Spoiler Alert: This review goes into detail about the film, so if you have not seen it, you’ve been warned.

As someone who has chronicled Diana’s all too short life (and her Shakespearean death) for decades, I will admit I have come to feel somewhat protective of her legacy. To that end, I have always been mystified why filmmakers have never come close to capturing the complexities and contradictions that defined one of the most famous women of all time. And why, in the name of all that is holy, can’t anyone get Diana’s hair right?

Diana’s story has often been considered a prologue to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s hyperbolic tale of their ‘escape’ to America in recent years. In “Spencer,” Diana is the star – but she’s a tortured, victimized woman who has lost the plot and is slowly spiraling into madness. “Spencer,” directed by Pablo Larrain (best-known for directing the Oscar-nominated “Jackie”) and written by Steven Knight, is a dark and surrealistic version of a chapter in the princess’ story.

The film focuses wholly on Diana on the brink as demonstrated by her brittle fragility and the overwrought histrionics that consumed her during the three-day Christmas holiday in the early nineties at Sandringham. The film maintains this is when the princess allegedly decided to separate from Prince Charles.

“Spencer” takes a sledgehammer to Princess Diana’s legacy depicting her as a madwoman losing her grip on reality. I hated it.

Diane Clehane

We are told the film is “a fable based on a true tragedy” during the opening credits. “Spencer” is more like a horror story with silent monsters (the royals, of course) and a creepy fictional watcher (Timothy Spall) who freaks a tormented Diana out at every turn. The film is full of not-so-subtle symbolism.

It’s no accident that during the three days Diana is imprisoned (in her mind) by the cold, unfeeling royals, Diana and her sons’ pleas to warm up drafty Sandringham House are ignored. At one point in the film, Diana dresses a scarecrow in a nearby barren field in a costume-like ‘royal’ outfit she’s worn leaving the isolated totem with its outstretched arms alone and ignored.

It is difficult to reconcile Diana, who brilliantly leveraged her worldwide popularity and masterfully communicated through her appearance with the paranoid, childlike Diana in “Spencer” who breaks down in tears as she faces a scrum of photographers on Christmas Day.

That is one of the few scenes where Diana’s wardrobe is spot on. The rest of her wardrobe just misses – except for the wedding gown which looked very much like the real thing. In reality, the princess glowed on Christmas Day in 1993 in her red coat and black-veiled hat as she greeted the crowd outside the church with Prince Charles and their sons, outshining the rest of the royals as she did any time she appeared with members of “The Firm.”

The film’s sets and art direction are exquisite, setting moviegoers’ expectations high for the rich, detailed storytelling “The Crown” delivers, but director Pablo Larrain clearly felt more comfortable evoking an ominous mood (Think “The Shining,” but not as entertaining) than developing the plot.

Watching the 111-minute film was, at times, excruciating as Diana’s suffocation becomes the viewers as we wait for something, anything, to break as “Spencer’s” endless monotony drags on. Johnny Greenwood’s melancholic score and Larrain’s occasional use of shaky cameras does set the viewer on edge, but not always for the right reasons.

Heavy-handed dialogue makes the glacially paced film feel even more stilted. (Which was likely intentional.) Larrain may have assumed most moviegoers are unfamiliar with the royals and their traditions, but there is far too much exposition in a film that aspires to be more style than substance. Some scenes meant to shock instead come right up to the edge of campiness.

Early in the film, Diana intentionally arrives late to Christmas Eve dinner with the royals and gets a frosty reception from a steely-eyed Queen Elizabeth (Stella Gonet). The princess is filled with rage over the discovery Charles’ Christmas gift to her is identical to the same strand of oversized pearls that he gifted his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles (briefly seen, but never mentioned by name).

As she struggles to eat the first course, a creamy green soup with a perfect dollop of cream at its center, she pulls at the pearls around her neck until they break free from the necklace and tumble into her soup. No one seems to notice (Charles looks up briefly before returning to his meal) as Diana frenetically scoops up the pearls and loudly crunches on them before swallowing. Horrible pains kick in and send her careening down a hallway to back to her room, where she throws up. There are several scenes involving Diana’s bulimia which could be a trigger for some viewers.

Diana encounters the ghost of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) several times in the film after she begins reading a book about the beheaded Queen that someone has left on her bed. Thankfully, the tragic second wife of Henry VIII has her head about her as she cautions Diana about her fate if she stays with the royals, but the scenes are as lifeless as the centuries dead Queen.

The scenes where Diana mournfully wanders the grounds and sneaks away from Sandringham to her nearby boarded-up family home feel strangely flat and does not do anything to add interest to the story. The overly long montage of Diana dancing in the palace wearing many different gowns would have benefited from some editing.

While all the royal family members are briefly seen (but not heard) in “Spencer,” it is Kristen Stewart’s film. The Oscar buzz Stewart has gotten for her performance genuinely baffles me. The praise directed at her seems more about the actor’s decision to move out of her comfort zone to play Diana rather than for the performance itself. I never once forgot I was watching Kristen Stewart play Diana. In a way, it almost felt like stunt casting. When the actor made the first “Twilight” film in 2008, Stewart had her own struggles with instant and intense worldwide fame.

Her performance does have some fine moments. Stewart is at her best in scenes with the actors playing Diana’s children (Jack Nielen as William and Freddie Spry as Harry). But mostly Stewart veers into caricature territory with her breathy, uncertain, and defiant Diana reacting badly towards anyone who dares to question her.

Stewart’s Diana is more anger and despair than vulnerability and independence but her exchanges with Maggie, her fictional dresser with a secret, bring “Spencer” to life for those few minutes when the women have conversations rather than just recite dialogue. Diana’s confidante is beautifully played by Sally Hawkins, whose name I expect to find on many lists come awards season.

The criminally underused Jack Farthing (who so brilliantly portrayed the vulnerable villain George Warleggen in the BBC One series “Poldark,”) as Prince Charles only gets to make a few cutting remarks about Diana’s bulimia and lectures her on behaving like a royal “for the good of the country.” The final scene Farthing and Stewart have together left me wondering how the film would have benefited if the actors had faced off in just one more dramatic encounter.

The final time we see Diana after she has escaped the English countryside with William and Harry, it is not an exhilarating moment because we all know how the story ends. In the film’s final minutes, “Spencer” lands its only gut punch. Diana’s wistful look at her boys before the credits roll finally makes the point this stifling, airless film was about a real person whose fate really was a true – and terrible — tragedy.

Review – Grade: C

The post Film Review: “Spencer” Takes A Sledgehammer to Princess Diana’s Legacy appeared first on lookonline.

The ninth Earl Spencer, Princess Diana’s brother, talks about his new non-fiction book, The White Ship, and why it’s a tale he’s “always carried” in his heart.

I first met Charles Spencer in 1998, a few days shy of the one-year anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. I was visiting Althorp, the Spencer family seat since the sixteenth century. My pilgrimage to the grounds marked the end of my year-long odyssey researching and writing about Diana’s life for my first book, Diana The Secrets of Her Style, which was published on August 31st, the somber first anniversary of the tragic car accident in Paris that took her life.

It seemed only fitting to make the trip to the great estate in the British countryside where Diana had grown up and was interred on a small island. As I walked around the sprawling, verdant lawns of Althorp, I could feel the weight of history that fell over the estate and was overwhelmed by the realization that Diana was not the only Spencer who had played a significant role in British history.

The Spencers have a distinguished family tree. Charles Spencer, the third Earl of Sutherland, merged the Spencer and Churchill families through marriage in the seventeenth century. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a distant cousin of Charles and his sisters. The first Lady Diana Spencer was supposed to marry the Prince of Wales in the early 1700s, but King George II was advised it would be best for his son to find a less threatening wife. In 1774, Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Princess Diana’s fourth great-aunt married a man ten years her senior who ignored his young wife and carried on a very public affair with a mistress. The duchess took comfort in her soaring popularity with the British people and became known for her great style. (Keira Knightley portrayed Georgiana brilliantly in the 2008 film, The Duchess.)

After spending three hours exploring Althorp, I made my way back up the pebbled drive to board the bus that would deliver visitors to the train back to London. I stopped in my tracks when I spotted a tall redheaded man, dressed in a white shirt and khakis in the distance. He was striding purposefully across the lawn and slipped inside a building that housed the estate’s gift shop.

It was there I found Charles Spencer moving about the room sprucing up displays of books, which upon closer inspection were stacks of Althorp: The Story of an English House written by the earl and published earlier that year. I dared not tell him I was a member of the media for fear he would banish me immediately. (Who would have blamed him at the time?) He was charming and said just enough to be polite before moving on to another display in need of attention.

While many of his ancestors made history, Charles, the ninth Earl Spencer, prefers to write about it and does so quite skillfully. What struck me most about the book on Althorp he had written back then was that in his telling the story of his ancestral home through his own fascinating recollections sprinkled in liberally with historical facts, Spencer had turned a non-fiction coffee table book into a highly enjoyable read.

I had nearly forgotten about my brief encounter with Spencer when I had the opportunity years later to have lunch with him at Michael’s in New York City for my ‘Lunch’ column. He had just published Killers of the King, a non-fiction page-turner in which he robustly recounts how, in 1649, Parliament handed down a death sentence to a defeated King Charles. Spencer also writes about the bloody revenge exacted by King Charles II in unstinting detail on the men who dared to kill his father and their sovereign. I could see the movie unspool in my mind as I devoured its pages.

Last month, I interviewed Spencer about his new book, The White Ship. Once again, Spencer combines scrupulous research with an electrifying narrative. In his latest non-fiction tome, he tackles another pivotal historical event — a largely untold story that changed the course of British history and the line of succession of the monarchy. Already a best-seller in the UK, the book has been described as “Titanic meets Game of Thrones,” published by HarperCollins here in the states last month.

At 367 pages, The White Ship is the tragic, fateful, and true story of how the greatest maritime disaster ever to befall Britain (only one of the 300 onboard survived the wreck) in November 1120 ended the dynastic reign of William the Conqueror and gave rise to the Plantagenet age.

The White Ship was considered the fastest vessel afloat at the time, but sadly, not indestructible. When its drunken crew rammed the towering ship into the rocks one night during high tide and was unable to save King Henry I’s son, William (grandson of William the Conqueror), the worst shipwreck in British history touched off two decades of civil war, which became known as “The Anarchy.” After the shipwreck, King Henry I had only one legitimate child, daughter Matilda, but medieval England had never had a female ruler and would not allow Henry’s daughter to ascend the throne. The King remarried and hoped to produce another male heir, but he never had another child. As a result, the Norman dynasty that had ruled England since 1066 ended.

“This is a story from the distant past that I’ve always carried in my heart,” said Spencer. “I learned about it as a boy, and the human tragedy of the shipwreck moved me hugely – particularly the young prince, the tragic hero of the tale, only perishing because he went back to save his sister from drowning.” There was another reason Spencer felt the tale was timely. “I saw, a few years back, that the 900th anniversary of this unique maritime disaster was coming up, and I felt if there was ever a time to revisit it, to bring it alive once more, it was now.”

Growing up at Althorp surrounded by history “nourished a passion” Spencer had from birth. “My primary school teacher noted in my school report card [when I was five years old] that history was my thing,” he recalled. “Then I worked as a 13-year-old tour guide at Althorp, telling the tale of all the people in their portraits from long ago. I got three pounds [every] afternoon for doing that.”

Over the years, Spencer has combined his love of history with his skills as a communicator and writer. He was a reporter on the Today show for nearly a decade between the mid-eighties and nineties and is the author of seven books, including two Sunday Times best-sellers. One of his most successful books, Blenheim: Battle for Europe, was shortlisted for History Book of the Year at the 2005 National Book Awards.

While Spencer is a best-selling author, he does not consider himself a commercial writer. The earl sees himself as a storyteller. I asked if he felt non-fiction gave him more freedom because he is not tasked with creating characters and a story purely out of his own imagination. “That doesn’t give me more freedom; in fact, the non-fiction rules remain the same,” he said. “I have to get the facts correct as the framework. Where I then concentrate, as a narrative historian, is in firing the reader’s mind. I want to bring the story alive.”

For Spencer, getting both the widely known and most arcane historical facts straight is an integral part of writing all his books. As a narrative historian, he relied heavily on the work of historians from the period who documented the details of the White Ship shipwreck. “There were nine main primary sources for this tale,” said Spencer. “All churchmen, chronicling a disaster so huge, they seem hardly able to have comprehended it. My job was to compare versions and see what made sense, and what was, rather, religious bias.”

Spencer has a rigorous yet adjustable research process. “I always have an idea as to structure before I begin the research. This helps me be flexible,” he said. “I might be researching the life of Henry I, the King of England at the time, but come across something to do with the medieval attitude [towards] the sea (many people couldn’t swim back then). I can then add each piece of research to its correct place as I go, which helps enormously when I write.”

It took Spencer 18 months to research The White Ship and more than a year to write it. “I edit each page at least eight times to make it all as fine on the page as I can manage.” Rather than sequester himself in studied silence, the earl revealed he likes to play loud music while he writes 1000 words per day. “Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds provided many of the background noises to The White Ship manuscript.”

Given Spencer’s penchant for cinematic storytelling, it is no surprise that Hollywood has come calling. Spencer revealed he had just sold the rights to a previous book (but did not name the title). “And it looks set to be made. I realize I cannot rely on that until filming actually starts.” He’s already on to his next book, which he describes as “a true story from the mid-20th century. “[It’s] something completely different for me, but the story is kind of compulsive.”

Diane’s Review: The White Ship: a highly dramatic non-fiction retelling of an event that changed the course of British history. An engrossing and addicting read with the shocks and twists readers usually find only in the best historical fiction. Spencer’s fast-paced and incredibly detailed storytelling comes alive with all the violent encounters, deceit, plotting, and backstabbing details of the medieval age. Grade: A

The post An Interview with Charles Spencer by Diane Clehane appeared first on lookonline.

Having been away from Michael’s since late last year, I was looking forward to going back to 55th and Fifth this week to catch up with the usual suspects who continue to flock to what has become New York’s last great power lunch spot. (The old Four Seasons always felt like a mausoleum to me and the reboot bombed.) While I have been chronicling the goings-on at Michael’s since 2006, I am struck by the fact that for all the head-spinning number of things that have changed in media and publishing since my first ‘Lunch,’ there is a comforting sameness to the place – something highly valued by me (and obviously many others) in this incredibly disconcerting era of upsetting weirdness that permeates our daily lives.

The joint was indeed jumping when I arrived today. Donna Hanover was presiding over her annual birthday lunch with a full table of gal pals on One. (Check out the guest list in the rundown in ‘Seen & Heard’), Hollywood types Matt Blank, Jean Doumanian and James Toback were dining and dishing at separate tables. There was plenty of table hopping and air-kissing. As I said, the more things change …

I was joined today by Jesse Kornbluth, a true renaissance man who just happens to be a great lunch date. This is a man who has written for, with and about plenty of boldface names. Jesse has penned screenplays for Robert De Niro and Paul Newman, collaborated with towering talents like Twyla Tharp and Frank Bennack and tooled around Tinseltown with Tina Brown at a time when glossy magazines mattered.

I knew of Jesse long before I got to know the incredibly smart, charming, funny and prolific novelist, playwright, screenwriter and “collector of copyrights.” Whenever I saw his byline in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine or New York, I knew I was in for a fascinating look into the psyche of some famous or infamous person. He’s written 11 (!) books, co-written a dozen screenplays all while churning out “a boatload of journalism.” Let’s just say he has a way with words.

I met Jesse some years ago – where else? – at Michael’s and had lunch with him for the first time in 2015 when his novel, Married Sex, was published. I loved the book (which was optioned by Griffin Dunne and Nick Wechsler) for his spare yet descriptive prose that painted an unstinting picture of the unexpected consequences of a three-way tryst on a modern marriage. I read it in one night.

In addition to his work as a novelist, Jesse may be one of the few marquee name journalists who was able to continue to make a buck when the Internet big-footed magazines. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t [continue to write solely for print],” he told me. “I didn’t want to.” So, he dove into the deep end and became AOL’s editorial director in1997 until 2003. Not a bad move: “The company’s stock split five times.” He’s still got a distinctive online presence – Jesse launched headbutler.com in 2004 as a “cultural concierge” for “people with more taste than time” that’s a must-read for the literati and still pens the occasional piece for Buzzfeed, salon.com and Elle Décor.

I was intrigued when I heard about the plot of his new novel, JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, in which Jesse recreates the diary of the president’s doomed lover whose murder in 1964 remains a mystery to this day. Mary’s diary is written based on the timeline of Kennedy’s presidency and every one of their documented encounters. The book’s many footnotes (which are just as riveting as the novel) answer the inevitable readers’ question — Could this have really happened? – by providing historical facts about the real people and circumstances (and Jesse’s take on them) that populate the book.

Jesse told me he decided to write the novel because, “I like stories hidden in plain sight.” He explained, “Mary was a footnote in other books.” But her true story is one that was full of dramatic possibilities. “She would sit in the Oval Office [with JFK] during business hours,” said Jesse. “She was rebellious and promiscuous and as close to a feminist as a woman could be at the time.” Mary was also “naïve and optimistic – a classic Kennedy era heroine.”

Mary Pinchot Meyer met JFK in 1935 when he was eighteen and she was sixteen. Twenty years later, while married to CIA official Cord Meyer, she and her husband became Jack and Jackie’s neighbors. By 1962, she was a woman in search of herself – a divorced, somewhat insecure artist whose friendship with JFK (she was his sole female advisor) inevitably led to their tragic affair.

In the book, Jesse recreates conversations between Mary and Jack that reveal an intimacy that JFK didn’t have with the many other women he bedded. When he tells her, “I never felt young,” Mary writes, “that line chilled me,” explaining, “We all pay a price for becoming ourselves, but [JFK] paid a high price to pay someone else: a Harvard version of Cary Grant.”

Later, after the assassination, the depths of Mary’s despair are revealed in her diary through her recollections of the man few people really knew. “What Jack believed … is that you’re never really bonded with anyone,” she writes. And, “Now I feel it: I am alone … I’m all I’ve got.”

What most people don’t know about Mary is that she didn’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone – a view she shared often and loudly around Washington. The recreated conversations between Mary and her CIA operative ex-husband strike a forbidding tone. The last diary entry in the book is dated October 11, 1964 – three days before Mary’s 44th birthday. The next day, Mary Meyer went for her usual noon walk along a towpath of a canal in Georgetown. She was grabbed from behind and shot in the head. A second bullet shot through her heart, killed her.

In reality, Mary did keep a diary which was filled with her sketches, notes on art – and ten pages about an unnamed lover. After her death, her sister found it and burned it. But Jesse has brilliantly recreated the lost relic linked to one of the most sensational whodunits in American history. In the end, Mary and JFK are forever linked in death – both mysteriously shot. As Jesse writes in the book’s epilogue: “Two murders, eternally unsolved.” And asks: “Was his assassination a coup? If so, was her murder just a bit of housekeeping?”

Mary’s sad and largely untold story (until now, that is) of her relationship with JFK is in stark contrast to the mythic idealization of his marriage to Jackie who Jesse describes as “a depressive, chain-smoking elitist who he never liked to sleep with.” Yikes. “The measure of contempt Jack had for Jackie,” he told me between bites of his burrata and beet salad, can be found in this unsettling anecdote: “He took the virginity of a 19-year-old intern on her fourth day [at the White House] in [Jackie’s] bed.”

Not exactly Camelot. “Jackie sold Camelot. The audience wants to believe the myth,” said Jesse. “They were actors,” he said of JFK and Jackie. “When the lights went on and the camera rolled, they were the most glamorous couple in the world, and when they stopped, they were the loneliest couple in the world.” And this: “Jackie missed her ‘sell-by’ date. She was 26 when she married Jack and he needed to get married. Their marriage was a deal.”

JFK’s relationship with Mary Meyer was something else entirely. According to Jesse, “He didn’t quite love her, but it was his last chance to have a romantic relationship.” And if he had not been assassinated? “He wouldn’t have been able to get past his sex addiction. J. Edgar Hoover had [files on] everything. In 1964, Jack would have been unmasked.” Possibly, explained Jesse, as the result of the Profumo scandal in Great Britain involving John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government, and Christine Keeler, a 19-year-old party girl with ties to another woman who Kennedy once entertained. But in fact, JFK dreamt of a very different future. He reportedly fantasized that after the 1964 election he would divorce Jackie and marry Mary. But, said Jesse, “There’s no way he could have done it.”

Jesse, an inveterate multi-tasker, told me he was “happy to have written the character of Mary, but thrilled to be getting JFK out of my head. He was a sad, sick, doomed guy.” Now it’s on to the next several projects in the pipeline. He’s written a play about Matisse which garnered rave reviews in Westchester and San Diego, “but hasn’t gotten to New York yet” and is developing “Bringing Home the Birkin” for the stage based on a comedic memoir he optioned by Michael Tonello about his quest to acquire his own arsenal of the insanely expensive handbags that took him around the world and became a multi-million dollar business as he tracked down the treasured totems for “rich lonely women who fill their lives with stuff.” Oh, and he’s also working on a new novel he can’t talk about.

I’m always fascinated by writers’ processes and when I asked Jesse how many hours a day he works, he told me, “Fourteen hours – but it’s not about writing. It’s about eight minutes of writing at a time. You don’t create at a desk, that’s for amateurs.” After all these years what still drives him? “It’s what I tell my 18-year-old [daughter], ‘Run through the tape. The finish line is not the finish line.’ My dream is a home run rising as it clears the fence. It’s not enough to be good, you have to be the best.”

Seen & Heard Around the Room

Donna Hanover celebrating her birthday on Table One – cheers! — with long time pals PR maven Joannie Danielides, Maria Cuomo Cole, Gayle King (who I wanted to chat with about the latest travails of Meghan and Harry, but she left before I got over to the table), Ann Moore, Time Inc’s former chairman and CEO (Talk about the good old days of media!), Sue Leibman and Blair Breard…Andrew Stein and screenwriter James Toback on Three … Producer and former CEO of Showtime Matt Blank on Four … Casting director Jean Doumanian on Five … Author and cultural commentator extraordinaire Lisa Birnbach and producer Marsha Garces Williams on Seven … Joan Jakobson with her son and daughter on Eight.

Moving On …

USA Network founder Kay Koplovitz on Eleven … Producer Joan Gelman with her sons Josh and Gregg Gelman on Twelve … Cristyne Nicholas, Adrienne Arsht and my former boss at People, Larry Hackett, who is now managing partner at 10Ten Media, on Sixteen. I happened to catch Larry weighing in on our former employer’s favorite subject – the British royals — for the recent ABC special, “Royal Divide: Harry, Meghan, and the Crown.” Those royals are the gift that keeps on giving! I did a fair share of television myself when the Megxit news broke and we both agree that if Harry thinks he’s going to escape the media microscope by ankling England, he’s very much mistaken …Alexandra Lebenthal on Seventeen … Another media macher, Gerry Byrne, Penske Media’s Vice Chairman, on Eighteen.

I’ll see you back at Michael’s next month!

The post Wednesdays at Michael’s by Diane Clehane: Lunch with Author Jesse Kornbluth appeared first on lookonline.

It was the usual bustling Wednesday scene at Michael’s this week with a room full of suits and social types ratcheting up the decibel level in the dining room, so I was glad my lunch date, the fabulous and prolific Sheila Weller arrived early enough for us to chat before things got too loud because I didn’t want to miss a single word of our conversation about her latest book, Carrie Fisher A Life on the Edge (Sarah Crichton Books) which came out earlier this month. Once our mutual friend, PR maven extraordinaire, Judy Twersky, arrived and we got right down to business.

Long before I met Sheila, I knew of her work. She wrote a fascinating book on Nicole Brown Simpson’s tragic relationship with OJ Simpson, Raging Heart (the gripping best-seller became part of the murder trial!), and I’d read plenty of her interviews in Vanity Fair and Glamour. We first ‘met’ on Facebook when she was working on “The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour – and the Triumph of Women in TV News” and had our first Michael’s lunch when the tantalizing tome that took on the professional lives of the three women who ruled broadcast television at that time when published in 2014.

Sheila also wrote the best-seller, Girls Like Us (See, I told you she was prolific!) where she profiled three more female powerhouses – this time from the music industry –Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. It’s a testament to Sheila that another icon, Judy Collins, who declined to be interviewed for Girls, read the book and loved it. Sheila and Judy have been friends ever since. The singer even hosted Sheila’s book party for A Life on the Edge. “She’s been absolutely terrific,” said Sheila. “She is truly a terrific woman.”

In the new book about the “beloved” actress, writer, and as Sheila calls her “badass feminist icon,” Fisher is celebrated for both her strength and vulnerability in one of the most compelling and comprehensive biographies on a Hollywood legend in recent years. Carrie Fisher A Life on the Edge has garnered rave reviews from The Washington Post, USA Today (calling it a “not to miss” book), Publisher’s Weekly, Refinery29, and Kirkus praised the book exclaiming readers will “fall in love with Carrie Fisher.” When I asked Sheila why she’d chosen to devote an entire book to one star rather than follow up her successful formula of examining a trio of talents, she said, “Carrie was so iconic and interesting, she was impossible to ignore. She was the Dorothy Parker of her time.”

When Fisher died suddenly in December 2016 – with her mother, the brilliant Debbie Reynolds, passing away from a stroke the very next day – there was an outpouring of affection for both women. Sheila covers all the highs and lows of Fisher’s complicated life – her overnight megastar status at 19 years old when cast as Princess Leia in Star Wars, her codependent relationship with her superstar mother, marriages to Paul Simon and Bryan Lourd as well as her very public battles with drug addiction and bipolar disorder.

Drawn from 120 interviews with people who knew Fisher as a close friend, costar or merely had a memorable encounter with her as well as experts in bipolar disorder, Sheila has constructed a fascinating and deeply compassionate portrait of a woman who was sassy, smart and straight-talking and meant so much to so many. While Sheila learned much for many of Fisher’s famous friends like Richard Dreyfuss and Salman Rushdie, she noted that “Sometimes the best insights and information come from people who don’t know the subject well but can shed light on their personality through a single encounter.” In Fisher’s case, Sheila found that she was open and honest with everyone she met. “I talked to people who met her once at an event or a meeting, and instead of talking about herself, she wanted to ask questions about them. That was who Carrie was.”

What I found utterly fascinating were the crazy parallels between Sheila and Fisher’s lives. The same height (5’1 ½”) and both grew up in Beverly Hills. Carrie’s mother was a movie star, and Sheila’s mother was a movie magazine editor who wrote about stars. “Carrie was magnetic, and I write about magnetic people,” said Sheila. Perhaps the most striking similarity is the one I found while reading the book’s acknowledgments. “My family – at the same time as the Debbie-Eddie-and-Liz [Taylor] drama was going on – had its version of a beautiful diva breaking up a marriage, in a violent, similarly near incestuous, and not unpublic way.” Sheila goes on to write that like Fisher, the devastating events led to an “uncomfortably bonded” relationship with a “plucky, ever-working, husband-dumped” mother. If you’re as fascinated by Sheila’s own story as I am, you can read more about it in her page-turning memoir, Dancing at Ciro’s: A Family’s Love, Loss, and Scandal on the Sunset Strip.

Mid-interview, when our mutual friend Susan Silver stopped by our table to say hello, she was effusive in her praise of Sheila’s book. “I read it in one night!” she told us. Sheila laughed, turned to me, and said, “I hope [people] are not just saying that to me.”

Sheila describes her portrayal of Fisher as “sympathetic”, but she doesn’t “sugarcoat” the darker times in the troubled star’s life, adding, “She had a lot of challenges. Addiction is a disease; bipolar disorder is an illness. I always try to approach my work with empathy and no judgment.” She told me she believed Fisher gave a lot of people hope because she showed the world that “despite whatever challenges you face, you can be honest about them and keep working.”

Fisher, who Sheila said was “weight-shamed an age-shamed” in a business obsessed with unattainable perfection, contributed a great deal to shift the cultural conversation about addiction and bipolar disorder that is the cause of devastating isolation for so many people today. “When a celebrity talks about these things, it helps people feel that they are not alone. One of the most significant legacies of her life is that she destigmatized bipolar disorder in a very powerful way.”

If you’d like to meet Sheila and hear more about her take on Carrie Fisher, she’ll be at the Jefferson Market Library on Saturday at 3 pm in conversation with Amy Ferris. Next month, she’s got two great events planned. On December 5th, she’ll be at the hotter than hot community workspace for women, The Wing, right here in town for a conversation with fellow scribe Alexandra Jacobs. Then on the 9th, she’s headed out to California for a talk at The Women’s City Club of Pasadena. As you can see, Sheila has plenty to talk about.

Seen & Heard Around the Room

We heard we missed Jodie Foster by a day. Oh well, next time … Sole man Steve Madden on Table Two … Paul and Ed McDonald on Table Three … Former Sony/ATV Music CEO Martin Bandier on Four … Allen & Company’s Stan Shuman at his regular perch, Table Five … Andy Stein on Six … Jason Oliver on Seven … New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia on Eight … Author (Hot Pants in Hollywood) Susan Silver and WOR’s Mark Simone on Nine … Peter Griffin on Ten … Jane Hartley on Eleven … Steve Cohen on Twelve … Tom Rogers on Fifteen … Producer Steven Haft on Sixteen… Ann Tisch on Seventeen …Producer Orin Wolf on Twenty-one … Beet. TV’s Andy Plesser on Twenty-two … Former Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes with Peter Kreisky on Twenty-five … The ‘Bar-ettes’ Vi Huse and Kira Semler enjoying their monthly champagne lunch at the bar. Cheers!

The post Lunch with Carrie Fisher Biographer Sheila Weller appeared first on lookonline.

While every neighborhood in the city seems to have been overtaken by empty storefronts and with iconic spots shuttering at an alarming rate, one Manhattan landmark has survived, thrived and thumbed its upturned nose at the naysayers who have been predicting the death of the power lunch for decades.

Michael’s, the cafeteria for the ‘cool kids’ in media, fashion and finance tucked away on the ground floor of the Rockefeller Apartments at 55th and Fifth, is alive and well. The beloved eatery celebrated an extraordinary milestone on Wednesday (of course!) night – its 30th anniversary! – with 350 of its loyal ‘regulars.’

I’ve been covering the comings and goings at Michael’s for 15 years and trust me, it’s been an education. I’ve watched fortunes rise and fall (easily tracked by a Wednesday seating chart) and marveled at just how important a prominent seat in the dining room is when a bold-faced name is campaigning for an Oscar, launching new digital venture or, of course, publishing a book.

It’s been fascinating to witness the behind the scenes goings-on as Michael McCarty and his team GM Steve Millington, Danny DiVella and Loreal Sherman navigate the delicate dance of soothing egos and satisfying every dietary request imaginable year after year – all while making everyone feel like they belong to this elite – but very collegial – club.

Michael stood at the foot of the stairs, as is his custom, his booming voice a familiar welcome to his guests who started showing up in at 6:01 pm (the invite called for 6 o’clock). There was a photographer there to capture all the A-listers and a video was set up in the window at Table One where well-wishers could share their favorite Michael memories. Because the crowd has already filled the room by the time we got there, we never made it over to the table. That’s okay, we’ve got plenty to share about the evening in this column.

The first person I saw after a said hello to Michael’s wife, Kim McCarty, and Michael’s indefatigable director of special events, Robyn Wolf, was W. Randall Jones who was with his son, Charles Jones. Both looked quite dapper in their tuxedos. Randy was one of the first people I met when I first started doing my column in 2006 – when ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong (who now lives in Texas) introduced us.

Randy is always the best dressed man in any room and tonight was no exception. He and Charles (who was filling in for Randy’s wife, Lynne, who was under the weather) were at Michael’s to toast the host but had to leave to attend the New York Landmark Preservation gala nearby. Can you stand the glamour? When they left, I checked in with Penske Media Vice Chair Gerry Byrne, who for the past ten years, has hosted a monthly ‘influencer’ lunch at Michael’s with Bonnie Fuller for Hollywoodlife.com.

I don’t know how they’ve done it, but I’ve seen up to 13 guests shoehorned around Table One for their popular confabs. No one ever seems to mind, and a good time is always had by all (except maybe by the nearby diners when things get a tad boisterous). Ah, but they were having fun! After I checked in with Gerry, I caught up with Matt Blank, now retired from the top spot at Showtime, but nonetheless thrilled with all the positive buzz over the surprisingly great series finale of “The Affair.” We both agree it was truly one of the best-ever series finales. We both also give series’ star Dominic West’s high marks for his performance. For Pete’s sake, give that guy the Emmy!

I spotted Teri Agins and her charming husband Paul Hands with fashionista Fern Mallis (also off to another event!) nearby and went over to say hello. Teri and Paul are Michael’s die-hards. After marrying at City Hall in July 2018, they celebrated in the dining room. “We didn’t tell them why we were coming,” Teri told me. She’s also hosted a party for our mutual pal Joan Kron as well as Paul’s birthday celebration at Michael’s. If only there were a frequent diners’ club!

In the SRO dining room, I bumped into Marshall Cohen and we decided to make haste to the Garden Room where there was a bar and rumored to be some food (Oysters! Pizza! Salmon!). All true, thankfully. We stopped to chat with Bryant Gumbel (who I’ve known since his Today show days), his lovely wife Hilary Gumbel (looking stunning, as usual) and then Discovery Communications’ Henry Schleiff happened by. Everyone knows everyone at Michael’s so after some picture taking, we reminisced about what makes Michael’s so great. “They’re loyal and they treat you right,” said Bryant as he sampled the fried chicken. Hilary and I recalled several lunches we both attended for mutual friends like Kate White when she published one of her fabulous Bailey Weggins mysteries.

Seen & Heard Around The Room

I spent a few minutes surveying the room to see who else had filed in since I arrived. Faces in the crowd included Desiree Gruber who was talking to Chris Taylor, Dick Cavett, Michael Gross, Susan Magrino, Simon Doonan, Joni Evans, Jill Brooke, Larry Hackett, Bill McCuddy, Michael Clinton, Jay McInerney, Alexandra Lebenthal, Joanna Coles, and CNBC’s Joe Kernen. Page Six’s very tall Keith Kelly stood out in the crowd and told me Michael hasn’t raised the cost for hosting The Kelly Gang’s Annual St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser in 15 years — “Not one dollar!” – which has allowed the charity to donate lots of loot to worthy recipients. Ben Widdicombe walking around with a bemused expression – no doubt in search of something to snipe at in his next column.

Other Michael’s regulars toasting the boite’s extraordinary anniversary: My friends Kira Semler (one-half of ‘The Bar-ettes’) and Liz Wood catching up and taking in the scene from a table in the dining room … Mickey Ateyeh and Fran Weissler … Galvanized Media CEO David Zinczenko and Jon Hammond making their way to the Garden Room … The New York Post’s Richard Johnson chatting with PR maven and authors’ best friend Judy Twersky, Susan Silver and new-ish documentarian Joan Kron … Quest’s Chris Meigher and his lovely wife, Grace Meigher holding court in the corner at Table Four … Former NYC police commissioner Bill Bratton and wife CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman making their way through the crowd getting lots of hellos … Norah Lawlor of Lawlor Media Group chatting with some movers and shakers in the center of the room … Leslie Stevens looking better than ever catching up with old pals … Dr. Robi Ludwig whose husband, David, was very game about taking lots of group photos .. Sharon Bush and Cheri Kaufman who both dazzled in their pretty party dresses … Paxton Quigley who chatted with me as I was on the way out about the absent David Patrick Columbia (He was attending The Landmark Preservation Gala.) We both agree David needs to get cracking and write his own book already!

The post Michael’s 30th Anniversary Party appeared first on lookonline.

This is a test: focus on the photograph of the stately manor house at the top of this story. If you hear familiar orchestral tones of the piano when you look at it, you’re going to love the new “Downton Abbey” movie. If all you see is a mansion that bears a passing resemblance to Britain’s Houses of Parliament and wonder about what’s going on inside, you’re probably going to like it, too.

When “Downton Abbey,” the series ended its six-year run on PBS’ Masterpiece in 2016 it was at the height of its popularity and was the most-watched series in PBS’s history. The premiere episode of the final season saw 9.9 million viewers tune in – a number far out of reach for most network shows and more than double the amount of viewers the much-heralded “Mad Men” attracted for its tirelessly promoted swan song (4.6 million) the previous year. “Downton Abbey” was Sunday night ‘appointment television.’ Remember those days?

When the ITV series debuted in the UK in 2010 and a year later here in the states, the aftershocks of the global financial crisis of 2007 were still reverberating. The idea of greenlighting a show about the British upper class and their rich people problems (“Nothing is worse than losing one’s maid,” uttered one of the main characters in “Downton’s” premiere season) would not have exactly inspired the word ‘megahit’ at the time.

And yet that was exactly what “Downton Abbey” was. It was a bonafide cultural phenomenon. With its incredibly well-mannered and well-dressed lords and ladies and oddly titled servants (What exactly is an ‘under-butler’ anyway?) all living under one awe-inspiring roof navigating the cultural shifts that transformed British society in the early 20th century, “Downton Abbey” inspired grown people to dress in period costume to watch television on Sunday nights (Just check out Facebook fan pages) and make pilgrimages to Highclere Castle (the real life manor house that ‘plays’ Downton Abbey in northern England). I visited the house this summer and stood in line with hundreds of people eager to walk the same halls as the Crawley family and their servants. The day I was there, I was one of the few people touring the house who wasn’t wearing either a fascinator and white gloves or bowler hat. I kid you not.

The long-awaited film version of popular television series is a love letter to fans and an anglophile’s dream. You don’t have to have seen the series to enjoy the film, but it helps. Series creator Julian Fellowes, told me, “It’s a very, very good-looking film. We’ve always has good-looking costumes and that kind of thing. But making a movie allows us to photograph it, light it, treat it in various ways that are luxurious compared to the making of television. The people who love Downton will have a wonderful time because everything they loved about the television show will be on the big screen, but there’s more of it.”

There certainly is. Every dollar spent on the lavish production is evident in every frame. The British period drama of a seemingly more genteel time and place is in top form under the direction Michael Engler (an American!) who manages to simultaneously imbue the film with a reassuring familiarity and a sweeping sense of grandeur proving Downton worthy of the big screen treatment. It’s like one of those supersized Downton Christmas specials, only more briskly paced, glossier and more luxurious.

If the thousand or so people who turned up to attend the New York City premiere at Alice Tully Hall earlier this week are any indication, the fans’ deep and abiding affection for elegant and delightfully soapy world of Downton Abbey has only grown stronger over time.

Just why is “Downton Abbey” still so beloved by its fans nearly four years after it wrapped?

Perhaps it was because the Crawley family were nice British aristocrats who became BFFs with their maids and butlers. Lord Grantham paid for the cook’s vision-saving surgery and championed the innocence of his valet charged with murder enlisting the aid of his own lawyer to overturn a guilty verdict. In the show’s final episode, long suffering lady’s maid Anna Bates gave birth in Lady Mary’s bed and afterwards, the maid and her valet husband, John Bates, cooed over their infant son while their employers lovingly looked on.

The Crawley’s benevolence was matched by their loyal servants’ unwavering devotion to the family. Except a few interlopers, everyone at Downton had their hearts in the right place. “Mostly, everyone on the show is inherently decent,” said Fellowes. “These people are doing their best with the cards they’ve been dealt.”

“Downton Abbey” wasn’t all high tea and fancy hats. There was plenty of melodrama during its six-season run. Characters endured World War I, the Spanish flu, a scandal involving a diplomat dying in a Crawley daughter’s bed, a particularly devastating third season which featured the truly shocking deaths of two main players, a controversial rape storyline, a secret pregnancy and a murder. The series finale, which took place on New Year’s Eve 1926, Fellowes fit all the pieces together in both sensible and surprising ways with plenty of heartwarming moments, memorable dialogue and subtle commentary on class consciousness.

As everyone who has seen the ubiquitous trailers for the film knows, the film picks up in 1927 and centers of the royal visit of King George V and Queen Mary (Perfectly timed to attract fans of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle). The news throws both the upstairs and downstairs residents of “Downton Abbey” into chaos. With nearly two dozen characters, the plot is a combination of comedic caper (with an interlude of real drama) and romantic soap opera with all the series’ main characters in the mix.

Plain and simple, “Downton Abbey” is a love letter to the fans. It’s sweeping, gorgeous and unabashedly romantic. Fellowes told me his biggest challenge was coming up with a script where all the main characters “have their own story that has to be developed and resolved. Everyone has to have their crack at the whip.”

Not everyone has a lot to do, but all the main characters from the series are all woven into the story in a way that lets fans know how their lives have progressed since we last saw them. I hate reviews that give everything away, so I won’t.

The first act centers largely on the servants who are united in their disdain for the dismissive staff from Buckingham Palace when they arrive ahead of King George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James) and attempt to take over downstairs. Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nichol) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) find themselves facing off against their insufferable counterparts from the royal household – and losing the battle. Unwilling to surrender to wholesale humiliation, plucky Anna (Joanne Froggatt) steps in and rallies the troops.

She even manages to get Carson (Jim Carter), who has come out of retirement to run the house during the visit at the request of Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) to go along with a far-fetched scheme designed to put the snobs in their place and fight “for the honor of Downton.” The set-up wasn’t my favorite part of the film (it goes on a tad too long) but keep your eyes on Mr. Molesley (the fabulous Kevin Doyle), who returns to service for one night to help with the royal visit. “No one is more excited at the prospect of serving the King and Queen,” Doyle told me. That’s plainly evident in one of the film’s most memorable scenes.

Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), who is now Downton’s butler, a position he coveted throughout the series, leaves the house in protest when he finds out he’s been temporarily replaced Carson and winds up having his own eye-opening adventure. Thomas’ struggle with being a closeted gay man at a time when homosexuality was considered a crime in England led him to attempt suicide towards the end of the series. In the film, a bittersweet subplot has the complicated character crossing paths with someone who offers him hope and gives the wonderful Robert James-Collier some well-earned screen time.

As the indomitable Violet, Maggie Smith utters plenty of the dowager’s signature one-liners (seemingly at breakneck speed) and reteams with Isobel (Penelope Wilton), now Lady Merton, married to Lord Merton (Douglas Reith). As was often the case in the series, Violet is at odds with a family member who won’t bend to her will. This time it’s Imelda Staunton (who is married to Jim Carter) as Maud Bagshaw, an estranged cousin and lady-in-waiting to the Queen who tussles with Violet over an inheritance. (“I don’t argue, I explain.”) Maud arrives with her maid, Lucy Smith (the luminous Tuppence Middleton) harboring a secret that Violet and Isobel are determined to uncover.

Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) are largely in the background, but still manage to a have lovely moment “to tie a ribbon on their six-year onscreen marriage and waltz off into the sunset,” said Bonneville. Lady Mary, sporting a Louise Brooks-inspired bob, is forced to rise to the occasion and make peace with her role as the steward of Downton’s future and just as she does, her husband, Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode, who only appears at the very end of the film) rushes in to sweep her off her feet and twirl her around the dance floor at the ball which caps off the royal visit. Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), now the Marchioness of Hexham, has taken to worrying about ballgowns and is happily married (at last!) to Bertie, Lord Hexham (Harry Haden-Patton). During the royal visit, the couple gets news that will alter their future forever.

Fellowes made a very interesting and smart choice by putting Tom Branson (the terrific Allen Leech), the Irish chauffeur who became a much-loved family member, at the center of the film. Downton always employed just enough historical detail to link plotlines to real-life events. In the series, Tom’s working-class Irish roots and Republican leanings served as a primer on Irish revolutionaries of the period. In the film, Tom’s loyalties are tested in a rather dramatic fashion that will have fans of the series marveling at just how far the avowed socialist has come since he married Sybil, the youngest Crawley daughter, who died after giving birth to their daughter leaving him a widower. “He was lost in that world without her,” Leech told me.

Leech said he was “surprised and delighted” by Tom’s “really lovely storyline” in the film. I suspect fans will feel the same way. “Tom Branson is the viewer’s eye experiencing things for the first time just as the audience saw it,” said Leech of his character’s role in the series. “One of Julian’s gifts is that he created a world where he needed someone to be the tour guide. That’s Tom through his trials and tribulations and relationships in the household whether it be upstairs or downstairs.” In the final reel, it becomes obvious where Tom will wind up – and who will be at his side.

“Downton Abbey” was number one at the box office in the UK where it opened a week ago. If every stateside fan goes to see the film, it will be a smash here, too. And don’t put the tiara and tea set away just yet, if it’s a worldwide hit, this might not be the last trip back to Downton. The film may not earn Fellowes another screenwriting Oscar, but that is hardly the point. At time when our world seems more divided over class and privilege than ever before, it is inexplicably comforting to spend two hours in a darkened theater watching a movie centered around the lives of a family of aristocrats from an idealized past rather than think about our very uncertain future.

Grade: A-

The post “Downton Abbey” Review: A Royally Good Time at the Movies appeared first on lookonline.

Not being an avid viewer of Fox News, I didn’t know much about Gretchen Carlson before her landmark lawsuit filed in July 2016 against her former boss Fox News chairman Roger Ailes in which she claimed her fired her from the network for refusing to have sex with him. The former Miss America, who hosted a daily afternoon news show on the network, successfully sued Ailes for sexual harassment and retaliation, won a $20 million settlement and got a rare public apology.

Little did she know that the chain of events set off by her going public with her story would open the floodgates of women in all walks of life coming forward with their own harrowing tales of sexual harassment and lay the groundwork for the #MeToo #TimesUp movements that are reshaping every aspect of our cultural lives.

“This is not something you wish for,” said Gretchen shortly after she settled into our corner table having turned more than a few heads as she made her way through Michael’s dining room. “You don’t wake up and say, ‘I wish I was the face of sexual harassment.’”

But that’s exactly what happened. The former television news anchor who grew up in Anoka, Minnesota has reinvented herself as an activist and icon of female empowerment in a head-spinning series of events – and some incredibly prescient writing with her book, Be Fierce.

I first met Gretchen at Michael’s (where else?) in December 2016 a few months after she’d won her lawsuit when we were both invited to Joanna Coles’ annual Hearst 100 luncheon. Back then, she seemed to be hanging back a bit in the noisy restaurant filled with the media’s most accomplished women. I sensed a slight reticence when I asked her about her future plans. She told me she was writing what she described as “a playbook on dealing with sexual harassment.” Her eyes widened when I asked her if her future included TV. “Yes,” she told me she “wanted to get back into television” but, “I’ve got all these new buckets to fill in my life.”

I was struck by her transformation when I heard her speak at The Greenwich Chamber of Commerce’s Women Who Matter luncheon in November of last year. Supremely confident and composed, Gretchen stood at the podium looking out at the sell-out crowd commanding their rapt attention as she recounted the excruciating details of the two sexual assaults she experienced early in her career. “One man helped me all day, making calls to help me break into the television business. Then when we were riding in the back of his car, he was all over me and his tongue was done my throat. I didn’t realize that getting into TV meant him getting into my pants.” Some women at my table had tears in their eyes when she told another story. “In the second incident, the perpetrator took my neck in his hand and shoved my face into his crotch so hard I couldn’t breathe.”

That afternoon, I was very moved by Gretchen’s comments about how important speaking out had been for making sure our daughters would not silently endure the same attacks and humiliations – and our sons would not become men who sexual harass and assault women.

When I asked her what has surprised her most by all this, she answered without missing a beat. “I’ve been amazed by how many men have come up to me and said, ‘Thank you for doing this for my daughter.’ I realized then if that was the only benefit to come of all this then it was worth it.”

That hit home especially hard when Gretchen’s then 12 year-old son Christian watched her on CNN’s Town Hall with Anita Hill and heard the staggering statistic that every 73 seconds a woman in this country is assaulted. “He looked at me and asked, ‘Is that true, Mom? And when I told him that sadly, it was he looked at me and said, ‘I want to be a part of the solution.’ I went into my husband’s office and just lost it.”

Gretchen told me about the evening in July 2016 when she had the difficult task telling her son and her 14 year-old daughter, Kaia, she had lost her job. “Mommy got fired and now I’m going to do something about it,” she said then added with a laugh, “My son asked ‘What’s going to happen to Tara? She’s our babysitter.”

Her husband, Casey Close, a sports agent, and two children left immediately after the lawsuit was filed on a previously scheduled trip to California . “It was a blessing,” she said between bites of her Hamachi appetizer. “The kids were away from the melee. I was all by myself and I had no idea what the hell was going to happen. I thought that I was going to sit home and cry. My career that I had worked so hard to build had been taken away.”

But she was about to become the accidental activist that kicked off one of the biggest cultural shifts this country has ever seen. “Women started reaching out to me almost immediately. In the beginning, I responded personally to everyone because my mid-western sense of responsibility had taught me you write thank you notes. I went from getting dozens of emails to hundreds very quickly,” she said. When the volume of correspondence spilled into “thousands” and she couldn’t write back to each person at length, Gretchen did “acknowledge” every email and note she received. “I heard from women in every profession; every socio-economic background — waitresses and women who worked on Wall Street. I heard from oil rig operators.”

That’s when it hit her. “I was standing in my office with stacks of these stories around me and that was the birth of the idea for the book.” Even more importantly, “What I thought was very personal became an epidemic in the space of one month.”

More Info/Purchase

Once she began writing, Be Fierce, morphed from the “playbook” to fight sexual harassment Gretchen had envisioned (“That’s chapter four. I tell women to tear it out and keep it in their back pocket”) into the definitive chronicle of issue.

“I never even called [her experiences] assaults before all this,” she told me between bites of her Dover sole. “It was when I was working on the book and I was interviewing Natasha Stoynoff [the People magazine reporter who has accused Donald Trump of sexual assault] and we were talking about it and she said, ‘You know that’s assault. Right?’ I thought, oh my gosh, it’s assault. My own shame and level of trauma prevented me from being able to call it what it was – assault.”

Gretchen told me exclusively that the new paperback edition of Be Fierce which will be published this fall will include new material about the tidal wave of sexual abuse cases that hit after the book’s publication. “I had to write about Weinstein,” she told me. And what of the stories involving Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer? I told her I’d spent years on the set of the Today show during the Katie Couric-Matt Lauer era and never heard or saw anything that would have indicated what was going on with Lauer behind the scenes. “That’s just it, you think you know someone, but you don’t,” she said. “I wasn’t surprised.”

Even with her “seven jobs” she is juggling (“It’s a good thing I’ve always been very organized!”) Gretchen told me she is planning a return to television without specifying if that means another full-time gig. “There’s another announcement coming in the next few weeks, but I can’t talk about that.”

She is currently a correspondent and executive producer of the Epix show, “America Divided”, produced by Norman Lear. The docuseries follows Gretchen around in real time as she works to pass a bill – The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2017 – that would end forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts.

The cameras were rolling when she had to ask the bill’s original co-sponsor,  Senator Al Franken, who had just been accused of sexual harassment, to take himself off the bill. It is now co-sponsored by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Lindsey Graham. “People thought we had solved this problem [of sexual harassment] because they weren’t hearing about it,” explained Gretchen. “Because of secret arbitration and secret settlements all these women could not tell their stories. That has to end.”

She is heartened by the bill’s bipartisan support. “In this climate, you have to have that to succeed. This is an apolitical issue.” In fact, said Gretchen, “It’s not even a women’s issue – it’s a men’s issue. We have to shift the dynamic and reframe it. There is only one way to stop it from happening –men have to stop sexually harassing women. We have to educate young men in school and at home – it’s almost too late by the time they’ve entered the workforce.”

In the midst of her non-stop schedule of speaking engagements and return to television, Gretchen’s role as chairman of the board of directors of the Miss America pageant, which she won in 1989, may prove to be her most challenging job. She stepped into the role last year after a scandal erupted from the disclosure that its chief executive had written disparaging and offensive emails about former contestants. The chairman position is a volunteer position that Gretchen said takes up between 70 and 80 hours per week.

She told me she wants to make the pageant “relevant for the twenty-first century” but wouldn’t directly answer if that meant eliminating the swimsuit competition. She noted that there was something to the idea that being fit demonstrates “discipline” which is an important quality for contestants but then added, “That was always my toughest category.” Stressing the scholarship aspect of the pageant (“It paid for my last year at Stanford”), Gretchen told me, “I would not have signed on to do this unless I could make this a 100 percent empowerment and leadership organization.” She had previously held a seat on the board, but stepped down two years ago, she said, “to make time for other boards” but when pressed further, indicated she also wasn’t satisfied with how some unspecified matters were being handled.

Before we could continue, we were interrupted by media executive Tom Rogers, who came up to our table, extended his hand and introduced himself to Gretchen saying. “I wanted to thank you for all that you’re doing,” he began. “I hired Roger Ailes at CNBC and it was the biggest mistake I ever made. It took me a lot longer to get rid him than it took you.”

After lunch had been cleared, I noticed she was checking a small black notebook. She had her day’s schedule on a yellow Post-It on the inside cover. “I can’t miss my train,” she said as we hugged goodbye. She was headed back to Greenwich to do a long promised interview via FaceTime and then dive into the most important task of her growing list of jobs – being a mother. “My son has a science test tomorrow.”

Seen & Heard Around the Room

Kathie Lee Gifford looking great with a grey-haired gentleman we didn’t recognize on Table Five Anyone? …Ellen Levine and Steven Haft on Four … New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia at his usual perch on Table Eight with Alex Hitz and Brooke Hayward … Judy Licht on Nine .. Dr. Robi Ludwig, who stopped by our table to say hello on Eleven … My pals Judy Twersky, Lisa Birnbach and Maurie Perl having a lively lunch on Twenty-one… And Stu Zakim with director Jyoti Singh, whose new film Yadvi, The Dignified Princess, is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.


See you next week!

The post A Conversation with Gretchen Carlson: Be Fierce, #MeToo and Miss America appeared first on lookonline.

Summer seemed all but a distant memory as the faithful (myself included) flocked to Michael’s today for another season of power lunches (yes, they are still a thing) where business actually gets done and birthdays are celebrated (Happy Birthday, Kerry Kennedy!). Think about it: When was the last time you got to pitch someone a big idea over the phone? And you can’t text anything important (or at least you shouldn’t) to a potential client or investor. Personal exchanges in a civilized setting to talk business seem downright subversive and revolutionary these days.

I was happy to kick-off the fall lunch season with Deborah Burns, whose new memoir, Saturday’s Child, reads like great literary fiction, and Amy Kliger, who arranged our get-together. Amy has introduced me to a whole host of high-achieving and fascinating women over the years. Deborah is one of those extraordinary women. We were meeting to talk about her new book which chronicles her fascinating, complex and touching relationship with her rule-breaking mother. I found the book incredibly cinematic and devoured it in three nights. (I love when reading a book is like watching the movie unfold in my head.) We settled into my usual perch (Table 27), ordered our salads, and got down to business.

After spending many years in magazines working for industry heavyweights including Jack Kliger (yes, Amy’s husband), David Pecker and Cathie Black and rising to the title of chief innovation officer and brand leader for a host of magazines including Elle Décor and Metropolitan Home, Deborah saw the handwriting on the wall when Hachette sold their titles to Hearst in 2011. “My job was all about the future and I saw that there was no future,” she said. “I knew I had to reinvent myself. It was time for my next act.”

Deborah left Hearst (but retained them as a client over the better part of seven years) and became a media consultant advising brands and professional women over fifty on how to reinvent themselves through her own business, which she cleverly christened Skirting the Rules. It was her perspective as a woman at mid-life that allowed her to really connect to the women she began coaching. “I’m wired to reinvent,” she said.

Amy witnessed Deborah’s passion for helping women reach their goals firsthand when she arranged for her to speak to the employees at L’Oreal about five years ago at an internal ‘Women on Fire’ event. “A million people say they’re going to help women. Deborah has actually done it,” said Amy. “She stands out because she was utterly connected to this [goal] through her mother, whose options were limited. People connected to Deborah and her soul.”

As a consultant, Deborah continued to work with brands looking to find their niche in the rapidly changing business climate until her last digital client went under in 2016. That was the moment that Deborah decided to focus on her dream to write the book about her relationship with her mother, who died twenty years ago, that had been building up inside of her for so many years. Deborah’s quest to discover the truth that was at the heart the relationship she had with her mother long after her parents’ deaths had “become the story I had to write” but leaving the corporate safety net behind “was scary,” said Deborah. Something just told her it was time to forge ahead.

A sign from her mother perhaps? Deborah laughed and said, “I believe that now. There are so many serendipitous things that have happened throughout the entire process.”

After fully committing to the project, Deborah wrote seven days a week for 15 months and produced several drafts before going she was ready to shop the final version. Interestingly enough, Saturday’s Child didn’t start out as a memoir, she explained. “But that’s where I wound up.” In the beginning, she toyed with the idea of writing a non-fiction empowerment tome encapsulating the lessons learned from her mother’s life and the same strategies she used in coaching titled (what else?) Skirting the Rules, but instead decided to write a thinly veiled version of her own life as historical fiction.

As a novel, the book told the story of an only child girl growing up in the fifties who revered her beautiful and unconventional mother, a woman who fought against the restrictive and repressive cultural forces of the era.

But a literary agent who knew the details of Deborah’s life “knew the real story” and recommended that she rewrite the book as a memoir. Something just clicked. “I knew it was right. I never entertained the idea of writing the true story of my mother and me, but when I decided to write the memoir, I never looked back.”

As someone who has also considered – but have always hesitated — about writing a memoir of the profound effect my mother – and her tragic death – has had on my life, I asked Deborah if she had any misgivings about revealing deeply personal details about her family life. “I’m a private person,” she said. “but it was very important to me to look at the forces that shaped the woman who shaped me.”

The critical reaction to the book “has exceeded my wildest expectations,” said Deborah. Saturday’s Child has garnered raves from Kirkus Reviews (“Devilishly smart … a masterful balance of psychological excavation and sumptuous description”) and Booklist (“Poignant and absorbing …”) and earned praise from other novelists including Sally Koslow and Meghann Foye (who called the book ‘This generation’s Terms of Endearment.’)

Deborah, Amy and I talked about the subgenre of memoirs written by millennial children with an axe to grind with their parents. We all agreed a good memoir – especially about familial relationship – benefits from its author having the gift of perspective that can only come with time. In Saturday’s Child, said Deborah, she writes with “no judgment” of her mother and the choices she made. The book intentionally gives the reader “space of their own interpretation.” She explained her thinking this way: “It’s easy to decide what to do when things are black or white. When things are gray, you have to figure it out. Most people live in the gray.”

One of the most fascinating byproducts of having written the book said Deborah, is when she talks to book clubs and gains a fresh perspective. “Everyone tells me something about my mother.”

I was fascinated when Deborah told me about She Writes Press, who published the book. With traditional publishing houses trying desperately to figure out the new rules of the game while clinging to the remnants of its glory days, Deborah knew full well she didn’t want to go that route. (“Each year it gets worse and worse.”) But self-publishing wasn’t the answer, either. After doing some research, she discovered She Write Press, a “hybrid” imprint which publishes a list of 40 titles per season.

Foregoing a literary agent (but an enlisting the aid of a contract lawyer), Deborah worked directly with the publisher on developing the material (They nixed Skirting the Rules as a title which led to Deborah coming up with the far more literary option, Saturday’s Child) while retaining creative control.

The agreement also called for Deborah to retain and cover the cost of her own public relations effort and contribute to the cost of print runs of the book. The good news, said Deborah, is she will receive a greater percentage of royalties on “the back end.”

Besides the professional satisfaction that has come from the solidly positive reviews and brisk sales, Deborah says she has gained tremendous personal insight from writing Saturday’s Child. “It started as a love letter to my mother,” she said. “But I discovered this is really about me.”

As we shared a plate of summer berries and cookies, Deborah told me she isn’t likely to write a novel anytime in the future, “I’m not a fiction writer, I have to write from the heart. For me to do this again, [the project] has to have a ‘why?’” She also knows there is only one direction for her – forward. “The creative process of writing this book changed me,” she said. As for what the future holds, Deborah is currently writing her non-fiction book, Skirting the Rules, and is developing a series of workshops for “boomer mothers and their millennial daughters” on achieving balance in their lives.

“You can’t have it all,” said Deborah, who lives with her husband on Long Island and has three grown children. She recently became a grandmother. “I know my daughter was shaped by having a mother who worked hard at a career while raising three children.” She made the fascinating point that our daughters face a very different world than we did. “So many of the jobs and opportunities that were there for us don’t exist anymore. We’re at a point where, for the first time, daughters may not surpass [the accomplishments] of their mothers.”

These days,Deborah is most excited about the possibility of seeing Saturday’s Child come to life on screen. The Hollywood Reporter touted the book as perfect fodder for either a television series or theatrical film and Deborah’s signed with The Unter Agency to explore the possibilities. “This is the story I was born to tell.”

Seen & Heard Around the Room

Kerry Kennedy celebrating her birthday on Table One with ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong in town for a visit from Texas (We miss you!), Discovery Communications’ CEO David Zaslav and Discovery Inc group president Henry Schleiff, Covey Club founder Cindi Leive and Planned Parenthood’s former president, Cecile Richards, who now heads up a new women’s political action group, Supermajority (which she co founded with Alicia Garza, a cofounder of Black Lives Matter, and Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance). I told you … the power lunch lives!

Brenda Vaccaro, Francine LeFrak and pals on Table Two … John Sykes on Three … PR scion Steven Rubenstein on Four … Jimmy Finkelstein on Five… Andrew Stein and his ‘girlfriend Dominique’ (I don’t know anything else, so don’t ask) on Six … Scott Malkin, co-owner of the New York Islanders on Table Eight … The early show: the lovely Gillian Miniter with a well-dressed gent we didn’t recognize had a quick bite, then for Act Two, 3 Arts Entertainment’s Molly Madden and Ben Stiller were seated at Table 11 … Keeping up with the “Joans”: producer Joan Gelman, radio doyenne Joan Hamburg (Happy Belated Birthday!) and another friend named ‘Joan’ (whose last name I didn’t catch) dining and dishing with the always dashing Robert Zimmerman … I didn’t see who he was with, but I spotted designer Tommy Hilfiger making the rounds in the dining room on the way out after his lunch this afternoon.

– Diane Clehane

The post Kerry Kennedy, Tommy Hilfiger & The Author of a New Mother-Daughter Memoir appeared first on lookonline.

I have been looking forward to this week’s lunch ever since Jeffrey Banks invited me some weeks ago. I’ve chatted with him a few times when I’d seen him lunching at Michael’s with one of our many mutual friends, and we’ve gotten to ‘know’ each other on Facebook. But I’d never had the opportunity to sit down at length with the urbane and dapper designer who has had a very successful second career as an author – until today.

I was eager to talk to him about so many topics. We covered it all, from his six books to his charming collection of tartan home furnishings for HSN to his recollections of working with his mentor Ralph Lauren.

We started with his latest masterpieces: the book, Norell: Master of American Fashion and the exhibition, Norell: Dean of American Fashion which both debuted earlier this year. Jeffrey wrote the book with Doria de La Chapelle and co-curated the exhibition with Patricia Mears. “When I do a book, I always want it to be an event,” he told me.

“Knowing how museums work, I didn’t think there was a chance in hell they’d do another show,” said Jeffrey. “There had been one [about Norell] in the nineties with pieces from one woman’s wardrobe, and I remembered that I didn’t think it was that great, so I asked them if they’d consider revisiting [Norell]. It was Valerie Steele’s first show, and she didn’t think it was all that great either.”

Much to Jeffrey’s great surprise they gave him “carte blanche” deferring to his exhaustive knowledge of designers and design history. He discovered a bridal designer named Kenneth Pool had a collection of over one hundred vintage pieces from Norell, many of which made it into the exhibition. “I started with 250 pieces and was told [by Mears] that might be too much. One of the first things you learn as a designer is how to edit.” In the end, Jeffrey selected 100 beautiful garments for the exhibition.

For the uninitiated, Norman Norell is one of the most celebrated fashion designers of the mid-twentieth century and is best remembered for his sleek, sophisticated and timeless approach to American glamour. I saw the exhibition in April just before it closed with my 13-year-old daughter, Madeline, who marveled at the idea that although the garments we were looking at had been made decades ago, they could have easily be worn today. “I want that green coat, Mommy!” she told me as she took her iPhone around and photographed her favorite items.

Jeffrey smiled when I told him about our visit. “Exactly,” he said. “Although [the cost of] a wool jersey dress was between $300 and $500 — stratospheric in 1960 — a woman could amortize its cost over ten years and it would still look great.” He marveled at the discovery of six to twelve-inch hems on garments. “Norell thought women should be able to shorten or lengthen hemlines at will over time. These clothes were made over fifty years ago. As a designer, this wowed me.”

As much as Jeffrey was awed by Norell’s timeless and enduring appeal and unique artistry, I was equally taken by Jeffrey’s desire to see the designer, who passed away in 1972, get his due. The exhibition was the direct result of Jeffrey’s latest book, which he began writing two years ago.

“I was shocked that no one else had done a book and I became obsessed,” he told me. “I had to do this.” Jeffrey had been collecting images of Norell’s work for almost 20 years. “I wanted to do this while the people who knew him were still here. I told Bill Cunningham about it and while I was writing it, but before I could talk to him, Bill died.”

Jeffrey’s memories of Norell that he shared with me were evocative of a very different time in New York. In October 1972, when he was working for Ralph Lauren, as his second assistant, he implored the designer to get tickets to a retrospective on the designer at the Met. “He asked me, ‘Who is this Norell guy?’” Jeffrey must have been convincing. “He listened to me, and we went. In the end, [the auditorium] went black and there were these lights like glittering stars.

Then 60 girls in his sequined mermaid gowns came out. Then the president of Parson’s came out and said Mr. Norell had had a stroke the night before,” said Jeffrey still moved by the memory. “He didn’t get to see any of that show, and he didn’t come out of the hospital again. He died ten days later.”

I’d known about Jeffrey’s connection to Ralph Lauren, but hadn’t realized it started when he was so young. Jeffrey first met Ralph when he was 16 and working at Britches, a menswear store in Georgetown when the designer came down from New York for a personal appearance at the store. “I’d had perfect attendance [in high school] up until that point, but I told my mother I was going to be absent and she was going to write me a note. And she did.”

Young Jeffrey made quite an impression. “He told me he might have a job for me [in New York] when I graduated [high school].” A year later, after convincing his mother, Eleanor, who wanted to accompany him to the interview, to wait for him at Bonwit Teller, Jeffrey met with Ralph (and wound up chatting with Bobby Short who was at the designer’s offices for a tuxedo fitting) and thus started his career in fashion in New York.

I assumed that Jeffrey’s impeccably tailored blazer was a Ralph Lauren design, but it turns out there was another fascinating story behind its origins. “It’s Brooks Brothers,” he said reaching for his iPhone. Jeffrey had selected an advertising image of the same jacket and repp-striped tie from Brooks Brothers’ archives for the cover of his book, Preppy: Cultivating Ivy Style which was published in 2011 by Rizzoli. “It was from the 1940s, and they remade the jacket and the tie [to coincide with the book launch]. It sold out.” When he showed me the cover, I remember loving it when I saw it on the main floor of Brooks Brothers’ Madison Avenue store.

His other books, especially his first with Rizzoli, Tartan: Romancing the Plaid, which came out in 2007, all have fascinating stories and deep personal connections behind them. Having seen Jeffrey’s adorable plaid home and pet accessories on HSN, I wanted to know where his obsession started. And, it turns out, so did he.

“Everything [written] was always about finding ‘your clan.’ I talked to theologians, architects, and psychiatrists to get a read on why people are obsessed,” he said. The verdict: the familial and familiar aspect of the plaids appeal to people especially in “chaotic times.” Said Jeffrey: “Bill Cunningham had a piece in the Times on tartan hats and scarves, and Tiffany had done tartan windows after 9-11. I knew then I had to do a book.”

Speaking of obsessions, I asked Jeffrey to weigh in on mine – the British royal family.  “Meghan is terrific,” he told me. “When she first appeared with Prince Harry at the Invictus Games in jeans and a white shirt with her fresh-scrubbed face. Who wouldn’t fall in love with her?”

“She’s such a boon for the royal family. You can tell by the way the British public has embraced her. If you go to Great Britain, you’ll see that it’s such a melting pot. As a mixed-race woman, she represents the face of the people who live in Britain.”

And what does he hope her wedding dress will look like? “I hope it will reflect her style and be a little more body conscious [than other royal wedding dresses]. I hope it’s not over the top, though.”

I told Jeffrey that I was surprised Meghan had chosen that elaborate Ralph & Russo gown with its eye-popping price tag [$75,000] for her official engagement portrait. “I love it,” he said. “It was an unusual choice, but I feel like when it comes to royals, the price shouldn’t be a concern. She was making her statement with that dress.” I’ll say.

As we sipped our coffee, I had to ask Jeffrey for his take on the Met Gala. He told me he last went attended the event in 1996, the same year Princess Diana accompanied by her friend and former Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis to the event. The late princess famously wore a navy silk slip dress from John Galliano’s debut couture collection as the Creative Director of Dior.

The company was being honored that year. “And we all stole the napkins that were embroidered with lily of the valley, the company’s signature,” said Jeffrey, laughing at the memory.

It’s been all downhill since then for the event, said Jeffrey who recalled getting a panicked phone call from his friend Terron Schaefer, who was then vice president of marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue, in the days leading up to the gala some years ago. “He told me he’d convinced Saks to buy a table, but Anna Wintour wasn’t letting [Saks’ president] Steve Sadove bring his wife. I told him to call Vogue and tell them that the store would pull all their advertising. That’s how she got to go.”

He continued, “Not only do you have to be invited [to buy a table] but Anna Wintour tells you who you can invite and which celebrities you should invite. I know it’s supposed to raise $12 million for the Costume Institute, but I can’t believe a lot of it doesn’t get funneled to the rest of the Met. It’s become more about the celebrities than the fashion or the designers. It’s a three-ring circus. I don’t miss it.”

And once again, as he’d done several times during our two-hour lunch, he was able to transport me back to a far more exciting time in the city. “When I was a student at Parson’s I bought a ticket to the after-party. It was $150 or $200, and you saw Nan Kempner, Diana Vreeland, and Jackie Kennedy. It was like the US Open; you got to see all the people you dreamed about seeing,” he said. “They would be coming out of the dinner as we were going into the after-party and you got to see the exhibition.  It was magical.”

Michaels through a window

Seen & Heard Around the Room

Hudson News’ James Cohen holding court on Table One … Andrew Stein on Two …Herb Allen on Three … The Today show’s Kathie Lee Gifford and contributor Jill Martin on Four. KLG and I arrived at the front door very same moment this afternoon. She, a vision in black and white, stepped out of her car and sailed in looking flawless. I came loaded down with two bags — the tell-tale sign of a commuter — and wearing my Nikes. Yes, I know, my life is so glamorous.

And there’s more…

Tom Florio and, so we’re told, his father on Table Six …Sharon Bush (mother of Lauren Bush Lauren) and Anne Hearst took over Six for the second seating … New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia at his regular perch on Table Eight … Friends and fellow scribes Roger Friedman and Jill Brooke on Nine … Tina Brown and Jolie Hunt on Eleven … Simon & Schuster’s Alice Mayhew on Fourteen… Long time no see! Adam Platzner, who was lunching on Fifteen, stopped by my table to tell me he’s co-founded a “new media” company, Zig Media, and former Vanity Fair EIC Graydon Carter is one of his investors. Sounds intriguing. Stay tuned!

And finally

PR priestess Susan Blond on Sixteen … LAK PR CEO Lisa Linden and colleague Hannah Arnold on Seventeen … Marc Rosenthal and Marshall Cohen on Eighteen … Joel Silverman and Patricia Duff on Twenty … Peter Price on Twenty-one … Attorney Bob Barnett, who was kind enough to stop by my table to say hello, on Twenty-three … Tom Goodman on Twenty-five … Kira Semler and Vi Huse toasting today’s lovely spring weather with a champagne lunch at the bar. Cheers!

I won’t be lunching at Michael’s next week because I’ll be getting ready for the royal wedding and all the attendant hoopla that comes with it. I’ll be covering every minute for Best Life and MSN. Instead of serving up a lunch report next Wednesday, I’ll have an exclusive editorial on the whole shebang instead.

See you back at Michael’s in two weeks!

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Despite the dreary weather (Will spring ever stick around?), I made my way to Michael’s yesterday to check in with the power lunch crowd. Now that I’m doing the column twice a month, I really look forward to my Wednesday visits to 55th and Fifth. This week, I was thrilled to bump into an old friend – and former boss – Laurel Touby who I met in this very dining room 13 (!!) years ago. At the time, Laurel was running Mediabistro, the popular media-centric site she founded which besides curating and covering news on the business of media, ran a lucrative job search arm of the site, offered courses and held events for aspiring media-ites at a time when it was becoming clear the future was digital. Brilliant Laurel later sold mediabistro to Jupiter Media for $23 million. Since then, she has been focused on investing in emerging technologies and talent. She is one of the smartest women I’ve ever met, and I’ll always be grateful to her for introducing me to the Michael’s crowd.

Before we made our way to our respective tables, we chatted for a few minutes with another Michael’s regular, Michael Gross, mostly recently EIC of Avenue magazine, who has now decamped back to familiar stomping grounds. Michael told me he is hard at work on another book but told me its subject is top secret. For now. Stay tuned!

I was looking forward to this week’s lunch with Ambassador John Loeb and was more than a little intrigued when, ahead of our date, his new book, Reflections, Memories, and Confessions, arrived at my house last week. Besides its considerable heft – I kid you not, the book weighs six pounds – it is a stunning chronicle and something of a personal scrapbook of an extraordinary American life. In the course of the hundreds of interviews I’ve conducted over lunch at Michael’s, I’ve met plenty of people whose lives were worthy of the big screen treatment, but Ambassador Loeb’s story would make a riveting mini-series. Think Winds of War or Rich Man, Poor Man – although the ambassador’s version might be called Rich Man, Richer Man.

How did Loeb turn out such a heavy (literally!) body of work? “I spent 20 years thinking about it – stopping and starting with it,” the ambassador told me when he joined me and his publicist, media maven Judy Twersky, at my usual perch (Table 27). “Then, I spent two years very focused on writing it at home in Purchase [in Westchester County].”

The charming and dapper ambassador, who turns 89 years young today, descended from the founders of two major Wall Street firms, Lehman Brothers and Loeb, Rhoades. Having lived in New York City for most of his life (he told me he had just sold his Upper East Side residence on this very day). Loeb now spends most of his time at his estate in Westchester County where he lives with his wife, Sharon, and works from his home office with a small staff (of three!) assisting him with his business interests (including a vineyard and licensed wine business), philanthropic works and engagements (Loeb will be speaking at the University Club on June 11th and in Newport, Rhode Island at Touro Synagogue on August 18th).

Loeb’s parents were John L. Loeb Sr. who the New York Times called a “pillar of Wall Street” and Frances Loeb née Lehman of the Lehman Brothers dynasty. His grandfather, Carl Morris Loeb, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, founded Carl M. Loeb & Co. which became Loeb, Rhoades & Co., one of the largest and most powerful investment banking houses of the twentieth century.

His family’s fascinating history along with Loeb’s reflections on the power, prestige, and privilege which defined his life – and spurred a lifetime commitment to public service and civic responsibility is chronicled in the over 700-page book. (I usually read an author’s book before interviewing them, but I confess, this time I skimmed it.) I was surprised to find as much as personal anecdotes about the ambassador’s family life as I did in the book. Loeb talks candidly about his wives – most notably his current wife and great love, Sharon Handler, an international attorney, who he married in 2013. He also devotes a chapter to his daughter, Alexandra Driscoll, and his son, Nicholas Loeb, honestly depicting the ups and downs of a father-son relationship. I was surprised to discover Nicholas was the man I knew best from Page Six, who in recent years has made headlines for his contentious relationship with his former fiancée, actress Sofia Vergara.

Loeb’s early years are also covered in great detail in the book (which is available on Amazon – there’s also an ebook). He attended Hotchkiss (which he hated) and Harvard (which he loved) and paints a compelling picture of growing up within those privileged environments while battling the ugliness of anti-Semitism. The ambassador told me stories of growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut where neighbors “had to commit not to sell their house to Jews.” Of his college years, he said, “At the time, Harvard had many clubs that would not take Jews, now my nephew is Porcellian [The university’s final all-male club], and the president is black.” Loeb’s own experiences with anti-Semitism has spurred on much of his charitable work — all written about extensively in the memoir.

In asking questions about Loeb’s impressive tome, it was hard to know where to begin, so I was glad when the ambassador began to tell the story behind the photograph that appeared to be taken outside of Buckingham Palace that appears on the endpapers of the book. “It was taken in 1949 when my family was invited for tea,” he explained as he sipped his pea soup. “The Loeb Rhoades office had stayed open in England during the war,” he said, and because of that, the British government – and the Royals wanted to express their appreciation. That invitation opened the door to a whole new social circle to the young Loeb. “There weren’t a lot of single men my age after the war, so I became very popular – especially during ‘the season,’” he laughed. “I started to get invited to ‘deb parties’ which were not just attended by young women, but everyone from great grandparents to young children. I met a lot of people.”

At another such party in 1953 at the ancestral home of the Duke of Wellington, the Loeb had “one of the greatest encounters of my life” when he met Winston Churchill. “I saw this man and thought, ‘He looks a lot like Churchill.’ I went over to introduce myself, but he said nothing. I talked to him, but he just looked at me and smiled.” The revered prime minister may have wanted to chat if he’d only known what an influential role, he would wind up playing Loeb’s life.

The book is filled with incredible stories populated by the many of the world’s most famous and influential people including plenty of tales about Loeb’s relationships with many US presidents and politicians including Ronald Reagan subsequently appointed Loeb US Ambassador to Denmark. During his tenure as ambassador, Danish popular support for NATO reached unprecedented levels, and Queen Margrethe II presented him with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog in recognition of his diplomacy. There’s plenty for royal watchers to pore over in the book’s pages, too.

Having been raised to believe that a full life is equal parts education, work, and philanthropy, Loeb inherited the legacy of the Winston Churchill Foundation, founded in 1960, from his father (which was born out of his friendship with Lew Douglas, a former US ambassador to the Court of St. James). The foundation was created in support of Churchill College in Cambridge, England, which was, said Loeb, “The MIT of England.” Loeb had just completed his assignment as ambassador to Denmark in the mid-eighties when Loeb’s father gave him a specific task, “My father said, ‘You love England, so you’re job is to raise money.” He did so splendidly by creating the Winston Churchill Award working with the foundation’s executive director Harold Epstein. “They were down to their last $400,000.” Imagine that. By tapping into his considerable skills of persuasion, not to mention impressive contacts, Loeb managed to raise $2.3 million in short order by honoring a roster of leaders including Margaret Thatcher and H. Ross Perot (who received the award from Prince Charles). How’s that for name-dropping?

Knowing that we shared a love of all things British, I told the ambassador I loved the passage about his 75th birthday party thrown by his then-girlfriend Sharon, at Blenheim Palace, a stunning country house in Blenheim, Oxfordshire, England in 2005. It was the hottest ticket among a certain circle of New Yorkers at the time. Among the attendees: Anne Hearst, Beth DeWoody, Susan Fales-Hill, Mary McFadden, and Kip Forbes. You get the picture. “Everyone was expecting me to propose,” said Loeb smiling at the memory. “And was upset I didn’t, but I did eventually.”

Tucked among all the incredible stories about his life and career, I found his anecdote about meeting the daughters of Janet Bouvier Auchincloss quite funny. In 1951, young Loeb was staying in Madrid with a poor family “and desperate for a pool” when a certain marquis had promised Janet he would introduce her daughters (who were touring Europe that summer) to a bullfighter. When none were to be found, he convinced twenty-year-old Loeb to dress and play the part. “I remember when I arrived Jackie and Lee were slightly inebriated.” The ruse seemed to work –until the next day when the young women invited the faux matador to lunch at the Ritz. “I told them the truth, and they were furious,” Loeb told me. “Years later Letitia Baldridge [Jackie’s social secretary in the White House] said Jackie thought it was funny, but I don’t think she did.”

Seen & Heard Around the Room

Michael Waisman on Table One … Interior Design guru Ryan Korban on Two … Andrew Stein and an attractive blonde we didn’t recognize on Three … G III’s Morris Goldfarb on Four … Allen & Company’s Stan Shuman on Five … Hail, hail, the gang’s all here: Dr. Gerald Imber, Jerry Della Femina, Jeff Greenfield, Andy Bergman and Michael Kramer back at their regular perch on Table Six … Paige Peterson on Seven … New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia and Brooke Hayward on Eight … Suzy Halpin on Nine … Security expert and tv talking head Bill Stanton on Ten.

Moving On

MediaVillage founder Jack Myers on Table Twelve … David Slackman on Sixteen … David Poltrack on Eighteen … Producers Joan Gelman and Sandy Pearl on Twenty … Quest’s Chris Meigher and Michael Gross on Twenty-one … Gilt’s Kevin Ryan on Twenty-two … Fashionista blogger Sydney Sadick and her mom (who we thought was her sister!) Amy Kamin on Twenty-six … Laurel Touby and author/investor Zackary Karabell on Twenty-nine.

I’ll be back at Michael’s on May 15th to dine and dish. See you then!

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