The champagne flows, and the noise level in the room rises.
Seated at her table in a corner of the room with her friend Rose Perlman, Granny Flo Myerson says, “Is that Edwee over there? What’s he doing?”
“Yes, that’s him.” And then, startled, “Why, Flo! Is your eyesight improving?”
“Of course not. I can’t see him. I can smell him. I know all my children by their smell.”
“He seems to be having some sort of discussion with the what-do-you-call-it. The man who’s going to run the film. The projectionist.”
“Well, don’t let Edwee get near me. I don’t want to talk to him.”
In another part of the room, Blaine Trump is saying, “You don’t spend fifteen thousand on a Christian Lacroix and expect to see another woman walk into the room wearing the same dress! As far as I’m concerned, he’s already one of yesterday’s designers. I’ll never buy a dress from him again.”
Moving about the room, Mimi suddenly finds herself face to face with the woman she saw Brad lunching with at Le Cirque. She extends her hand. “Good evening, I’m Mimi Myerson.”
“I’m Rita Robinson.”
“Oh, yes. My husband’s told me about you.”
The other woman eyes her narrowly. “You think you’ve won, don’t you?”
“Won? I didn’t know we were fighting over anything. But I will say this: you’re very pretty. I can see why he was attracted to you.”
“Was? What if he still is?”
“And I must say you don’t look pregnant, dear.”
The two women move apart.
“She’s here,” Mimi whispers to Brad.
“I know,” he says grimly.
“Did you know she was coming?”
“Of course not. Does this upset you?”
“I told her she was very pretty. You have good taste, Brad.”
“How did you know that was her?”
But Lily Auchincloss has moved in to join them and wants to talk about Cancun. “It’s an entire new city!” she exclaims.
Now there is another flurry of activity at the door, and more flashbulbs go off, as Elizabeth Taylor makes her entrance, looking radiant, a rope of diamonds plaited through her hair.
“It’s something of a surprise to see you here, Miss Taylor,” a reporter says.
Elizabeth, well rehearsed as always, replies brightly, “I had to sniff out the competition, didn’t I?”
There is polite laughter because everyone agrees that Elizabeth is a damned good sport to make an appearance at Mimi’s party.
Now Edwee Myerson has joined his wife at their table, and as his sister, Nonie, passes, he reaches out and seizes her arm. “Where is the Goya?” he hisses.
“And where is my money?”
“I know you had something to do with this!”
“And speaking of that, how much do you know about the science of encausticology, Edwee?” she says.
“What’s that?”
“Encaustics—ink analysis. It’s something I picked up from my days as a magazine publisher. There are certain tests that have been developed by the FBI. There are X-ray fluorescence tests, and there’s something called the Mossbauer Test, which is a test for moisture. Using these tests, the age of any mark in ink can be determined with great accuracy—even something as small as, say, a question mark.”
“Just tell me where it is and you’ll get your money.”
“And when are you two leaving for Belize? I thought you’d be gone by now. Or is it Biafra? I never can keep those places straight.”
He glares at her.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I want to say hello to Elizabeth. I taught her to ride, you know, for National Velvet.”
“Are you that old, Nonie?” Gloria says.
His sister moves away, and Edwee grabs Gloria’s wrist beneath the table and squeezes it hard in his fist.
“Ouch, Edwee,” she says. “What was she talking about, ink?”
“Did you tell her about Belize, you little slut?”
“Ouch!” she cries. “She knew already. Ouch! Edwee! You’re hurting me!”
The conversation moves in swirls and eddies as new guests enter the room and old friends greet each other and as, with little gestures, the rich and famous recognize each other and congratulate each other on being rich and famous together.
“I’ve heard that some gay men make marvelous lovers,” someone is saying to Barbara Walters.
“I’d have to disagree,” Miss Walters says. “Most of the gay married men I know are very cruel to their wives.”
“I didn’t say husbands, darling,” the other woman says.
Greeting Mimi with an upraised champagne glass, Michael Horowitz whispers just two words. “Palm Beach.”
Promptly at seven-thirty, Mark Segal gives Mimi the nod, and she mounts the steps to the small stage and moves to the microphone. The lights in the room dim slightly, and a pink spot falls on her. The voices hush.
“I promise you there aren’t going to be any speeches,” she begins, “but I just want to tell you all how happy I am that you all could come. This evening is a happy occasion for me for several reasons: First, and most important, because we’ve been able to raise slightly over seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for the public library tonight.” (There is a round of applause.) “This money will go to the library’s Book Purchase Fund. I’m also happy because all of you people who did this will be the first to sample my new perfume—of which, understandably, I’m just a little bit proud.” (More applause, and calls of “Hear, hear!”) “But tonight I’m happiest of all for a very special, very personal reason. As some of you may know, this company was founded in nineteen twelve by my grandfather, Adolph Myerson, whose widow, Fleurette Myerson—Granny, will you please stand up?” (Granny Flo stands, and bows) “—is right over there, and his brother, Leopold Myerson. Years ago, as some of you may also know, the two brothers had a famous falling-out—though what it was all about nobody really remembers.” (Laughter.)
“It was about women!” Granny Flo says in a strong voice. (More laughter erupts all over the room over this.)
“Anyway,” Mimi continues, when the laughter finally subsides, “this falling-out created, sadly, a deep rift between the two branches of the family—the children and grandchildren of Leopold Myerson and what I guess you’d call my line.” (Laughter.) “But tonight, I’m happy to say, for the first time in almost fifty years, all my Myerson cousins and second cousins—all of whom I’ve gotten to know only recently—are here with us. We’re a united family again.” (Strong applause.) “Now, as I call their names, I’d like each of my cousins to step forward and be introduced to all of you. First, my cousin Louise Myerson Bernhardt, and her husband, Dick …”
One by one, as she calls their names, the Leo cousins step forward until they form a small semi-circle in front of the stage.
“Thank you all for coming,” Mimi says.
“I never thought I’d live to see this,” Granny Flo says in her loud voice. “And I had to live to be eighty-nine to do it.” (Laughter.) “And now that it’s happened, I can’t even see it. Blind as a bat.” (Sympathetic, light laughter.)
“There are a few other, very special people that I’d like to thank,” she continues. “First, my advertising director, Mark Segal, who has prepared the short—very short, I promise you—presentation that you’re about to see.” She gestures in Mark’s direction. “Next, my son, Brad Moore, junior, our director of sales. And finally, my wonderful husband, Brad Moore, senior.” Both Brad and Badger step forward and take small bows, to applause. “We’re all here,” Mimi says. “Together—one big happy family. Thank you all.” Mimi smiles, leaves the microphone, and moves quickly off the stage amid more applause.
Now the lights dim further, and the big screen descends from the ceiling. The lights dim altogether, and the screen comes to life with the sting of music and diamond flashes of sunlight on the water of Long Island Sound outside the Seawan
haka Yacht Club. The girl in the whiite dress waves as the yawl-rigged sailboat moves into view with a blond young man at the tiller.
THE GIRL: You’re late!
THE BOY: Tricky winds!
The boy turns his head just slightly toward her to reveal the jagged, uneven scar that mars his perfect handsomeness, and there is a collective gasp from the audience in the Pierre ballroom. The boy secures the boat to the dock, reaches up for the girl, and lifts her down to the deck of the boat with him.
THE BOY: You smell brand-new!
And the commercial continues, concluding with the line that travels across the screen against the sunlit water: Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance!
Next comes the second commercial, a hunting scene filmed in the horse country of northern Westchester, in which the boy reaches down from horseback and lifts the girl lightly up into the saddle with him. Once again, there is the shock as he turns to reveal the harsh scar.
At her shoulder, Dan Rather whispers to Mimi, ‘I don’t know a thing about perfume, but you’ve got a hell of an ad campaign.”
The third commercial uses an interior setting, and the Mireille Couple encounter each other on the huge, curved staircase of a manor house, she ascending and he descending from the shadows above to meet her.
During the applause that follows, Mimi steps to the microphone again. “And now,” she says, “I’d like to introduce you to two people you’ll be seeing a good deal of in the coming months: the Mireille Woman and the Mireille Man.” The Mireille theme music comes up on cue.
Mimi returns to her seat, and from stage left, Sherrill Shear-son emerges, wearing the white gown from the final commercial. She moves to center stage, into the spotlight, and performs a deep curtsy (executing it perfectly, to Mimi’s relief) and then, after a spin or two, exits into the wings on the side where she entered.
Now the Mireille theme music increases a bit, and the Mireille Man appears from stage right in a dinner jacket, and as the spotlight catches him, the shock of canary-colored hair is unmistakable, but so is the mask from Phantom of the Opera—that eerie white mask that was the show’s signature, the mask that gazed balefully from the marquee of the Majestic Theatre and from posters advertising the show, which decorated, it seemed, every outdoor advertising space in New York that year, from the sides of Fifth Avenue buses to public telephone booths.
As Dirk takes his bow, the Mireille theme dissolves into the theme from Phantom.
There is applause, of course, but there are also, inevitably, some groans, and cries of “No fair!” and “Take off the mask!” But after his bow, Dirk Gordon exits, stage right, still wearing the mask.
At this point, the lights are supposed to come up, but instead, the pink spot fades and the screen flickers to life again. Mark Segal sits forward in his chair. “What’s going on!” he whispers. “That’s the show! It’s over!”
Slowly, on the screen, vague images appear. The quality of the film is grainy, and the lighting is poor, but figures can be made out, unclothed figures, twisting and writhing together in silent contortions, as though involved in some sort of coupling. Nothing is clear, not even faces, but there seem to be three people, two men and a woman, although one of the male figures, with long silver hair, could also be a woman. Arms and hands reach out in what could be caresses; the figures disappear then reappear out of focus. One of the male figures, Mimi realizes, could possibly be Dirk Gordon, while the silver-haired one, she sees with a gasp, could be Edwee himself—and the woman could be his wife, Gloria! “Brad,” she says urgently, “we’ve got to stop this!”
“Hold on,” Brad says quietly.
The dimly lit, out-of-focus figures continue to writhe and undulate together for another moment or two. Then the screen goes blank, and the confused audience sits in total silence, obviously unsure of what it has just witnessed.
Brad Moore steps quickly to the microphone and, with a broad smile, says, “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my wife’s way of saying, so much for Calvin Klein. So much for Obsession.’”
The first to see the joke, inside joke though it is, is Calvin Klein himself, who laughs and claps his hands and cries, “I love it, Mimi! My ad people and Helmut Newton never did better.”
And now Mimi moves to the microphone. “One thing my husband didn’t mention,” she says, “Is that I love you, Calvin. Look: I’m wearing one of your dresses! Nothing comes between me and my Calvin.”
Now the whole room is laughing and cheering and shouting. The lights come up, and Bobby Short dives at his keyboard with the fast opening bars of “Anything Goes.” In this jubilant mood, the red-jacketed waiters swiftly resume their rounds, refilling glasses with champagne. The room swells with sound.
In olden days, a glimpse of stockin’
Was looked on as somethin’ shockin’ …
“Thank you, darling,” Mimi whispers to Brad. “How did you ever—”
“One thing I’ve learned about your business,” he says. “It pays to be quick on your feet.”
But there is no time to say more, for Mimi suddenly finds herself in the center of a growing rush of people, all trying either to take her hand or to kiss her all at once, all mouthing incoherent words of congratulations and praise. She recognizes one of these as the cosmetics buyer from Bergdorf’s, who is begging her to let him have a six-month exclusive franchise on Mireille for the Fifth Avenue store. “Just six months, Mimi—exclusive in New York,” he is imploring her.
“Will you give my wife a window?” Brad is saying. “On the Fifth Avenue side?”
“Why, Brad—you really do care about this business!” she says.
Now the photographers and reporters from the fashion press are crowding around her. Microphones are being thrust in front of her face, and flashbulbs are popping everywhere.
“Smile, Miss Myerson.…”
“Over here, Miss Myerson.…”
“What does your husband think of it, Miss Myerson?”
“Who did your hair, Miss Myerson?”
“Will you be touring with this, Miss Myerson, the way Elizabeth did with Passion?”
“What is the secret ingredient? Just give us a hint.”
“Is it some special rose attar? I’ve never seen so many roses in one room!”
“And roses in her hair, too!”
“What’s next from Miray, Miss Myerson?”
And as the noise level in the room rises around her, and Bobby Short cooperatively segues into “Rose of Washington Square,” Mimi realizes, at last, that her launch party is a success.
From Suzy Knickerbocker’s column in the New York Post the following day:
AN EVENING OF FUN … AND SURPRISES
“Frolicsome” was the word Diana Vreeland used to describe last night’s wingding at the Hotel Pierre to introduce “Mireille,” that much-talked-about new fragrance from Miray Corp. And if the great D.V. says it was frolicsome, then it was, darlings. Added the Oracle, “The scent of ‘Mireille’ is scandalously serious. But the mood of the evening was positively larky.”
Five hundred members of New York’s glitter set sipped champagne and made little piggies of themselves on caviar, while aaaahing and oooohing over “Mireille,” including Brooke Astor, Jacqueline Onassis, Annette Reed, the Saul P. Steinbergs, Blaine and Robert Trump, Gloria Vanderbilt, Mica and Ahmet Ertegun, Ricky and Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass, Ann and Gordon Getty, and on and on and on. You get the picture.
It was also an evening punctuated with a series of little surprises.
Surprise No. 1: The appearance, in a cloud of white chiffon, of Elizabeth Taylor, just back from a national tour pushing “Passion,” a perfume of her own. What caused Queen Liz to set foot in a party that was plugging her competition? “I wanted to sniff this one out,” said she. Could H.R.H. still sniff under the weight of all those diamonds? Well, she tried.
Surprise No. 2: The preview of three TV commercials for “Mireille” that will begin airing cross-country next week. The gasp in these
commercials comes when the otherwise hunky male model turns his head to reveal a nasty scar along one side of his face. The burning question industry insiders have been asking is: Is this model a guy with a real scar, or is the “scar” a cosmetic concoction, courtesy of Miray? Guests at last night’s gala were promised that they’d be introduced to the real “man with a scar,” and see for themselves.
Surprise No. 3: They were, but they didn’t. The Mystery Model made an appearance, all right, but was wearing the famous spooky white mask which Michael Crawford wears in “Phantom of the Opera.” So the question still burns. For this, we hear, Mr. X is being paid in seven figures.
Surprise No. 4 brought the house down. The house lights dimmed, and the audience was treated to a hilarious parody of Calvin Klein’s famously naughty ads for “Obsession,” in which birthday-suited boys and girls seem to be carrying on in oh-such-kinky-looking sexual hijinks. The parody was cleverly shot in soft focus and with home-movie graininess, which left party-goers wondering not only who was doing what and with which and to whom, but also who was who. Or whom.
It was all pretty daring, come to think of it, what with Calvin and Kelly Klein right there in the audience. He stopped pouting, though, when Miray’s president, Mimi Myerson, stepped to the microphone and pointed out that her smashing tea-length gown was by (but you guessed it) Calvin Klein.
And let’s nominate Calvin for Good Sport of the Year. “Mireille is a wonderful fragrance,” he said. “Perhaps not quite as exciting as Obsession—but close.” And this, of course, was surprise No. 5. For the first time in the recorded history of the meow-meow beauty business, we had bitter rivals actually saying nice things about each other! What’s the world coming to?
All this went nicely with the surprise that rounded off the night’s surprises to an even half-dozen. Long before you were born, darlings, the two brothers who founded Miray, Adolph and Leopold Myerson, had a famous pffft over business philosophy. (Mimi’s Adolph’s granddaughter, so that’s how long ago it was.) Ever since, the Myersons have been a house divided. But last night, under the influence of “Mireille, the Miracle Fragrance,” as it’s being billed, Mimi brought off another miracle of her own: a massive family hatchet-burying. All the scattered members of the clan were there, all smiles and kisses, after something like fifty years of battling. Surprised? Of course you are.
Shades of Fortune Page 50
