Earlier in this chapter, we implied that models are dumb. Most of them are. But one who was no dope was a blue-eyed rusty-mop who graduated from the local high school in Canton, N.C., at 13. Dumb, did we say? High school is correct. She finished it at 13.
Her name was Marianne Grey.
The next year, she matriculated at the University of Wisconsin, its youngest student. She majored in archeology—bone-dry digging up of things long dead. She got her degree in three years, at 17.
Luckily, all her spadework couldn't retard her physical development. She had curves and dimples wherever bewitching beauts at 17 can grow curves and dimples.
Carefully packing her sheepskin in mothballs, Marianne, the tomb-expert, set out to rummage around in the living world. She found it strangely clammy to specialists on mummies.
It might, though, find itself short of curves and dimples, red hair and blue eyes.
So Marianne Grey changed her diploma-distinguished name to Marianne Simms and headed for Broadway, where she registered it on the rolls of Powers' models.
All students of the Sunday supplements know these dolls get around and everybody looks at them.
In her peregrinations, she met Sinclair Lewis, who, captivated more by her ravishments than by her knowledge of King Tut, brought her to the attention of Edna and Red Skelton. They signed her to a personal contract pronto, brought her to Hollywood for a projected radio show—Skeltons instead of skeletons.
The show didn't materialize. But David O. Selznick did.
The great producer offered a screen test. Literate as well as gorgeous, the youngster wrote the script of the test, and in it she challenged the camera.
When she signed the contract, her name was changed again—to Cristofa Sims and she became a Hollywood favorite.
WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:
Smart guys seldom escort Powers, Thornton or Conover models. The cover gals arise so early to keep working appointments that, along about midnight, as the party gets in high, they suggest you take them home. Chorines and show gals are indicated for night owls. Models are for chumps who crave to show off with orchidaceous bric-a-brac.
19. SECOND FROM THE END
So manymillions of inspirational and incoherent words are annually written in raves over New York's chorus gals that the time has come to do a little debunking.
1. Our chorines are not the prettiest girls in the world.2. Nor are they the most immoral—3. Or the most stupid.4. They are usually poor dressers.5. Few have passable gowns.6. A small number live in penthouses.7. Fewer win rich patrons or sweeties.
1. Our chorines are not the prettiest girls in the world.
2. Nor are they the most immoral—
3. Or the most stupid.
4. They are usually poor dressers.
5. Few have passable gowns.
6. A small number live in penthouses.
7. Fewer win rich patrons or sweeties.
The New York rolls of Chorus Equity and the American Guild of Variety Artists list several thousand girls who work in the ensembles of musical shows, vaudeville houses and night clubs, or road-show in traveling theatrical troupes, tabloid units, circuses and carnivals originating in New York.
Of these, not more than ten tyros in any year come forth as glamor gals, and the proportion of those with outstanding beauty is just about the same as in non-professional life.
New York's chorines, like her models, are drawn to the magnet from every state in the Union and all corners of the earth. Few hit the jackpot.
Many Hollywood femme stars once hoofed in Broadway lines and other cuties snared rich husbands or near-husbands.
But for every Paulette Goddard, Barbara Stanwyck, Alice Faye, Joan Crawford and Lucille Bremer, there are thousands of kids who pound out the soles of their aching feet for five or six years, then discover that at 21 or 22 they've been around the Stem so long the managers call them "old faces" and they no longer can get work.
If they have no particular talent to develop into individual specialties, or if they haven't the faculty to snare a man to take care of them, they've got to get jobs in inferior outlying night clubs or in out-of-town cafés or road-shows, and, typed as a "road louse," there is only one direction for them—down.
Yet nothing deters recruits. For every one who gets a Broadway job, there are 100 applicants.
Perhaps, because we're getting older, we mumble that "those days" were the best.
But the records prove the current chorus gal is not half so gay, glamorous or interesting as the ensemble entry of a decade and more ago.
The world has changed, and with it changed the choryphee.
In the old days, a chorus salary of 50 or 60 bucks a week seemed like a million to hicks in the sticks, and parental opposition was not too oppressive.
The playboys were still around; the mobsters rustled $1,000 bills and the Wall Street Blue Sky subdividers had gold mines up there.
Now, a survey will turn up the startling fact that most lilies of the line are using the chorus as a temporary makeshift while completing their education. They double between the cabaret floor or stage, and college. If they're seeking a theatrical career, they spend their days studying voice, ballet, dramatics.
The result is, few playgirls at that source. More and more duck home immediately after the show, so they can get up early and go to school or to the coach.
This is very bad on love-life, and the few still around with loose shekels don't look too longingly at Broadway.
It's getting extremely difficult to meet a chorus charmer.
Those in legit musicals aren't usually approachable unless you know someone to perform the introductions, which makes this puzzle something like the one about which came first, the egg or the chicken.
Night club quail is as hard to make up to, because of the law which forbids entertainers to sit with patrons in the dining room. All big cafés, with the choicest, enforce this rule rigorously. You'd hardly want to meet the girls in the kind of dumps that cheat.
Thus, the new babe has little opportunity to get in with the playboy set. There are, of course, exceptions. People still break out of Leavenworth, too.
The glamorous ten who crack through each year, to be quoted and itemed in the columns, wined and steaked at El Morocco and screen-tested by 20th Century-Fox are the phenoms.
The others go home every night and study—or end up with a musician.
That's orthodox.
Every night club and theatre with choruses must employ musicians. They work the same bastard hours as the girls. They duck out for smokes at the same time, have their crullers and java in the same lunchroom or greasy spoon. They talk the same language about the same interests.
Propinquity, plus opportunity, are Cupid's nets.
The young, strange gals are lonesome, their cheap rooms are depressing—and musicians are at their elbows.
So you can easily figure out the answer to this one: To meet a chorine, learn to slide a trombone.
Most of the kids live in midtown hotels between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, from 42nd Street to 55th.
Their favorites are the Piccadilly, Forrest, President, Plymouth, Belvedere, Victoria, Taft, Abbey, Century, Knickerbocker, Wellington, with those who can afford it staying at the Edison, Lincoln, Astor and Park Sheraton and dreaming of the Savoy Plaza.
A day in the life of the average chorine—without school obligations—would find her arising about 5 p.m., and getting out just in time to grab a cup of coffee before reporting for work. They look like hell at this time of day, minus make-up and with tousled hair in a net. The transformation that comes after they apply their stage war paint remains with them for the rest of the day. When a chorine has a date after or betweenshows, she never removes the pancake or the drugstore eyelashes.
When they are eating alone or with a musician boy friend (with whom they usually go "Dutch") you'll find them at the soda fountains of Hanson's pharmacy, 51st and Seventh Avenue, or the Paramount druggist, on Seventh near 52nd Street. Their favorite lunch counters are Rudley's and Rikers, and the greasy vest in the 49th Street side of the Brill Building.
Those who aren't cabaret hoppers frequently bowl at the Roxy alley after the show. Others prefer jam sessions in the small and smoky 52nd Street jitterbug joints.
The ambition of every cookie in every chorus is to be tapped by a Hollywood talent scout.
Each year several dozen "new faces" are approached by the local representatives of the major film studios and signed to "option contracts," with the company not obligated to hire the girl after she is tested.
A tiny percentage of those so signed arrive in Hollywood, and of these one in a thousand makes good.
Often they seek out your authors and breathlessly spill the info that it has come—the chance for a screen test!
What to do?
We ask whether the test is to be shot here or on the Coast. Mostly likely, it's in the New York studios.
We caution, "Don't take it; hold out for a Coast test."
Few movie contracts have resulted from tests in local offices here. The facilities and abilities available are undergrade. The best points are not brought out. There are no directors here, so any talent that does lurk is often kicked around.
But when a studio has enough faith to ship one to the Coast for the test, chances of a film break-through are considerably higher.
First, the studio must pay a salary during the testing period, on top of round-trip, first-class fare. With that invested, efforts will be made to bring out assets. And, should the first test fizzle, others will be given.
Another factor against Eastern tests is that the try-out is viewed by a tough jury, 3,000 miles away—hard strangers predisposed to turn thick thumbs down.
In addition to meaning little, these Eastern screen tests are a walkaway for wise wolves, most of whom manage to get close to casting agents of studios.
The procedure is to introduce the subject to the scout and get his promise to consider her for a test. Even if he eventually turns her down, the squab is on a string for weeks and has to be nice to her "benefactor." If she ever gets the test, she's hooked for at least three months, while the film is shipped to the Coast to await the verdict of producers and directors.
Actually, it's not necessary to know anyone to get consideration from the talent scouts. They're always looking for new faces. That's their business. Just barge in. (See page 301 for list of casting agents.)
But, suppose the candidate is lucky enough to run the gauntlet and find herself signed to the usual standard contract, which calls for $125 per week the first six months and options for seven years thereafter, at a slowly rising scale.
Should she take it?
We say, unless she wants the trip and a six-month paid vacation—no. She wants to be a dramatic actress. The odds against her making any talking screen role are about one in 500. If her heart breaks easily, movies will do it.
We tell her when she steps off the Super-Chief, with high hopes and enthusiasm, she will be plugged, for publicity, as a new star. A battery of photogs will greet her at Union Station. That afternoon she will get phone calls from every chaser in town, who will have learned everything about her by the grapevine from their opposite numbers in New York, who kissed her good-bye.
The first week will be a merry-go-round. She will dance till she's dippy at the Sunset Strip cabarets, meeting the biggies and the host of peculiar paranoiacs who infest the colony. She will go to swimming pool parties at mansions that look like De Mille film sets.
But the cabarets are fewer and not so glamorous as those she left behind. The people are duller, less intriguing. After a week, she'll realize Hollywood is pretty much Petoskey with palms.
Then will come the waiting—waiting for calls from the studio, waiting for appointments with the costumers, hairdressers, publicity department, still photogs.
She'll be snapped in every pose. If she's ultra-photogenic, she's sunk. For the rest of her career in Hollywood, while her gams are still straight and her figure otherwise, she'll pose cheese-cake for fan-mags and Sunday sheets—and find herself with a one-way ticket back to New York six months later.
The girl, of the hundreds under contract at every lot, who gets the attention of the producer or director, so he throws her a line in a picture, is the lucky one who is hit by a modern miracle.
She is the one each year at each studio who may possibly have a future.
The others, perhaps equally qualified, return to New York and sarcastic jibes, go back to the farm and marry the hired hand, or remain a part of the Hollywood flotsam, drifting from one extra call to another, back to a job in a chorus, possibly end up as a car-hop or checkroom-worker, as many have and will.
But, as we hinted, in New York dreams sometimes do come alive, though not always according to time-table or preconceived plan.
In the spring of 1937, Mortimer received a phone call from a 15-year-old redhead named Marianne O'Brien, who that day had joined the kid chorus of Ben Marden's Riviera, a glittering roadhouse on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge.
Said Miss O'Brien to Mortimer: "I'm 15, sweet, unspoiled and innocent. Rich men like to marry girls like me, the others tell me. Will you take me to the Stork Club and introduce me to one?"
Mortimer is an obliging soul, especially when he smells a story, so he escorted the youngster to Chez Billingsley, but ran into no millionaires.
Marianne got no proposals of marriage that season, but did achieve some attention due to publication of the following story:
It seems Ben Marden demanded all "new faces" for his chorus that year. When he interviewed Marianne in the line-up, he said, "Wait a minute, dear, haven't you worked for me before?"
Marianne demurely replied, "No, sir, you mistake me for my mamma, Mae O'Brien, who danced in your chorus at the Silver Slipper a few years ago."
Mae O'Brien, still beautiful and redheaded, was then selling programs and cigarettes at Jimmy Kelly's Greenwich Village bistro.
Marianne missed out on her millionaire, but soon the public prints linked her with many other men. She was pursued like the rabbit in a greyhound race. She was in demand as a photographers' model and finally won a speaking role in a road show of a Broadway hit.
A talent scout from Warners saw her, signed her to a $750 a week contract. She sat in Hollywood a year, on the payroll but not on a work-sheet. She was credited with romances in dizzy dozens, yet none with millionaires.
Then her film "career" faded and Marianne returned to New York. They said she was "through," though she was 22.
In the meantime, her mother, Mae, a widow, had wed. Her husband was no millionaire, but he got by. His name is Abe Attell, and three decades ago he was the world's featherweight champion, called by many the greatest boxer ever.
He had achieved fame of another sort by being named as the go-between in the Black Sox baseball scandal.
One night at El Morocco, Marianne was introduced to a good-looking, youngish fellow, who wanted to dance with her. He asked for a date. It grew into a romance.
The man, Richard Reynolds, Jr., heir to the $30,000,000 tobacco fortune, settled with his wife for $3,000,000—to be free to marry Marianne.
So the little redhead, no longer 15 or so unsophisticated, got her millionaire. No wonder O. Henry, who wrote so much so well about a town he knew so little, called it Bagdad on the Subway. It's a wonderworld—to its chosen few.
20. PARTY GIRLS
Just whatand who is the party girl? Where does she come from? How does she live? What does she make?
There is a great deal of popular misinformation about the "party girl" and her function. The common error is to confuse her with a "call girl" and let it go at that. But there is a great and definite distinction between the two, though, of course, there are borderline cases.
But which is the "party girl"? You'll find her in many East Side hotels and apartment houses. Originally, she came to New York or Hollywood from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida or a small Pennsylvania town, with ambitions to become a model or an actress.
More often than not, her name is registered at one or more of the large model agencies.
All new girls in town quickly find themselves invited to cocktail parties given in swank apartments, where the local wolves get an opportunity to look them over.
These parties usually are thrown by hosts who make their living that way. They are smooth, suave characters with an unlimited acquaintance among show people, artists and models, and have access to every fresh young thing in town.
In return, the "guests" pay liberally for the privilege of being invited to the parties and also rewardtheir hosts liberally otherwise, such as buying fur coats or jewelry through them, giving them tips on the market or commissions on deals consummated through contacts made at these parties.
The new girl in town soon finds she can make a good living merely by gracing these parties, and at the same time have a lot of fun with practically no labor or exertion. The usual fee these days is from $50 up, and the "party girl" is, unlike the "call girl," under no obligation whatever to give more than her presence.
What she does on her own, of course, is her own business. But many are good businesswomen. Quite often a "party girl" ends up with a wealthy protector and a luxurious apartment, if not marriage.
Many "party girls" have no means of support other than their fees for being on call to go out dancing. Some, however, continue to work as chorines or models, thus enhancing their desirability as guests and taking down the wages of toil. The girl with ambition to go places in show business often finds being a "party girl" a stepping stone toward a contract.
Many of the clients are visiting film executives who are lonesome and want to go out with a pretty girl, a semi-professional preferred, jailbait and film personnel avoided with horror.
The chief qualifications of a successful "party girl" are good looks, a range of smart clothes with the know-how to wear them, some wit, a fund of the day's small talk, superior dancing ability and a sense of humor—and, above almost all, she must be a good listener. Sheprobably hears more bragging than she does "propositioning."
Clients fall into a variety of classifications. There are big businessmen with heavy deals to close, who find pretty girls help break down a customer's resistance. There are wealthy men who occasionally want to go out for a night on the town with a charming companion and no complications. And there are, of course, plain wolves.
"Party girls," unlike "call girls," are welcomed in all the best places in town and travel in the top strata of society—or, at least, café society. As steerers to some clubs they get commissions. All headwaiters know them, but none recognizes them.
21. IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN ON BROADWAY
The charactersO. Henry, Damon Runyon, and Mark Hellinger wrote about were fictitious. None like them ever existed in New York or elsewhere. They were broad inventions that lived only in their gifted creators' imaginations.
Here are some Broadway beauts who actually lived and did make history. These stories are not fiction:
a.—The Carrot Top and the Opal
Iris Adrian, an oomphy redhead, who now plays tough girl parts in films, was a central character in one of the strangest love stories ever told on Broadway.
She had come to New York a young greenhorn, in 1932, from her California home.
She had no ambitions toward show business, but was visiting a girl friend, who one day answered a call posted by the late great Flo Ziegfeld. Iris went along to watch.
Ziegfeld didn't hire the friend, but he asked Iris if she would like to be a glorified clothes-horse. Iris thought it might be a lark and took the job.
At that time N.T.G., who was running the old Hollywood Restaurant on Broadway, had an agreement with Ziegfeld that the ten choicest Ziegfeld girls could double in both shows. Iris was one of the ten, easy.
Every night, after the final curtain of the Ziegfeld show—it wasHot-Cha, in which the late tempestuous Lupe Velez starred—Iris would scamper to the Hollywood and go into the chorus there for the midnight and two o'clock performances.
One of the owners of the Hollywood Restaurant was a very wealthy New York real estate man. His son, Herman Amron, was manager of the club. He fell in love with Iris and for a year or more it was one of the torrid romances of the Street.
When Iris took a summer off to go to Europe, Herman grabbed the next boat and followed her. When she returned, he bought her a mink coat, a diamond ring, a diamond bracelet—and kept buying.
He loved her so much, he did what so many other unwise, over-eager men on Broadway do. He tried to help her career. He begged talent scouts to go to see Iris. He spoke to friends—in the movie studios. Finally Iris came up with a contract—a year, with options each six months. She went out to Hollywood about ten years ago and appeared first in a George Raft picture. Herman was thrilled that he had done so much for his beloved. But, of course, he was very lonesome, since his job kept him here. He managed to fly out a couple of times to see her, but, as so many other men have learned, he found fame and adulation help a girl forget the man who isn't there.
Herman felt he was losing her. He grew desperate. He was back in New York. Christmas was coming. He had bought her diamonds and furs and didn't know what to send her now. He chose a beautiful, costlyopal bracelet, packed it carefully, put in an affectionate card and sent it on to Hollywood, to Iris.
What Herman didn't know was, that among the superstitions in show business—like not whistling in a dressing-room or wearing yellow on opening night—opals are hoodoo 1-A.
Iris received the package. Like a girl, she opened it in a flurry of anticipation. She took out the opal bracelet. It was beautiful and she put it on, though she knew it was hard luck.
In the same mail was a letter from her studio—a notice that her option wasn't taken up and in two weeks she would no longer shine at Paramount.
The two, coming at once, were more than a coincidence to Iris. She knew that the opals had jinxed her contract. In a rage, she threw the bracelet on the floor, broke a couple of stones, had her maid send it back.
Two days later, still furious, she married a man who had been proposing to her for a year. He was worth $30,000,000, but he had one drawback—he was deaf and dumb.
The honeymoon covered a cruise from California to New York, via the Panama Canal. When Iris got to New York, she left him, picked a good state and sued for divorce. She got her decree and, washed up with pictures, returned to New York clubs, this time doing a specialty, advertised as Iris Adrian of the films.
She worked a couple of weeks at Leon & Eddie's, featured, and got over so well that she was given another chance in Hollywood, with another studio. And this time she clicked.
Through the years, Herman Amron continued to love her. Once in a while she would give him a break and let him take her out. Though he had disposed of the opal bracelet years before, the curse apparently hung on. Every time she went out with Herman something unfortunate happened to her.
Once she got sick; again, she got word of a lost Hollywood contract.
The last time Iris was in the newspapers was when she married Georgie Jay, a personable character who owns an uptown night club, the 78th Street Taproom. The marriage, of course, wasn't meant to take, because Iris had to stay in Hollywood and he had to stay in New York.
Once, when she was East, she and her husband sat in Leon & Eddie's. Herman, the hoodoo, was at the next table. He came over to say hello to Iris and Jay. That night Iris and her husband had the squabble which resulted, a week later, in her divorce.
b.—Edith Finds Love
Newcomers to night life—and most people around town today—will not recognize her name, Edith Roark.
But we remember Edith well—also the fabulously funny story she told on herself, that made her for the time the best-known beauty on the White Way.
Edith came from Dallas ... went to Hollywood ... became a showgirl ... worked for Sam Goldwyn.
When N.T.G. opened the famous old Paradise Restaurant on Broadway, in 1932, he imported 12 Goldwyn girls—at $150 a week—for his première. Edith was one.
On the Coast, the luminous Miss Roark had been the constant companion of George Raft.
In New York, she met singer Harry Richman—my, how that guy gets into our stories!—and became his constant companion.
A few months later, Richman and Raft happened to meet in Chicago.
Raft said to Richman—"Harry, what's this I hear about you trying to steal my girl?"
Richman said to Raft—"Georgie, you're nuts. She's my girl and you keep away from her."
Raft replied—"I'll prove it."
He phoned Edith in New York, said—"Honey, Richman says you love him."
Miss Roark, not knowing Richman was listening in on the extension, cooed sweetly—"Why, Georgie, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Richman. He's important and can do me good."
"Just wait till I call her," Richman said.
He got Edith on the phone, asked—"What's this I hear about Raft?"
Again cooing sweetly, unconscious of Raft's ear on the other receiver, Edith said—"Why, Harry, you know you're my only love. I'm just being polite to Raft. He was so nice to me on the Coast."
The pay-off is that when the two stars accused her of double dealing, Edith flew into a simulated rage, shouted she knew they were testing her all the time and she said it all on purpose.
She made them both apologize to her—in the presence of her real sweetheart!
c.—Unto the Second Generation
It's likely you have heard of Hilda Ferguson, even possible you vaguely remember her. But it is not likely you have heard of Yolande Ugarte, who did do a bit in a Broadway show which ran about a week.
This is the story to date of Yolande Ugarte, and so it must also be to a degree the story of Hilda Ferguson, because Yolande, now in her 20's, seemed compelled by a strange destiny to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Hilda Ferguson.
During the first 17 years of her life, Yolande led a sheltered existence with relatives in Baltimore. She went to school, had puppy-love crushes. And, like many girls of her age, she dreamed of the stage.
She had a vague notion that her mother, whom she hadn't seen for years, had something to do with Broadway. Beyond that she knew little about her. The mother's name was seldom mentioned where she lived.
One summer Yolande entered a beauty contest. She was chosen to represent Baltimore in the annual Atlantic City competitions. Her guardians hated to see her go, but her youthful, understandable enthusiasm overcame all objections.
Many Broadway producers visited the resort town the week "Miss America" was chosen. Among those seeking new faces for shows were Earl Carroll and Nils T. Granlund.
Yolande Ugarte is an attractive girl: tall, lissome, with nut-brown hair. The producers were much taken with her possibilities. They thought there was something vaguely reminiscent of Hilda Ferguson about Yolande. Granlund, who had been Hilda's press agent 15 years before, told her so.
"Hilda Ferguson? Why, I believe my mother used that name," Yolande replied.
He hired Yolande as a dancer in his new cabaret, the Midnight Sun. He changed her name to "Hilda Ferguson." She was startlingly like her mother and Broadway was thrilled when Granlund introduced her as "Hilda Ferguson."
The original Hilda Ferguson was a dainty, devastating beauty, born in Baltimore as Hilda Gibbons. At 15, she eloped with and married a young Honduran medical student, Ramond Ugarte. Yolande was born the next year.
Hilda and her husband separated soon afterward. Hilda came to New York and baby Yolande was left with relatives, with whom she lived thenceforth.
They still tell stories about the wide-eyed Hilda Ferguson, strange in New York, only 17, still naïve, though a grass widow and a mother.
It took her little time to make the grade. She became a "Follies" girl. Ziegfeld featured her as one of his most beautiful. Then started the hectic career that to Broadwayites made the name "Hilda Ferguson" symbolize an era. Hilda came to Broadway in 1921, shortly after the beginning of Prohibition. Churchill's, Rectors, Reisenweber's, Bustanoby's, the Café de Paris, were fresh, green memories.
The speakeasies were getting going. The first of the bootleggers, later to inspire a bloody generation of crime, were feeling their way in wholesale law violation.
In this changing world, the girl decided to cast her lot.
Her tinseled career, running a parallel course with Prohibition, came to an end on a hospital cot two months and two days before Repeal.
During her short lifetime, Hilda went the pace with men and liquor. Young millionaires and old ones, powerful figures of the underworld and of politics were on the roster of her admirers. Her life reads like a history of America's crazy years.
She was a flat-mate of Dot King when the mysterious slaying of that youngster, kept by a Philadelphia financier, rocked Manhattan.
Hilda, questioned by police, denied she knew a thing about it.
She was engaged to Aaron Benesch, multi-millionaire Baltimore furniture king, only to lose him to Helen Henderson, another glamorous show girl.
She was the sweetheart of Enoch (Nucky) Johnson, Atlantic City overlord, and was featured by him in an elaborate show in Atlantic City's Silver Slipper, a night club he bought for the sole purpose of providing a stage for his current reigning favorite.
He gave her a $12,000 mink coat and a Rolls-Royce. They lived in half the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton.
She lost him to Kitty Ray, who claimed she was the ex-wife of Macoco, millionaire playboy of the Pampas, though he denied they ever wed.
Arthur Hammerstein was one of her most ardent admirers. Then it was rumored Hilda would marry Howard Lee, rich society scion.
She was questioned by police when "Tough Willie" McCabe, ex-bodyguard of Arnold Rothstein, was cut up in the "61 Club" stabbings. To General Sessions Judge Freschi, she exclaimed: "My dear, I was in the ladies' room."
The judge replied: "It's very nice to be called 'my dear.' I don't know whether I like it or not."
He held her in $5,000 bail. She spent the night in Harlem Prison until she was bailed out the next day by "Feets" Edson, another colorful Broadway mobster.
"I put up the bail," Edson said, "because she used to work for me." Hilda had appeared in the Club Abbey, another resort of pungent Broadway memory, where Larry Fay was later killed.
She had refused to talk after Dot King was slain. She kept mum when police grilled her about Willie McCabe. Broadway said: "Hilda knows how to keep her mouth shut."
So she forfeited the $5,000 bail for failing to appear.
When third-degreed about her dressing-room mate inThe Music Box Revue—who was thought to have landed her job because her father was warden of Leavenworth Prison, where Nicky Arnstein, husband of Fannie Brice, star of the show, was on the rock pile—Hilda again "knew nothing."
She started her own little brownstone-front upstairs speakeasy. The opening was all New York in one place. It was soon the scene of raids and battles.
When she went to Europe to duck a judgment she resented, for $270 for ten pairs of specially built shoes, she traveled incognito, with her Rolls-Royce, two maids and 27 trunks.
Though she never earned more than $150 a week, Hilda once walked into Texas Guinan's, and bought a bracelet off Tex's arm for $25,000 in big bills, just to "burn up" Kitty Ray, who was sitting a few tables away with "Nucky" Johnson.
She was 29 when she died, in New York Hospital, of peritonitis.
Many of her friends are still on Broadway. At least one gentleman with whom she was known to be close cracked a bottle of champagne for her daughter.
A girl who also succeeded Hilda in the affections of "Nucky" Johnson worked at the same club with her daughter until she left to get married. With a subtle touch of irony, fate had decreed that this girl, Virginia Biddle, should dance next to Yolande Ugarte, Hilda Ferguson's daughter!
Hilda, Junior, after sweeping Broadway's most ardent off their feet, eloped with Frank Parker, radio tenor. The marriage, a stormy one, lasted all of two years, after which the pair took their troubles to court.
The court decision which severed their ties only brought more squabbles in its wake. For, when Hilda, Junior, became the constant companion of Duncan McMartin, Canadian multi-millionaire, and McMartin'swife inferred she was the cause of their separation, Parker hailed Hilda back into court.
He told the judge she was holding him up to so much ridicule he thought alimony payments should be stopped. The judge said Frank was no candidate for a monastery either, and ordered the payments to go on, with an urgent reminder to get the arrears up to date.
As these lines were written McMartin settled with his wife, obtained a divorce and married Hilda.
d.—The Good Deed
When Ruth Hilliard was eight years old, she was scalded by boiling water. One side of her face was terribly disfigured. When she grew up, she would have been beautiful enough, except for that hideous scar.
She worked as a cigarette girl in the old Hollywood Restaurant, and envied the chorines who had all the nice things in life.
Stars thronged the Hollywood, and so did the millionaires. But none noticed Ruth Hilliard. Or, if they did, it was to look at the scar and momentarily think, "what a shame!"
A constant visitor at the Hollywood was Jimmy Ritz, the comedian. Ruth often wished he'd say hello to her. Sometimes, when she had the money, she'd go to Loew's State to see him act, or to Earl Carroll'sVanities, in which he later starred.
One night, William Leeds, Jr., fabulously rich son of the Tin Plate King, bought a cigar from Ruth. He saw the scar, asked about it, took down her name andaddress. The next day Ruth's mother got a phone call from Leeds. He said he had made arrangements with a plastic surgeon to operate on her; had paid all the bills in advance. It seemed unbelievable, but Ruth and her mother visited the medico, the operation was decided on and Ruth went into a hospital.
Meanwhile, Leeds sailed away on a year's yachting cruise.
On his return, he and his fiancée, Olive Hamilton, later Mrs. Leeds, went to theVanities.
A girl in the front line seemed familiar. After the show, the girl ran over to Leeds, threw her arms around him, showered him with blessings. She was Ruth Hilliard. The operation had been a complete success. But Leeds had forgotten all about his impulsive gracious gesture.
Ruth Hilliard had sighed and prayed to be like other girls, so that maybe Jimmy Ritz would notice her and take her out. He and his brothers were stars of the show in which she hoofed—and, sure enough, he did notice her. He took her out. A romance developed.
They were engaged a long time, then married.
Everyone figured Ruth now would be happy forever after. From an ugly duckling she had become a beautiful show girl. She got the man she always wanted. She went to Hollywood when the Ritzes were at the height of their fame and lived lavishly. She got a movie contract, too.
Though she later divorced Ritz, she remarried and is now living in Hollywood, happy and prosperous.
It's another of those things that could only happen on Broadway.
And it all started because Bill Leeds, Jr., was in a generous mood that night, and played Aladdin's genie to a sad, frustrated girl.
e.—Gun Moll
Those were some of the little pigs who went to market and who had roast beef. (And "pigs" is the backstage slang for chorines.) Here's a little round-up on one who had none, and cried "wee-wee-wee" all the way home.
Marion Paterka was born in Boston, in 1908, child of Czech immigrants. Her mother married again, a man named Strasmick, and, as Marion Strasmick, a black-eyed, beautiful redhead, 16, descended on Broadway. You never saw a prettier girl. Ziegfeld never did, as he said when he glorified her on sight for hisFollies.
In that show there was an ensemble number in which the kids did take-offs on the stars of the day. Lenore Ulric was in Belasco'sKiki. Marion impersonated her. She was Kiki the rest of her life. Kiki Roberts she chose to make it. And that name was to shout from Page 1 headlines often—for Kiki became the sweetheart of Jack "Legs" Diamond, gangster, mass killer, riddled so often with bullets that he was dubbed "the clay pigeon of the underworld."
Diamond first saw her in "practice clothes," sweater and bloomers, trying out on a chorus call forStrike Me Pink, a revue angeled by gangster dough and starringJimmy Durante and Lupe Velez. A dozen or more of "the boys" kittied the bank roll. That gave them the privilege of sitting in. Also of putting their young molls in the line.
As one went through her paces, a partner in the enterprise asked:
"Whose bim is dat one?"
"Nobody's," was the answer.
"Den what's she doin' in our show?"
Diamond took another look and almost fell out of his chair.
"She's mine!" he barked.
And, though she didn't know it yet, she was—so quickly and so suddenly that she didn't even open in the show. Diamond wouldn't let her out of bed long enough even to rehearse.
Not a bad-looking beast, Legs; he got his nickname when he was a boy thief, because he could outrun the bulls. Tall, slender, with regular features, dark and personable, Legs was a night club hound, even owned and ran some himself. He was boss of the Hotsy Totsy. There, one night, cockeyed, he shot two inoffensive customers. There were present, besides the corpses and the well-dressed man with the automatic, seven other men, including Diamond's bartender.
When the cops arrived, Legs had legged it. Within six weeks, those seven—including the bartender—were shot down and killed, one by one. The night of the day the last one cashed in, Legs walked into a police station and asked, charmingly, "You boys looking for me?"
There were no witnesses.
That was the assassin Kiki idolized.
When he was sprayed with lead in the Monticello Hotel, a hide-out for his sort, she was with him. Almost every time, and that time, she was hauled in and put on the carpet. Yes, she was around—but she was asleep—she didn't know from nothing.
Diamond had a younger brother, Eddie, a lunger, his lieutenant. The kid went to Denver for his health. Some New York murderers who hadn't dared molest him while Legs was around followed him and sniped at him. The youngster scrammed back. Legs loved him and when he heard what had happened he boiled, got oiled and went out with two pants-pocket miniature .38's to pay off.
In the next three days, four bodies were found, widely scattered. A meeting was called, a death sentence was passed on Legs Diamond, who had cheated so many such with only some scars as mementos.
Diamond was tipped off. He took it on the lam. He found a secluded cottage up in Sullivan County, a region of apple orchards. But he was a gangster in his heart.
Kiki, again, was with him. She begged him to stay under cover. He had enough money for existence. But Legs had a trade and he went to work.
Applejack had a ready and lucrative market. Diamond started to "organize" the farmers, to buy up their crops. Some yielded, for he offered cash. Others had commitments and refused. They found a muzzle in their bellies and a threat—sell him their apples or else.
One, Grover Parks, a young farmer, was game. When Diamond came back he had a pitchfork. But Legs had a cannon. He backed Parks into his barn, strung him up by the wrists and burned the soles of his feet. Parks didn't die. He lived to get the local law to hunt down the stranger in the county. Legs was indicted. Kiki was taken in, too, released on $2,500 bail, cleared. She went back to New York and into another show.
In December, 1931, Diamond was tried, in Troy. He had a brilliant lawyer, Daniel Pryor. After a bitter contest, he was acquitted.
Diamond, all this time, had a wife, Alice. She knew a lot about Kiki—anyone who could read did. But she stuck—when he'd let her.
Kiki was then sharing an apartment with Agnes O'Laughlin, another Ziegfelder (she later made some sensational inconclusive accusations against Rudy Vallee, and, disgusted with the whole life, returned to her native Cleveland and married a boy she'd gone to school with). Kiki was ordered to stay far from Troy. Because of the notoriety with Kiki, Pryor had ordered that Alice Diamond, Legs' wife, sit beside him through the trial.
But there were telephones.
The jury freed Legs about midday. He, Alice, Eddie and Pryor drove to Albany, a few miles off, and staged a celebration dinner. Diamond had engaged a shabby room where he was to spend the night with Alice.
At about 9 o'clock, half overboard, Legs said he was going to the washroom. Instead, he slipped outside,hailed a taxi and was driven to another bed-house, where he had parked Kiki.
At 3A.M., a very drunken man staggered out and gave the address of the place where Legs had hired sleeping quarters for "J.H. Desmond and Wife," to a hackman. He was unconscious on arrival. The driver pulled him together enough to get him upstairs. Diamond fell into bed with all his clothes on, including his derby hat.
A long, gray limousine had followed him. Five minutes later, it was roaring toward New York. In the bed lay the clay pigeon—this time shot for keeps. Alice and the party were still at the restaurant, waiting for him.
Kiki was questioned. Maybe she had an idea of who her man's enemies had been. Maybe not. She wasn't held.
She went back to Boston. Said she was licked—through. She posed for pictures with her mother, ironing, cooking. But she wasn't through. They never are while they can help it.
She came back, danced in cafés, did fan numbers, worked in Jersey, Pennsylvania, sneaked to New York and was hired at an uptown smalltime spot, the Little Casino. The flat-feet tore down the billing and wouldn't let her work. They said she was a peeler. But it is a policy of New York police not to permit exploitation of names connected with crime stories.
Alice also went into show business, got herself an act in which she preached against liquor, violence and violation of the marriage oath. The dicks gave her the bum's rush, too. Soon thereafter she was put on thespot and murdered. The wise crowd said, "She knew too much."
Kiki drifted. She was reported married to an athletic director, but that fizzled. She did marry a beer salesman, in an elopement, and she soon got a divorce. She flew to Memphis and became the wife of a Newark airport attaché.
She was reported running a lunchroom in Bridgeport. Broadway never knew her again.
Perhaps, somewhere, now 40 but undoubtedly still chic and attractive, a redheaded woman lives the simple, unrippled existence of a matured matron. Perhaps, though, in the dark, alone, she recalls the flash of guns, the thud of bullets, the mad love of a murderous madman, third degrees by police and prosecutors, days and nights of fleeing and being hunted with her lover—and the last glimpse of his riddled remains, in a basket in an undertaker's morgue in Albany, where she slunk in after all others—except one of your authors, covering the story—had gone.
This little pig had no roast beef. But she certainly didn't stay home!
22. WHITE WAY WOLVES
Call a mana dog and he'll fight. Call a woman a cat and she'll scratch your eyes.
But speak of a guy as a wolf, a most loathsome, cowardly animal, and he'll be pleased as all get out.
Of course, no man openly admits he's a wolf. He smirks and smiles and blushes and tries to giggle it off. But he sure is proud.
The dictionary defines "wolf" as a fierce, rapacious, destructive beast—or person. None of that fits the New Yorkcanis lupus.
He is not fierce; he traps his prey with gentle wiles. He is not rapacious, being satisfied with one at a time. (But every day is a different time.) And he is not so destructive.
The subject of wolves has been written about ad nauseam, and to most people it's an old and tedious joke. Yet, nowhere in the world save possibly Hollywood, are male wolves so much a part of the scene as in afterdark New York.
Here, wolfing has developed into an art, and though grandma's girl, after she's been around any time at all, spots the species immediately, tradition demands that she permit him to pursue and subdue her, wolf-fashion, and never let on she's wise to his act. Wolves are very sensitive.
Though there are more femmes in Gotham than in any other city on earth, it takes much ingenuity tostalk the Little Red Riding Hood here. There are no forest paths. It's the best-lighted place on earth—when John L. Lewis keeps his hands off. It is against the law to flirt on the streets of New York. He who would try it in public places, such as theatres or the subway, will get a punch in the nose if he doesn't land in the hoose-gow.
There are so many wolves in Manhattan that, even if the entire female population of Scranton, with Reading and Mauch Chunk thrown in, were transplanted here, they wouldn't cross the path of 1 per cent of our predatory males.
But here it takes specific knowledge and specialized scheming to perfect a pick-up. We have few social clubs and fewer church festivals, where you can meet the squabs in small towns. There are no corner drugstores with juke boxes to drop in on after school. People don't ask motorists for a lift here, and motorists don't give 'em.
None but professionals work cocktail lounges and hotel lobbies. Sailors provide too much competition on Riverside Drive. There are no cabaret hostesses or so-called "B Girls." It's illegal for the headwaiter to introduce you to a cutie in the show, or for you to sit out with her even if you know her or can get her to invite you.
So, where do wolves whistle? Shhh! We spent many sleepless nights gathering the info. Paste it in your hat. It tells where our choicest chickens perch.
CHORINES: If you see a plain-looking gal, sans make-up, in slacks or cheap dress, breakfasting at thefountain of a drugstore near Broadway at 5P.M., she's a show girl. Favorite spot is Hanson's, 51st and Seventh Avenue.
Those who live on the East Side play the Belmont-Plaza drugstore. They're back again between shows for dinner at the fountain, once more, after the show, when they sip coffee with one eye peeled for a musician, press agent or other Main Stem character. When the kids are really left flat, they frequently go bowling. Many patronize the Roxy alley.
MODELS: You can always spot a "pro" model. She's usually slender, hipless, has small features, carries her make-up in a man's hat-box. Powers girls tea at the fountain in Grand Central Palace; the Conover beauts patronize the cocktail lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel; Thornton's youngsters make their headquarters at the Liggett fountain, 43d and Lexington Avenue. Smart wolves know you can always find models at cocktail time in Armando's.
But we must tell you about the famed Round Table at John Perona's El Morocco, expensive East Side rendezvous. The table is so situated that the town's aging and more prosperous squab-hunters, like Macoco, who congregate at it nightly can case the door and ogle the bims brought in by younger and more energetic men. The bald and graying Knights of the Table Round select and signal, and by a method we cannot detail, get phone numbers.
Many of the most successful wolves do not drink. Alcohol is a hurdle in the chase. The trick is to let her do the imbibing.
It is strictly unprofessional for a wolf to pay a girl, ever. Anyone can pay.
Married wolves are debarred if they lie and say they're single or pull the old one about being misunderstood. Naturally, the town's top lupos are married.
WISDOM OF A WHITE WAY WOLF:
"Woman is like your shadow. Follow it, it flies you. Fly, it will pursue you!"—Ben Jonson.
When your doll starts showing an interest in another, don't agree with her appraisal of him. If you make it too easy for her to leave you for another, she won't—and you're stuck with her.
Fastest way to a doll's heart is not through protestations of love and undying affection. Keep her laughing, bud. That's the block buster.
Guys who give seldom get.
It's tough to romance a chorine while she's rehearsing for a new show. Hard-boiled dance directors are mayhem on love life.
When you have a date with a chorus doll and she keeps you waiting after a show—being last to leave the dressing room—it can mean one of two things. Either she's so thrilled to be going out with you, she primps more than usual. Or she's so bored and unconcerned she stalls to the last minute. Make up your mind.
Dames that pull the share-a-date gag are carbolic acid. Give 'em the air when they do this: The evening is half over; suddenly she remarks that she's got to go. "Why, dear," says she, "I told you earlier I had this date, but to show you how much I care for you I ducked him all these hours to spend them with you." The malarkey!
When a doll tells you she couldn't get a job in the cabaret chorus because the boss tried to get fresh with her, it's a phony. There's such a shortage of pretty femmes who dance that managers would rather hire them than make love to them—paying up to $100 aweek, two shows a night, six days a week—and saying "Please."
Don't try to start a conversation with the pretty pigeon at the end of the bar. She's the bartender's bim and no stray can steal her.
When your doll excuses herself to go to the powder room—a few minutes after she nods to the sleek dark musician—watch out that she doesn't give you a powder.
23. THE NOTED AND THE NOTORIOUS
Abigshot is just a pain in the neck to the average New Yorker, who has seen them all and seen them come and go. He is a nuisance who has to be endured; a nuisance because he gets in front of the line, has the best tables, blocks entrances with his car and generally makes himself obnoxious.
New York reeks with very important people. Most, of course, aren't celebrities. They mind their own business and try to forget their fame.
But, if a New Yorker can take or leave his notables, a muzhik can't. Next to the Empire State and Radio City, V.I.P.'s are the tallest things on his agenda, and if it's your hard luck to nursemaid one, you've got to take him to one place where he can feed his obsession. And many celebs are only too anxious to oblige.
There's a prosperous firm in town called Celebrity Service, which, for a fee, advises just which celebrities are where and when. Subscribers, in addition to newspapers, press agents and high pressure salesmen, often include fan clubs.
If the sidewalk outside a public place is filled with moronic-looking imbeciles of both sexes, grasping autograph books and candid cameras, it's a pretty safe bet someone whom they consider important is inside or expected.
Exhibitionistic hams love it and you can find themwith their silly smirking faces at any hour around the clock.
These are some of the places where they hang out:
Algonquin Hotel—Lunch place of the la-de-dah literary set.
Barberry Room—Socialites, for dinner.
Blair House—Broadway and sports figures.
Colony—Top money mob, for lunch and dinner.
Copacabana—Show and sport crowd, at midnight and 2A.M.
Copa Lounge—Show, radio, sport and press crowd, 12:30 to 4A.M.
El Boraccho—Show, screen and society glamor gals, at dinner.
El Morocco—Top movie stars, international society, rich wolves, Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Dinner until 4A.M.
Larue—Social climbers.
Leon & Eddie's—Ditto, Sundays, after midnight.
Lindy's (old)—Sporting and racing crowd, lunch and dinner.
Lindy's (new)—Song-writers and comedians, dinner and after theatre.
Luchow's—Tammany politicos, Mencken and Nathan, opera and theatrical.
Moore's—Movie executives and stars, sports, political and Broadway headliners.
Reuben's—Broadway mob, after 4A.M.
Sardi's—The drama (pronounced draymah) bunch at lunch and dinner and after theatre.
Stork Club—Politicians, columnists—Walter Winchell, always—producers and movie bunch, lunch, cocktails, dinner, until 4A.M.
Toots Shor's—Broadway, especially radio, and sporting bunch for lunch and dinner.
Twenty-One—Hollywood, Broadway and semi-society, for lunch and dinner.
Other places where celebrities can be viewed include the Metropolitan Opera House, especially on opening nights, when all the sables, stomachers and high hats turn out.
Almost every theatrical opening brings out a few celebs, though only at events like the première of an expensive musical comedy or a show with Katharine Cornell, the Lunts or Tallulah Bankhead, do you find more than the regulars.
24. THERE IS NO SOCIETY
If thistitle seems an overstatement, you may have something. But, as far as your eye can see, it is almost categorically true.
There is a Social Register, published and revised annually. Its standards for selection are vague and the private corporation which sets them doesn't play according to its own precedents. Its principal excuses for continued existence are that it pays off, as every snob in town feels it is an essential household article, and it is the sweetest sucker list ever compiled for peddlers, panders, climbers and promoters.
The younger generation of what was once New York society has gotten largely out of hand. Its typical proponent is Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco Stokowski, who in her teens disported herself at bars, heavily made up, one wedgie on the rail and a foot-long cigarette holder between fingers with crimson mandarin nails. To make the picture perfect, her then-beloved mother was drinking with her.
Debutantes (who rarely have debuts any more) are largely silk-lined bobby soxers. They wear slacks and sweaters out loud and mingle with tea-dancers and gin-garglers in the more expensive but no more exclusive drop-ins.
The musty, crusty Old Guard is dwindling with death and high taxes. The few who have retained their aristocratic bearing go deeper and deeper into seclusion. But even they are smudged with the sins of modernity which penetrate all walls and past all butlers. Not so long ago, one of our dozen foremost real society matrons was committed to an insane asylum. The husband of an equally blue-blooded top-drawer grand dame was beaten to death by her gigolo when he walked in on them.
The in-betweeners, neither young nor old, make pitiful pretense of youthfulness, dance until they are lame and find dignity too old-fashioned for words—the kind of words they use.
Many women born to social position are horning into politics, not a few radical. It's smart to talk red and the son of the late head of J.P. Morgan & Company is one of the loudest of this contingent.
Divorces among the social names are becoming as commonplace as they are in Hollywood.
As a backwash of the war, New York was invaded by many rich refugees and stranded titled bums. The latter found doors wide open for them.
What is left of Inanity Fair is on view rarely and only in a few spots. Great palaces have been razed or turned into dressmakers' shops or offices. Increased real estate values, hardships with help, murderous income and inheritance taxes and the disinclination of the younger members to follow the old and more gracious ways have made mausoleums of the mansions.
When these fortresses of fashion fell, society went underground. A few Knickerbocker clans, from hidden retreats, still resist attempts at intrusion by war profiteers, black marketeers and that mixed miscellany ofthe gossip columns—Café Society. Contrary to general belief, that is not a new institution, though for generations it was regarded from above in about the same light as a daughter of a good family who had borne twins out of wedlock.
It originated toward the end of the golden 90's, and its father was the esoteric Harry Lehr, successor to Ward McAllister, social arbiter supreme, creator of the great Mrs. William Astor's sacred 400.
Lehr had at one time been the kingpin of those since-vanished Americans, the wine (champagne) agents. It never got out of his blood, though he lofted into the social stratosphere. Perhaps as a prank or caprice or a reversion to type, on a Sunday night he induced Mrs. Astor to attend a dinner he gave at Sherry's, then at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. That night Café Society was born.
Next morning, a newspaper published this astonishing lead:
"What are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry's table d'hôte! I never dreamt it would be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room."
Next day, all the newspapers featured the epoch-making feast. One society editor wrote:
"When I saw Mrs. Astor in coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest headdress, at Sherry's, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could scarcely believe my eyes. She seemed to enjoy it and nodded her head to the ragtime tunes. She wore her famous pearls and was a stunning sight."
Lehr was a crony of Tom Wanamaker, who ownedan apartment above Sherry's. He gave Harry the use of a beautiful suite and arranged for him to eat on the cuff in the café and entertain friends there, likewise. His historic dinner to Mrs. Astor was a shill job, to break the ice for social patronage. Night clubs follow the same device today to pump up brilliant opening nights.
Mrs. Astor undoubtedly had no suspicion of Lehr's object, but she gave the royal nod to the first big break in the fences, which eventually permitted an infiltration of Manhattan Okies into her own 400, which expanded the circle so widely that with every year it meant less and less as it grew more and more.
Perhaps the most conspicuous disintegration is visible at a glance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Première nights in the golden days were glittering spectacles, with the women of the Astor, Vanderbilt, Drexel, Gould and other proud dynasties wearing Paris gowns and radiant tiaras, and the newspapers covering the show avidly.
Today such events are drab. Anybody with the coin can buy a box in the Diamond Horseshoe. Night club managers, Broadway gamblers, cloak-and-suit salesmen entertain where formerly only meticulously screened millionaires basked in their own glory, a thousand sets of glasses trained on them from the seats of the lowly. Now strangers in business suits and women in frocks tilt back in the front chairs, originally reserved for ladies only, and rest their feet on the storied railing.
Among the last top-name regulars were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Orme Wilson, who shared Box 3 on different nights. Newport's famous spinster sisters, Edith and Maude Wetmore, occasionally occupy their Box 5. The Duchess de Talleyrand, née Anna Gould, retains her box, but rarely uses it. The Morgan family gave up theirs seasons ago. Most of the ladies who own rich gems no longer wear them—they're afraid of stick-ups.