D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A t h e N e w yo r k c i t y b a l l e t ’ s fa l l g a l a
Johanna Murphy and Maryli Karske
parties, she once told me, were orchestrations she had learned during her early days of marriage, from observing Frances Goldwyn, and Dorothy Paley. They were timed and organized down to the minute. They set the standards that other women of fashion followed in the film colony. In her seventies and early eighties, a lot of her nolonger-invited guests referred to her and her dinners as pretentious and silly. A couple of others who were frequent guests disagreed. Billy Wilder once told me he always loved dinner at Edie Goetz’s, especially after a long 34 QUEST
Charles Askegard and Candace Bushnell
Fe and Alessandro Fendi
workday at the studio, because “you knew you were going to have a helluva good time and a helluva meal.” Jean Howard put it another way: “They all badmouthed her behind her back but kissed her (you know what) to be invited.” Dinner parties in New York in the twenty-first century have many of the same qualities, although a lot of the formalities have been set aside. Jamee Gregory’s New York Parties: Private Views take in the diversity of style that is prevalent today. Among the hosts and hostesses featured are: Hilary and Wilbur Ross, Tory Burch, Joan and Michael Steinberg, Zang Toi, Jamie
Natalie Portman
Marie Nugent-Head
Drake, Whitney and James Fairchild, Michael Kors, Antony Todd, Blair and Alistair Clarke, Shafi and Alex Roepers, Frances Beatty Adler (whose time of year for dinner parties is especially the Christmas holidays), Fernanda Kellogg and Kurt Henckels. Jamee’s first New York dinner parties came when she became engaged to her husband, a New York boy brought up by sophisticated and elegant parents who emigrated here Russia’s fall to communism. The Gregorys were highly cultured, as well as stylish. The first summer she was married, her mother-in-law,
Sarah Jessica Parker and Peter Martins
who was going off to Europe for the summer, told her she was going to lend Jamee her chef so that she “could learn to cook.” As it happened, the cook spoke only Spanish, which Jamee didn’t understand. She was, however, a wonderful cook, and while Jamee could learn by watching and keeping notes, it also occurred to her that the cook could prepare some menus for dinner parties. Soon the newlyweds were using the cook’s talents to everyone’s advantage. That’s where the first seeds were planted for this beautiful book. More books. One night, Lars Bolander and his wife
Pat r i c k m c m u ll a n
Bill Wright and Yvonne Durant