pretty much in our own neighborhood, rarely venturing onto a street where we didn’t know the neighbors by name if not by face.

In the city, I later learned, the kids did their trick-or-treating by elevator. In my building you have to sign up in the elevator so that parents with their kiddies know not to run into any crabby old ladies or crabby old men (although I think crabby is no longer operative in current parlance).

In those post-war years the American diet was still recovering from rationing and sugar candy wasn’t as abundant as it is today. Hershey kisses in the trick-or-treaters bowl were pure gold. And anything Nestle. Sometimes we’d get an apple (“oh thank you!!”! – you always said thank you even if you didn’t mean it). Or a lollipop. Or a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. One to a customer. Ooooh, thank yoooooou…! .Sometimes it’d be taffy kisses, or peanut brittle. M&M’s still weren’t mainstream, if they were invented. Sometimes Tootsie Rolls (pay-dirt) and sometimes even popcorn (whaaa?)

We always traveled in groups (the herd instinct), anticipating a potential bonanza (Hershey kisses and Milky Ways). Sometimes we’d be invited in for a glass of Coca-Cola. Good, except you wanted to keep moving, fill that goodie-bag. This was a Big Deal, so you see how times have changed. At the end of the night there was the competitive moment when we’d compare our hauls in terms of number and quality. The one with the most chocolate was the winner. And most envied.

I’m not sure when Halloween transmogrified into an adult “holiday” although I’m sure there were always Halloween parties among adults (although not in my neighborhood), although I never knew any parents of my friends who came to the door in full regalia. I was first aware of this sociological phenomenon in Los Angeles in 1980 when I went into my bank one day to cash a check and everyone on the staff was dressed up like a walking promo for Western Costume. Everything. And elaborate. If it were Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz or the Wicked Witch or Jayne Mansfield or Zorro, honey, they WERE that character. “May I help you?” Hollywood doesn’t end at the movie studio gate out there.

In the early 90s they started the annual Halloween parade in West Hollywood and even closed off Santa Monica and San Vicente Boulevards and set up a stage for performing for the costume melee. Costumes there were social commentary as much as anything. That was the year of the Clarence Thomas hearings so there were several individuals set-out as life-sized Coke cans with big curly thingy’s on the top. 

Back in New York around that same time, the Age of the Costume had also come into vogue with a similar parade in the Village. There is a definite difference in tone and image between the two Coasts although the costumes are similarly elaborate and at times lavish. People love costumes. Personally I’m not interested but many find their more pleasurable identities behind a mask and with make up and will go to all kinds of hilarious lengths.

I’m sure that tomorrow in Manhattan the whole town will be teeming with Halloween revelers and costume-junkies. There are literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of costume parties in New York around Halloween. One of the greatest is over in Central Park, hosted by the Central Park Conservancy. When you see some of those bankers and white-shoe lawyers and mega-corporate CEOs turned out in elaborate get-ups like Donald Duck or the Phantom of the Opera (an old one, I know), you gotta laugh. I mean really laugh. Everyone else does too. And so it’s a real fun time.