Word: duchessed
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Over free food and wine, the aristocracy matched wits and wagers, betting on everything from the Derby to the seduction of a duchess. Crocky's, as it was called, was also known affectionately as The New Pandemonium and. less fondly, as the Fishmonger's, after the original profession of its founder. William Crockford, who made a fortune of some $6,000,000-or what one historian described as "the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation." The club was closed by the 1845 law prohibiting chemmy and almost all other forms of card playing...
...gimmick, and is cattily critical of his competitors. For the New York Times's Nan Robertson, one promoter ticked off one colleague's: "He plays the Russian bit. He always has somebody doing the squat dance or auctioning off a painting by a 90-year-old grand duchess." Struck by sudden inspiration, one promoter saved a recent ball (for Society Girl Gregg Dodge's pet charity, Girls Town of Mt. Plymouth, Fla.) by billing it as a Twist party, and some of the most distinguished names in the Social Register happily rushed to the Four Seasons restaurant...
Died. Anna Gould, Duchess of Talleyrand, 83, daughter of Rail Tycoon Jay Gould and one of the first of the American heiresses whose marriages infused new blood-and new money-into Europe's sagging aristocracy; of a heart attack; in Paris. Wed to Count Boniface de Castellane in 1895, Anna Gould divorced him after an 11-year phantasmagoria of pink marble palaces and $150,000 parties during which the Parisian gay blade skated through more than half of her $13.5 million inheritance. Two years later, she wed the fifth Duke of Talleyrand, a descendant of the wily French diplomatist...
...reverse My Fair Lady. Where Henry Higgins is a confirmed bachelor, Anatol von Huber (Walter Chiari) is a confirmed boulevardier. It is hard to get either hero to the altar, but for opposing reasons: Higgins rejects women, Anatol collects them. My Fair Lady turns a guttersnippet into a duchess; The Gay Life turns a wealthy, well-bred girl (Barbara Cook) into a beddable wench who will fight like a fishwife for her male. Unfortunately, Actress Cook, who is as wholesome as sunshine, resists this metamorphosis, and Italy's Chiari, though he clowns likably in his U.S. debut, acts...
...sharp eye of New York Journal-American Society Editor "Cholly Knickerbocker" (Igor Cassini), who somehow spotted a few members of the smart set slumming there one night. No sooner did Cholly break the news in his gossip column than the Peppermint Lounge became an instant fad. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford showed up. So did Porfirio and Odile Rubirosa, and Bill Zeckendorf Jr. and Judy Garland and the Bruno Pagliais (Merle Oberon), and Billy Rose, and Tennessee Williams, and William Inge. The word shot quickly over the mink-line to the Stork's Cub Room, El Morocco...