There are, of course, many degrees of debutante parties, just as there are degrees of debutantes. Take, for instance, one of the largest and best-known debutante functions in New York, the Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball. Customarily given at the Waldorf-Astoria, where the grand ballroom is decorated in clouds of pink and silver fluff, pink tablecloths and twinkly lights, the Cotillion annually presents a hundred or more debutantes to “society.” Around the dance floor, the tables are largely filled with members of New York business firms who have agreed to sponsor bits and pieces of the Cotillion and, from tiers of boxes above, parents and friends of the debutantes, plus patrons and patronesses of the Cotillion and members of the Cotillion Committee, survey the proceedings below. In the bar outside, white-tied young men press relentlessly toward a small band of perspiring bartenders, and it is clear that in the face of such a jostling, thirsty throng, the hotel has abandoned any pretense of seeking proof-of-age from the young drinkers. In the anteroom outside the ballroom, games of chance offer rewards ranging from color television sets to ladies’ gloves to Waring Blenders to free photographs “By Famous Fashion Photographer, Irving Penn.” Domestic champagne circulates in this area for two dollars the glass and, through an opening in the crowd, one may see a shiny new automobile being raffled off at one dollar the chance. If the New York Cotillion seems to have a faint odor of commercialism, to say nothing of Las Vegas, this perhaps can be forgiven, since the whole affair is for the benefit of the New York Infirmary, and all the merchandise offered as prizes in the lottery games has been donated. Just how much money the Cotillion makes for the Infirmary is not recorded as a rule, but, according to Mrs. Eugene W. Ong, a former Cotillion chairman, “The Infirmary could not keep its doors open without the Bail.”
Within the ballroom the lights dim as the debutantes are presented from the center of the stage. The orchestra plays a tinkly version of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” over and over again as, one by one, the girls step forward, grip their escorts’ hands for wobbly support, and sink into a deep curtsy. A master of ceremonies intones each girl’s name over the loudspeaker. Once presented, the young women and their escorts perform a series of Cotillion figures, after which, in somewhat thin and reedy voices, the girls sing “The Coming-Out Waltz”—the lyric of which was written by Mrs. Eugene W. Ong’s daughter when she was a debutante:
We’re coming out tonight,
We’re having a fling!
Debs dressed in yards of white,
Waltzing we sing—’cause—
Beaux flock around tonight,
Flowers are part of the scheme!
Tomorrow may be just another day,
But tonight we are part of a dream!
Which sums things up pretty well, at least during the early part of the evening.
Later on, it is possible for the mood of the evening to change. A young man in tails reels drunkenly down a staircase and, all at once, a small crowd gathers around a sobbing girl. It seems the young man, in passing, stepped on the hem of her huge white gown, and a large section of the underskirt has ripped out at the waist; as the girl’s mother and friends surround and try to comfort the girl, the elaborate dress is daintily upraised revealing the puffs of petticoats, in layers, like the components of a parfait. “Look what some slob did to Marcia!” the girl’s mother cries repeatedly to anyone who will listen, and others join the group and begin debating what to do. The cost of the dress is mentioned, and there is talk of legal action and insurance. Others suggest that the problem be taken into the ladies’ room where, perhaps, the matron can supply needle and thread. Through it all, the debutante herself keeps crying, “Oh, Mother! Mother! Leave me alone!” her voice childlike and despairing.
Not all debutante parties should be judged by this one, however. For all the needed dollars it brings to the New York Infirmary, the Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball is not one of the more fashionable balls in the United States. In New York, the Grosvenor Ball, given at Thanksgiving time to benefit the Grosvenor Neighborhood House, is far more exclusive; it not only presents far fewer girls, but it costs considerably more than the Cotillion. (To put a girl on the Cotillion’s list costs only about one hundred and fifty dollars; the Grosvenor costs over one thousand dollars per debutante but, since it benefits a charity, much of this sum is deductible.) The Junior League Ball and the Junior Assemblies are also considered more important, socially, than the Cotillion, and the Assemblies are more important than the Ball. At all of these, one can feel surer of being presented to Real Society. As a New York social secretary explains, “I can almost always arrange for a girl to be presented at the Cotillion, and, sometimes, the Junior League Ball—using pull, that is. But the Assemblies and the Grosvenor she simply must manage for herself.” A truly important debutante, of course, will be presented at all of these balls—the Cotillion thrown in, as if for good measure—plus a number of others, plus at a ball of her very own. “A girl who has a little dinner party in the Sert Room, and who has been presented at the Cotillion afterward—and nothing else—hasn’t had much of a debut,” another social secretary says. No, for not enough money has been spent.
Another way to gauge the importance, or realness, of a girl’s debut is to consider at which point during her eighteenth year she makes her first, and therefore official, emergence. The Christmas-to-New Year’s holiday season is perhaps the gayest and the busiest—with, in most large cities, several hotel-based parties scheduled each evening—but, within that period, there are subtle gradations of status. A girl whose debut is placed toward the New Year’s end of the week has less to look forward to, and is therefore less favored. There are, however, three other distinct “little” seasons, and each of these has its own connotations. The June, beginning-of-summer coming-out season is probably the least fashionable; one associates June with impoverished, shabby-genteel families, with teas, and with unstylish Boston (where June is as fashionable as any other season). Then there is the Thanksgiving holiday season which, for its very brevity, was for many years considered the most fashionable coming-out season of all. But recently the most wanted season, in terms of everything that matters to a debutante and her parents, has been the somewhat longer fall “little season” between Labor Day and the start of school. In New York, this comes to a sort of climax with the Tuxedo Autumn Ball in Tuxedo Park. In other cities it is the scene of large and lavish private parties given at country houses and under tents. Looked at cynically, the fall season gives a girl a fine and early start on a long social season that will continue through Thanksgiving, move into full speed at Christmas, carry on through spring and wind her up, exhausted, in June.
There are other ways for a girl to come out than at a ball. In theory, she can come out at a luncheon, a tea, or at a dinner dance. But nowadays coming-out luncheons have virtually disappeared. Teas continue to be popular in a few cities—notably in the South—but each year sees fewer of them. (A debutante tea, of course, is not the one-lump-or-two variety; it is a “great tea” with champagne, an orchestra, dancing, and “the same guest list you’d invite to a ball—around a thousand.”) As one debutante says, “Teas are too exhausting. They last only two hours, but a girl has to be on her feet the whole time, receiving.” It leaves a girl too tuckered to enjoy any parties that evening. Dinner dances are also disappearing as coming-out media, and the reason for the waning importance of all these—leaving it a question of a ball or nothing—is that the raison d’être for the debut itself has changed gradually in the last fifty years. Formerly, a girl’s debut was to introduce her to friends of her parents, and single men, if present at all, were as a rule older than she. Today, the reason is boys. Luncheons and teas are disappearing because, as one social secretary explains, “Boys don’t like to go to parties in the daytime.” Adults today are pushed into the background and, by their own admission, enjoy going to coming-out parties—even their own daughters’—far less than their parents did a generation ago. “I remember what a lovely time we all
had in those days,” a Boston grandmother reminisces. “When each of us in our set brought a daughter out, it was a chance for us all to get together. Now? I don’t understand what they do at these parties any more. If a granddaughter of a particularly dear friend has a party, I go, put in an appearance, but I leave as soon as possible.” Older people leaving a party as soon as possible can have consequences, at a large private ball, more severe than a ripped-out underskirt. It can result in a rented mansion being vandalized on Long Island or in any number of less publicized incidents. During the early morning hours at a recent Connecticut party, for instance, it was for some reason decided—by the time the guests had gathered at the swimming pool—to break all the glassware. For several hours afterward, guests danced and swam with bare and bleeding feet.
And so it has become a rule of thumb that to bring out a daughter properly she must have a ball of her own. (There was a time when small groups of girls would band together and, to share the expenses, give a joint ball; in the affluent 1960’s, this has become according to one girl “the cheapie way” to come out.) That Society is now addicted to the private ball was nowhere more apparent than in San Francisco where the G. W. Douglas Carvers did the uncommon thing in buying their own ball-sized tent, instead of renting one, along with the glasses and the folding chairs, from a caterer. The Carvers point out that their tent is an investment. They have four daughters. Their tent also makes them popular with their neighbors. (The James Floods borrowed it for the 1966 debut of their daughter Elizabeth.) And the Carvers like to point out that theirs is, after all, only a small tent—just sixty feet in diameter. Larger San Francisco parties—like that of the William Wallace Meins for their daughter—must still turn elsewhere for tents. To canopy more than a thousand guests, the Meins had to import one from Los Angeles. San Francisco parties have gotten so large that Millie Robbins, a local Society columnist, has commented, “They’ll soon have to bring the girls out in the Cow Palace—which might be rather appropriate!”
As the number and scale of private balls have climbed steadily since the Second World War, so have the possibilities for decorating, outfitting, and staffing them. When the Henry Fords spent a reported $50,000 on a party for their daughter, the affair made news and raised eyebrows here and there. But many American families, with names less well-known to those outside Society, today spend that much and more to bring out their daughters in what they consider the proper style. It has become unfashionable to have merely one dance orchestra on hand; to make their parties sure of success, many parents hire as many as three—one for dancing, one for jazz, one for folk-rock—and place each in a separate part of the garden so that young guests can traipse from one style of music to another. It is also unthinkable to hire one of the big Society bands—Meyer Davis’s, Lester Lanin’s, or Peter Duchin’s—without its leader. Meyer Davis, though he has some ninety different orchestras, had, as of 1966, bookings to appear with his band up into the year 1985 which Davis, a man in his seventies, wryly suggests that the lawyers handling his estate will have to fill. Davis will not personally appear with his band for an evening for a penny under five thousand dollars. The good old days of unbridled spending on parties and such frivolity are not dead and gone. They are here.
Obviously, a debutante ball on the grandest possible scale is an enterprise to be undertaken neither lightly nor by the inexperienced and, in recent years, professional party-planners have found themselves in a lucrative business. These social secretaries, as they designate themselves, are for the most part women. Almost all are members of well-connected (or almost well-connected) families who, for various reasons (for the sheer thrill of it all, they say), use their social connections to help them make a living. They are nearly always gracious and charming and yet, at the same time, they are shrewd businesswomen who know how to come to quick terms with the most recalcitrant Teamster or member of the electricians’ union should the occasion demand. The undisputed dean of all social secretaries was the late, great Juliana Cutting of New York, and New York’s three most prominent social secretaries—Mrs. William H. Tew, Mrs. Katherine Palmer, and Mrs. Chester Burden—admit that they carry on in her illustrious tradition and clutch Mrs. Cutting’s image, figuratively, next to their hearts. (Mrs. Tew, probably the grandest of the three, has actually allowed the myth to grow up around her that she decides who goes into the Social Register and who does not; this is untrue.)
A New York parent going to one of these three ladies will first be asked to select a date for the ball—and it is wise to do this as early as possible—literally when the child is a toddler. All three ladies have brought out their second generation of debutantes, and have dates selected for a third. A date, once picked, is immediately registered with the other social secretaries. The three are scrupulously honest; if Mrs. Tew has selected a date for a debut, Mrs. Palmer would never dream of giving it to a client of hers, nor would Mrs. Burden. They are competitors, but in ladylike cahoots. Not all social secretaries are as trustworthy; pirating of dates occurs, particularly in smaller cities, and it is a practice that plagues innocent San Francisco. When it happens, there is only one practical course for a hostess to take—make sure that her party is at least twice as lavish as her rival’s. A San Francisco mother, hearing that her claim on a date had been jumped, rushed to the house of the usurper and, being told by the butler that the lady of the house was indisposed, seized a precious Chinese vase in her white-gloved hands, flung it to the marble floor where it shattered into bits, and cried, “Tell the bitch I know her for what she is!” and departed.
Social secretaries insist that the more completely they are allowed to plan and run a coming-out, the better it will be. One social secretary recalls a party where the hostess insisted on making her own arrangements for the orchestra. On the night of the party, did the orchestra show up? Of course it didn’t, so there you are. Given carte blanche, a social secretary will arrange for all the catering, the liquor (champagne is recommended because, as one social secretary says, “It gives them a pleasant little bun on”), the music, tent, flowers, decorations, invitations, photographs, notices in the newspapers—right up to the cleanup crew the day after. “As a result of television,” Mrs. Tew says, “everybody wants celebrities at their parties.” Celebrities who, for a fee, have appeared and entertained at coming-out parties range from Victor Borge and Ethel Merman (of whom parents approve) to Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones (of whom the parents approve less).
A social secretary selects a motif for each party and, looking back, will recall, “I did her in pink geraniums, and married her a year later in wisteria,” or, “The family colors are purple and white, so we did her in lilacs and white crocus.” But perhaps the most important ingredient that a social secretary supplies is her list. In New York, such a list may contain twenty-five hundred names—two thousand boys and five hundred girls. The boys’ list is, of course, more important, and each secretary jealously guards and maintains her names. One social secretary keeps her list in her safe-deposit box at her bank, and will not even let her own secretary see it; the quality of her list is a social secretary’s most precious asset, and social-climbing parents with ambitions for their sons must, in order to get anywhere at all, get their sons’ names placed somehow on a social secretary’s list. Actually, it is not all that hard, and the composition of the list is not much of a mystery. The names come from prep school and college catalogues, from the Social Register, from the pupils at private dancing classes, and from those who attend “junior” or sub-debutante dances and, in New York, particularly the Groton-St. Mark’s Dance. This dance, given each year by the two schools, serves as a major clearing house for stags. The behavior of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy at the Groton-St. Mark’s Dance can determine his social career for years to come, and will decide whether or not his name will appear on a list the following season. At the dance, which is usually given at the Hotel Pierre, soft punch and sweet biscuit are the only refreshments served. Social secretaries pos
t emissaries in the Hotel Pierre bar to take down names of boys who go there for sturdier libations.
There is one other reason why a boy’s name may not appear on a social secretary’s list. In New York and in other large cities, few Jewish boys are listed—or, more exactly, boys with Jewish-sounding names, since social secretaries have no access to facts about a boy’s religion. It is at the debutante stage that what is known as “The Great Division” begins to take place, and Jewish and Gentile Society are parted like the Red Sea. In Jewish Society there is, of course, a similar list of boys’ names, similarly carefully maintained, by Jewish social secretaries for Jewish debutantes; in New York, its backbone is provided by the pupils of the Viola Wolff Dancing Classes, the Jewish equivalent of Mrs. William de Rham’s. But it is rare for a boy’s name to appear on both a Jewish and a Gentile list; when this happens, it is assumed to be through an inadvertence.
The Right People Page 8
