Francophile cultural fantasies, that she didn’t have us living on the WASPy Upper East Side.
Maybe the Lansky name was a deal breaker. Or maybe it was the Lansky deeds. But Mommy was a cultural striver, rather than a social climber. She wasn’t conflicted about her roots. She didn’t try to conceal her Jewish background. She didn’t want to become a WASP. She didn’t care about getting her name in the columns. She just wanted tolive like a queen, and her children to live like princes and princesses. And in this regard, at least in the material sense, Daddy made her dreams come true.
No sooner had we moved in than the lessons started. At age five I was taking ballet lessons, piano lessons, ice skating lessons at the rink in Rockefeller Center. Mommy would watch from one of the two cafés beside the rink. The best part was Mommy taking me for hot cocoa at Schrafft’s after the lessons. I could actually ice skate on our terrace; it was that big, so the lessons had some utility. The ballet lessons were Daddy’s idea. He was a good friend of Leon Leonidoff, a Russian-born ballet master and impresario who staged all the shows at Radio City Music Hall. He did the “Living Nativity” Christmas show, with live camels and elephants, re-creating the Holy Land on stage.
We had the best seats at that show and at the equally famous “Glory of Easter” show, which re-created St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Easter Parade right on stage. It was funny how all these Christian spectacles were created by Jewish men like Mr. Leonidoff and his boss Roxy Rothafel, another friend of Daddy’s who had built the famous Roxy Theatre. Mr. Leonidoff also created the Rockettes, and we’d see them, too, dressed as daffodils with the longest legs on earth.
Daddy didn’t want me to be a Rockette, but he would have liked if I had become a ballerina. To that end, Mr. Leonidoff set me up in the best school in the city, right behind Carnegie Hall. The main reason I went was because I wanted to get the ballet shoes. I wasn’t that great at the dancing part, though I lasted there longer than the French nursery school. Mommy herself took me into Central Park and taught me to roller skate. I had never thought of her as athletic. I assumed she was too delicate and pampered for any sports. But she really surprised me. Mommy loved taking me to parks, Central, Riverside, and she loved the Central Park Zoo, probably more than I did. She was big on chimps. One of them she named “Jimmy,” and he responded to her whenever she called his name, coming over and reaching his hand to her out of the cage, pure beauty and the beast.
The fall before I turned six, in 1943, Mommy enrolled me at Birch Wathen, a fancy finishing school twelve blocks away up on West 94th Street. The school building was a limestone townhouse that looked like it belonged in Paris. Maybe that’s why Mommy picked it. She took me up there each day in the morning and picked me up in the afternoon, either driving Daddy’s Oldsmobile or in a cab. She refused to let me go by myself, even though the school was so close to us. All she could ever talk about was the Lindbergh kidnapping. Although that crime took place in 1932, Mommy treated it as if it had happened yesterday and could happen again to me tomorrow. Most of my new classmates were WASPy debutantes in training, though not every girl was in the Social Register . One who wasn’t was Barbara Walters, who was closer to Buddy’s age. Her father, Lou, owned the Latin Quarter nightclubs in New York and Miami and was a friend of Daddy’s, as both men were working the same beat. Barbara would have been a perfect match for Buddy. I wish my parents had fixed them up.
When we moved into the Beresford I got my first dog, a smart and elegant fox terrier. He could have been a double for Asta, the dog in the Thin Man films who was as much of a star as William Powell and Myrna Loy. The Thin Man movies were selling the same art deco
Maybe the Lansky name was a deal breaker. Or maybe it was the Lansky deeds. But Mommy was a cultural striver, rather than a social climber. She wasn’t conflicted about her roots. She didn’t try to conceal her Jewish background. She didn’t want to become a WASP. She didn’t care about getting her name in the columns. She just wanted tolive like a queen, and her children to live like princes and princesses. And in this regard, at least in the material sense, Daddy made her dreams come true.
No sooner had we moved in than the lessons started. At age five I was taking ballet lessons, piano lessons, ice skating lessons at the rink in Rockefeller Center. Mommy would watch from one of the two cafés beside the rink. The best part was Mommy taking me for hot cocoa at Schrafft’s after the lessons. I could actually ice skate on our terrace; it was that big, so the lessons had some utility. The ballet lessons were Daddy’s idea. He was a good friend of Leon Leonidoff, a Russian-born ballet master and impresario who staged all the shows at Radio City Music Hall. He did the “Living Nativity” Christmas show, with live camels and elephants, re-creating the Holy Land on stage.
We had the best seats at that show and at the equally famous “Glory of Easter” show, which re-created St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Easter Parade right on stage. It was funny how all these Christian spectacles were created by Jewish men like Mr. Leonidoff and his boss Roxy Rothafel, another friend of Daddy’s who had built the famous Roxy Theatre. Mr. Leonidoff also created the Rockettes, and we’d see them, too, dressed as daffodils with the longest legs on earth.
Daddy didn’t want me to be a Rockette, but he would have liked if I had become a ballerina. To that end, Mr. Leonidoff set me up in the best school in the city, right behind Carnegie Hall. The main reason I went was because I wanted to get the ballet shoes. I wasn’t that great at the dancing part, though I lasted there longer than the French nursery school. Mommy herself took me into Central Park and taught me to roller skate. I had never thought of her as athletic. I assumed she was too delicate and pampered for any sports. But she really surprised me. Mommy loved taking me to parks, Central, Riverside, and she loved the Central Park Zoo, probably more than I did. She was big on chimps. One of them she named “Jimmy,” and he responded to her whenever she called his name, coming over and reaching his hand to her out of the cage, pure beauty and the beast.
The fall before I turned six, in 1943, Mommy enrolled me at Birch Wathen, a fancy finishing school twelve blocks away up on West 94th Street. The school building was a limestone townhouse that looked like it belonged in Paris. Maybe that’s why Mommy picked it. She took me up there each day in the morning and picked me up in the afternoon, either driving Daddy’s Oldsmobile or in a cab. She refused to let me go by myself, even though the school was so close to us. All she could ever talk about was the Lindbergh kidnapping. Although that crime took place in 1932, Mommy treated it as if it had happened yesterday and could happen again to me tomorrow. Most of my new classmates were WASPy debutantes in training, though not every girl was in the Social Register . One who wasn’t was Barbara Walters, who was closer to Buddy’s age. Her father, Lou, owned the Latin Quarter nightclubs in New York and Miami and was a friend of Daddy’s, as both men were working the same beat. Barbara would have been a perfect match for Buddy. I wish my parents had fixed them up.
When we moved into the Beresford I got my first dog, a smart and elegant fox terrier. He could have been a double for Asta, the dog in the Thin Man films who was as much of a star as William Powell and Myrna Loy. The Thin Man movies were selling the same art deco
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