American society, as recorded in popular history, began in New York with the Astor family at the end of the 19th century. It started under the faux sovereignty of Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, who was known as Mrs. Astor. Society. The word, itself, always implies money, as in financial fortunes—and, therefore, the men who created …
His Royal Highness Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh. To me, he was the best-dressed man in the world, with the possible exception of the flamboyantly attired former King Edward VIII, HRH the Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor. I’ve always said that men’s magazines should emulate Prince Philip in their “how a man should dress …
There is an English writer who is going around telling all and sundry that I made a pass at his wife. Now English men are known not to get too excited about such matters, but in this case the man is simply showing off. I can’t for the life of me think what else this …
It was, using Edward De Vere’s words, much ado about nothing. The media didn’t think so, called it “Deflategate,” and one of America’s great sporting heroes, Tom Brady, was pilloried as if he had inflated the beautiful model Giselle Bunchen, his wife, against her wishes. If any of you Quest readers missed it while on …
In the mid-20th century, the Great American Middle Class took its vacation in the first two weeks of July. Not everybody, of course, but that was a popular date. The working man of the house had two weeks off, and July was right in the middle of the year. Growing up in western Massachusetts, as I …
We First met, Betsy von Furstenberg and I, in 1970 when I was doing a story for LIFE magazine on the playwright Neil Simon. It’s hard to believe that was forty-five years ago. Betsy was co-starring with Maureen Stapleton in Simon’s first serious play, The Gingerbread Lady, which was about to open at the Plymouth …
In 1954, Robert Shaw made it big when his album Christmas Hymns and Carols went gold. “Gold” meant it sold at least a million copies—it was the first classical record to ever do so—and this was about 10 years into Robert’s solo career as a conductor. Robert had grown up poor, and although he’d enjoyed …