Word: velvets
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Commodore Vanderbilt was a rowdy illiterate who wore a fur coat winter and summer and bellowed, "What do I care about the law? Hain't I got the power?" Big Jim Fisk was an ebullient bluffer who wore velvet vests and many rings, was shot to death by his mistress' lover. Dapper Jay Gould was a consumptive neurotic who was once led by a doctor from a board of directors' meeting in raving hysteria. These great robber barons all had the stuff of celebrity, and all of them have already been documented to death. But not Russell...
...today's crooner is a suave, smoky-eyed predator. His natural habitat is the supper club, his prey the middle-aged female. Cologned, imperially trim, hair sculptured and pomaded, he moves in the spotlight's golden glow like a young god, a smiling vision in pancake makeup, velvet-trimmed dinner jacket, and patent-leather shoes...
Each year Sarmi makes two trips to Switzerland, France and Italy to select his fabrics. He has the lace re-embroidered with silver and gold, the chiffon treated to produce a raised velvet pattern, the dress wools interwoven with rows of iridescent paillettes. Often he designs his own: one year it was photographs of raindrops screened onto fine silk, another time it was magnified butterfly wings...
Wyler gets results by demanding them-over and over and over again. Actors assigned to him describe the experience as "living in the torture chamber." Greer Garson tried to soften him up in advance by sending him a pair of velvet gloves. Bette Davis got so mad she walked off the set for a week. Olivia de Havilland all but heaved a suitcase at Wyler after he ordered the umpteenth take of the same scene; yet all these films were hits. "I've resisted the temptation of being a good fellow," says Wyler, 62. "I don't care...
...notables as Navy Secretary Paul Nitze, Dutch Ambassador Carl Schurmann, Pittsburgh Art Patron Paul Mellon and William Walton, chairman of the Federal Government's Commission of Fine Arts. Then Titus was ceremoniously brought from the gallery's basement, and while flashbulbs popped and TV cameras whirred, hung before red velvet in its place of honor. Yet, for all the trouble and cost he had incurred to acquire Titus, the lean, craggy six-footer with the deepset eyes and anguished look clearly did not savor the glare of publicity...