| Aileen
Mehle. The dowager,
doyenne and queen of society columnists in America, Mrs.
Mehle is said to have been “discovered” by Truman
Capote who first started talking about her in
New York (buzz-buzz) when she was writing a society column
in Miami. Born deep in the heart of Texas (El Paso), her
stiletto wit, always accompanied by the signature satin-y
slap and a tickle made her a must-read for anyone with
the slightest appreciation for the puncturing of pomposity
and the human comedy.
She
first came to the New York Daily Mirror, which was
the Hearst morning tabloid which competed with the New
York Daily News, in the late 1950s, writing under the nom
de plume Suzy. There were seven major
daily papers in those days, four morning papers the News, the Mirror, the Times, the Herald-Tribune,
and three afternoon papers: The World Telegram and Sun, the Journal
American, and the Post. And they all had a society
column of one kind or another. Although the then left-leaning Post,
owned by Wall Street banking heiress Dorothy Schiff,
eschewed the notion of society in homage to the notion of the
proletarian idea. She was, it turned out, ahead of her time. The
number one social column for decades had been Cholly
Knickerbocker, also a nom de plume which
was then the domain of Igor Cassini, the suave
and sophisticated brother of designer Oleg Cassini.
The reason for its prominence was circulation and syndication.
Cholly Knickerbocker was in the Hearst afternoon paper, the New
York Journal-American and had been created first by a
man named Maury Paul who coined the term “café society” after
the repeal of Prohibition when society began its long and ultimate
descent into proletarian manners and mores that we find ourselves
with today.
By the late 50s, early 60s, Mr. Cassini (known
as Ghi-ghi to his legions of socialite friends)
left most of the grunt work – the writing, that
is, to another young Texas girl who’d been in
town only a few minutes longer than Mrs. Mehle – Liz
Smith. This juxtaposition of Texas girls covering
the social scene never was to be, it turned out, harmonious.
As the French would say (even in Texas) “c’est
la vie.”
Number two on the list of prominent society reporters in those days was the Daily
News column written by Nancy Randolph (also a nom
de plume) who was more of a hat-and-white-gloves sort of reporter (Cholly
Knickerbocker was a little clubbier and intimate than Randolph’s textbook
reportage where a big story was who got kicked out of the Social Register for
marrying whom). The Daily News, of course, had the largest circulation
in the city.
The New York Times and New York Herald-Tribune never
had a society gossip column per se, being above all
that (or so they pretended — or were possibly
uninterested — the Trib was owned by
the very rich and top drawer social Jock Whitney)
but they did have society pages that were devoted to
the ladies who lunched and volunteered and married
(and eventually died). Divorce, even when it occurred,
was never touched on and only vaguely alluded to in
those papers.
And the World Telegram which started out life in the 19th century
as three different papers, namely Joseph Pulitzer’s The
New York Evening World, had a column written by another hat-and-white-gloves
proper lady named Mimi Strong (Mrs. Stephen van Rensselaer
Strong), now a top literary agent, whose husband’s family went
all the way back to the real Knickerbocker families.
So when Mrs. Mehle arrived on the scene, The Daily Mirror’s
number one columnist was Walter Winchell, who was and remains
the most widely read gossip columnist in American press history (30 million
people a day!). These were, it would turn out, Winchell’s last days and
so society, or café society, or the horsey set (who often mingled with
café society) was open season for the clever and never-not-amusing Mrs.
Mehle, now known as Suzy. She had free rein and they were ready for someone
to rustle up the silks and satins. And that she did.
A very goodlooking woman, movie star glamorous (a real babe), she was already
the lady of choice to a lot of panting South American playboys and rich American
sportsmen (the accepted word for rich boys who didn’t do anything but
play). And she always had a few words of wisdom that were sufficiently sympathetic
and empathic for the ladies of the smart set, so she was never a threat. Although
she had already been married and was mother of a son, for a long time she was
romantically linked to Barbara Hutton’s first cousin Woolworth
Donohue. Later in her life, she had a long relationship with film
producer Walter Wanger but she never married either man.
As light as the bubbles on a glass of champagne as she could be in print, she
could be feisty too, and it was some of her press feuds that brought her attention
(and always victory) and endeared her to her gathering fans who reveled in
her snarky seasonings. Once in a feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor,
she referred to the Hungarian-born beauty as Miss Chicken Paprika of 1914.
Zsa Zsa lost, alas, my dollink.
By the late 1960s, the seven major dailies were reduced to three – the
three which remain today (the new New York Sun notwithstanding): The
Times, the News and the Post. Mrs. Mehle left the defunct Mirror for
the Journal-American, replacing Cassini who got in trouble with the
Feds because of international public relations clients that he hadn’t
registered with the State Department. There she was given the moniker Suzy
Knickerbocker (“well, they finally gave me a last name” she began
her first column in the afternoon paper). When the J-A went belly
up, she went off to the News, or the Post, or vice versa
and before she was through, wrote for both of them.
By that time (the early 70s), she was the
only society columnist in New York, and
therefore the most important one in the world. Liz
Smith, not so incidentally, had moved on to her own
column which took up the reins of the great Winchell
column, where she remains today also. After a number
of years, Mrs. Mehle moved to Women’s Wear
Daily and W where she remains today.
In the process, the transmogrification of what was called high society, and
then café society was succeeded by the jet set and eventually what became
(dubbed by Women’s Wear) Nouvelle Society and the society of
charity benefits. And Mrs. Mehle, still writing as Suzy (they dropped the Knickerbocker
when the J-A ended) became not just the chronicler and commentator
of society in New York but the actual ad hoc arbiter of what people regard
as society, and there she remains today (the Mrs. Astor may she R.I.P.) — still
looking like the movie star she never was but might have been.
Her items now have more to do with Brad and Angelina that Bitsy
and Reggie because, as she might possibly agree herself, those days
are gone for ever and the reading public (what’s left of them) want to
feast on celebrity-dom, no matter how dumb they might be.
It’s been an amazing feat for this little girl who it’s hard to
believe came from deep in the heart of Texas, for her prominence has long been
as international as the Windsors (who reportedly still court, if you’ll
pardon the pun, her). One doesn’t see her out and about as much as she
might have been in the days of yore, although if there’s an important
event, she’s there. And let’s face it, she's more than “been
there/done that.” And although it might seem slightly, or even more than,
inappropriate, considering her ascending years, to say so, she’s still
has that aura of the babe she was when she first blew into town and the Tiny
Terror (her nickname for Capote) told all his friends, she was the funniest,
most outrageous society columnist you’ll ever read. The man was rarely
far from the mark.
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Albemarle,
Rufus
Aston, Muffie Potter
Basso, Dennis
Benedict, Daniel
Capehart, Jonathan
Cominotto, Michael
Curry, Boykin
Dahl, Tessa
DeWoody, Beth Rudin
Duchin, Peter and Brooke
Duff, Patricia
Eaton, Phoebe
Fales-HIll, Susan
Fekkai, Frederic
THE FULL LIST
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