DAVID PATRICK COLUMBIA

way in the world pursuing the subjects of personal interest, and all were enormously successful in the pursuits of their ambition.

It also made me think of the social Women of the first half of the 20th century. New York women with the unadorned ambition, entirely self-created personalities, like movie stars, but social stars like Babe Paley and CZ Guest . Artists really; social artists who always looked GOOD.

Then there was also Jackie Rogers, the fashion designer who died on the last week in January, peacefully at Lenox Hill Hospital. Jackie was still working in her mid-90s, or thereabouts; and up until two weeks before, she continued her business here and in Palm Beach. She was fashionable like the above mentioned Mrs. Paley and Mrs. Guest but it was an entirely different feature story of ambition coming to New York.

She had style going all the way back to the beginning of her long life. Born in Boston in 1932 or thereabouts, she had natural beauty and a personality to go along with it. That took her to the most styl - ish places of her time – to New York, Paris, Rome, Hollywood where she was a FAMOUS fashion model, sometimes actress and ultimately a designer.

It was a big personality, outspoken by nature, ambitious, a “tough cookie” to some, a chance-taker, an adventurer, explorer and a don’t-mess-with-me attitude in her pursuits. And a hard-worker to boot.

Her relationships were as active as her work. Her success with Chanel , who was very “taken” with her, was merely a stop along the way for the dynamic and ambitious personality. By the 1970s, she was in New York with her own design business. Andre Leon Talley once said in evaluating her work: “Jackie makes wonderful, minimalistic clothes. I think her satin clip dresses stand up to the best and the most acknowledged of that school of design.”

I met her about 20 years ago when she was interested in writing a memoir. She was looking for a collaborator (ghost) although I soon learned she’d had several already. We discussed the project but I realized that she herself was not 100% certain that she wanted to go there even though she had been pursuing it.

That’s a problem a lot of collaborators don’t want to and/or can’t deal with. The ideal in telling one’s story is to “let it all hang out.” She’d seen it all and had a lot to tell and to say about it, but at the end of the day, when I met her—well past her beauty prime— she loved her dogs, had a comfortable apartment on Park Avenue, and was devoted to keeping up with her dreams and ambitions. Letting it all hang out was not her style. She’d lived a long time; it was a good one, and she’d seen it all!

To change the story, Prince Harry. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter from a woman, a reader:

Thank you so much for your good and real and decent reporting on Prince Harry. I’ve been a guest at Highgrove once, had a nice talk with Camilla and a guest twice at Windsor Castle at the invitation of Prince Charles. I’ve also been a psychotherapist in England working with all classes of people. I know how important it is to have somebody as important as Harry to talk about therapy, struggles of mourning, and fame. The racist press was so much worse than I already knew. The attacks continue by the press, including pseudo intellectuals of the New Yorker. Thank you again and I hope you’ve encouraged people to read the book and hear his voice. Sincerely…

Most opinions I hear about Prince Harry and his wife are very negative as if Harry and wife are obliged to make personal private decisions that are agreeable to the general public – that being us. It’s actually funny, except it’s also none of our business any more than Harry and Meghan making judgments about us personally.

The problem, the challenge for Prince Harry, it would seem, is making a life for oneself that is selfsatisfying. It’s the same for most of us. You see the Royal experience not through your imagination but through his eyes, the real story. Right there at the very center. Where he’s not the center – except in his own life, like the rest of us—He IS. It’s really a good book about a family and what it’s like and what it does to its members. Its issues are universal; as are all families; different and the same, good, bad, high, low, and fascinating because you can relate even when you can’t. Like families.

He’s a thinker and he is naturally challenged. It’s interesting, this trip he takes us on in his memoir. And if you read the book, as I did in spurts of free time, you will be looking forward to it when you are away from it. When you finish you will have a much clearer picture of what it is like to be a member of the British Royal Family, one of the very few such families left in a world where a little over a century ago, royal families had presided over much of the world for several centuries.

Meanwhile, in America, we had our own version of royalty: Hollywood and its movie stars. Their reigns, unlike those of the House of Windsor , were shorter comparatively, and ultimately all tied to “popular demand.” But their rise to glory made them all worth the admission (per ticket) to see and even to relate to personally.

In the late 1940s - early 50s, the three leading hostesses in Hollywood were Cobina Wright , a social columnist for the Hearst Newspapers who held court in a large white mansion; Yolanda Saylor , a Venetian dynamo who charmingly murdered the English language with her bon mots and was married to Jay Saylor , a decorator to the stars; and then the queen of them all, Lady Mendl , Elsie de Wolfe , renowned interior designer and wife of an English diplomat, Sir Charles Mendl . Her much coveted invitation to a dinner was THE stamp of approval and proof that you had arrived socially in Hollywood.

These ladies ruled with a velvet glove and vied for prominence in that social firmament.

Elsie was by far the most sophisticated and soignee, and internationally famous. Devout Francophiles, Elsie and Sir Charles had been living for years at her beloved Villa Trianon , the only private home adjacent to the gardens of Versailles. During World War II when the Germans were about to descend upon Paris, the Duchess of Windsor sent her Rolls Royce to spirit Elsie and Charles out of France via Spain to New York.

Why Elsie, a native New Yorker then in her mid80s, would move to Beverly Hills, a town she had no previous experience in, remains a mystery. Undaunt -

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ed, however, she purchased a large but ordinary house there and named it “After All.”

Having left her FFF, (fine French furniture) behind, she discovered a young L. A. designer Tony Duquette , and became his mentor. Together they made her new house into a showplace with his unique tromphe l’oeil furniture pieces and her signature touches – such as green and white striped ceilings, shiny black floors, mirrored gardens, etcetera.

Arlene Dahl, then a young working actress in New York , had been brought out to Hollywood to make a screen test for Jack Warner , who had noticed her in a Broadway musical. She met actor Richard

Greene on the Warner studio where he was making the film The Border Incident, and he invited her to a dinner party that he and his wife actress Patricia Medina were giving. He told her that he’d ask another dinner guest, Sir Charles Mendl , to send his car for her.

Greene described Mendl to her as a charming and distinguished diplomat, a grandfatherly older man with “an eye for beauty.” At the dinner, Arlene was seated next to Sir Charles and they hit it off immediately. Halfway through dinner he said, “You must meet Elsie, she would love you.”

At the time, Arlene, hailing from Minnesota, had no idea that Lady Mendl was the famous decorator

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Elsie DeWolfe. Shortly thereafter, Sir Charles sent his car and driver to pick her up at The Vine Lodge where she was staying while doing her screen test, to take her to their house for the luncheon.

On arrival, Elsie greeted her in the grand living room, seated on an emerald green loveseat with her two toy poodles, Gin and Tonic, with their fur tinted the same shade of blue as Elsie’s.

“Call me Mother,” Elsie said to Arlene, extending her hand to greet her. As Arlene’s own mother had died when she was 15, this greeting was both poignant and prophetic to her.

That same afternoon at the luncheon, Elsie invited Arlene to attend a black tie party the following week that the Mendls were giving for the legendary Cole Porter

“It was with wild anticipation” Arlene recalled, “that I nervously fingered the invitation that had just been delivered. The elegant crème-colored envelope was addressed to me inscribed ‘by hand’ in the upper right hand corner. I ran to my desk to find a letter opener so as not to tear this precious object. As I slipped the pristine greenbordered card out of its lined envelope, I noticed an embossed green fox emblem at the top of the invitation. It read: What to wear : Cole Porter , Black tie .”

“I had packed in such a hurry when I left New York for Hollywood and my screen test that I’d forgotten to include anything suitable for a formal dinner.

“I’d have to buy a new gown even though my resources were extremely slim. I’d just received my first $500 weekly paycheck, which covered my rent and food.

“Would there be enough left to cover a proper gown? I’d just have to chance it. I grabbed the keys to my studio rental car and headed south to Bullocks Wilshire, which I was told was the best shop in town, and located on ‘The Miracle Mile’; and that was exactly what I needed… a miracle!

“The designer shop was on the third floor and as I was looking over the gowns on display, I was approached by an elegantly dressed woman who asked if she could help me. I told her I’d been invited to Sir Charles and Elsie Mendl’s black tie dinner and was looking for something appropriate. She seemed suitably impressed and came back from the stock room with a beautiful ivory satin gown with a matching stole.”

“She quickly ushered me into the ‘star’ dressing room to try on this special creation.

“As I admired myself in the three way mirror, the saleswoman remarked, ‘It’s a gorgeous gown on you. You’re sure to be the ‘star’ attraction of the evening.’

“How prophetic,” I thought to myself. “I knew I just had to have it but when I saw the price tag, I was floored! $495.00! Just five dollars less than my paycheck! How could I spend my entire paycheck of the gown of my dreams?

“I confided my dilemma to the nice lady who turned out to be the buyer for the designer department. She said she understood, and offered to open a charge account for me so that I wouldn’t have to pay the entire sum until the end of the month—a solution that I could accommodate.

“Finally, the moment of truth— June 12th— arrived. I felt like a debutante as I dressed for my first Hollywood black tie party given by the famous Lady and Sir Charles Mendl.

Arlene’s memory of the evening: “Wouldn’t you know that the zipper on my beautiful gown got stuck between my waist and shoulder blades and no matter how hard I pulled and tugged it wouldn’t budge. At that same moment, I was being called for by Russell Arms , one of the actors under contract to Warner’s.

Russell was tall and handsome and had been especially helpful in preparing me for my screen test, so I had invited him to escort me to this very special night, and he graciously accepted.

But could I ask him to zip me up when we’d just met last week and this was our first date?