‘WE ARE seen around New York, El Morocco and The Stork, and the other stay-up-late cafes / I am on the town with you these days / that’s the way it stands . . . some cocktails, some orchids, a show or two, a line in a column that links me with you!”
(Oh, what I wouldn’t give if only El Morocco and The Stork still existed to stay up late in!) The quoted lyrics, from the song “All in Fun,” are by Oscar Hammerstein.
SO, SEEN around New York is the recently- written-about Peter Duchin, bandleader extraordinaire, who has separated from his wife, Brooke Hayward, after many years. He is out these days with party-arranger Virginia Coleman.
But as Peter told me several weeks back; Ms. Coleman is not the reason he wanted to effect a separation in his marriage. A guy has to have someone to have dinner with. I guess.
REMEMBER the fetching Caroline Giuliani? She is the daughter of Donna Hanover and the former mayor of New York, Rudy by name. I hear our girl Caroline not only learned a lot about drama at the Mamet Theater over the summer but she is now a sophomore at Harvard, making straight A’s. Way to go, girl of famous parents!
And, anyway, you already knew plenty about drama.
AIN’T LOVE grand? Deborah Roberts of ABC and Al Roker of NBC – the twain who met 16 years ago and got married – just celebrated their anniversary with a dinner at Michael’s and then toddled to off-Broadway to see their friend Leslie Uggams in her show “The First Breeze of Summer,” which has won raves.
‘SOUTH PACIFIC” is still the hit of hits, and people are again having trouble finding their way into the theater because Lincoln Center remains under construction. But, just try, just try to get a ticket to this Rodgers & Hammerstein epic! Tickets are as scarce as they were back when the then-controversial musical first opened in 1949.
I WENT to see “Wicked” last weekend, paying a whopping $378 for three tickets, and it’s still SRO. It suddenly occurred to me – the hapless Wizard of Oz onstage reminds me of GOP candidate John McCain, with the intrepid Sarah Palin playing the role of the feisty and courageous Dorothy who isn’t afraid of anything. And, the talk of the town this week is the New York Observer photo of a younger governor of Alaska wearing a T-shirt that reads: “Proud To Be Valley Trash.” I showed this to a devout Hillary Clinton aide who laughed, bitterly: “This kind of thing only endears Palin to more and more people.” Hmmm.
I WENT to Michael’s after the disastrous review given the popular place by the NY Times restaurant critic. The place was crammed with everyone from agent Mort Janklow to ace auctioneer Jamie Niven to the Carnegie Foundation’s genius Vartan Gregorian to “60 Minutes’ ” Morley Safer to mover/shaker Joe Armstrong to writer Michael Kramer to TV’s Jeff Greenfield to plastic surgeon Gerry Imber to ad king Jerry Della Femina to political power broker Ed Rollins to CBS’s Susan Zirinsky and Cindy Hsu to Glamour’s Cindi Leive to Sports Illustrated’s Bob Durst . . . I glimpsed three of the most spectacular women in New York at one table – Melania Trump of the Trump empire, designer Rachel Roy, who was bragging about her new baby girl, Tallulah, and Vogue’s Stephanie Winston Wolfkoff, who is Avenue’s cover girl this month.
MY TABLE was celebrating Hearst prexy Cathie Black‘s book “Basic Black” going from hardcover (150,000 plus copies) to paperback. Now, more women who didn’t want to spend $24.95 can get more reasonably priced advice on how to win in business at the top.
We also had Citigroup’s Lisa Caputo . . . Marie Claire’s Joanna Coles . . . O’s new boss Susan Reed . . . Lifetime TV’s Andrea Wong . . . Wow’s Web founder Joni Evans . . . the aforesaid Donna Hanover . . . and Hearst’s Ellen Levine and Deb Shriver.
Maybe you think that table didn’t shimmy and shake. Cathie Black promised to show me the Chinese edition of “Basic Black there are 12 foreign-language versions . . . Joni Evans was celebrating landing her Web site on Yahoo with a finance story . . . Joanna and Andrea were celebrating their recent alliance with “Project Runway” . . . the soft-spoken Ms. Reed said she’d be reserved for now since she just began her job at O.
Every powerful man in the place came by to greet this table. So it’s too bad that Michael’s got a bad review. But critics don’t mean much these days. Look at the Times’ critique of Cipriani and its Eurotrash customers. You can’t get in there!
THE BEST, most important part of the Emmy awards is not for entertainment but for news and documentaries. Those prizes will be given at Lincoln Center tomorrow night by a clutch of great names: Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, John Roberts, Cynthia McFadden, Sheila Nevins. There’ll be tributes to the late Jim McKay and Bill Buckley, plus salutes to Tony Snow, Ken Burns, Tim Russert and Bob Schieffer.