The Right Places (36 page)

Her solution has nothing to do with injections, or radioactive mud-baths, or saunas, or hosings with hot seawater, or oxygen-sniffing. She says, “The best way to stay looking young is to stay
up
on things. Keep up with what's happening, and, as much as possible, be
for
what's happening. Take a positive attitude toward things that are different and new—don't close yourself off from new things.” In other words, don't knock pop and op art or whatever comes next, at least until
you've studied it to see what you can get out of it. Don't complain about the high-school boy next door
just
because his hair is down to his shoulders. Keep up with the latest books, the latest plays, the latest music, the latest films, both underground and above.

The late Elizabeth Arden, who went to her grave in her eighties looking the way most women in their fifties wish they
still
looked, once said, “The secret of perpetual youth is perpetual motion.” She had a point. Staying busy and interested in what's going on is one of the most important secrets one must learn to stay young. Lyn Tornabene says, “At a party, or in any group of people, it's the pooh-poohers, the tongue-cluckers, the gracious-what's-the-world-coming-to types who look
old!
”

The rich have learned these secrets, too (not all the rich look young, but those who do have young interests), and, of course, with more money, the rich will always have more time to stay abreast of things. It seems unfair that the rich should have a priority on youthfulness, but they do have that important edge.

What's more, the rich today begin the job of staying younger sooner than ever. It is no longer a surprise to hear of a mother who trots her ten-year-old (or younger) daughter to Norbert's or Vidal Sassoon's for a haircut, shampoo, set, manicure, et al. Venner Kelsen in California and Erno Laszlo in New York are only two of many costly skin specialists in the country who are now doing a big business treating adolescent skin.

Youngsters today are having their teeth not only straightened, but
capped
before they reach high-school age. Eddie's like other high-priced hairstylists, is now giving seven-dollar haircuts and twelve-dollar hair-straightening jobs to prep-school boys before they go off to Andover or Groton, and his clients for hairpieces today include several Ivy League college boys. At an early age, the children of the rich are learning the importance of staying young, healthy, and attractive.

And yet it should not be said that the rich emphasize these things only out of vanity, or because they are bored or lazy and have no interests other than their own beautification and adornment. There is more to it than that, and a lot of it has to do with the somewhat special attitude of the American rich where, today, the most important
question is not who you are or what you do—or even what's your mother's maiden name?—but “Is he
attractive?
”

This attitude grows more pronounced, and one New York society woman states it rather well. “It's part of the different role which money plays in America today,” she says. “In Grandpa's day, men made money so they could wield financial power—control a railroad or that sort of thing. Today, people who have money use it almost entirely on pleasure—travel, entertaining, going out to restaurants and parties, and that sort of thing—and on improving their surroundings and, last but not least, themselves. To do that you've
got
to feel and look your best. Do you see what I mean? I mean, if you don't look young and attractive—well, for all you're worth, you might as well be poor.”

Photo by Louis Mercier

The
Social Register
—is it still the goal?

19

The Dying Art of Social Climbing

It used to be that an upper crust could not exist in the United States without the thousands of persons clambering to penetrate its shell from underneath. Certainly, if this had not been the case, the crust would not have been as cohesive and recognizable as it was and would simply have been an amorphous collection of rich people looking worried. “Blessed be the social climbers,” those who considered themselves to have been better than others must—or should—have murmured to themselves from time to time as they contemplated their lot; “without them, we would be unwanted.”

In Europe, it was always different. Those who were of the aristocracy knew who they were, and so did everyone else, and that was that. You couldn't
climb
into European aristocracy, not even by marrying into it. In the United States, something more than a title was always required to be of the topmost social level, which was probably why the topmost social level in America often ended up resembling very much what a European would consider the middle class—moored there like a kite in a tree. Old Mrs. Vanderbilt, “Queen of Newport Society,” repaired to her pantry after every dinner party and painstakingly counted her linens and her silver. Henriette Seligman, doyenne of New York's Jewish society during the early part of this century, entertained like a mad thing in her Manhattan town house—with meals that were always catered by Schrafft's.

In the United States, the social climber's relationship to society was
the opposite of the mountaineer's to Everest. The social climber didn't climb simply because society was
there
. The social climber created his own mountain, and the best social climbers met at the top, at ringside tables, with all the people they moved out of Brooklyn to avoid.

With these facts in mind, social climbing has never been a difficult art. Essentially, all the successful social climber needed—like any other aerialist—was guts, determination, skin the thickness of rhinoceros hide, and a knowledge of the ground rules. Social climbing was not for the faint of heart or the easily discouraged. Even so, there were always some who were better at it than others. It helped, for example, if the climber was reasonably good-looking. If he or she had dandruff, chronic halitosis, a wooden leg, or was hopelessly overweight, his or her rise was less swift. It was, on the other hand, always helpful to look well in clothes, to have an easy smile, to be able to dance, play tennis or at least backgammon, to be witty—but not
too
funny, which was off-putting—to enjoy gossip, to be able to drink well, not to make a big thing about a person's morals, to be able to remember names and faces quickly, and to know at any given moment just who it was whom everybody hated. It went without saying, if you were interested in social climbing, that you were rich. All this was true as recently as a decade ago. But today, social climbing is becoming a dying art, and it has become so for a simple reason: Nowadays it's so easy. One cannot consider as a true art form what has become as simple as a childish exercise in finger-painting.

For example, it used to be that the kiss of death for any social climber was to be caught at it. The social climber used to have to affect an air of indifference towards his goal, to pretend not to care whether or not he achieved it, to insinuate himself gradually and oh-so-gently into the perfumed waters of the people he wanted to get to know. The social climber used the traditional avenues—hard work (or at least the appearance of hard work) for charities, hospitals, churches, and worthy civic causes, and from there into the better clubs and dinner parties. It was a climb, in other words, within the social framework that prevailed in any given city.

Today, all that has changed. Now the social climber seldom beats around the bush. If he cares at all, he simply lays his cards on the table and says, in effect, “Look, here I am. I want to get in, and if it costs
I'm willing to pay.” Needless to say, this makes for a cut-and-dried situation, but one that is not without a certain amount of excitement. It may be exciting for others to know that here, now, is a person nobody had heard of a year ago—with money, or at least some money, from God knows where—willing to put himself on the line to get to mix with whoever are supposed to be the right people in town.

Today, the main thing the climber needs is recognition. Someone should say, “Here comes So-and-So,” when So-and-So enters the room or the restaurant door. Recognition means the press, the name or the photograph, or both, in the social columns. It used to be that this could best be achieved through the use of a social publicist who, for a fee ranging from five hundred to a thousand dollars a month, “placed” items in columns about his clients. The publicist could also arrange for his clients' names to appear on certain lists, on the committees for certain benefits, and for them to be invited to certain art and theater openings as well as to parties given by people the clients would like to know. The publicist is still a climbing tool of sorts. “They dress them up in a David Webb pin, put them in Sarmi pants and trot them around,” says one public relations man. Marianne Strong, who has taken on socially ambitious clients in the past, now says, “All we can do is take them around to parties and introduce them to people. After that, they're on their own.”

Today's climber, however—in today's less constrained, less self-conscious mood—has discovered that the social publicist may have become superfluous. If you want publicity, you can do it yourself. If you want your party written up in Leonard Lyons's column, why not just invite Leonard Lyons to your party? In a recent, and brilliant, example of the dexterity with which this can be handled, an attractive woman had a large dinner party in her New York apartment with three important columnists present—three powerful and competitive women who do not really like each other. It was all right; they stayed in different corners of the room, and the hostess was mentioned in three newspapers in the morning.

If climbers take on this task for themselves there are a few simple basics to bear in mind. Here, then, are ten easy rules for today's upstart:

1. Find something about yourself to promote, get a label. That way,
people will say, “Oh yes, I've heard of her,” even when they haven't. The label can be based on anything, no matter how tenuous. Have a gimmick, an identifying fetish. Be “Mrs. Anne Kerr Slater, whose inevitable blue-tinted glasses and huge diamond solitaire … etc.,” or “Mrs. Reed Albee, who wears nothing but white in winter, nothing but black in summer,” or anything equally silly. People, including the columnists, will learn to spot you.

2. Be generous to your friendly society columnist at Christmastime. “I used to pay a publicist once a month, now I pay just once a year,” says one woman, obviously pleased with the results of her economy. Cash gifts, however, are frowned upon. A hand-me-down designer dress, on the other hand, is not.

3. Find a designer and spend a bit on his clothes. When asked, “Whose dress is that?” don't look puzzled and say, “Mine.” Designers employ publicists too, and if you spend enough their publicists will publicize you—for free. They will feed your picture to
Women's Wear Daily
and make sure that it is a picture of you looking your loveliest.

4. Latch on to, by all means—up to, if not including, threat of bodily harm—someone
big
, preferably from out of town, even more preferably from out of the country, certainly from out of your league, whom everyone will flock to your house in droves to see. Mrs. Robert R. Young built a whole house just to entertain the Windsors in, and when they were in residence, her parties were the most popular in Palm Beach. Royalty still carries weight down there, at least. Once you have made your Very Important Friend, cherish and cosset her. Lavish her with gifts and flattery and she will serve you well. Don't be shy. Zero in on the top people around. Remember that quite often the top people are sitting around twiddling their thumbs on a Saturday evening. Often they are the easiest to get because everyone else is too in awe of them to ask them to dinner. Splendor can create isolation.

In Washington, once upon a time, Mrs. Gwen Cafritz discovered that Supreme Court justices and their wives were so loftily regarded that they were being socially shortchanged. She fixed all that, made them her special property, and decorated her parties with justices again and again. Mrs. Cafritz's technique lives on. There is also the old but still workable technique of calling one Important Friend
to say you're having a party for another Important Friend, and then calling the second one to say you're having a party for the first one. Then you hold your breath and hope that at least one of your guests of honor shows up.

5. Be Jewish. Many of the most publicized “new” names recently have been Jewish, and this has nothing to do with anything in the so-called Jewish character. It is simply that it is better, in big-city society, to be Jewish today than it has ever been before. Never has social anti-Semitism been so unfashionable, nor have so many people been out to prove that they are liberal-liberal-liberal. If you can't be Jewish, sprinkle your guest list liberally with fashionable Jews and—even more important—with blacks. This is more than your social conscience at work if you are a climber. It is because you know that most reporters of metropolitan newspapers nowadays are liberal in their outlook. Your mixed racial and religious gathering will get more attention and more praise and sympathy than if you confine yourself to old-hat WASPs.