Shades of Fortune (66 page)

Now the lights dim further, and the big screen descends from the ceiling. The lights dim altogether, and the screen comes to life with the sting of music and diamond flashes of sunlight on the water of Long Island Sound outside the Seawanhaka Yacht Club. The girl in the whiite dress waves as the yawl-rigged sailboat moves into view with a blond young man at the tiller.

T
HE
G
IRL
: You're late!

T
HE
B
OY
: Tricky winds!

The boy turns his head just slightly toward her to reveal the jagged, uneven scar that mars his perfect handsomeness, and there is a collective gasp from the audience in the Pierre ballroom. The boy secures the boat to the dock, reaches up for the girl, and lifts her down to the deck of the boat with him.

T
HE
B
OY
: You smell brand-new!

And the commercial continues, concluding with the line that travels across the screen against the sunlit water:
Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance!

Next comes the second commercial, a hunting scene filmed in the horse country of northern Westchester, in which the boy reaches down from horseback and lifts the girl lightly up into the saddle with him. Once again, there is the shock as he turns to reveal the harsh scar.

At her shoulder, Dan Rather whispers to Mimi, ‘I don't know a thing about perfume, but you've got a hell of an ad campaign.”

The third commercial uses an interior setting, and the Mireille Couple encounter each other on the huge, curved staircase of a manor house, she ascending and he descending from the shadows above to meet her.

During the applause that follows, Mimi steps to the microphone again. “And now,” she says, “I'd like to introduce you to two people you'll be seeing a good deal of in the coming months: the Mireille Woman and the Mireille Man.” The Mireille theme music comes up on cue.

Mimi returns to her seat, and from stage left, Sherrill Shear-son emerges, wearing the white gown from the final commercial. She moves to center stage, into the spotlight, and performs a deep curtsy (executing it perfectly, to Mimi's relief) and then, after a spin or two, exits into the wings on the side where she entered.

Now the Mireille theme music increases a bit, and the Mireille Man appears from stage right in a dinner jacket, and as the spotlight catches him, the shock of canary-colored hair is unmistakable, but so is the mask from
Phantom of the Opera
—that eerie white mask that was the show's signature, the mask that gazed balefully from the marquee of the Majestic Theatre and from posters advertising the show, which decorated, it seemed, every outdoor advertising space in New York that year, from the sides of Fifth Avenue buses to public telephone booths.

As Dirk takes his bow, the Mireille theme dissolves into the theme from
Phantom
.

There is applause, of course, but there are also, inevitably, some groans, and cries of “No fair!” and “Take off the mask!” But after his bow, Dirk Gordon exits, stage right, still wearing the mask.

At this point, the lights are supposed to come up, but instead, the pink spot fades and the screen flickers to life again. Mark Segal sits forward in his chair. “What's going on!” he whispers. “That's the show! It's over!”

Slowly, on the screen, vague images appear. The quality of the film is grainy, and the lighting is poor, but figures can be made out, unclothed figures, twisting and writhing together in silent contortions, as though involved in some sort of coupling. Nothing is clear, not even faces, but there seem to be three people, two men and a woman, although one of the male figures, with long silver hair, could also be a woman. Arms and hands reach out in what could be caresses; the figures disappear then reappear out of focus. One of the male figures, Mimi realizes, could possibly be Dirk Gordon, while the silver-haired one, she sees with a gasp, could be Edwee himself—and the woman could be his wife, Gloria! “Brad,” she says urgently, “we've got to stop this!”

“Hold on,” Brad says quietly.

The dimly lit, out-of-focus figures continue to writhe and undulate together for another moment or two. Then the screen goes blank, and the confused audience sits in total silence, obviously unsure of what it has just witnessed.

Brad Moore steps quickly to the microphone and, with a broad smile, says, “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my wife's way of saying, so much for Calvin Klein. So much for Obsession.'”

The first to see the joke, inside joke though it is, is Calvin Klein himself, who laughs and claps his hands and cries, “I love it, Mimi! My ad people and Helmut Newton never did better.”

And now Mimi moves to the microphone. “One thing my husband didn't mention,” she says, “Is that I love
you
, Calvin. Look: I'm wearing one of your dresses! Nothing comes between me and my Calvin.”

Now the whole room is laughing and cheering and shouting. The lights come up, and Bobby Short dives at his keyboard with the fast opening bars of “Anything Goes.” In this jubilant mood, the red-jacketed waiters swiftly resume their rounds, refilling glasses with champagne. The room swells with sound.

In olden days, a glimpse of stockin'

Was looked on as somethin' shockin' …

“Thank you, darling,” Mimi whispers to Brad. “How did you ever—”

“One thing I've learned about your business,” he says. “It pays to be quick on your feet.”

But there is no time to say more, for Mimi suddenly finds herself in the center of a growing rush of people, all trying either to take her hand or to kiss her all at once, all mouthing incoherent words of congratulations and praise. She recognizes one of these as the cosmetics buyer from Bergdorf's, who is begging her to let him have a six-month exclusive franchise on Mireille for the Fifth Avenue store. “Just six months, Mimi—exclusive in New York,” he is imploring her.

“Will you give my wife a window?” Brad is saying. “On the Fifth Avenue side?”

“Why, Brad—you really do care about this business!” she says.

Now the photographers and reporters from the fashion press are crowding around her. Microphones are being thrust in front of her face, and flashbulbs are popping everywhere.

“Smile, Miss Myerson.…”

“Over here, Miss Myerson.…”

“What does your husband think of it, Miss Myerson?”

“Who did your hair, Miss Myerson?”

“Will you be touring with this, Miss Myerson, the way Elizabeth did with Passion?”

“What is the secret ingredient? Just give us a hint.”

“Is it some special rose attar? I've never seen so many roses in one room!”

“And roses in her hair, too!”

“What's next from Miray, Miss Myerson?”

And as the noise level in the room rises around her, and Bobby Short cooperatively segues into “Rose of Washington Square,” Mimi realizes, at last, that her launch party is a success.

From Suzy Knickerbocker's column in the
New York Post
the following day:

AN EVENING OF FUN … AND SURPRISES

“Frolicsome” was the word
Diana Vreeland
used to describe last night's wingding at the Hotel Pierre to introduce “Mireille,” that much-talked-about new fragrance from Miray Corp. And if the great D.V. says it was frolicsome, then it was, darlings. Added the Oracle, “The scent of ‘Mireille' is scandalously serious. But the mood of the evening was positively larky.”

Five hundred members of New York's glitter set sipped champagne and made little piggies of themselves on caviar, while aaaahing and oooohing over “Mireille,” including
Brooke Astor, Jacqueline Onassis, Annette Reed,
the
Saul P. Steinbergs, Blaine
and
Robert Trump, Gloria Vanderbilt, Mica
and
Ahmet Ertegun, Ricky
and
Ralph Lauren, Bill Blass, Ann
and Gordon Getty, and on and on and on. You get the picture.

It was also an evening punctuated with a series of little surprises.

Surprise No. 1: The appearance, in a cloud of white chiffon, of
Elizabeth Taylor,
just back from a national tour pushing “Passion,” a perfume of her own. What caused Queen Liz to set foot in a party that was plugging her competition? “I wanted to sniff this one out,” said she. Could H.R.H. still sniff under the weight of all those diamonds? Well, she tried.

Surprise No. 2: The preview of three TV commercials for “Mireille” that will begin airing cross-country next week. The gasp in these commercials comes when the otherwise hunky male model turns his head to reveal a nasty scar along one side of his face. The burning question industry insiders have been asking is: Is this model a guy with a real scar, or is the “scar” a cosmetic concoction, courtesy of Miray? Guests at last night's gala were promised that they'd be introduced to the real “man with a scar,” and see for themselves.

Surprise No. 3: They were, but they didn't. The Mystery Model made an appearance, all right, but was wearing the famous spooky white mask which
Michael Crawford
wears in “Phantom of the Opera.” So the question still burns. For this, we hear, Mr. X is being paid in seven figures.

Surprise No. 4 brought the house down. The house lights dimmed, and the audience was treated to a hilarious parody of
Calvin Klein's
famously naughty ads for “Obsession,” in which birthday-suited boys and girls seem to be carrying on in oh-such-kinky-looking sexual hijinks. The parody was cleverly shot in soft focus and with home-movie graininess, which left party-goers wondering not only who was doing what and with which and to whom, but also who was who. Or whom.

It was all pretty daring, come to think of it, what with Calvin and Kelly Klein right there in the audience. He stopped pouting, though, when Miray's president,
Mimi Myerson,
stepped to the microphone and pointed out that her smashing tea-length gown was by (but you guessed it) Calvin Klein.

And let's nominate Calvin for Good Sport of the Year. “Mireille is a wonderful fragrance,” he said. “Perhaps not quite as exciting as Obsession—but close.” And this, of course, was surprise No. 5. For the first time in the recorded history of the meow-meow beauty business, we had bitter rivals actually saying nice things about each other! What's the world coming to?

All this went nicely with the surprise that rounded off the night's surprises to an even half-dozen. Long before you were born, darlings, the two brothers who founded Miray,
Adolph
and
Leopold Myerson,
had a famous pffft over business philosophy. (Mimi's Adolph's granddaughter, so that's how long ago it was.) Ever since, the Myersons have been a house divided. But last night, under the influence of “Mireille, the Miracle Fragrance,” as it's being billed, Mimi brought off another miracle of her own: a massive family hatchet-burying. All the scattered members of the clan were there, all smiles and kisses, after something like fifty years of battling. Surprised? Of course you are.

“My God, she gave us her whole column!” Mark Segal says.

“Well, it looks as though Mimi has another hit on her hands,” Granny Flo Myerson says to her friend Rose Perlman, after Mrs. Perlman has finished reading the
Post
story to her. The two have met for lunch at what is their favorite meeting place, the top-floor Charleston Gardens coffee shop at B. Altman & Company. “I'm going to have the tomato surprise,” she says. “That's always good here. Of course, nothing can ever replace Schrafft's, but this is next best.”

“That's with tuna, isn't it?” Rose Perlman says. “I think I'll have the same.”

“Actually,” Granny Flo says, “I didn't think those naked people in the film were all that unrecognizable. I could have sworn that one of those men was Edwee.”

“Why, Flo!” Rose Perlman says, putting down the newspaper. “Your eyesight
is
getting better! How could you have recognized
any
body in that film?”

“I didn't
see
him,” Granny Flo says impatiently. “I
smelled
him, the way I always can.”

“You can even smell him in a film?”

“Certainly. Why not? He's always smelled the same—a kind of vegetable-soupy smell. My little Henny-Penny, on the other hand—he was the sweetest-smelling baby on the whole East Side. Just thinking of him, I can remember how he smelled.”

“Really, Flo, you are remarkable!”

“It's what happens when you lose your eyesight. All your other senses get better. My hearing, for instance. Did you hear that?” She points. “I just heard someone drop something. It sounded like a napkin.”

Rose Perlman follows the direction of Granny's pointed finger and sees another diner at a nearby table reach down and retrieve a napkin from the floor. “Amazing!” she says.

Their waitress arrives to take their order. “We don't want to be
too
surprised by the tomato surprise,” Granny Flo says. “It is with tuna, isn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am.…”

“Speaking of Edwee,” Rose Perlman says when the waitress has departed, “what
did
you do with your Goya?”

“I gave it to Nonie.”

“Really, Flo?”

“Yes. When Nonie told me what Edwee was up to, trying to have that painting declared a fake when it's not a fake, I decided Nonie should have it.”

“And Edwee wanted that painting so badly.”

“Well, that's just hard cheese on Edwee, isn't it? You see, poor Nonie really was stiffed by Adolph in his will. He really stiffed her, Rose, and I really wanted to right that wrong. Of course, if Mimi's plan to take the company private goes through, Nonie will finally have some money of her own. But having … sponsored, I guess, is the word—having sponsored Nonie in some of her other business ventures, I'm a little worried about this new one of hers, and I didn't like the smell of that man she's going into it with. She's always been unlucky in business, and unlucky with men. I'm afraid she's going to lose her shirt again, but I know there's no stopping Nonie when she decides she wants to do something. Meanwhile, that painting is worth a lot of money. When I gave it to Nonie, I said to her, ‘This is for your insurance. If this new business of yours fails, Nonie, the Goya will be your insurance.'”