Fashion Show, or, the Adventures of Bingo Marsh

by James Brady

  I wondered whether, while in Japan, he called them “Japs.” It wouldn’t have been Bingo, otherwise. Still, I did ask.

  “Why shouldn’t I? We won the war, didn’t we?”

  He also got the Chinese and the “Japs” mixed up, and declined to visit China on an official junket of American journalists and business leaders.

  “Maybe the Chinks didn’t attack Pearl Harbor. But they were certainly capable of it.”

  On his return Ambrose and I gave it yet another old college try.

  We talked Bingo into going to a World Series game with us. I wangled an invitation for both of us to the Gridiron Dinner in Washington. Ambrose introduced him to a justice of the Supreme Court, and I recommended books he might read.

  His ignorance remained invincible.

  “Clive Neville says Elizabeth Taylor has regular electrolysis treatments or else she’d have a clearly discernible mustache. It all comes of taking hormone treatments for her back problems.”

  For all his Yale education, he really did share the mentality of people who bought magazines at supermarket checkouts.

  “I draw the line at UFO’s or that Hitler is really still alive in Argentina,” he told me once, “but I believe firmly in dowsing rods and ghosts.”

  He’d seen a ghost himself, once. “And Ames. We were staying with friends in a manor house in Kent and playing with a Ouija board and there were the usual rappings and creaking noises and mysterious moans you always get in an old house and then our hostess said, ‘Hark!’ and clear as you are to me now, a nun walked through the wall and across the room and out the other side, rattling her beads and sobbing. Most amazing thing.”

  “They were serving brandy at the time?”

  “No, actually,” Bingo said, oblivious to sarcasm, “it was a very decent old port.”

  He was trying to get the Big Three automakers to spend more advertising money in the magazine and we flew to Detroit for a lunch at some prestigious club where auto executives gathered and they’d arranged a very pleasant private room and an audience of the senior people at Ford. The Ford executives were smooth, making the introductions, appending charming little grace notes of background for each man. Then Bingo introduced our party. When he got to me he said brightly:

  “Like Henry Ford himself, Mr. Sharkey is also from the Midwest. From Iowa, the Cornhusker State.”

  “But isn’t Nebraska the Cornhusker… ,” one began.

  “I’m actually from Ohio,” I said, trying to move the conversation along to more constructive lines.

  “Whatever,” Bingo agreed cheerfully.

  Drinks were served around by liveried waiters, and the talk became more general, including a brisk discussion of just which network news people preferred to watch these evenings.

  “I always watch CBS,” Bingo said, as proud as if he owned the network.

  “You like Dan Rather?” a Ford man asked, swirling the ice in his glass.

  “No, Mr. Paley.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “I see him around Manhattan,” Bingo said, “and he’s always very nicely dressed. Well-tailored suits, and his shoes look English.”

  “Oh?”

  “Most television people wear blazers and such. Mr. Paley maintains a certain standard.”

  “So that’s why you watch…”

  “It’s things like that by which we’re all judged, don’t you think?”

  Now the conversation moved on to current headlines, turning at one point to General Noriega and the Panamanian situation. Bingo listened for a few minutes.

  “I never understood how canals work,” he said, “you know, how water flows uphill just because they have locks.”

  “Hydraulics, Mr. Marsh, simple hydraulics. But that isn’t the root of our problem with Noriega. You see, he’s a drug dealer whose government in a few years will take control of the canal under terms of…”

  “But just how does it flow uphill?” Bingo insisted.

  A patronizing explanation ensued which seemed to satisfy Marsh. Then, shifting gears, he said, “You know, I think Princess Tiny Meat was originally from Panama. He’s some variety of spic, certainly, whatever his name.”

  “Princess Tiny Meat?” someone asked, wondering what this might have to do with the Canal Zone and Noriega.

  “Yes, you know, that’s what Fire Island calls him.”

  Before we left, Bingo distinguished himself with one final, nearly awesome, gaffe.

  “Cristina Ford, is she still around? We used to put her in the magazine a lot, so much more fun than Mr. Ford’s other wives.”

  He had these blind spots, totally opaque. Trouble was, he kept sharing his ignorance with others.

  “Did you know Paul Newman was Jewish? It certainly stunned me. I realize anyone can have a nose job but those blue eyes…”

  When Eastern Europe began to stir and tyrants fall, Bingo wondered aloud, “Which Germany is the Commie part?” He thought “Becket” was about the man who wrote Waiting for Godot, something else he’d never seen or read. “I believe two men sit in garbage cans and converse. It’s an allegory about something but I forget what.”

  He was quite convinced he had the solution to the AIDS crisis.

  “They ought to all stop putting their things in one another’s bottoms,” he said. “Before I had the fight with Profonde, I told him so. I said, ‘Pipi, do something else with your friend if you must, but please stop doing that.’ And, you know, I really think if he took my advice he wouldn’t be so swollen up today.”

  Such memorable moments now became all too infrequent as Bingo slid deeper into a personal slough of despond, and even the competition seemed to be ganging up.

  Years before he’d talked of Fashion as the “new” Vanity Fair. And when Condé Nast relaunched a real Vanity Fair in the early eighties, he was delighted at how feeble it was.

  “Some Alex Liberman sleight of hand on the art direction and a marvelous Hollywood column by Nick Dunne, and that’s about it. It was paranoid of me to think it meant trouble.”

  When the first editor and publisher were dismissed, Bingo rubbed his hands in genuine glee. When old Leo Lerman was seconded from Vogue’s “People are talking about…” feature to act as interim editor at Vanity Fair, Marsh clucked sympathetically. If patronizingly.

  “I hope it doesn’t tire him unnecessarily. Such a good and faithful servant.”

  When Newhouse hired Tina Brown, a young Brit then in London editing (at the age of twenty-six) Tatler, Bingo welcomed her snidely to New York, calling her “the latest boy wonder.” That was 1984. By now, Marsh was no longer rubbing his hands, no longer sympathetic, had ceased being snide. Vanity Fair was by now a “hot” book; it was, in fact, what Fashion had been ten years before. Tina Brown, virtually alone, had turned a flop into what even Marsh called “un succès fou.”

  “The most depressing thing that’s happened to me since Babe Paley died,” he informed friends.

  “But, Bingo, it’s not as if it’s Vogue. Vanity Fair isn’t your competition.”

  “Of course they are,” he insisted.

  “But Vanity Fair doesn’t even cover fashion.”

  “Of course they do,” Marsh shouted. “Fashion isn’t clothes. It’s… it’s… life!”

  Then, one unhappy afternoon and quite innocently, trying to be sociable, Barrier Reef delivered the coup de grace.

  He’d dropped by Marsh’s office unasked, something that always upset Bingo, and when admitted reluctantly to the presence, perched himself on a corner of Bingo’s Louis Quinze table.

  “We don’t get much chance to talk, mate,” said Barrier, “and I thought it might be matey one of these evenings if you and I stopped by a pub, so to speak, and went on the piss together.”

  I really think that was what did it for Bingo.

  79 Sows’ purses out of silk.

  “I’M quitting,” said Bingo Marsh.

  I’d been summoned to his place at Arcachon, in southwest France, sixteen hour
s, two planes, and a rented car from New York. He stood on the doorstep as I drove up the long gravel along the avenue of cedars, unable, or unwilling, to skip the final dozen paces to greet me.

  “Emotion is exhausting. And Ames,” he said, extending a languorous hand.

  In fairness, he looked exhausted. His hair had once been blond and then salt-and-pepper and finally gray, and it was now pure snow. Only a month had passed since last I saw him and his hair had gone suddenly white, dead white, a great shock of it. I was stunned to see how he looked.

  Now, voice piping, words spilling out, he catalogued unhappiness, how Grottnex and Nunc and Barrier, with his unwanted intimacy, and even the AIDS crisis and the “pansies” were to blame.

  “I’m sending Sir Hugo a short note, courteous but definite. And I’ll assuredly wish him and the magazine well.”

  I was shocked into silence. And we still stood on the doorstep. In ten years it was the first of any of Bingo’s houses I’d actually been invited to, and now, after traveling thirty-five hundred miles to get here, it appeared as if I were not to be asked inside.

  “Bingo,” I said loudly, “I’ve been driving for a while, and I’d like very much to go inside and to wash up.”

  “Oh, you mean do number one?”

  Ames wasn’t with him nor were any of the children, and after being permitted to “do number one” or any of his euphemisms, I was led out onto a splendid verandah overlooking the sea. Our vervain tea came in cups from Moustiers. I didn’t know this but was so informed by Marsh. Then a cassis, in special stemware whose name I have already forgotten. The sun fell over the bassin toward the still, mirroring water and we sat there under the great pines of the Landes, staring out toward the oyster beds. Jet-lagged, I fear I nodded.

  “Yes,” said Marsh, “I’m putting all this in writing to Hugo.”

  I came out of my funk.

  “Bingo, you can’t quit. This magazine is your baby, your life. But if you go, you’ve got to tell Grottnex personally. You simply don’t do things like this in the mail.”

  “Oh,” he said airily, “I’ll send it by hand, by private courier, as Olivier of Hollywood used to send his dirty socks.” He looked very pleased with himself.

  I bit my tongue, cutting off a taunt, knowing he was afraid of Grottnex and would never go through the trauma of quitting in person. Instead, I resumed trying to change his mind.

  “Bingo, the man paid you and Nunc nearly half a billion dollars. Don’t you owe him something? You promised to stay on for five years, to run the magazine that makes all the dough. You’re the editor and the heart of…”

  “They’ll do very well without me,” he said primly.

  “Bingo,” I said, almost pleading.

  He got up now and skipped across the verandah, quite cheery, as if tremendous weights had been shucked off.

  “… and I’ll buy that ski resort I’ve told you about so often. And Ames.”

  It angered me, this emphasis on him, on his future, what I saw as dereliction of duty. For ten years I’d worked for this man and his magazine and couldn’t imagine either the magazine or my work without him. Glumly, not really expecting an answer, I said, “And just who becomes editor? Barrier Reef? Cap’n Andy?”

  “No,” Bingo said brightly, “you will.”

  Now I was the one pacing the polished tile, mine the voice cracking with emotion.

  “Bingo… ,” I stormed in protestation, “I’m a writer. I’ve never edited…”

  “There’s no one else. Count Vava’s got his conspiracies. Madame Stealth is blind. Le Boot, a drunk. The women are hopeless, once a month they stay home and you’re not permitted to ask why. No, it’s got to be you. You’re the only one.”

  We railed at each other, hashing out arguments. He ended the debate in typical Marsh fashion:

  “You can too make sows’ purses out of silk.”

  Eventually he permitted me to surrender to exhaustion and tumble into an upstairs bed, having pointed out the quilt the maid had just turned down had been sewn up by hand by peasant women in the Camargue.

  As we breakfasted next morning in the gazebo (“of local manufacture by artisans; hand-wrought and doweled, not a nail to be found in it anywhere”) on oranges “flown in daily from Tangier” and wicked black coffee in Giverny cups, Bingo returned to his theme, insisting I had no choice.

  “I entreat you to do this for me, John. I realize you’re not a trained editor. But you’ve got taste and brains and instinct. More important, I trust you. I’m leaving the magazine’s fate in your hands. Who knows what atrocities might be committed otherwise? Not Grottnex, of course, he’s a decent man even if another sort entirely.”

  This was a new category: not our sort but “another sort entirely.” But this was no time to prick Marsh’s snobbery or indulge myself. His face reflected genuine concern.

  “You really do care about the magazine, don’t you?”

  “Care? Care? It’s all I care about in the world. And Ames.”

  “Suppose Grottnex has his own ideas? Suppose he wants Reef as editor?”

  “Oh, he values my output,” Marsh said, loftily and imprecisely. “He’ll name you.”

  There was more of this, and then I got back in the car to drive to Bordeaux for the plane to Paris. Bingo ordered a servant out into the road to alert me to oncoming traffic, and as I backed the car slowly along the graveled drive, Marsh walked on the grassy verge beside me. I noticed again how white his hair had turned and, subconsciously, raised a hand to run fingers through my own hair. He noticed and smiled, rather shyly, and unlike him.

  “Yes,” he said, “old. We’re getting older.”

  “Well,” I said, looking for words. Bingo saved me from emotion.

  “You remember what Hillary said as he started up Everest?”

  “ ‘Because it’s there’?” I said, falling in with his jest. But he shook his head, lips pursed.

  “No.” Then, after a brief pause, and with a joyous shout:

  “Tippicanoe and Taylor too!”

  He got even that wrong, but my mouth fell gaping, inspiring him to skip happily along the drive.

  “See, you didn’t think I knew things like that. About history and such…”

  He’d tried to make a joke, and he loved me for recognizing it. Or so I thought, watching him for a few minutes in the rearview mirror until, small and indistinct, he skipped from sight.

  80 They’ll cheat you, these lads, if they’re dead.

  GROTTNEX went along with Marsh, and I was named editor the following week.

  My salary was nearly doubled, I was offered Bingo’s office (and declined it; you don’t dance on graves). I called the staff together to say the obvious, that I wasn’t Marsh, nor an editor, but a writer and journalist who believed in them and in this magazine.

  “Was Bingo dumped? Did Grottnex fire him?”

  Reporters are paid to be skeptics, and I didn’t resent the question. “No,” I said, “he resigned.”

  There were sly, knowing looks. At a certain level of celebrity, no one is ever fired; people “resign.”

  “What’s all this stuff about changing the magazine, putting Diane Sawyer on the cover?”

  “The magazine will continue to be what Mr. Marsh made it,” I said, feeling prissy. I also felt like a liar, knowing what Sir Hugo had tried to talk Bingo into doing.

  That first night as editor I went home drained. I wrote a letter telling Babe I was proud to have been named editor but unsure of my professional qualifications.

  “It’s fine editing my own stuff. Less sure about editing other people’s. And without Bingo as a goad, where do the ideas derive week after week? What do I do about Vava and Madame Stealth? Bingo kept them sullen but not mutinous. Can I do that? The art department and Tyson Rambush are a total mystery. Paperwork, administration, personnel, haggling over people’s salaries and expense accounts… such things appall me. I’m not as smart as Tina Brown or Anna Wintour or John Fairchild. Murdoch’s s
aid to be starting a new magazine, Mirabella. There are too many fashion mags already, and we all compete for the same reader, the same advertising. Now I know why editors get paid so much…”

  Within a week she wrote back, chewing me out.

  “You’re as smart as any of them. Just work hard and treat people decently and pick their brains for ideas and remember what you always told me, the advantage Fashion has in being a weekly over all those monthlies. See, Shark, I did learn something from you. So stop feeling sorry for yourself. All love, Babe.”

  Nunc, of course, objected to my appointment. Sir Hugo, plump bonhomie and smiles, heard him out, Nunc, after all, holding considerable stock in the Grottnex empire. “Well, let’s give the lad a fair trial, eh?” Nunc grunted, which Sir Hugo took as assent, and when I encountered Nunc one morning in the lobby and he pawed at his nose, I assumed this was meant to be congratulatory. Marsh’s departure was major news in the papers, front page in the Times. My appointment drew somewhat less attention, for which I was grateful. P.J. le Boot resurfaced, took me out for drinks, and got so drunk in his elation he fell down and I had to get him home. Pinsky sent a basket of fruit.

  “Pinsky does not do champagne suppers. But consider this a token.”

  Cap’n Andy sent me an effusive letter pledging fealty. Tyson Ram-bush rolled his eyes and called me “Mister Sharkey.” Ambrose the lawyer commiserated over dinner he paid for with his own cash. “No one replaces Bingo; no one’s that odd.” Once a week I went uptown to go over the issue with Grottnex. Barrier Reef was around, of course, and I assumed he spied and gave periodic reports.

  Occasionally I was summoned upstairs to Nunc’s suite of offices.

  “That lad Thaxter, did you know him?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Before your time, I imagine, retired years ago. A copy editor. I think the lad is dead and someone’s bilking the company, cashing his pension checks.”