Fourth of July
BILL HEPPENHEIMER didn’t go to the Maidstone Club to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over Main Beach, sponsored by the East Hampton Fire Department, even though the club has one of the best vantage points from which to watch the world-class display. Saturday night of the holiday weekend, 1997, nearly 20,000 spectators converged on Main Beach to see the 11,000 shell pyrotechnics, the largest crowd ever assembled in the village. They parked their cars and campers and RVs up and down the gilded lanes of the estate district, or on the grass fringes of the zealously guarded Maidstone golf links, and headed toward Main Beach, throngs of them gawking up at the great mansions as they went by, laden with children, blankets, strollers, and beach chairs.
Fourth of July brings with it a special delirium to the Hamptons, a lopsided New Year’s Eve. It is so frenetic that many inveterate Hamptonites, like Heppenheimer, don’t even leave their houses if they can avoid it. “The traffic is such a mess out there,” he said. “It’s a helluva job for the police department.” Instead, he stayed at home with family and friends that weekend; if he stood on his back lawn, he could see the magnesium rockets and chrysanthemum starbursts lighting up the western sky just after dusk, two or three football fields wide, the percussion spreading in waves all over East Hampton.
That Fourth of July weekend, a few months after the village settled Jerry Della Femina’s lawsuit, it really did seem like “everybody” had turned up in the Hamptons, as Heppenheimer had feared. According to official estimates, traffic increased by 8 percent that year, and the roads were reported to be “perilous” by the East Hampton Star. More than 2,200 emergency 911 calls were made to the East Hampton emergency services building on Cedar Street that weekend, so many that Police Chief Glen Stonemetz stood in the doorway of the room where the calls were coming in and shook his head in amazement. The Southampton Hospital emergency room experienced its busiest holiday weekend ever, attending to the victims of more than 100 automobile accidents, one pedestrian fatality, and the collision of a small private plane with a tree.
For the first time in memory, there were moments when the center of the five-square-mile village of East Hampton was gridlocked with cars, and during the day there was not a single unoccupied parking spot to be found. One frustrated local caterer, Brent Newsom, trying to make a delivery, rode in circles for more than an hour in the parking lot behind town trying to find a space, until he began to scream, red-faced, out his van window in frustration at all the visitors in their cars, “GO HOME! GO HOME!” To add to the general chaos of the holiday weekend, the sidewalks of all the hamlets were fairly teeming with day-tripping tourists, strolling along in rubber flip-flops and pastel-colored undershirts, sightseers who had made the long trip to the tip of Long Island, trying to find glamour and money on the streets, but mostly leaving disappointed to discover that the Hamptons are not a welcoming place for the uninitiated or uninvited.
For the cognoscenti willing to brave the roads, there was much to do. Novelists Rona Jaffe and Erica Jong held book-publishing parties at the same exact hour, both parties attended by Joan Rivers, and Lally Weymouth had a birthday party for her mother, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham at the same time that cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder was throwing a birthday party for his daughter Jane. For those who were less connected, there was an 8K run in Southampton to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a North Sea fire department carnival, and a clothing sale at the Bridgehampton Community House to benefit the Design Industry Foundation Fighting AIDS. The Presbyterian Church in East Hampton was holding an antiques show, and the Amagansett Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary served up a pancake breakfast at the firehouse.
That weekend the restaurants were so crowded that the Bridgehampton Cafe was ticketed by the police because customers spilled out the front door, blocking the sidewalk. The owners of the American Hotel laid down the law and banned cell phones in the dining room but continued to keep an emergency pair of long pants in the checkroom so it wouldn’t have to turn away men dressed in shorts, as they did John Kennedy Jr. the summer before. Dining at Nick & Toni’s has become so sacred an experience that one woman who waited weeks for her reservation continued to eat her dinner even after her elderly husband passed out at the table and was taken away to Southampton Hospital by an ambulance, whisked out a door in the kitchen so as not to disturb patrons dining in the front room, who included directors Steven Spielberg and Nora Ephron.
Perhaps the East End claims a special affinity to this holiday, not only because it was originally part of Yankee New England, but because historians believe that the American flag sewn by Betsy Ross was a copy of the “Bridgehampton Original,” designed by Lieutenant John Hulburt of Bridgehampton, used in raising a company of volunteer militia in 1775. One hundred years later, Independence Day festivities were supplied by young boys running through the streets with sparklers or setting off St. Catherine’s wheels and Roman candles in the dunes with their fathers. For many years the Maidstone Club held its own fireworks display on the beach, with dancing on a wooden platform, and summer resident John Drew emceed a patriotic celebration on the East Hampton Commons, with Revolutionary War reenactments and a marching band.
The very rich held their own fireworks. Charlotte Harris’s grandfather, Thomas E. Murray, set fire to the dunes with his own home-rigged fireworks display the very first Fourth of July that he and his family spent in Southampton, charring the dunes half a mile in either direction and royally enraging his neighbors. Nearly fifty years later, in 1972, writer and fireworks aficionado George Plimpton, who made pyrotechnics synonymous with the Hamptons, was arrested and handcuffed on the lawn of his own house by the town police, in front of guests who included Teddy Kennedy, for having a private fireworks display without a permit. Some years later another private fireworks display of Plimpton’s went awry, and one of his guests was burned on the shoulder by a spark. The guest sued Plimpton for $11 million, and the author promptly stopped giving private displays and became instead the master of pyrotechnics at the annual benefit for Boys Harbor later in the summer.
In the old days, the Fourth of July was also a day of great revelry at The Creeks. The Herters gave visitors party favors of sparkler pinwheels and served pink lemonade. The guests were indebted to join the family in patriotic tableau al fresco while Albert read aloud descriptions of famous moments in American history. Modern-day Fourth of July at Ron Perelman’s Creeks was just as festive, if perhaps more subdued. Actor Don Johnson and director Penny Marshall were guests, and among other weekend activities, Perelman fiddled with his drum set and screened movies for his guests. The Creeks’ previous owner, Ted Dragon, resolutely stayed home on Fourth of July weekend, as he did for most of the summer. He ventured beyond the gardens of his house only in the early morning, to go to church or volunteer for the local hospice. He said he counts the days until Labor Day, when summer is over, and his hometown gets back to normal again.
The lord of the manor, Robert D. L. Gardiner, was in residence again in his formidable stone mansion in the center of the village. He too kept a lower profile this summer, after last year’s imbroglio on Gardiner’s Island was reported in the press. As the walking legacy of East Hampton’s rich early history, Gardiner is gearing up to take a prominent part in the 350th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the town of East Hampton that would consume the East End for most of 1998. His trips to Gardiner’s Island this summer were less frequent, and his annual fall hunt to trim the herd of deer was called off. His nemeses, Robert Goelet and his family, have returned as well, celebrating Fourth of July weekend happily far from the mainland, by themselves in the luxury of the island’s privacy.
Elena Prohaska lives contentedly most of the year in an Upper West Side duplex off Central Park, with her husband, Burt Glinn, and their teenage son, Sam. But every spring, when the weather begins to warm and the trees bud in the park, she is drawn, inexorably, back to the town where she was born. Elena and Burt own a white, contempo
rary home in Springs, set far off the road in an oak forest, its entrance marked only by a mailbox with a gamboling deer on top. Every Fourth of July weekend they hold a cocktail party on the back deck overlooking the pool, attended by an eclectic mixture of artists and writers and the local people she grew up with when she was a “townie.” Not often, but at least once a summer, she drives down Hither Lane, past where Brigadoon once stood, and marvels that Evan’s notorious swimming pool has been filled in with dirt and sodded over, as if it never was.
In Southampton Bill Hattrick, happily a private citizen again, has returned to being a full-time stockbroker. He was now a member of Southampton’s posh Meadow Club, an invitation extended to him, he said, in thanks for his years of service as mayor. This holiday weekend he skipped the big parade down Main Street organized by the combined veterans organizations that he was obligated to attend for so many years as a village official, and went instead, along with many members of the Southampton Association, to a private fireworks display at a mansion on Dune Road, at a party to benefit the Fresh Air Home.
Perhaps the most talked about party that Fourth of July weekend was at Heaven’s Gate, the home of Judy Licht and Jerry Della Femina, high on the dunes off Lily Pond Lane. The invitation called it “The Ultimate East Hampton Benefit,” because it was free. “What you will receive,” the invitation said, “is an incredible view of the fireworks, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, dessert and coffee. And all it will cost you is a few hours on Saturday at 8 P.M.” Jerry and Judy’s fireworks party is always a big, convivial affair, with more than 100 guests spilling out of the house onto the patio and lawn. There were children everywhere, scurrying underfoot as the waiters circulated with hors d'oeuvres and splashing in the heated, smoking pool, because Jerry and Judy encouraged guests to bring their kids. “After all,” Judy said, “this party is about fireworks.” And what a night for fireworks. The sky was cloudless that Saturday night, ink blue and glittering with pinpoint stars. The air coming in from the ocean was cool and bracing, and in the distance the sound of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” emanating from speakers hidden in the dunes, was accompanied by the cadence of the waves thundering on the shore. There was a feeling of the perfect moment, perfectly played out.
Lauren Bacall was among the guests, as was actor Alan Alda, writer Ken Auletta, advertising executive Jay Chiatt, CBS News’s Roone Arledge, and Mort Zuckerman, who wandered across the road from his own house for a better view. The checkout girls from the Red Horse Market were there too, as was the produce man, who proudly hoisted his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders. “This to me is the real Americana,” Jerry said proudly. “It’s not just rich people or famous people who are here, it’s everybody. This is the real East Hampton.”
Just after 9 P.M. the fireworks started. They were so close, and the explosions so loud, that for a moment it seemed the stars themselves might shake out of the sky. The music segued to Ray Charles singing “America the Beautiful,” and as the melody began to swell, Jerry and Judy began to sing along, shyly at first, and then more bravely. The people standing near them began to join in, and soon everyone was singing, their faces turned to the sky.
If there was anything to be gleaned from the sight of Lauren Bacall singing “America the Beautiful” at Jerry Della Femina’s elbow, it was that the latest skirmish in the eternal Them versus Us struggle was already over. At the millennium, the score remained a shutout. As always, the invaders had won. If Wyandanch were around, he probably could have explained it. The establishment can hold off the newcomers for only so long; there are always more of Them than Us. Eventually you have to come to terms and make friends. But once you do, the newcomers’ ills kill you. For the Indians, it was smallpox; for Evan Frankel, it was the desecration of the land; for Charlotte Harris, it was simply the invasion of bad taste. The way of life that Heppenheimer and company think they are protecting has already disappeared. There is no “fitting in” with the status quo, as Heppenheimer phrases it, because the status quo is the eclectic mixture of guests singing “America the Beautiful” at Jerry Della Femina’s house. As to why each generation of newcomers was drawn here in the first place, well, there is little left to remind anyone.
Allan Schneider stands in front of a $100,000 East Hampton summer rental. (© 1990 Newsday)
Tyler House, Allan Schneider’s “White House” on Main Street. (Credit Lee Minetree)
Allan Schneider in the living room of the Summer White House, feeding his ill-tempered dog, Duff. (Property of Rochelle Rosenberg)
Grey Gardens, now the home of former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, writer Sally Quinn. The house came to infamy when it was the home of Edith Bouvier Beale, the maternal aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her daughter, Edie.
On the way to Gardiner’s Island, a tattered Jolly Roger flaps in the wind as the lord of the manor, D. L. Gardiner, spins his tales.
Robert Gardiner makes himself comfortable in the bed of his niece, Alexandra Creel Goelet, and her husband, Robert G. Goelet.
Lion Gardiner’s Gothic sepulchre under an ornate sandstone tomb designed by James Renwick, the architect of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church.
The East Hampton home of Robert D. L. Gardiner, the “real” Summer White House, with its fortresslike walls.
Adele and Albert Herter in their later years, with daughter, Lydia, who lived in the “Happy Hour” house on the grounds of The Creeks. (Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Historical Society)
Albert Herter in costume for one of his famous tableaux at The Creeks. (Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Historical Society)
Ted Dragon in costume for Bach French Suite for Paris Opera. Danseur E’toile, 1951. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Alfonso Ossorio, circa 1966. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Group sitting on steps of The Creeks, circa 1954. Seated left to right, Ted Dragon with poodle Horla, the Polish poet Kasmir Wierzynski, Alfonso Ossorio, Josephine Little with infant Abigail, Halina Wierzynski, Joseph Glasco, Jackson Pollock. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Ted Dragon in sitting room at The Creeks with Ta-Yu, circa 1976. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Aerial view of The Creeks, East Hampton, New York, circa 1984. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Jean Dubuffet and Alfonso Ossorio in front of sculpture by Ossorio, “In, Out, Up & Down,” 1973. (Courtesy of the Ossorio Foundation, Southampton, N.Y.)
Elena Prohaska as she looked around the time of her breakup with Evan Frankel. (Property of Elena Prohaska)
Evan Frankel and Elena Prohaska in Jamaica in the bloom of their romance. (Property of Elena Prohaska)
At an opening at Elena Prohaska’s Upstairs Gallery, artist Larry Rivers is behind the video camera while Evan Frankel and his escort, Jeannette Rattray, are interviewed. (Property of Elena Prohaska)
Evan Frankel’s last birthday party, at age eighty-nine, flanked by Elena Prohaska and Joan Cullman. (Credit Burt Glinn/property of Elena Prohaska)
East Hampton’s Town Pond at the turn of the century, when it was known as Goose Pond. (J. G. Thorp, courtesy of the East Hampton Library)
Fourth of July, 1915, actor and Maidstone Club member John Drew next to his automobile festooned for the big parade. (F. B. Eldredge, courtesy of the East Hampton Library)
Sabbath services in the Norman Jaffe—designed sanctuary of the East Hampton Jewish Center. The arches are in the shape of the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, yod. (© 1997 Gordon M. Grant)
The Maidstone Club as viewed across its immaculately kept golf links and sand traps. (© 1997 Gordon M. Grant)
On the campaign trail, from left, candidates Kevin Guidera and Charlotte Harris with the campaign manager, Harry Marmion. (Property of Kevin Guidera)
Chestertown House, the home of Henry F. du Pont, before the Trupins got their hands on it. (© P. Boody)
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p; Barry and Renee Trupin’s half-finished Dragon’s Head in Southampton, a “hideosity” as seen from the beach. (Courtesy of the Southampton Press)
Barry Trupin proudly stands with his creation behind him. (© 1986 Newsday)
Barry Trupin hoists his wife, Renee, jubilantly in their indoor lagoon. (© 1984 Harry Benson)
Handcuffed Jerry Della Femina and his partner David Silver are led to a waiting police car as Jerry bites his lip to stop from laughing. (© Jack Otter)
Judy Licht, Jerry Della Femina, and their son J. T. at the polls for the big election of 1996. (© 1997 Gordon M. Grant)
Acknowledgments
Iowe a great debt of gratitude to my supportive and loving friends, Rusty Unger and David Burr, Sophia Tezel and Frank Di Giacomo, Joseph Olshan and Barry Raine, Jonathan Canno and Jay Dagenhart, and Sydney Butchkes; and to Sue Pollock, whose canny suggestion it was that I write a book about the Hamptons.
Philistines at the Hedgerow Page 31
