The Girls Who Had Everything

Chelsea sunset. Photo: JH.

Warm summer night in mid-July in New York. In the neighborhood of the girls who had everything.

I went over to the opening at Leila Heller’s Gallery on 39 East 78th Street. A big group show: Shiva Ahmadi, Mohsen Ahmadvand, John Alexander, Shoja Azari and Shahram Karimi, Sonja Balassanian, Naasha Bowdoin, Brichard Bruce, Jennifer Danner, Jonny Detiger, Peter Fox, Judy Henderson, Beth Higgins, William T. Hillman, Iran Issa-Khan, Laleh Khoramian, Abbas Kiarostami, Joyce Korotkin, Conrad de Kwiatkowski, Robert Longo, Kevin MacDonald, Niagara, Nicky Nodjoumi, Martin Saar, Elizabeth Thompson, Andy Warhol, Albert Watson, Tom Wesselman, Dirk Westphal, Peter Wise.

Gallery openings are fun. They’re mindless. You don’t have to do anything but stand there. And look. At the art or at the people. Often it’s the people. Who are often either theatre or at least theatrical.

The northeast corner of 78th and Madison, number 16, with some of the guests of Leila Heller whose gallery exhibition opened last night in that building.

There was a small crowd on the sidewalk outside when I arrived. It was 7 o’clock. You don’t see many people on that block at that time of the night. Or even day. That was a good sign. I didn’t recognize anyone I knew.

You don’t have to know anyone at an art gallery opening in New York. Sometimes a small crowd, sometimes big. Always the plastic glasses with the wine – which in this case might have come from the Heller Vineyards.

Always a variety of types, particularly those who “look” like artists and often aren’t. This crowd looked pretty Upper East, girls in summer dresses, men in seersucker or just shirts with rolled up sleeves. It was warm inside in the big crowd.

opening night crowd.

I’ve known Leila since the mid-90s. She’s married to Henry. They have two young sons and are familiar faces on the New York-Southampton scene. Leila is from Iran although she’s been in this country for years.

She started this gallery long ago. Maybe early 80s. Or has been a dealer for a long time; maybe as long as she’s been in this country.

There are many Iranians in New York, many of whom came here to live during the fall of the Shah in the late 1970s. Many are Jewish and refer to themselves as Persian Jews. There are some very dynamic women in New York who are Persian Jews.

Nicky Nodjumi before two of his works.

Richard Bruce in front of one of his.

They are often very smart, even scholarly, and quite a few are achievers. Some have wealthy or at least affluent husbands. Some live remarkably full, industriously conventional lives with their studies, their careers, their raising of families. Some appear to be women who have everything. Leila Heller probably fills several of those categories although I don’t know about the Hellers’ Net Worth.

I like to look at the art. I’m not a collector. I can’t afford it. But I see a lot of it in my line of business. And so I see things I like and I can often even see whether or not it’s “good.”

I remember the first time that happened. I saw a “bad” Renoir. In a very grand apartment on Fifth Avenue, the home of a very rich man and his wife. I was surprised that I could tell. I was even more surprised that Renoir could paint a “bad” painting.

Paintings by Martin Saar.

I wondered if it might be more than “bad,” a fake. I was astonished that such a rich man and his wife -- with quite a few “name” painters hung in their entrance gallery, living room and dining room -- would buy something so obviously bad. Or, shall we say, not good. I began to look at all the pictures in that apartment with a different eye. A suspicious one.

The pictures at Leila’s new exhibition are good. And diverse. And engaging: I thought how lucky someone would be to own one of them.

See for yourself. 39 East 78th, 3rd Floor, Exhibition continues through August 21st.

Jay Snyder

Philip Heller

Geoffrey Bradfield

Leila Heller and her gallery director

Linda Silverman. Debra Schuster-Tanger, Jennifer Danner, and Catherine Adler

Sonia Balassanian

Henry and Alexander Heller

Jennifer Danner before one of her works

Shoja Azari and Sharam Karimi before their video picture

The Girl Who Had Everything. I left to go over to a small cocktail party that Kathy Sloane was giving, having just moved into her new apartment overlooking the Park.

I passed the old Duke mansion on the corner of 78th and Fifth, so massive and grand compared to anything else around it. It is now part of NYU. There was a woman sitting on the marble front steps. I took a picture so you could get a sense of the immense proportion. Walking by I thought about the house – designed by Horace Trumbauer for Doris’ father James B. Duke. Little Doris grew up there. It is said that he told his little girl (she was twelve) on his deathbed, “never” to trust anyone. And he left her very rich.

Kathy Sloane is a very prominent and prosperous private residential real estate broker here in New York. (See her on The List). She’s always on the go, dividing her time between here and Washington where her husband Harvey holds down the fort and works in government-related business. The people you meet at one of Kathy’s rare gatherings are often Washington or politically related. They are often smart, even scholarly. I always figure there is something for me to learn in such company.


Kathy Sloane

I left her apartment about 8:15 having had an interesting converation with Robert Schlesinger, the journalist/author son of Arthur and Alexandra Schlesinger, which I will report at another time.

Still light, such a nice night, a warm night, I decided to walk up the avenue and cross over 80th on my way to Eli’s to pick up some dinner.

Those two blocks from 78th and the Duke Mansion to the corner of 80th, are filled with New York history. The kid Jock Whitney and his sister Joan grew up in the house next door to the Dukes, designed by Stanford White for his parents. The house on the corner at 79th Streeet, known as the Fletcher House, was also owned by man named Harry Sinclair, one of the richest oilmen in the early 20th century and at the center of the Teapot Dome Scandal in the 1920s.

Across the street on the northeast corner of Fifth and 79th is a luxury coop built in the late 60s, replacing three little chateaux that belonged to a family named Brokaw. The writer Clare Booth Luce was first married to a Brokaw before she married Henry Luce and went big time. She was a girl who had everything.

Now in place of one of those Brokaw limestone piles, one doorway north of the corner, sits another big post-50s/late 60s apartment houses owned by former Governor Spitzer’s father. And right next to that is a big limestone co-op building on the corner of 80th and Fifth, where once sat a huge private mansion belonging to the Five and Dime Store tycoon Frank W. Woolworth. Just around the corner on 80th are the houses built originally for his three daughters: Mrs. Hutton, Mrs. Donahue and Mrs. McCann. Mrs. Hutton killed herself at a young age and her little daughter Barbara inherited her share of the Woolworth fortune. Her father Franklyn Hutton, it is said, made it even larger through shrewd investments.

The James B. Duke house on the corner of 78th and Fifth designed by Horace Trumbauer in 1912, the New York home until 1957 of his only chlld Doris Duke; now part of New York University.

Barbara was a contemporary of Doris Duke. They had other things in common too, Both lost a parent in childhood. Both ended up being the richest American heiresses of their day. Both married several times and once married the same man, Porifirio Rubirosa whom they both showered with VERY expensive gifts (planes, cars, suits, polo ponies, houses, cash and jewels). Both marriages lasted practically moments. It was often said they both married for his priapic prowess, a matter often archly piqued the curiosity and astonishment of both.

So, passing the house on my way to get dinner last night, a half century, three score years later, I was ruminating about Girls Who Have Everything in New York. The Dorian Leigh memoir The Girl Who Had Everything stuck in my craw and the present and the history sat before my eyes. And ears.

Yesterday, a friend was telling me about a well known woman who is getting a divorce (not Madonna). The woman’s stated case is not, not surprisingly, the same as her estranged husband. She claims that he more or less left her emotionally. He claims she left him. This is not her first marriage. Maybe her fourth; I’m not sure. But they’ve all been rich in experience and in some cases, in possessions.


	Barbara Hutton.

	Rubi and Doris.

She’s a beauty. Her husbands have been rich and generous and goodlooking. The last one, over the course of the marriage spent about a hundred million keeping her happy. Yes, you read that right. Less than ten years. She’s also very independent and it’s been acceptable to him. Somehow something is not right. I don’t know what that something is. Maybe no one, even the principals, know what that something is. But this girl who has (had) everything is clearly missing something. Someone else told me she always had a terrible relationship with her father.

You may be thinking this aforementioned woman should get her act together. That’s usually what we think when we hear someone who has more favorable financial circumstances than most of us is unhappy.

I was reminded of a conversation I had last year with a friend who was talking about a friend of hers who was then rumored to be getting a divorce. My friend couldn’t understand it: “She has a handsome cool husband, beautiful children, a fantastic apartment on Fifth Avenue, a fabulous house in the Hamptons, a very successful business. What is she unhappy about?”

The couple eventually divorced. Whatever they were unhappy about is now presumably gone.

New York is a town of dynamic women. They come to this marketplace to do business like so many men. This is the town to ply your cleverness, smarts and ambitions. There can be vast rewards. At least in the financial department. Not to mention the high level of social connections. Knowing kings and presidents or even sitting next to some fresh new movie star at a Cinema Society screening (although they probably do that too), is a lot headier than watching “Gossip Girls” or “Mad Men.”

That quest for success is congenital, if that’s the right word. Those poor little rich girls Hutton and Duke wanted that too. That’s why they dressed up and went to town as much as they could: they wanted to be Out There in the Big World.

The two women who were hosting their receptions tonight are examples of this dynamic when it works optimally. It is probably not coincidental that both women work. This is not about buying a career or having yourself photographed into a career. Or marrying for it – all of which are perfectly legitimate of course. This is about labor. They’ve both had the common woman’s experience of having to look after others, such as children, too.

Then there are the Barbaras and Dorises. And the aforementioned girls who are equally as dynamic, independent and questing. A man plays a pivotal role for these girls. At least in their heads. And there are lots and lots and lots like this living in those big expensive limestone buildings running up and down the avenue overlooking the beautiful Park.

“She married well,” they’ll say about her. Meaning she got a little closer to the loot. Nevertheless, the girls who inherited it are seen as more favored because they didn’t have to do anything (I mean that in the most ordinary aspects) to get it.

Barbara and Doris, who had the loot, used it to acquire jewels and houses, and most importantly, men. For them life mighta/shudda been a song.

However, Barbara died alone after having a reclusive drug sodde existence, in a Beverly Hills Hotel, the crumbs of her once huge fortune all but drained away by a suave and sophisticated lawyer who spoke several languages. And out of both sides of his mouth.

Doris died at the hands of possibly the only man she ever really trusted outside of her father: her butler who robbed her blind and some believe may have hastened her death. The Girls Who Had Everything.

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