“There is to be a Tropical Ball given by a group of young men styling themselves The Cocoanuts at the Country Club tonight …” — The Palm Beach Post, February 18, 1920, page seven.
On December 31, 1991 at The Breakers Golf Club several Coconuts offered conflicting timelines when a local reporter asked them to divulge the genesis of their New Year’s Eve party tradition: “Since before World War II,” Coconut Paul Ilyinsky said. “The first Coconut party was held in 1929,” according to Coconut Dick Cowell. “Approximately 1924,” said Chief Coconut Guilford Dudley who hosted the party at his house in 1987. “The late Chris Dunphy held the first Coconuts party at his home on New Year’s Eve,” replied another of the hosts.
Although most agreed “nobody seems to know just how many years ago,” other reports claimed this prestigious social fraternity was formed by the Oasis Club’s bachelor members during the 1920s. When The Cocoanuts was reinvented as The Coconuts on December 31, 1957 at Ta-boo, Ed Sullivan reported in his “Little Old New York” column that the “buffet party and dance” was started by twelve bachelors with Chris Dunphy, Charles Cushing and Milton “Doc” Holden named as co-founders. Five years later at Ta-boo, only Dunphy and Holden were credited as founders. Or, might this Prohibition-era revelry have first banded together in1933 after Prohibition was repealed? Considering The Coconuts celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1983, according to contemporaneous reports. Three years later, the consensus was the group began at the Oasis Club in 1935. Virtually impossible since there had not been a Cocoanuts Ball since 1927 and in 1933 the Bradley brothers had foreclosed the Oasis Club’s mortgage, shutting the club down.
In a 2002 article Coconut icon Bob Leidy admitted “knowledge of the Coconuts’ early days is sketchy …” Nevertheless, the report indicated the revel began in 1935 with ten bachelors who each invited four to six friends. Later, the number of host Coconuts was revised to include 25 bachelors and former bachelors. But, as Leidy emphasized, “anything more than a basic awareness of its founding principles is unnecessary.”
Even the venerated New York Social Diary offered its version of Coconutology in 2006: “The Coconuts held their annual legendary dance, a party that has been a fixture on the Palm Beach scene since the 1930s at the Flagler Museum. Originally conceived by Anthony J. (Tony) Drexel Biddle Jr. as a payback by himself and his group of social bachelors, the Coconuts New Year’s Eve Gala went dormant almost to the point of oblivion about fifteen years ago (1990) but now has transformed once again into Palm Beach’s most coveted New Year’s Eve invitation.”
Most recently, The Shiny Sheet wrote the 26-member male bastion’s ritual had been around “…for nearly 80 years. Or maybe 90. Nobody’s actually sure because — well, they’re Coconuts. What is known is that Charles Munn and Chris Dunphy, both of whom were single at the time, thought a jointly hosted party would be the ideal way to repay social debts incurred in season. Soon, one bachelor after another — none oblivious to the economic advantage of splitting the tab, rich as they were — joined, and The Coconuts was born.” If only The Coconuts’ genesis was as simplistic as The Shiny Sheet’s synopsis.
Instead, the group’s cachet is embedded within an inherent knot of legend and lore recast by the ever-changing generational perspectives of Palm Beach’s multiple social circles that were fragmented into episodic seasonal narratives. The resort’s customary historical fiction mixes together repeated gossip sprinkled with bits of truth crafted into a kaleidoscopic blend that makes for more of a good read than reliable scripture. Albeit, the Roaring ‘20s code of behavior for proper people probably dictated that it was good manners to forget one’s excesses during a fashionable all-night Dionysian bacchanal. With the introduction of private clubs and nightclubs, Palm Beach was no longer the programmed punch-clock social world it was during Flagler’s hotel era.
In March 1925, The Palm Beach Post’s social columnist Amy Lyman Phillips wrote about The Cocoanuts, “And I shall not write of them nor disclose their secrets, for there is no thrill in being a coconut, unless one can keep his identity a secret –and no good having such a fine secret society of gay young blades and cavaliers who dispense such lavish hospitalities unless their wishes be respected.”
Two years later, Phillips wrote, “Did see, as the eve progressed, many amusing things that, alas, they may not be printed. I vow if they were they would cause something of a sensation in our prim little Palm Beach …”
As the 100th Coconuts Ball approaches, the following chronological survey is drawn from available records, aware that much of the group’s appeal rests on its story remain unknowable. The Coconuts’ discontinuous evolution from an unruly end-of-season masquerade ball to today’s The Coconuts of Palm Beach LLC formal black-tie, boutonnière and slippers New Year’s Eve party endures as coveted an invitation as it was nearly a century ago.
February 18, 1920
Palm Beach Country Club
The Cocoanuts — Addison Mizner, Caleb Bragg, James R. Hyde, James A. Blair Jr., and L. Rodman “Roddy” Wanamaker II — anonymously welcomed several hundred friends to an end-of-season social payback masked Tropical Ball beginning at 11 pm at the Palm Beach Country Club. Mizner transformed the club’s staid ambiance into a jungle, having produced tableau vivants and society events in 1890s San Francisco while he worked on his architectural apprenticeship. With society swells costumed as bootleggers, gypsies, tramps, and pirates, the evening’s lack of decorum and protocol became its draw.
After all, Palm Beach was intended as an escape from reality not an extension of it. Dabney’s Syncopated Orchestra, the first African-American to regularly play in a Broadway theatre, provided the all-night vibe courtesy of Flo Ziegfeld who brought the group to Palm Beach from his Midnight Frolic production at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Marie Louise Wanamaker Munn and Mary Brown Warburton performed a butterfly dance in between guests stepping the Lindy Hop, Charleston and Black Bottom.
Shortly before supper was served at 1 am, the five Cocoanuts were unmasked. Not surprisingly, most of the select partygoers were Philadelphia aristocrats — Main Line horsemen and clubmen — along with New York nobles — Wall Street financiers and railroad monopolists. Among them the all-night seaside jungle attracted, the expected Mr. and Mrs. chosen from the Everglades Club’s subscriber list, Stephen Sanford, Harold S. “Mike” Vanderbilt, Munn in-law Herb Pulitzer, and the soon-to-be bachelor Conde Nast. Husband-hunters included Betty Thayer, Constance Peabody, and the Pierson sisters, Suzanne, Emily and Betty.
March 2, 1921
Palm Beach Country Club
“Costume is obligatory … Marius and Francois outdid themselves in the supper which was served at 1:30 am. Leonard Replogle and Flo Ziegfeld, who were made-up as tramps, sat on the floor all night and shot craps.”
With The Cocoanuts’ first Tropical Ball memorialized in Palm Beach’s party pantheon, The 400’s best-known tycoons and footloose debutantes assembled at 11 pm for a Jungle Ball of “fast and furious fun,” ending sometime in the morning hours when breakfast was served at Bradley’s Beach Club amid the roulette wheel and dice tables. Guests were greeted by six masked Cocoanuts headed by Lawrence Waterbury and fellow Cocoanuts Caleb Bragg, James R. Hyde, Arrell Widener, Leonard Thomas, and Addison Mizner who once again designed the stagecraft at the Palm Beach Country Club.
February 25, 1922
Palm Beach Country Club
The 1922 Cocoanuts included Lawrence Waterbury, Caleb Bragg, James R. Hyde, Stephen “Laddie” Sanford, William A. Slater, Joe Widener, Richard Hoyt, Paul Rainey, Wadsworth Lewis, and the controversial Flo Ziegfeld. At the previous Cocoanut’s Ball, Flo Ziegfeld’s “stage beauties” created a stir when they stepped off stage, cavorting with invited guests during the early morning hours. Weeks earlier, The Breakers reportedly banned Ziegfeld’s long-legged show-stoppers from the hotel’s bathing beach after complaints from more reserved hotel guests. Each Cocoanut wore a phosphorescent mask imported from Paris by Ziegfeld.
March 2, 1923
Palm Beach Country Club
“A strictly private ball … the etiquette of invitations … the scene is one of rare beauty … Meyer Davis orchestra … the ultra-smart younger set.”
February 28, 1924
Whitehall
“… Many wore the same costumes they wore to the Everglade Club’s Fancy Dress Ball … one of the most handsomely staged they had ever attended … magnificent mansion of Grecian architecture … more commodious than the Country Club … supper was served in the patio at 2 am, entertained by two toreadors with guitars …
The 18 Cocoanuts of 1924 — Stephen Sanford, Caleb Bragg, William Averill, James Hyde, John Fell, Flo Ziegfeld, Fred Inman, Joseph Riter, Harold S. “Mike” Vanderbilt, John M. L. Rutherford, Addison Mizner, Thomas Robertson, Maxwell “Buddie” Norman, Ellis Postlethwaite, Frederick Mills, Frederick Sears, Owen Kenan, and Oliver Perrin — greeted 400 “gorgeously arrayed men and women” at the entrance to Whitehall’s French ballroom. The Meyer Davis and Malcolm Johnston orchestras played until dawn.
March 4, 1925
Palm Beach Country Club
“the most brilliant one ever … they do not wish to make their names public.”
March 5, 1926
Palm Beach Country Club
“… bachelors, with two exceptions … jolliest, most exclusive event of the Palm Beach social season.”
Outfitted in “all sorts of wonderful rags and white wigs, “ fifteen incognito Cocoanuts greeted more than 300 sheiks and buccaneers. Designer Chamberlain Dodds crafted “a veritable futurist black-and-gold jungle with black velvet draperies … hundreds of balloons in rainbow colors.” The guest list was “cloaked in secrecy.”
March 4, 1927
Oasis Club
“… the most spectacular … a picture of enchantment with strange and unreal mingling with persons torn from the pages of history and fable… given by fifteen bachelors … transformed into a coconut grove … Marjorie Oelrichs came as a ricksha boy. Alice Delamar dressed as a sailor. ”
Guests marveled at Joseph Urban’s transformation of the Oasis Club for the 1927 “Ball of the Cocoanuts”, having all but fainted weeks earlier when Urban’s stagecraft was unveiled at Mar-a-Lago and the openings of the Bath & Tennis Club and the Paramount Theatre. Palm Beach had been Urbanized. In a break with tradition at the all-male club, the receiving line included the Oasis Club’s president Tony Biddle’s wife, wearing a pink satin and chiffon pajama costume with a headdress finished with pink pompoms, and Mrs. Harris Hammond, Marjorie Merriweather Post Hutton, and Mrs. John M. L. Rutherford.
1928-1956
Cocoanuts suspended “after much agitation.”
December 31, 1957
Ta-boo
The Coconuts were revived.
December 31, 1967
Ta-boo
December 31,1969
Ta-boo
December 31, 1970
Coconut Room at Ta-boo
“People have been known to leave town when they failed to get their telegram-invitation in early December. An understatement, believe me. Flee is more like it.”
December 31, 1972
Club 265 – Royal Poinciana Way
December 31, 1974
Ta-boo
December 31, 1975
Poinciana Club
December 31, 1976
Poinciana Club
December 31, 1978
Breakers Beach Club
“… recently revived after years of neglect … this year for the first time at The Breakers … bachelorhood is no longer a prerequisite…”
Chief Coconut Charles Amory with Charles A. Munn, honorary chairman, Dennie Boardman Beverly Bogert, Rex Cross, T. Bedford Davie, John R Drexel III, Guilford Dudley, Alfonso Fanjul, Walter S. Gubelmann, John Ben Ali Haggin, John D. F. Hamilton, James A. Hannah Jr., Rodman A. de Heeren, Albin Holder, Phillip Hulitar, Paul R. Ilyinsky, James Kimberly, Edward B. McLean, Peter Mulholland, Edmond Monell, Peter Pulitzer, Leverett Shaw, Earl E. T. Smith, Garrick Stephenson, T. Suffern Tailer, and General William T. Young.
December 31, 1982
Breakers Beach Club
“… Members are permitted only four guests each …”
December 31, 1984
Breakers Beach Club
“… affair that’s been going on since 1935 …”
August 1986
“Beware of falling coconuts …”
December 31, 2010
Flagler Kenan Pavilion at Whitehall
“… 400 guests at Palm Beach’s oldest private party … breakfast and disco for the younger crowd … “
Having celebrated previously at The Colony Pavilion before moving to the Flagler’s Kenan Pavilion in 2005, The Coconuts celebrated their 80th Anniversary in 2007, as “the granddaddy of chic Palm Beach parties.”
December 31, 2013
Flagler Kenan Pavilion at Whitehall
“… a night to remember … town’s oldest most prestigious private party … 25 Coconuts welcomed more than 300 guests … the finest of Palm Beach traditions.”
December 31, 2017
Flagler Kenan Pavilion at Whitehall
“… 30 minutes of fireworks underwritten by David Koch …”
Contact Augustus Mayhew here.
