The Vanity Fair Diaries

by Tina Brown

Monday, May 28, 1984

  Just back from Henry Kissinger’s surprise sixty-first birthday party at the River House, billed as “knock-out knockwurst,” which turned out to be bulbous Germanic sausages and sauerkraut. It was pouring with rain as it was a year ago when we all—the same group multiplied by twenty—convened for his sixtieth at the Pierre. I really have no right to be at the Henry fests, it’s only Harry they want. I sat between the CBS correspondent Mike Wallace and Norman Podhoretz, with Jayne Wrightsman’s unflinching coiffed hair on the other side of him, and Mica Ertegun, Ahmet’s chic, decorator wife, on the other side of Mike. Podhoretz, with his hard, pitiless nose and humorless skunk’s eyes, fascinates me. He is so conceited and arrogant, I find it endearing. He has an utter uninterest in being anything but right, snuffling with impatience as he shovels up his sauerkraut. He and Mike Wallace argued across me about the General Westmoreland $120 million libel case against CBS. [CBS made a documentary that proved Westmoreland had contributed to the public reaction to the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War by manipulating intelligence about enemy strength in order not to embarrass LBJ.] Podhoretz assured me Westmoreland would win because he deserves to.

  “You wait till you see our brief. It will knock you out,” said Wallace.

  “Yeah, I’m on your case. I wrote a book about Vietnam, remember? Messenger the brief over to me tomorrow.”

  “And, Norman, read it.”

  “Yeah. I’ll not only read it, I’ll have OTHERS read it.”

  “And let’s not forget how much this case means to our profession,” said Wallace.

  “Libel? Yeah, well, as it happens I support the side of the argument that works against me professionally. I’d prefer to operate under stricter libel restraints if it curbed the flagrant abuse of facts in our society.”

  This ping-pong continued most of the dinner. Whenever Mike brought up a statistic, Podhoretz corrected him. Note to self. Must assign a Mike Wallace profile. My instinct is CBS will win and then Mike will be a hero. (Maybe even a cover.)

  I was enchanted to find Alex was there escorting Tatiana, terrifying in her giant gentian glasses. He looked touching to me, standing erect in front of the windows that looked out onto the mist over the East River. I probably irritated Tatiana by raving about her daughter Francine Gray’s new novel, Lovers and Tyrants. So well does it catch the two of them, it obviously concerned and embarrassed Alex. “You know, we were upset when we first read it,” he said. “That was Francine’s view of us for a time. She has changed, but that was her view.” I wished I hadn’t brought it up. Pat Buckley was there laughing her voluptuous laugh and Barbara Walters in a white Grecian-style dress and Susan Gutfreund, noticeably toned down since last year. It’s funny how I always dread going out and then get so much out of it when I do. Social life is the trigger for all the best stories I have ever got, or at any rate, it helps me secure, or conceptualize, most of them. Ed Epstein told me that when Clay Felker was editing he would walk by each desk at lunchtime and say, “Why aren’t you out?” It’s essential if you are an editor to do so, and being an introvert by nature, I remind myself of this each time.

  Friday, June 1, 1984

  Bill Attwood, old friend of Harry’s in the newspaper business, called to tell me he had heard from a close friend of Donald Newhouse that the Newhouses were fed up with losing money and very annoyed about the Murdoch piece. It threw me off my stride. Could Si have been duplicitous? Or could it just be Donald? Yet the night before I had in fact been at a benefit dinner at Donald and Sue’s before a dance display for disabled kids and they were both so nice to me. I am choosing not to believe Attwood’s rumors of displeasure.

  Tuesday, June 19, 1984

  Life still tense at the office. We saw Mort Zuckerman last night flushed from buying US News and World Report. In a way it’s a complication. Having just taken on the Atlantic Press, his book publishing business, Harry doesn’t know if Mort now wants him to edit US News instead—Mort keeps suggesting he does but he’s such a tease. He seems obsessed with Harry, which I find appealing. He’s in love with journalism and being around journalists, which is understandable given how boring real estate is. Of course, a news magazine would excite Harry more, but I fear Mort would be a highly strung press baron. I doubt he understands that great editors can’t be controlled and I don’t want Harry moving to DC, where US News is based. Now that we have settled in together I would so hate his abrupt departure again!

  New York is in constant motion with its opportunities and its changing landscapes. Makes you long for the stasis I used to rail against in London. The dinner we saw Mort at was for Gore Vidal, who was fuming at me about Wolcott’s review of his new book, Lincoln.

  “He’s a very good writer who unfortunately can’t read,” Gore said. “I just wish he’d stick to TV, which he knows about, and stop screwing around with writers like me.” He’s very square in the face now, Gore, and walks with a high-stepped pussycat walk. He was nonetheless cordial when he stopped hissing to me about Wolcott, which was a relief because I have seen him when he is not. Mort told me he’s now deeply in love with Gloria Steinem. He has good taste in bright women who at least are age appropriate. Si has returned from his European tour in a good mood, except we now have to cut editorial costs. Condé is so erratic about budgets. First Alex refusing to give me one, then suddenly imposing one, then changing it midyear. I sat for three hours with Pam McCarthy doing a slash-and-burn cut, which brought some of my dithering about personnel into sharp focus.

  Thursday, June 21, 1984

  The relentless David O’Brasky dragged me to see Perry Ellis, the third of the fashion big three, to solicit their ads. This time Dick Shortway, Si’s trusted corporate confidant and spy, came with us, probably so he could suggest the leverage of Vogue in the background as additional pressure. Shortway has a genially pitted salesman face and Ronald Reagan square-shouldered suit, worn with the flash of a gold ID bracelet. David was looking especially anxious and plump. His tiny legs were pumped into his seersucker pants like inflated sausage-shaped balloons.

  Having already met the quietly flamboyant Calvin Klein and the watchful, cool Ralph Lauren, I was interested in Perry Ellis. He’s the rising yuppie of the trio, a Virginian better bred than the other two, with a sportswear line that seems to be on fire. They are all fiercely competitive, Ralph I think most with Perry because of the class angle.

  The three of us got to the Ellis headquarters on Seventh Avenue at two p.m. Inside the offices, everything was the new high-key low-key. The inevitable ravishing petite Japanese assistant wearing soft ballet pumps. Small cakes and biscuits were on trays outside for the staff (Perry is known to “do” tea), and canvas easels on trolleys stood around with swatches of fabric pinned on colorful combinations of Ellis’s famous college knitwear. Chairs so delicate that O’Brasky nearly swiveled out the door when his thighs sank on the seat. We sat around facing Ellis, lawyer and boyfriend Laughlin, and his backer. Ellis himself has an ageless prettiness. Very light blue eyes, light southern voice, tousled wavy hair, rumpled khakis; perfect really. His business partner was also midthirties, with a frosted blond crop, rimless glasses, and stubble. He just watched and said nothing. Michael Roberts said Perry and Laughlin sometimes take a Balducci’s picnic bag to Fire Island for dinner and watch the sunset.

  I was surprised at how Ellis led the negotiation, kicking off with elaborate, smart praise of VF—its wit, edge, taste, intelligence, etc. etc.; then, as we sat there waiting for the payoff: “My question is, how much is intelligence worth in terms of the advertising dollar? I worry about the MIX as well.” My heart stopped, but he meant the advertising mix, it seemed, and in doing so fingered an O’Brasky weakness—accepting the occasional cheesy ad, which lowers the glossy tone and puts off the chic brigade. But who are we to turn them away when these precious folk won’t commit? O’Brasky talked too much, shifting from ham to ham. At moments of acute nerves he refers to Si as “the little short guy on the fourteenth floor, the one
who pays our bills.” Shortway looked sly.

  “Now look, Perry,” he creaked, “we know that what you care about is book position. Now as you know, this book is getting hot. Right now, these positions are yours to buy. Six months from now, they won’t be. You could be trying to buy into the book and find that Ralph and Calvin are there where you want to be!” Overplaying of hand! Perry immediately bridled. “You’ve just put your finger on my worries, Dick,” he said. “The sense of indiscriminate acceptance of ANYONE’S ad pages.” (Boy, these three are competitive.) And so it went on, getting down in the end to the buzz-cut partner negotiating for discounts. Still, much jubilance going down in the elevator. We scored.

  Now I am sitting in our dream rental at Quogue consumed by excitement. It is just possible we may be able to buy the house! It is for sale for $125,000, the complication being that the price doesn’t cover the land it stands on. That belongs to John Post of the old Quogue family, signified by the road to the beach, Post Lane. We would have to separately rent the land. Still, that doesn’t daunt us as much as it probably would most Americans, as renting land is pretty common in the UK, and surely worth it for the haven it would give us. I’d like to be able to do it with my own Tatler money and a mortgage.

  Last night we drove to East Hampton to have dinner with Mort Zuckerman and Gloria Steinem, just the four of us. Mort is living in the guesthouse while his own is rebuilt. It startled me to see what an enormous mansion his new house is becoming for just him. Why does anyone need a house this size? The guesthouse is enchanting. Much, much nicer in my view than the monsterama in progress; so intimate and romantic.

  I am in awe of Gloria but feel she underestimates me. More bristly than sisterly, I have to say, though I like her laconic sense of humor. Mort is obviously intimidated by her, which he enjoys.

  There is something immensely likeable about Mort. An idealism, despite the cutting brain, he tries to hide with slight facetiousness that makes him vulnerable. He’s obviously half-terrified of spending 183 million bucks on US News and who wouldn’t be. The numbers are insane.

  How rich and fast-paced life has become. Ed Victor walked into my office in a burst of good cheer and told me that at the ABA the editor in chief of Crown had told him he would pay in the region of 250K for a novel by me! The catch is, I have no time to write it. Ed said, “I hope you’re still keeping a diary. I see it as my retirement pension.”

  Wish I did have time to write a book. I’ve always thought my “outer life” was research for the day when I’d just withdraw and write about it. The only reason I go out is observation greed. Churning through the cast of New York society, I see it as the ever-moving slipstream of a novel.

  At Billy and Jane Hitchcock’s dinner in Gracie Square the careless beauty of the rich was never clearer. Amanda Burden’s slim, fragile shoulders in a red chiffon spaghetti-strapped dress and biscuit-colored legs. Bill Hitchcock’s big jaw and opinionated mustache. But the New York establishment is much, much duller than the British. Everyone is so bland, the pleasantness is grinding, the absence of irony or eccentricity crippling. Maybe I am just a cultural misfit.

  Ran into the Harper’s editor, WASPy, sardonic Lewis Lapham, who said to Harry, “Have you caught the New York disease?” “What’s that?” “MONEY madness,” Lapham said (he’s writing a book on the subject), “fiddling with your calculator all the time, doing little sums on scraps of paper, knowing you will never have quite enough. It’s the sickness of the town.” How did he know?

  Thursday, July 12, 1984

  Kathleen Tynan brought in a very promising and entertaining writer from the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier. Has wild hair and great sardonic delivery. He told me that he had tried to connect with Richard Locke, but found him a “state-of-the-art literary asshole.” He has the wit, I think, to write a VF column. He wants to do so under the pseudonym of Vox, which I will give a try though I don’t much like pseudonyms.

  Nick Dunne is working on a piece that will make a lot of waves in LA and Washington. It’s about the murder of Alfred Bloomingdale’s mistress Vicki Morgan. Alfred paid her a monthly stipend of eighteen thousand dollars to cater to his various perversions. Nick and I have been totally fascinated by this story since we saw the item about the murder. It lifts a lid on Nancy Reagan’s air-kissy social circle and the way this affluent, pampered Bel Air crew really operates. (Betsy Bloomingdale, Alfred’s wife, is Nancy’s closest friend. Alfred was the department store heir and founder of the Diners Club.) We all first heard about Vicki Morgan when she sued the dying Alfred for $5 million palimony and there were those vivid, soap opera scenes of her trying to get into the hospital. Icicle Betsy cut off the corporate checks and banned her from seeing Alfred before he died. That cast Vicki into penury and she shacked up with Marvin Pancoast, a cracked, devoted loser she’d met in a bout in a mental hospital. She bullied Pancoast and made him her slave until he couldn’t take it anymore and beat her to death with a baseball bat. Or so it’s been reported. Of course, the tension of the story is in whether or not Betsy had Vicki bumped off, especially since it was leaked that Vicki had sex tapes of Alfred.

  One rumor strand suggests Betsy used Pancoast to do her dirty work. Or perhaps Pancoast didn’t do it at all. He took the fall and was promised a payout later. (It seems more likely it was a crime of passion on the part of Pancoast, thinking he was putting Vicki out of her misery about her downward mobility, but there’s plenty of reasonable doubt to make a great, page-turning society yarn.)

  These kinds of questions anyway are what allow Nick to riff on decline and fall. He’s just as turned on by the melancholy details of a life on the skids as he is by high life on a roll. He has been there and he has tasted it and he never forgets how it felt. He understands Vicki Morgan’s pain and is instinctively on her side against high-and-mighty Betsy. He starts sniffing the air like a journalistic truffle dog when he sees the Morgan murder covered only on page five or six in the Los Angeles Examiner, with hardly a mention in the LA Times, where Betsy has influence.

  I need three more Nicks! A VF formula that works is beginning to finally suggest itself. Celeb cover to move the newsstand, juicy news narrative like Vicki Morgan, A-list literary piece, visual escapism, revealing political profile, fashion. If we nail each of these per issue it’s gonna work.

  Sunday, July 15, 1984

  Copy flooding in now for the September issue, and it’s tense. So many on deadline and all need a tremendous amount of work. Vicki Morgan piece is going to need a huge makeover from Wayne. Thank God Nick accepts Wayne’s very radical interventions on structure and flow and needed additions. When I leave for lunch I see them knee to knee at Wayne’s cubicle and know all will be right with the world. It’s always such a relief when we have a great news narrative in an issue. Without that core I end up overassigning B features in desperate hope to conceal the lack of that One Great Thing. The rest of the September mag can now be Horst’s great pics, a profile of Bobby Kennedy’s son Joe who’s entered politics, a charming feuilleton by John Guare about a famous Penn still-life called Theater Accident, Alison Lurie’s terrific short story, and Michael’s glorious fashion spreads.

  Michael excelled himself this month with a style spoof shot by Tony Snowdon of a country house murder plot using Tom Cruise as the model. I just noticed today that in the last picture of a slinky blonde in a silk evening dress there is a pair of legs in socks and walking shoes sticking out upside down from an Egyptian urn. “Was it the countess who turned out these exquisite corpses? Or were they all—in the end—fashion victims?” Michael’s caption copy reads. He’s so inventive. God knows what anyone will make of it. He’s been off this week with Bill King shooting a Paloma Picasso cover with an outsize scent bottle held up by a butler’s hands. It’s very chic but probably very uncommercial, and we have no fall back. I guess the fuchsia silk gloves she’s wearing and huge pink rock on a pearl necklace have a lot of glamour, which will please the fashion advertisers at least. Michael has now forge
d his own quiet power base inside the art department, effectively redoing all their layouts on his stuff when they go out to lunch and then waiting for me to arbitrate. He vanishes when he hears Alex is coming down.

  Monday, July 16, 1984

  Am in overdrive trying to buy 160 Dune Road! Legally so complicated with it just being the house without the land. Harry is going to meet with the owner, John Post, in Boston. I said, find out how many kids he has, because if a lot we will for sure end up with the land at a later date. One thing I have learned about wealthy families is the kids always fight about money. If there are more than two kids, one of them is sure to be in financial trouble, or marry someone who is, and persuade the others to sell. And we will be happily waiting. We couldn’t afford it now anyway, so doing it in stages couldn’t be better. The owner, Mrs. Clarholme, said to be the widow of a gold miner, wants to sell all the furniture in the house, which delights me, as I lust for that Bakelite radio.

  The New York Times today attributed to Gail Sheehy’s Gary Hart piece Mondale’s reconsidering him for the veep ticket. That’s influential. We are finally showing the news chops. It made all the waves we hoped. Last weekend we went to dinner at Nora Ephron’s at Bridgehampton with the director Sidney Lumet, the gossip columnist Liz Smith, the writer Ken Auletta, and the agent Binky Urban. Nora looked pale and slightly frail, but much less neurotic now that she has hooked up with the screenplay writer Nick Pileggi. Lumet was very loud and theatrical but enthralling when cornered on his own subject, i.e., making movies, particularly on the difference between English and American actors. Americans, he says, find it harder to get the texture and range because of the paucity of material. “The muscles you flex, after a training period of Hamlet and Faustus is irreplaceable,” he said. “Good material changes you.” He said Mamet’s amazing new Glengarry Glen Ross is probably the one good play of the last five years. “Isn’t it extraordinary how three great American plays, Iceman, Salesman, and Glengarry are all about salesmen?” Made me want to rush off and do it as an essay for him to grade. Or maybe—what am I thinking!—an essay for Schiff.