“For gosh sakes,” I said, becoming a little heated, “give her a break! Most of her admirers are intellectual—and so is she.”
“General Patton?”
“You bet—he comes from California and belongs to a scholarly set with the Huntington family! Besides that, she was a violin protégée in Berlin—”
“The violin? I thought she played the musical saw.”
“I guess I forgot that.” I made a face. “But she’s a genius, nevertheless.” I’d read that her mother bought her an expensive violin, a great sacrifice for her, knowing that Marlene was gifted as a young girl.
“Huh?”
“That’s right. She read German fairy tales when she was four—and could speak French!”
“Well, do tell.” Marty was trying on her shoes. “She’s attractive, I’ll give her that—but skinny as a rail. Like your ‘You can’t be too rich or too thin’ duchess.”
“She’s thin from exhaustion—the paper said she needed a long rest,” I said, rushing to her defense again.
“Sure,” Marty laughed. “At the St. Regis no less—reading letters from Hemingway or making a play for Salvador Dalí in the Iridium Room.”
“Salvador Dalí—at the St. Regis?” I asked.
“You bet. Think how great they’d be together—she’s as surreal as he is.”
Marty had a point, but Marlene Dietrich was fascinating to me, ever since I read that she’d studied at the Music Academy in Berlin with the famous violinist Carl Flesch. I marveled at her talent. Was it her fault men dropped dead at her feet? I could learn a thing or two from her myself.
106 Morningside Dr.
Dear Family,
What’s new around here is that we may have a new roommate, a friend of the Shuttleworths’. We hear she’s lovely—I’m sure she’ll fit right in. Marty has offered to take the studio couch in the living room for the rest of the summer.
If that wasn’t enough excitement—who should walk into Tiffany’s but Marlene Dietrich! She looked more glamorous than in her pictures—even in a USO uniform! The most interesting thing to me is that she studied with Carl Flesch! Ask Katherine if she remembers practicing from that Carl Flesch Scale System book—those scales every morning? Phil and I do!
You asked if I’d been practicing the cello. We’ve been too, too busy.
Love, Marjorie
P.S. Had a lovely dinner with Bill Craig. Please tell his mother the next time you play bridge.
Too busy whipping things into shape for the new girl! The big deal is splitting the rent—that’s a plus; with a little extra money we can all see the smash hits on Broadway—even Carousel!
As for dinner with Bill Craig, he took me to a fantastic supper club in Greenwich Village, Salle de Champagne, with marvelous food—all French dishes I’d never even heard of. It was the first real meal I’d had since arriving in New York—though I didn’t let on. How fun it was sharing the latest news about Story City.
And what would my family think if they heard that we’d eaten snails with champagne?
Chapter Eleven
JACK CAVANAUGH, the Irish clerk in the shipping department, looked at me and said, “So—ain’t seen the Empire State Building yit?” Throwing his hands in the air, he said, “Sure, you kin see five states from there! What are you thinking of?”
“Five states?” Of all the tall tales about the Empire State Building, I’d never heard that one. “Don’t worry—we have it on our list.”
“A list!” His eyes widened. “The tallest buildin’ in the world—on a list? Ah, I’d walk past it every noon just to admire’t—that’s when we were at the old store. . . .” As soon as he said “the old store” in that wistful tone, I smiled. If Jack wanted to reminisce about that store all day, I’d be there to listen. Tiffany’s was known as the “Venetian Palace,” on Thirty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, and there were giant pillars, seven stories high, surrounding the building, modeled after the Palazzo Grimani in Venice. It had been hailed by the press as “the highest mark of artistic excellence.”
Pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, he continued eagerly, “Oh, lass, you should’a seen it at Christmastime—golden garlands around the silver chandeliers, made by our own silvermen, and Christmas trees fancy as wedding cakes. Ah, the chauffeurs with their fine uniforms with all them buttons would drive up to the entrance wit’ the lydies dressed to kill, wearin’ enough pearls and diamonds to buckle their knees. Then Mr. Jansen—Mr. Tiffany’s chauffeur—would drive up in that swell cream-colored Stutz Bearcat with the wire wheels sittin’ on the running board . . . and he’d swap stories wit’ us—like in your Story City where you’re tellin’ tales all day long.”
It was true. Early in the morning the old folks gathered at Alsager’s meat market to speak Norwegian, the quilters in the church basement could trace every family back to the Runic Stone, and at every wedding, Story City’s church balconies were filled with uninvited rubberneckers looking for the latest gossip.
“And at Christmastime,” I told him, “we had a giant Christmas tree in the center of town, and our church was packed for the Junior Choir’s candlelight program, with a walnut carved candelabra ablaze with twenty-one candles, copied from one in Norway. Maybe not so fancy as those you saw, Jack, but ours was made by our own Norwegian craftsman.” The memory almost caused me to tear up.
When I described how the Story City Herald was sent to Norway every week, it made Jack’s eyes dance.
“So tell me that joke of your father’s,” he said, leaning forward, “the one you promised me.”
I laughed. “I can’t tell it as well as my dad, but it goes like this—
“There was this Norwegian by the name of Ole, who just got off the boat, and his cousin from Story City went to meet him. He was so proud to show him the Empire State Building, but disappointed by Ole’s reaction.
“ ‘But, Ole,’ he asked, ‘isn’t that the tallest building you’ve ever seen?’
“ ‘Yah,’ he answered, ‘but vait till ve see Story City!’ ”
Jack laughed, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief, and had me repeat it to the others in the back. I knew it was time to leave, past time. But it was his turn for a story, and I was mesmerized by Jack’s stories and his brogue. The elegant way he enunciated Tif-fany with the gentle lilt on the first syllable. When I commented on his Tif-fany, he said,
“’Tis an Irish name, lass.”
He shook his finger before I left. “Don’t ye be putting off going to that great building. And soon. Why not tomorrow?”
I said we would; it was the admission fee that was holding us back. The elevator to the observation tower was not cheap. It cost over a dollar!
SATURDAY MORNING MARTY and I were asleep at just before ten, when we felt a sudden jolt. Marty sat up, startled. I ran to the window. “What was that?” she called.
“Can’t see—the fog’s too thick,” I said, dashing for my clothes. “I’ll go to the lobby and find out.” Halfway out the door, I heard our Russian neighbor shrieking, “It’s a bomb—a bomb!” I headed for the stairs, not waiting for the elevator. In the lobby, people were gathering around the radio.
The startled desk clerk turned to me. “The Empire State Building—a plane crashed into it!” I was shocked—and moved closer to the radio. An army plane . . . lost in the fog . . . the Empire State Building was on fire! Unbelievable.
I ran up the stairs two at a time to tell Marty, urging her to join a group of us leaving for downtown.
“It’s too foggy,” Marty said, putting on her slippers. “I’m not ready—you go ahead.” I grabbed my purse and joined a gaggle of people waiting for the Riverside bus, passing shadowy shapes half hidden by the fog. We asked each other if the buses were running, but soon saw the headlights of one approaching. It was crowded as we squeezed our way in—everyone talking at once. Reaching midtown, the bus driver announced, “Everybody out, can’t go any farther.”
The police had cordoned off the
streets and a misty drizzle filled the air; a fire siren wailed a block away. Though the weather obscured the Empire State Building, I overheard snatches of conversation as more people surrounded us with umbrellas: “It sounded like a train wreck—” “I heard the roar of the plane and then this horrible explosion—” “There was screaming in our hotel—we saw flames down the whole building—” “Remember the man who jumped off the tower and killed a tourist—something bad is always happening.”
A stocky woman holding a striped umbrella spoke up. “My office—it’s on the thirty-second floor. I was there yesterday,” she said tearfully, as if the Empire State Building were a person and a treasured family member. She tried desperately to get a glimpse of the building, but the dense fog hung like a gray sheet. Black smoke mixed with water circled above.
It wasn’t long before the acrid smell became overwhelming. I coughed as my eyes smarted from the caustic fumes. I recognized that bitter smell. I knew it all too well. When I was a freshman at Iowa State College, in Ames, a fire had started in the chemistry building’s third floor while I was in a lab class on the second floor. We ran for the door at the first sign of smoke, but a guard would not let us leave our lab. We ran to the windows—fire trucks and the firemen were below, looking up at us, while billows of black smoke poured out from above.
That third floor! So secret that there was a guard posted each day at the entrance to the building, and the stairway was blocked above the second floor. Everybody knew it was a top secret war project, but that’s all we knew. After the fire was under control, not a word of explanation was offered. Nothing to worry about, we were told.
That pungent smell of smoke had haunted me ever since, and this time it made me queasy. Maybe a half hour after our arrival, a harried policeman dashed over. “Nothing you folks can do here—move along now.”
I couldn’t leave fast enough.
WHEN I REACHED our apartment, Marty wasn’t there. At first I thought she was at the Shuttleworths’, but when I checked, they hadn’t seen her. I asked the desk clerk, but he shook his head. I checked with the elevator operator. Yes, he had taken her to the lobby. All I could do was wait. And wait.
When she finally burst in late that afternoon, I jumped. “Where have you been?”
“Where haven’t I been is more like it!” she groaned, slumping into the couch, her coat dripping. “I decided to go and see it—it seemed to be the only way to find out anything. Then of all the dumb things”—Marty stopped to catch her breath—“when I was ready to come back, I realized that I’d left my coin purse. I didn’t have a red cent—nothing!”
What she did have, she explained, was a fifteen-dollar check from her father. He had wanted her to visit Washington, D.C., while she was on the East Coast.
“I knew the stores were closed because it’s Saturday—but I finally found a bank open, and tried to act like I knew what I was doing, without a stitch of identification. I was lucky they’d cash it.”
“Honestly, Marty—cashing all that money for one single nickel?”
“I did think about jumping over the turnstile—but if I’d been caught—then what?”
She reached for an ashtray from the couch, and I ran to the fridge for ice water, relieved she was back safely. In the kitchen I saw the clock.
Ohmygosh. Jim would be at the door in half an hour. My hair—straggly, straight, a mess!
“Try a scarf,” Marty volunteered. I found my blue-fringed scarf, but still my bangs hung straight down like Mamie Eisenhower’s. And it was five forty-five. Jim had never been this late. I jumped whenever the phone rang, my pulse racing, trying to pretend I didn’t give a hoot. I fooled around with the scarf, tying it in front, in back, behind the ears, and in an inspired moment, a Dorothy Lamour–style turban.
“Ta-da!” I turned to Marty as I tucked in a few loose strands.
She bit her lip. “Better—but you need big dangly earrings—and a sarong.”
I tied the scarf back under my chin. What difference did it make? How could I fuss about my hair after what had happened today? Innocent people had been killed and families torn apart forever.
The clock said six-thirty. Seven! I felt like Madame Butterfly kneeling all night waiting for Lieutenant Pinkerton. But Jim wasn’t like that; he’d never stand me up. Common sense told me there had to be a reasonable explanation. It could be related to the Empire State Building, or a lockdown of the navy. He’d call the next day. Of course he would.
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, July 29, we went to the Shuttleworths’ to read the New York Times, gasping together in horror at subheadlines, such as “2 Women Fall 75 Stories” and “Motor Hits Another Building,” and with relief at one that read “Many Offices Unoccupied.” Our eyes swelled with tears and we shook our heads in disbelief when we saw the front-page photo of the gaping hole torn between the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors.
We read the headline over and over, and read the article several times, our hearts going out to the families of those who’d met such a desperately sad fate the previous morning. I kept having to remind myself that it was not a dream.
The paper, in part, read:
B-25 CRASHES IN FOG
HOLE 18 BY 20 FEET TORN THROUGH NORTH WALL BY TERRIFIC IMPACT
BLAZING “GAS” SCATTERED
FLAMES PUT OUT IN 40-MINUTE FIGHT—2 WOMEN SURVIVE FALL IN ELEVATOR
By FRANK ADAMS
A twin-engined B-25 Army bomber, lost in a blinding fog, crashed into the Empire State Building at a point 915 feet above the street level at 9:49 A.M. yesterday. Thirteen persons, including the three occupants of the plane and ten persons at work within the building, were killed in the catastrophe, and twenty-six were injured.
Although the crash and the fire that followed wrecked most of the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors of the structure, causing damage estimated at $500,000, Lieut. Gen. Hugh A. Drum, president of the Empire State, Inc., Corporation, said last night that an inspection by the city’s building department and by other engineers and architects showed that the structural soundness of the building had not been impaired.
Landing Advice Disregarded
The plane, en route from Bedford, Mass., to Newark on a cross-country mission, had flown over La Guardia Field a few minutes before the crash, and its pilot, Lieut. Col. William F. Smith Jr., deputy commander of the 457th Bomber Group and recently decorated for his service overseas, was advised by the control tower to land. Instead he asked for the weather at Newark Airport and headed in that direction.
Horror-stricken occupants of the building, alarmed by the roar of engines, ran to the windows just in time to see the plane loom out of the gray mists that swathed the upper floors of the world’s tallest office building. The plane was banked at an angle of about fifteen degrees as Colonel Smith swung it in a curve out of the northeast.
It crashed with a terrifying impact midway along the north, or Thirty-fourth Street, wall of the building. Its wings were sheared off by the impact, but the motors and fuselage ripped a hole eighteen feet wide and twenty feet high in the outer wall of the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors of the structure.
Brilliant orange flames shot as high as the observatory on the eighty-sixth floor of the building, 1,050 feet above Fifth Avenue, as the gasoline tanks of the plane exploded. For a moment, watchers in the street saw the tower clearly illuminated by the glare. Then it disappeared again in gray murk and the smoke of the burning plane. . . .
Fire Commissioner Patrick Walsh, who arrived to take personal command of the fire-fighting, said the blaze was the highest one in history, surpassing even the celebrated Sherry-Netherland Tower fire of 1927, but that it was a comparatively easy one to extinguish. The flames were put out within forty minutes. . . .
Flight Started at 8:55 A.M.
Colonel Smith was a native of Alabama, where his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. F. Smith, still live. . . . He was a varsity lacrosse man and a member of the football squad at West Point, from which he was grad
uated in 1942. He had completed 100 missions over Germany, and was only recently decorated for his combat services. . . .
Archbishop Spellman issued a statement last night expressing his sorrow at the catastrophe. The Chancery Office of the Archdiocese announced later that prayers would be offered in all of the city’s Catholic churches today in memory of the dead, for the consolation of their relatives and for the recovery of the injured.
Archbishop Spellman will celebrate mass at 9 A.M. in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with the same intentions, and a special pontifical high mass of requiem will be sung by the Archbishop for the dead at 10:30 A.M. Wednesday.
Copyright © 1945 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.
“Did you read about La Guardia?” Mrs. Shuttleworth asked, tapping her finger against the paper. “He risked his life entering that burning building! But, land’s sake, on weekdays, there are ten thousand people working there. Good thing it was Saturday!”
“Or hundreds of tourists if it hadn’t been so foggy,” Marty added. I shivered. “And it could have been us, if we’d had the money.”
106 Morningside Dr.
Dear Family,
What a catastrophe!! We felt the crash here—our building rocked! I hope you didn’t worry about me—I did go downtown, but couldn’t see a thing with so much fog and smoke. Mayor La Guardia was the hero—a real Superman. Imagine taking an elevator up in that burning building! No wonder New Yorkers are crazy about him!
I thought of you, Dad—joining the volunteers during all the fires. I’ll never forget those two rings on the telephone in the middle of the night and then you’d have to run downtown to get on the fire truck. The smoke reminded me of the chemistry building fire, too. Does anyone know what that war secret is all about?
Please save the LIFE magazine—without a radio we don’t hear all the news.
Love, Marjorie
No news from Jim, that’s for darn sure. Not a single word all day Sunday. My head is spinning with excuses.
But it paled in comparison to the news that filled the newspapers. This tragic crash had changed so many lives.
Summer at Tiffany Page 9