D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A t h e a m e r i c a n c a n c e r s o c i e t y ’ s a n n u a l l a u r e at e l u n c h e o n at c a f e b o u l u d i n p a l m b e a c h
Larry and Linda Smith
some people seem to have and are also unaware of. Her mother was aware for her, and she would be brought up to expect the best, and she would have it. After her mother’s marriage to Watts, Joanne was placed in a convent school on Long Island, and then Miss Beard’s in Orange, New Jersey. However, Margaret’s marriage failed. By the mid1940s, Watts had faded away, and Margaret, working in an exclusive Upper East Side dress shop, was eking out a living to keep the precious child in private school. By her mid-teens, the child was developing into a lady. Petite, well-formed, and buxom, with hair of naturally golden blonde. There was a kind of feverish mistiness to her hazel eyes, the kind that boys read as sex. Someone 36 QUEST
Peter and Pam Dupuis
Paula and Nikita Zukov
else might see sadness or anger. Then when she smiled, the sun beamed, gone were all hints of darkness. The temptress was a virgin. By age seventeen, a very young woman in Joanne Connelley’s world had only a handful of choices. College, if she could afford it (which she could not), or a job (which meant a menial one, for the glass ceiling was very low), or she could get married, perhaps the most legitimate pursuit in the minds of most women. A rich man was a very good idea. New York City in 1948 was the center of the world. The country had emerged from the war unharmed. The Depression had turned into the greatest boom in modern history, bustling at all hours of the day and night. There were thousands of
Karl Saxe, Jesse Araskog and Julie Reveley
Patrick Moore and Ralph DeVitto
clubs throughout the town, as well as in all the big hotels like the Plaza, the Pierre, the Ambassador, the Savoy-Plaza, the St. Regis, the Waldorf. It was a great big town of working-class neighborhoods, manufacturing and office districts and avenues for the rich. There were at least seven daily newspapers. There was no television. Everybody read the papers, often two or three, everyday. Republicans got the Trib in the morning and the Telegram in the afternoon. The Times went to the liberals and the hoi polloi read the News and the Mirror in the morning and the Post and the Journal in the afternoon. All the papers had their star columnists. The biggest was Walter Winchell. Then came Dorothy Kilgallen, and Cholly Knickerbocker, the latter being a nom de plume for a
Mark Cook
column called the Smart Set, in the Journal. They all wrote about society, starting with Barbara Hutton, whose coming-out party startled the nation. Then Brenda Frazier. Then Cary Latimer, Mimi Baker, and Cobina Wright, Jr. They were glamour girls, beautiful and presumably rich—a dream come true. This was how Margaret Watts saw her Joanne. A social debut was step one. Margaret didn’t have a dime, but there were ways. She had access to clothes, and the Infirmary Ball was a bargain. The girls paid $50 to bring one escort and $10 for each additional escort. On the evening of December 20, 1948, Joanne Connelley was presented with 124 other girls to society at the annual Debutante Cotillion
lu c i e n c a p e h a rt
Helen Bernstein and Helen Fealy