Vanity Fair USA 2015-11

DONALD TRUMP : A JOKER WHO HILLARY’S WOMEN : POLITICS’
DOESN’T GET THE JOKE K I N S L E Y

BY MICHAEL
MOST SECRETIVE SOCIETY BE LY LSI SAOR NA H
MICHAEL THE MOTHER OF ALL
LEWIS HOLLYWOOD
GOES ONE-ON-ONE WITH CUSTODY
TOM BATTLES
WOLFE
MONEYBALL
: BY SHEILA WELLER
MEETS HOW TOP CHEFS FIGHT THE

THE RIGHT STUFF MICHELIN
STAR WARS
BY SAM KASHNER
CRIME AND
PUNISHMENT
AT AN
ELITE
IVY LEAGUE
“ H E L L , I F YO U
FRAT
UNDERSTOOD BY JOHN SEDGWICK
E V E RY T H I N G I S A I D,
Y O U ’ D B E M E .”
— M I L E S D AV I S
N OV E M B E R 2015
Everyone’s “Bad Girl” Talks Music, Sex, and

Chris Brown—and Why She’s Nobody’s “Bad Girl”!
BY LISA ROBINSON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
NOVEMBER 2015 No. 663 VANIT YFAIR.COM
FEATURES
138 RIHANNA’S SOLO SCENE By LISA ROBINSON
In her decade at the top of the charts, Rihanna has been
painted as both a victim and a vixen. Now, as she
confronts her bad-girl reputation and ignites the heat for
her next album, the 27-year-old singer is guided only
by her own rules. Photographs by Annie Leibovitz.
149 SWINGING ON A CENTURY

Spotlight on Sinatra: The Chairman, volume two of
James Kaplan’s definitive biography, heralding the 100th
anniversary of the singer’s birth. By James Wolcott.
150 V.F. PORTRAIT: BARTLETT SHER

By ANDRÉ BISHOP With the Tony Award–winning director’s
Fiddler on the Roof revival hitting Broadway, a friend
and colleague applauds Sher’s method, in which chaos
leads to curtain calls. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.
152 FORTRESS HILLARY By SARAH ELLISON

As First Lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential
candidate, Hillary Clinton has been surrounded by an
impermeable Praetorian Guard: mute, secretive, and loyal.
As Clinton embarks on her 2016 campaign, this defensive
shield of confidants and advisers may become an Achilles’
heel. Photo illustration by Sean McCabe.
158 SCHOOL SPIRIT

Spotlight on School of Rock, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
upcoming musical of the 2003 movie. By David Kamp.
Photograph by Mark Seliger.
160 IRRECONCILABLE DISTANCES By SHEILA WELLER

On the hit show Gossip Girl, Kelly Rutherford played a
privileged parent. Offscreen, the actress has been living every
divorced mother’s nightmare: losing custody of her young
kids to their father in Monaco. Trapped in a legal battle,
Rutherford talks about the bruising seven-year struggle
T HI E RRY Z OCCO L A N /GA M MA - R A PHO , K EI KO HI ROM I/ P OL A R IS
P HOTO GR A PHS : FRO M L EF T, © LY N N GO LD SMI T H/CO RB I S, BY
with her ex. Photograph by Claiborne Swanson Frank.
ON THE COVER
Rihanna wears a bodysuit by Valentino;
earrings by Jennifer Fisher; shoes by Giuseppe
Zanotti Design. Hair products by Matrix.
Makeup products by Dior. Nail enamel by IBD.
Hair by Yusef. Makeup by Stéphane Marais.
Manicure by Jenny Longworth. Set design by
Mary Howard Studio. Special thanks to
Rosa Bosch of Cuban Star and Pamela Ruiz of
Tom Wolfe (page 176); the Michelin guide (page 168); Hillary Clinton (page 152). the Cuba Untitled foundation. Styled by
Jessica Diehl. Photographed exclusively for V.F. by Annie Leibovitz
in Havana, Cuba. For details, go to VF.com/credits.
36 VANIT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com CONTINUED ON PAGE 46 N OVEMB ER 2 015

72 JAZZ AGE GEMS From the pages of Vanity Fair
By EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY • ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT • F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
SHERWOOD ANDERSON • CLARENCE DARROW • THEODORE DREISER
LANGSTON HUGHES • FORD MADOX FORD • STEPHEN LEACOCK • BERTRAND RUSSELL
WALTER WINCHELL • ROBERT SHERWOOD • P. G. WODEHOUSE
WALTER LIPPMANN • DOROTHY PARKER • WILLIAM SAROYAN • GERTRUDE STEIN
CARL SANDBURG • ROBERT BENCHLEY • DALTON TRUMBO • NOËL COWARD
D. H. LAWRENCE • E. E. CUMMINGS • JEAN COCTEAU • ALDOUS HUXLEY • JANET FLANNER
DJUNA BARNES • PAUL GALLICO • THOMAS MANN • A. A. MILNE • THOMAS WOLFE
COLETTE • T. S. ELIOT . . . and many more
“Impressively
prescient. . . .
A book as a box
of chocolates.” NOW
—ASSOCIATED PRESS in Paperback
“Fantastic.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Delightful.”
—BOOKLIST
PENGUIN BOOKS W W W . P E N G U I N . CO M
NOVEMBER 2015 No. 663 VANIT YFAIR.COM
CON TI NUED FROM PAGE 36
166 AT LONG LAST KING

Spotlight on King Charles III as the slyly insurrectionist
drama crosses the Atlantic to Broadway. By John Heilpern.
Photograph by Jason Bell.
168 THE FAULT IN THEIR STARS By SAM KASHNER

Michelin stars can be both a blessing and a curse for
anointed restaurants. Indeed, a few chefs have spurned the
honor. The kings of New York’s top kitchens reveal what
it takes to gain (and keep) Michelin’s imprimatur—and the
trauma of losing a star. Photo illustration by Darrow.
173 BETTER INSTALL SAUL

Spotlight on Peter Saul, the irreverently iconoclastic painter,
whose latest work will be on show at New York’s Mary
Boone Gallery. By A. M. Homes. Photograph by John Huba.
174 BOND’S TRIPLE PLAY

Spotlight on Monica Bellucci, Léa Seydoux, and Naomie
Harris, stirring things up in the new Bond film, Spectre.
By Bruce Handy. Photograph by Bryan Adams.
176 THE WHITE STUFF By MICHAEL LEWIS

Trailblazing observer of American mores, Tom Wolfe has
created indelible memes, from Radical Chic to the Right Stuff,
with a technique—New Journalism—that inspired generations
of writers. After a plunge into Wolfe’s newly opened archive
and a visit with the 85-year-old author, a lifelong admirer
emerges with a fresh take on the man in the white suit.
190 OLÉ FOR HOLLYWOOD!
S A I NT A N THO N Y HA L L P HOTO GRA P HE D BY J O NAT HA N B E CK ER . R UT HE RF O RD P HOTO GR A PHE D BY C L A I BO RNE

S WA N SO N F RA N K; DRE SS BY CA LVI N KL E IN CO LL E CTI O N ; B R ACE LE T BY S E A MA N SCHE PP S . P HOTO GR APH BY
Spotlight on a quartet of acclaimed Mexican ﬁlmmakers,
plus a fifth who’s on the rise. By Anderson Tepper.
Photograph by Jason Bell.
DA F Y DD J O N ES ( S HA N D) . I L LU STR ATI O N BY R IS KO . F O R DE TA I L S , G O TO VF. CO M/ CR E DITS
VANITIES
81 DREAMS OF DAVIS
Bruce Feirstein sizes up today’s living generations, charting
the Greatest to the most tech-immersed.
FANFAIR & FAIRGROUND

85 30 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF THE CULTURE
Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book retrospective. Warby Parker’s
new goddess-inspired line; Beltology finds a niche; jeweler
Suzanne Syz’s latest collection. Hot Tracks: Sam Smith.
Mood Board: Proenza Schouler. Cult Favorites. Xin Li: the
Saint Anthony Hall (page 128); Mark Shand (page 118); Kelly Rutherford (page 160); art world’s hottest V.I.P. Hot Type. Beauty: Lancôme’s
George Takei (page 202). 80th birthday in a bottle; Maison Francis Kurkdjian Paris’s
new fragrant assemblage.
46 VANIT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com CONTINUED ON PAGE 50 N OVEMB ER 2 015

101 AROUND THE WORLD, ONE PARTY AT A TIME

Photographer Justin Bishop captures an all-star cast of
actors at the Toronto International Film Festival.
COLUMNS
110 CINEMA POLITICO By JAMES WOLCOTT
Campaign documentaries have captured the nail-biting
tension and unscripted crises of elections from
J.F.K. to Obama. But can cinéma vérité do justice to
the circus of 2016?
114 FOOL’S PARADISE By MICHAEL KINSLEY

With Donald Trump commanding the political stage, his
opponents and critics don’t seem to know how to
counter his appeal. The answer may be very simple.
Illustrations by Barry Blitt.
118 THE UNTAMED ARISTOCRAT By BOB COLACELLO

Last year, after a star-studded fund-raiser for his
charity, Elephant Family, Mark Shand’s wild ride came
to an abrupt end. His sister Camilla, Duchess of
Cornwall, ex-wife Clio Goldsmith, Lee Radziwill, and
more recall his picaresque days as a playboy,
explorer, and conservationist.
L I P HOTO GR A PHE D BY CL A I B OR NE SWA N S ON F R A NK ; CL OTHI N G BY BOTTE GA VE N ETA . DAVI S P HOTO GRAPHE D

128
BY KE NN ET H WI L L A RDT; DRE S S BY F E NDI ; EA R R IN GS BY B UL GA R I. PH OTO GR A PH BY CA R STE N W I NDHO RST
HALL OF SECRETS By JOHN SEDGWICK
For decades Walter Perry, a devoted member of Columbia
University’s mysterious society, Saint Anthony Hall,
kept the club going and its secrets safe. Then, in 2011,
he was convicted of pocketing some $650,000 of
its funds. With Perry still protesting his innocence, the
( S MI T H) . IL L USTR AT IO N BY B A R RY B L IT T. F O R D ETA I L S, GO TO V F.COM / CRE DI TS
case raises intriguing questions. Photographs by

Jonathan Becker.
ET CETERA
62 CONTRIBUTORS
68 EDITOR’S LETTER STEEL TRAPS AND SHORT FINGERS
74 60 MINUTES POLL
76 LETTERS THE TINDER TRAP
104 IN THE DETAILS BILLY EICHNER
Xin Li (page 94); Mackenzie Davis (page 81); Sam Smith (page 88);
Donald Trump (page 114). 109 OUT TO LUNCH PATTI SMITH
202 PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE GEORGE TAKEI
50 VANIT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. N OVEMB ER 2 015

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HOTEL HAVANA By RON BEINNER
As diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba cool
off, tourism is heating up. Explore the best places to spend
those Havana Nights in the city’s time-honored hotels.
IT’S YOUR FIRST LOVE, CHARLIE BROWN

By DARRYN KING Next month, Charlie Brown and his gang
re-unite for The Peanuts Movie. As the beloved comic strip
comes to the big screen, meet the original voice behind
the Little Red-Haired Girl, the ultimate symbol of
unrequited love.
A MOVABLE FEAST By MICAH NATHAN

Fried chicken on the Champs-Élysées? VF.com explores
the new taste for southern food in the City of Light and
foresees the next American dishes to catch on.
GAME, SET, MATCH By KATEY RICH

Visit the set of Red Oaks, Amazon’s new country-club
comedy, serving up some 80s nostalgia. Plus, pull up a
chair with director David Gordon Green and producer
Steven Soderbergh for some behind-the-scenes secrets.
ALL ABOUT EVE

Read an exclusive excerpt from the colorful dedication of
Eve’s Hollywood, a cherished romp through 70s L.A. with
scene-ster Eve Babitz. The memoir by the boho intellectual,
journalist, and Hollywood muse is being reissued by New
York Review Books this month.
BACK TO THE PRESENT

Nearly 30 years ago, Marty McFly hopped in the DeLorean
to visit a date in the distant future—October 21, 2015. As
the fateful day from Back to the Future Part II approaches,
VF.com shares an exclusive look back on the prophetic trilogy.
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VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT

This month, V.F. hosted a packed house of innovators,
influencers, and disrupters for the 2015 New Establishment
Summit, in San Francisco. Relive the highlights from
panels with media moguls, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs,
and a myriad of game changers.
BILLY ON THE SCREEN

Watch comedian Billy Eichner discuss his dream guest,
random fan encounters, and what it’s like to be pushed
around in a grocery cart—by Michelle Obama.
Billy Eichner, host of Funny or Die’s Billy on the Street,
turns the mike on himself. N OVEMB ER 2 015
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Editor GRAYDON CARTER
Managing Editor CHRIS GARRETT Design Director CHRIS DIXON

Executive Editor DOUGLAS STUMPF Features Editor JANE SARKIN Photography Director SUSAN WHITE
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Senior Photography Producer KATHRYN MACLEOD Senior Photography Research Editors ANN SCHNEIDER, KATHERINE BANG Accessories Director DAISY SHAW
Associate Photography Editors CATE STURGESS, RACHEL DELOACHE WILLIAMS Special Projects Manager ARI BERGEN
Art Production Director CHRISTOPHER GEORGE Copy and U.K. Production Director CARLA ZANDONELLA Copy Production Manager ANDERSON TEPPER
Senior Executive Assistant to the Editor ANNA HJALMARSDOTTIR Assistant to the Editor DAN GILMORE Assistant to the Managing Editor DANA LESHEM
Market Editor ISABELLA BEHRENS Associate to the Fashion and Style Director RYAN YOUNG Assistant Features Editor ANDREA CUTTLER
Fashion Associate DUNCAN GOODWIN Features Associate MARISSA EISELE Editorial Business Associate CAMILLE ZUMWALT COPPOLA
Editorial Associates LUCY FELDMAN, MARY ALICE MILLER, LOUISA STRAUSS Editorial Assistants BEN ABRAMOWITZ, MARLEY BROWN, JULIA VITALE, LEORA YASHARI
Editor-at-Large CULLEN MURPHY Special Correspondents BOB COLACELLO, MAUREEN ORTH, BRYAN BURROUGH, AMY FINE COLLINS
Writers-at-Large MARIE BRENNER, JAMES REGINATO Style Editor–at–Large MICHAEL ROBERTS International Correspondent WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE
London Editor HENRY PORTER Paris Editor VÉRONIQUE PLAZOLLES European Editor–at–Large JEMIMA KHAN Editor (Los Angeles) WENDY STARK MORRISSEY
Our Man in Kabul TOM FRESTON Our Man in Saigon BRIAN MCNALLY Our Man on the Street DEREK BLASBERG Architecture Consultant BASIL WALTER
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Editor, Creative Development DAVID FRIEND
vanityfair.com
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Hollywood Editor KATEY RICH Hollywood Columnist RICHARD LAWSON Senior Hollywood Writer JULIE MILLER Hollywood Writer JOANNA ROBINSON
Story Editor KIA MAKARECHI Staff Writer JOSH DUBOFF Associate Editor ALEXANDRA BEGGS News Writer EMILY FOX News Blogger TINA NGUYEN
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Contributing Editors
HENRY ALFORD, KURT ANDERSEN, SUZANNA ANDREWS, LILI ANOLIK, ROBERT SAM ANSON, JUDY BACHRACH, DONALD L. BARLETT, CARL BERNSTEIN,
PETER BISKIND, BUZZ BISSINGER, HOWARD BLUM, PATRICIA BOSWORTH, MARK BOWDEN, DOUGLAS BRINKLEY,
ALICE BRUDENELL-BRUCE, MICHAEL CALLAHAN, MARINA CICOGNA, EDWIN JOHN COASTER, WILLIAM D. COHAN, RICH COHEN, JOHN CONNOLLY,
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STEVE GARBARINO, A. A. GILL, PAUL GOLDBERGER, VANESSA GRIGORIADIS, MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS, LOUISE GRUNWALD, BRUCE HANDY, DAVID HARRIS,
JOHN HEILPERN, REINALDO HERRERA, CAROL BLUE HITCHENS, SARAJANE HOARE, A. M. HOMES, LAURA JACOBS, SEBASTIAN JUNGER,
DAVID KAMP, SAM KASHNER, JON KELLY, MICHAEL KINSLEY, EDWARD KLEIN, BETSY KENNY LACK, FRAN LEBOWITZ, ADAM LEFF, DANY LEVY,
MONICA LEWINSKY, MICHAEL LEWIS, GEORGE LOIS, DAVID MARGOLICK, VICTORIA MATHER (TRAVEL), BRUCE MCCALL, BETHANY MCLEAN,
PATRICK MCMULLAN, ANNE MCNALLY, PIPPA MIDDLETON, SETH MNOOKIN, NINA MUNK, ELISE O’SHAUGHNESSY, JAMIE PALLOT,
EVGENIA PERETZ, JEAN PIGOZZI, WILLIAM PROCHNAU, TODD S. PURDUM, JOHN RICHARDSON, LISA ROBINSON, DAVID ROSE,
RICHARD RUSHFIELD, NANCY JO SALES, ELISSA SCHAPPELL, MARK SEAL, GAIL SHEEHY, MICHAEL SHNAYERSON, SALLY BEDELL SMITH,
JAMES B. STEELE, CHRISTOPHER TENNANT, MATT TYRNAUER, CRAIG UNGER, DIANE VON FURSTENBERG,
ELIZABETH SALTZMAN WALKER, BENJAMIN WALLACE, HEATHER WATTS, JIM WINDOLF, JAMES WOLCOTT, EVAN WRIGHT, NED ZEMAN
In Memoriam INGRID SISCHY (1952–2015), FREDERIC MORTON (1924–2015), CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (1949–2011), TIM HETHERINGTON (1970–2011),
DOMINICK DUNNE (1925–2009), DAVID HALBERSTAM (1934–2007), MARJORIE WILLIAMS (1958–2005), HELMUT NEWTON (1920–2004), HERB RITTS (1952–2002)
Contributing Photographers
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
BRUCE WEBER, JONATHAN BECKER, MARK SELIGER, PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, HARRY BENSON, LARRY FINK, TIMOTHY GREENFIELD-SANDERS, SAM JONES,
JONAS FREDWALL KARLSSON, DAVID LACHAPELLE, MICHAEL O’NEILL, NORMAN JEAN ROY, SNOWDON, MARIO TESTINO, GASPER TRINGALE, FIROOZ ZAHEDI
Photographer-at-Large TODD EBERLE Contributing Artists HILARY KNIGHT, ROSS MACDONALD, ROBERT RISKO, TIM SHEAFFER, EDWARD SOREL, STEPHEN DOYLE
Contributors
Fashion Market Director (Menswear) HEATHER SHIMOKAWA Senior Photography Producer RON BEINNER Accessories Editor JACLYN COBOURN
Special Projects Art Director ANGELA PANICHI Digital Production Manager H. SCOTT JOLLEY Associate Digital Production Manager SUSAN M. RASCO
I L LUST RATI O NS BY M A RK MATCHO
Production Manager BETH BARTHOLOMEW Associate Editor S. P. NIX Beauty Assistant AUDREY NOBLE Photo Associate JAMES EMMERMAN
Photography Production Assistant ELIZABETH ROBERTS Photo Assistant MARINA VERE NICOLL Stylist DEBORAH AFSHANI
Art Assistant LILY NELSON Video Associate EMMA GRADY Editorial Assistants EMILY TANNENBAUM, ISABEL ASHTON
Public Relations
Executive Director of Public Relations BETH KSENIAK Deputy Director of Public Relations LIZZIE WOLFF
Associate Director of Public Relations/Contributing Style Editor, VF.com RACHEL TASHJIAN Public Relations Assistant ANDREA WHITTLE
56 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com N OVEMB ER 2015

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CONTRIBUTORS
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
For “Rihanna’s Solo Act,” on page 138, Contributing
Photographer Annie Leibovitz traveled to Havana
to photograph the Barbados-born superstar. “Annie
and Rihanna have a special connection,” says
Fashion and Style Director Jessica Diehl. “Even through
throngs of hundreds of spectators and fans, they
were completely at ease.” Leibovitz also photographed
Bartlett Sher, resident director at Lincoln
Center Theater, for his V.F. Portrait, on page 150.
MICHAEL LEWIS
Earlier this year, the New York Public Library unveiled its
$2.15 million acquisition of the private papers of New
Journalism pioneer Tom Wolfe. In “The White Stuff,” on
page 176, Contributing Editor Michael Lewis mines
this remarkable trove to construct an original portrait of
Wolfe’s rise to literary stardom. “I met Tom Wolfe 25
years ago,” says Lewis. “I never presumed I would know
him intimately—and then he dumped the contents of
his underwear drawer into the public library.”
LISA ROBINSON
Contributing Editor Lisa Robinson, who profiles
Rihanna for this month’s cover, says, “Despite all
the club-hopping, ‘bad girl’ reputation, I found
Rihanna to be thoughtful and completely in control of her
life and career—and in this story she reveals herself
in a way she never has before.” Robinson, whose memoir,
There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll, is now
out in paperback, also talks this month with
singer-songwriter Sam Smith in Hot Tracks, on page 88.
ANDRÉ BISHOP
André Bishop, producing artistic director of Lincoln
Center Theater, pays tribute to director Bartlett Sher in this
L E I BOV IT Z PHOTOG RA PH ED BY R ACHE L D E L OACHE W IL L IA M S . P HOTO GR A PH S BY PAUL KO L NI K ( BI S HO P),

month’s V.F. Portrait, on page 150. Bishop has worked
TABITHA SOREN LEWIS (LEWIS), NATHAN PODSHADLEY (SELIGER), HANNAH THOMSON (ROBINSON)
with Sher on eight Lincoln Center productions, including
the current Tony Award winner The King and I, the final
scene of which Sher re-staged multiple times in previews.
“He plays with scenery and staging up to the night the
critics are coming,” says Bishop. “But his endless tinkering
and refinements make the production wonderful.”
MARK SELIGER
To capture the cast of School of Rock for the Spotlight
on page 158, Contributing Photographer Mark Seliger
channeled his student days. “I went to a visual-
performance-art high school in Houston,” Seliger
says. “There were these groups of dance or theater or band
students, and they would all of a sudden burst out in the
middle of the courtyard with some kind of ‘happening.’
It was just like the antics of School of Rock—just
wacky, irreverent fun. And that’s exactly what I wanted.”
CON TI NUED ON PAGE 64

CONTRIBUTORS
JASON BELL
Jason Bell photographed the cast
of King Charles III at the top of the London
Eye observation wheel, through the
window of an adjacent compartment,
for the Spotlight on page 166. “I had
a walkie-talkie and was gesticulating wildly,”
says Bell. “It’s not normally how I work,
but it was one of those rare situations where
you feel you’ve got the shot straightaway.”
Also this month, Bell photographed
a tight-knit group of Mexico’s boldest
filmmakers poolside in Santa Monica
for the Spotlight on page 190.
JOHN SEDGWICK
In “Hall of Secrets,” on page 128,
writer John Sedgwick profiles Walter
Perry, the former board president of
Saint Anthony Hall, who was convicted of
stealing $650,000 from the Columbia
fraternity. “Walter is a prismatic figure,”
says Sedgwick. “What you see in
[him] depends on your angle of view.”
Sedgwick’s 12th book, War of Two:
Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and
the Duel That Stunned the Nation,
comes out this month from Berkley.
JONATHAN BECKER
Contributing Photographer
Jonathan Becker does double duty this
month. First up: Walter Perry, for
“Hall of Secrets,” on page 128. Next,
Becker turns his lens on his “great
journalistic hero,” Tom Wolfe, for “The
White Stuff,” on page 176. (“I’ve read
his every word,” says Becker.)
“A Fashionable Mind,” an exhibition
of Becker’s fashion photography
curated by André Leon Talley, runs
through January at the SCAD Museum
of Art, in Savannah, Georgia.
BOB COLACELLO
Special Correspondent Bob Colacello
remembers adventurer Mark Shand in
“The Untamed Aristocrat,” on
page 118. “He never really took high
P HOTO GR A PHS : FRO M TO P, BY A L E X B OA R D, J OS E PH IN E
society very seriously, which was part of

S E DGW ICK, RA L PH GI B SO N , J O NATHA N B E CKE R
his charm,” Colacello says. Shand

died in April 2014 following a benefit,
co-chaired by Colacello, for Shand’s
charity Elephant Family. “Writing this
piece was a sensitive assignment for
me,” Colacello says. “Mark was
this bad boy who turned out to be a
good man when he found his cause.”
CON TI NUED ON PAGE 66
N OVEMB ER 2015
CONTRIBUTORS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 64
SHEILA WELLER
In “Irreconcilable Distances,” on page
160, Sheila Weller recounts actress
Kelly Rutherford’s struggle to share
custody of her two young children,
who have, by a U.S. court decision, been
sent to live with their father in Monaco.
“I’ve written about mothers losing
custody before,” Weller says. “It’s
a unique tragedy that leaves one wishing
that the court system had more
common sense—and more humanity.”
JOHN HEILPERN
For the Spotlight on page 166,
British-born Contributing Editor John
Heilpern peeks behind the curtain of
Broadway’s newest West End import,
King Charles III, a Shakespeare-
inspired fantasy about the current Prince
of Wales’s becoming king. “A British
accent still goes a long way in America,
I’m afraid—particularly if it’s royal or
Shakespearean,” says Heilpern. “To
have both onstage makes the whole
Anglophile world kin.” Also this month,
Heilpern and M Train author Patti
Smith go “Out to Lunch,” on page 109.
CLAIBORNE
SWANSON FRANK
Photographer Claiborne Swanson
Frank’s third book, in progress, focuses
on the relationships between mothers
and their children—so it was a natural fit
for Frank to photograph actress Kelly
Rutherford with her son and daughter for
“Irreconcilable Distances,” on page
160. Frank, who also shot art-world power
player Xin Li, on page 94, praised
Rutherford’s children for their performance
on set: “They brought intensity M A C L E O D A N D W I LL I A MS P HOTO GRA P HE D BY N I CK A N D M AT THI A S . P HOTO GR A PH S BY L AURA
PEDRICK (WELLER), CL AIBORNE SWANSON FRANK (FRANK), SYDNEY H. WEINBERG (HEILPERN)
and love that only kids can bring.”
KATHRYN MACLEOD &

RACHEL DELOACHE
WILLIAMS
Senior Photography Producer Kathryn
MacLeod and Associate Photography
Editor Rachel DeLoache Williams spent
five long days and nights in Havana
producing Rihanna’s cover shoot. “I’ve
never worked so hard in my life,”
Williams says, laughing. “For shoots in
New York or L.A., you know exactly
what you’re going to get,” says
MacLeod. “With Cuba, you have to
go in with a lot of faith that something
magical will happen—and it did.”
66 VA NI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com N OVEMB ER 2015

EDITOR’S LETTER
STEEL TRAPS AND SHORT FINGERS
T he myriad vulgarities of opment for more than three decades.
N I GE L PAR RY
Donald Trump—exam- In “Fortress Hillary,” on page
ples of which are retailed 152, Ellison describes the tight-knit
daily on Web sites and front pages these group of advisers and surrogates that
days—are not news to those of us who has grown up around Clinton like a
have been living downwind of him for coral reef. It once consisted mainly of
any period of time. I first encountered women, but now is about evenly split
Trump more than 30 years ago. Back between the genders. Some of them,
then he was a flashy go-getter from an like Mandy Grunwald and Huma
outer borough eager to make his name Abedin, have formed part of Clinton’s
in Manhattan real estate. Which he suc- defensive shield for almost a quarter-
ceeded in doing in the only way he century. Hillary Clinton has been
knew how: by putting his name in over- embattled ever since she entered public
size type on anything he was associated life, sometimes for reasons of her own
with—buildings, yes, but also vodka, making (and sometimes not). The wall
golf courses, starchy ties, and even a sham of a real-estate school. Most around her is now high and thick. As Ellison notes, this wall creates
people who own private planes include their initials as part of the tail its own set of problems—it’s like the Maginot Line. The State Depart-
number. Not Trump. On his campaign jet, a Boeing 757, his name runs ment e-mail scandal is Exhibit A—the Clintonian zest for prophylactic
from the cockpit to the wings—in gold letters, 10 feet high. secrecy is the root cause of the issue that has mired her campaign in
Like so many bullies, Trump has skin of gossamer. He thinks noth- the muck of the recent past. The wall also keeps information from
ing of saying the most hurtful thing about someone else, but when he getting in. During the dark days of the Whitewater investigation, one
hears a whisper that runs counter to his own vainglorious self-image, adviser told Hillary to stop reading the newspapers—her aides would
he coils like a caged ferret. Just to drive him a little bit crazy, I took to tell her what she needed to know. How isolated is Clinton? Most of us
referring to him as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in the pages of Spy would find a single day of full-time Secret Service protection to be in-
magazine. That was more than a quarter of a century ago. To this day, tolerable. Hillary, Ellison writes, has had it for 23 years. No other recent
I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a pho- presidential candidate—not Obama, not Bush, not even Nixon—has
to of him—generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he been as inaccessible as Hillary has been from day one of her campaign.
has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the
W
length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to hat mystifies V.F. columnist Michael Kinsley about Clin-
me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby. The most recent offering ton’s opposite in the presidential sweepstakes is how his
arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican fellow Republican candidates—and, frankly, the political
presidential nomination. Like the other packages, this one included a media—ever allowed him to sprint onto the playing field as if he were
circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: “See, not so a serious candidate, or a serious anything. In business circles, few take
short!” I sent the picture back by return mail with a note attached, say- him seriously. Even other real-estate developers give him a wide berth.
ing, “Actually, quite short.” Which I can only assume gave him fits. As Kinsley writes in “Fool’s Paradise,” on page 114, Trump’s oppo-
nents’ strategy from the start has been to engage with him, and debate
I
f Trump is like a feral forest animal on the campaign trail, his him, on the “issues”: immigration, ISIS, China, health care, taxes—what
Democratic counterpart is a razor clam with a sharp mind and have you. At a stroke, it elevated Trump to legitimacy. Too late now,
a long memory. They are like matter and anti-matter and really but a better strategy would have been to speak the simple truth: Trump
could not be more un-alike. Trump says whatever he wants, takes ad- is unqualified for the job by temperament, experience, and character.
vice from no one, and so far seems politically unaffected by any of “That’s why his campaign is a joke,” Kinsley writes, “not the merits or
his loathsome boasts and put-downs. Whatever one thinks of Hillary otherwise of his alleged policies.” Fortunes will be lost on bets as to
Clinton—and, goodness knows, everyone has an opinion—she knows a when the wheels on the Donald Trump bandwagon will fall off. He’s
lot about government. But she seems to rarely say what she thinks and certainly lasted longer than his detractors would have initially guessed.
has surrounded herself with a secretive phalanx of control-freak viziers. He may be giving the American political system the roughing up it
At this point, as Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison points out, you’d need to so sorely needs, but even the remote possibility that one of those tiny
apply the famous Turing Test to see if any authentic human “Hillary” fingers could be within reach of the nuclear hot button should give any
can be distinguished from the machine version that has been in devel- sane Republican the chills. —GRAYDON CARTER

THE 60 MINUTES/VANITY FAIR POLL
BAD HABITS
A
re Americans creatures of habit? Maybe, if it’s badd hab- In a related question, the thing we most want to hide from others
its we’re talking about. And, being Americans, we’re differs according to gender. More women (33 percent) say it’s their
pretty proud of that; or anyway we show a magnani- body; more men (26 percent) say it’s their credit-card statement. (An
mous understanding and acceptance of our foibles. equal number of men and women—2 percent—say it’s their “spouse
Our go-to bad habit appears to be gluttony: far and or partner” they’d really like to keep under wraps.)
away the habit we most want to conceal (we claim) is “eating some- Finally, what about those freaks—sorry, solid citizens—who ap-
thing fattening.” And if we could get away with anything, with no pear to have no bad habits whatsoever? Fewer than half of us see
bad consequences, it would be overeating. How appropriate 1 them as “role models.” A quarter of us, in fact, are convinced
that we needed two questions, instead of the customary they’re “hiding something.” Judging from this poll, it’s
one, to confirm that. probably a large cheese pizza.
Whom do you @vf.com
judge more?
10 2 See the complete
P O L L R E S U LT S.
Go to VF.COM/
NOV2015.
When you hear
about a celebrity 16% Which of these
going into rehab,
you think ...
OTHERS 69% irritates you most?
MYSELF SMOKING / 32%
32% IT WON’T BE THE LAST TIME

CURSING / 23%
SPEAKING WHILE CHEWING / 20%
62%
SMACKING GUM / 8%
9 3
BITING NAILS / 4%
CRACKING KNUCKLES / 3%
Which do you Which are you
33%
most want to hide from GOOD FOR THEM most likely to do when
26%
no one is looking?
EAT FATTENING FOOD / 38%

other people?
CHECK SOMEONE OUT / 13%
SMOKE A CIGARETTE / 10%
CREDIT-CARD STATEMENTS
WATCH TRASHY TV / 14%

19%
A PARTNER OR SPOUSE
E-MAILS AND TEXTS
WEB SITES I VISIT
TEXT AN EX / 4%
10%
10%
9%
We love to eat,
7%
MY BODY
MEN
WOMEN
drink, and be merry.
2%
2%
2%
We also love to smoke,

LOOKING AT PORNOGRAPHY / 49% judge one another, DRINK 16% 44%
T HOM A S N O RTH CU T (5 ) , F RO M STI LL IM AG ES ( 2 ) , F ROM UYGA RG EOG RA PHI C ( 8 ) , BY EL IZ ABE TH W YATT (3)
ALCOHOL
OVEREAT
WATCHING REALITY TELEVISION / 17% and eat some more.
P HOTOG RA PHS BY A LE XSTA R ( 1 ) , BU RA Z IN (4 ) , D E N DON G ( 9 ) , H AYRI E R ( 6 ), IG ORR 1 (10 ) , N A STCO ( 7),

PLAYING VIDEO GAMES / 13%
8 4
POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA / 11% SMOKE 10%
If your partner If there were
indulged in one of
these activities every SLEEP 8%
no negative
night, which one DEEPLY UNHAPPY / 6% AROUND consequences, which
bad habit would
would bother you
30% IMPOSSIBLE TO BE AROUND / 7% you do more of?
most?
ALWAYS FROM ANOTHER PLANET / 14% 4% LIE
19% LATE ALWAYS 9%
HIDING SOMETHING / 24%
ROLE MODELS
ON TIME
41%
79% 41% 9%
7 NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE 5
ULTIMATUM FROM LOVED ONE
SEVERAL YEARS IN THERAPY
A DIFFERENT BAD HABIT
My friends and People who have no
colleagues see
me as …
6 bad habits are …
Which is most likely This poll was conducted on behalf of CBS

News by SSRS of Media, Pennsylvania, among a
to get you to break a random sample of 1,019 adults nationwide,
bad habit? interviewed by telephone August 7–11, 2015. Some
low-percentage answer choices have been omitted.

LETTERS
I
enjoyed reading your recent article on
Tinder. It did a great job of exploring
the many double standards around dat-
ing, sexuality, and cisgender expectations.
However, as a bisexual woman who met
her current girlfriend on Tinder more than
a year ago, I would like to point out that
Tinder has been a great boon for many
>HRL\W@Tinder @nancyjosales and L.G.B.T.Q. people around the country. It is
much less sexualized than Grindr (for gay
']HUP[`MHPYHYLZWV[VU@V\YHWWWHUKLYZ[V and bisexual men) and Craigslist, and has
[OLSHa`HUK[LJOHKKPJ[LK)YPUNIHJRYL[YV many more users than most dating apps
KH[PUN and sites marketed toward lesbian, bi, and/
or queer women. This makes it particu-
larly useful in places without a large, visible
L.G.B.T.Q. community.
It was disheartening to learn of other
women’s negative experiences on Tinder, but
I would argue that the technology doesn’t
enable rampant misogyny and male privi-
lege—it reveals it.
I realize that the majority of your reader-
ship (and the world) is straight, but it would
@nancyjosales @V\Y=HUP[`-HPYWPLJLVU have been nice if the author or editor had in-
cluded a nod toward L.G.B.T.Q. readers and
;PUKLY^HZPUJYLKPISL0Q\Z[KLSL[LK[OL users of the app as well.
HWW@V\WYVIHIS`ZH]LKT`ZHUP[` NAME WITHHELD
New York, New York
FLAME WAR
H
Does Tinder
UGE props for tackling
inspire emotionless the divisive issue of Tin-
encounters? der. Each week I have
Emotions run at least 20 female friends using
high. me as their therapist to address
their horror at how sexually shallow
and aggressive users are. These friends
are losing faith in humanity, marriage, and
@nancyjosales Great article, & #Tinder’s living at all. Millions will defend Tinder, but
OPZZ`Ä[VUS`WYV]LZP[#tindertantrum years from now we’ll all know this was where
things went very wrong.
MARK RADCLIFFE
New York, New York
THE TINDER TRAP S

orry, Nancy Jo Sales: what you’re ob-
serving is class-specific social relations,
not the advent of the fourth chimpanzee.
The birds and the bees, the swipes and JEREMY LOPEZ
Toronto, Ontario
the tweets; Taylor Swift expands her circle
T
Y
our article about twentysomethings
using the dating app Tinder to ar-
range multitudes of emotionally de-
he photo of our nation’s best and brightest huddled over void sexual encounters unfortunately misses
their smartphones waiting to bag their next score is pro- what is actually fascinating about the Tin-
foundly sad [“Tinder Is the Night,” by Nancy Jo Sales, der revolution: the co-opting of newfangled
technology by forty- and fiftysomethings
September]. To think this generation sidesteps the delight- using the app to arrange multitudes of old-
ful frisson that has fueled the arts from Romeo and Juliet to the Twi- fashioned, traditional dates.
light saga. Slow down, live a little, love a little; dare to savor the Tinder has evolved past its swipe-swipe-
bang origins—although it is indisputably
stomach-churning anxiety and soaring bliss that have intoxicated used for that purpose by plenty—and has
the world forever. Elite ladies of the metropolis: those who emerge become a choice for people seeking old-
only into the pale-green light of dating apps are salamanders, not men. school, boy-meets-girl-and-picks-up-the-
dinner-bill behavior. With the total demise
ANNE STERLING of personal ads and the decline of some
Salem, Massachusetts paid dating sites, Tinder is becoming
LETTERS
akin to mom jeans and Dad’s Oldsmobile. olds on their last day of school. Accord- I the only one who finds all this fuss over
I am a fortysomething divorced mom ing to press accounts, after being refused Taylor and her Suzy Creamcheese persona
of three and offer by way of illustration permission by one publishing company to a bit nauseating? And boring? She loves
my last two Tinder dates, both of which use a song by Swift in a pivotal moment her parents, she now loves Kanye West,
involved late-fortysomething professional in the show, the director attempted to con- she loves her fans, she loves her girlfriends,
men who took me out to eat, declined my tact Swift directly by tweeting, “Please … and—news flash—Taylor and the blond-
offer to split the check, and behaved like help these seventy-year-olds Shake It Off.” tourage do not discuss shoes during their
perfect gentlemen without any expectation Taylor Swift’s swift reply? “Permission sleepovers … There are more “pressing
of sex (or even any physical contact other granted… Good luck with your opening matters.”
than a good-bye kiss). night.” How sweet and kind is that? PAMELA NARUTA
Neither of these perfectly lovely men text- ANNIE LANG Arnold, Maryland
ed me pictures of his genitals. They did not Kambah, Australia
engage in explicit conversation, either by text
T
or in person. They did not initiate any sexual aylor Swift: champion of artists ev- Letters to the editor should be sent electronically with
activity or even invite me to a private place at erywhere; girlfriend to the world; the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone
which that could occur. This from the very the superstar with the ordinary number to letters@vf.com. All requests for back issues
same Tinder app that you described in your voice and the best publicist ever. As a writ- should be sent to subscriptions@vf.com. All other
queries should be sent to vfmail@vf.com. The magazine
narrowly focused profile. er who writes a whole lot for no money, I reserves the right to edit submissions, which may
Middle-aged women easily meeting re- cannot thank her enough for her voice and be published or otherwise used in any medium.
spectable, respectful suitors? Now, that truly support for the underpaid artist. But am All submissions become the property of Vanity Fair.
represents a sexual revolution.
DEBRA KARLSTEIN
New York, New York
I
am hoping the reason you would pub-
lish an article about Tinder is that such
behavior is aberrant and practiced by More from the
V. F.
only a few, like being a vegetarian.
KATIE O’CONNOR
MAILBAG
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
T
hat Tinder article is the most ac-
curate portrayal of modern dating
and its consequences that I’ve read
in a long time—or maybe ever. Other maga-
zines try but fail to examine the question of
whether this new approach is really good
for women and men.
I shared this article with my friends and “In my opinion, there are only three print magazines worth subscribing to,” writes
have vowed never to Tinder/online-date Parker Johnson, from Ubud, in Bali, Indonesia. “The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and Vanity
ever again. Fair. I am writing to just simply say thank you to Graydon Carter.” Mr. Johnson goes
Your article made me want to subscribe on to call Graydon “a badass,” making this Mailbag’s day, at any rate.
to Vanity Fair. I always saw it as a magazine Toni Bentley’s “I’ll Read What She’s Reading” (August) elicited a perhaps appropri-
I’d start to read in my late 30s, early 40s, ately ecstatic response from many readers. You know the article we mean. “I was
but now I feel as if I need it in my life today. introduced to good books by my mother when I was young,” writes Wendy Howard-
So rarely are the ins and outs of the lives of Benham, from Castle Rock, Washington. “I was introduced to the Hitachi Magic Wand by
millennials written about in such an elegant friends at a delightful party in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the mid-80s. I was introduced
and mature fashion. to ‘Hysterical Literature’ by the August 2015 issue of Vanity Fair.... The Magic Wand is
KRYSTAL WALKER
the greatest invention of mankind.” Diane Lehnowsky writes, from Mantua, New Jersey,
Minneapolis, Minnesota “After reading the article and seeing the video, I have only one comment: Please, sir ...
Me, sir ... Can I be next, sir???????” (Not everyone was, to borrow from the 2,000-Year-
Old Man, thrilled and delighted. Nancy Molina writes, from Gresham, Oregon, to say,
LEADER OF THE PACK “Bye-bye, Vanity Fair,” citing as one reason “the pure ‘ick’ ” of the Bentley article.)
So appreciative is Vancouver’s Valeria Fellini of V.F.’s “needle-sharp journalism and
fantastic photos” that she “offers this study of Miss Piggy, so much in the news of late, in
J
osh Duboff writes, in his essay on
Taylor Swift [“Taylor Calls the Tune,” thanks.” Did we read that right? Let’s check: So appreciative is Vancouver’s Valeria Fellini
September], that he doesn’t know a of V.F.’s “needle-sharp journalism and fantastic photos” that she “offers this study of Miss
young woman (or young man) who doesn’t Piggy, so much in the news of late, in thanks.” Well, so appreciative is V.F. that we wanted
want to be part of Swift’s circle of success- to be sure to mention the gift—though, alas, now that we’ve unnecessarily repeated that
ful, supportive, and hardworking friends sentence, space prohibits including any of the porcine-related “insider info.”
I L L USTR AT IO N BY A N TT I KA L E VI
and colleagues. “Longtime subscriber” James Hill, of Saluda, South Carolina, is the kind of reader we
To that circle of admirers could surely be cherish, one who “annually tolerates the vapidity of your Style Issue,” as he puts it—one
added the veteran cast of Seventeen, at the who loves us for (or despite) our faults. That September issue also failed to resonate with P. J.
Belvoir theater company, in Sydney, Aus- Maurice, whose verdict from Whittier, California, is: “Too much vanity and not enough
tralia. In the new play a group of famous sanity.” Surely you’ve noticed the magazine’s name; we’re contractually obligated.
septuagenarian theater actors play 17-year-
NOVEMBER A l l I s VA N I T I E S . . . N o t h i n g I s F a i r 2015
‹ ‹
BRUCE FEIRSTEIN charts GENERATIONAL DIVIDES The first APPLE Mac computer
GEN POP
THIS
i FA C T
and disunions, from baby-boomers’ was released in:*
preferred mode of communication (LAWSUITS) to
the iGen’s trusted news source (YOUTUBE) . p.82
MONTH A
1979
B
1984
C
1996
D
Yesterday
DAVIS WE A R S A TO P
BY B OT T E G A V EN ETA;
S H ORTS BY M ARC
JACOB S ; S H O ES BY
ST UA RT WE ITZ M AN ;
B R AC EL ETS BY
JE N N IFE R F I S H ER .
1984.
* Answer: ( b )
P RO DUCTS BY CHA N EL ; NA I L E NA M EL BY DI O R; HA I R BY P ET E R G RAY; M A KE UP BY
ST Y L E D BY RYA N YO UN G; HA I R P RO DUC TS BY WE L L A P ROF E S SI ON A L S; M A KE UP
L I NDA H AY; M A NI CUR E BY H ON E Y; F O R DE TA IL S, GO TO VF.CO M /CR E DI TS
MACKENZIE DAVIS
AG E : 28. P ROV E N A N C E : Vancouver, British Columbia. C L A SS AC T: The Canadian ingénue studied Eng-
lish literature at McGill University, in Montreal. She then moved to New York City, in 2009, where
she attended the Neighborhood Playhouse for theater training. “Behavior matters more than words.”
F R E S H A I R : The actress’s big break came in the 2013 Sundance darling Breathe In, alongside Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, and Amy Ryan. “It was
the best introduction to professional acting that I could have hoped for. The cast wasn’t populated with jaded people; everyone was excited. To
enter the business with that sort of energy was so lovely. It set a high bar.” O N F I R E : She’s also in AMC’s series Halt and Catch Fire, which is set
in Texas’s “Silicon Prairie” in the 1980s. “It’s about ego and innovators, and people being very competitive and dying for their cause.” D I R E C TI N G
AT TE NTI O N : This month Davis appears as NASA worker Mindy Park in Ridley Scott’s The Martian, starring Matt Damon. “Ridley knows exactly what
he wants. He’s so comfortable and confident that when you stop shooting, it’s because he got what he needed.” K E E P I N G P E R S P E C TI V E : Actors she
admires: “People who make project choices because they want to tell a very specific story, not because they’re making chess moves to become
the biggest star.” — KRISTA SMITH
N OV E M BE R 2 015 P H OTO G R A P H BY KENNETH WILLARDT www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 81

VAN I T IE S
GENERATION GAPS
Seventy years after the end of W.W. II, 50 years after the Beatles at Shea, 20 years after
the birth of AOL, 10 years after YouTube, and 3 years after “Call Me Maybe,”
Vanity Fair charts the latest generational divides—and the state of our psychic disunion
B y B RU C E F E I R S T E I N
GENERATION iGEN MILLENNIALS GEN X BABY-BOOMERS GREATEST

GENERATION
YEAR OF Before the end of
BIRTH After 2000 1980–2000 1965–1979 1946–1964
W.W. II
WHICH 51–69
MAKES THEM 0–14 15–35 36–50 70 +
HOW OLD? (but they lie)
First time they First time they laid

LIFE-ALTERING Release of
EVENT
Free Wi-Fi 9/11 eyes on a ’55
the iPhone 6 tried pot
Ford Thunderbird
Sharing an Priced out of Using a reverse mortgage
CURRENT LIVING Down the hall from apartment in Back in the city, to provide shelter
SITUATION
Brooklyn, considering
Mom and Dad Brooklyn baby! for feckless offspring
Los Angeles
Soon-to-be- Dreaming about

HOW DO THEY Mom’s Prius Lyft Handmade
GET AROUND?
repossessed that ’55 T-Bird
Dutch bicycle
BMW
TRUSTED NEWS Dan Rather Dead

SOURCE YouTube Twitter John Oliver
Brian Williams trees
PREFERRED
MODE OF Guilt-inducing
Snapchat Selfies Text Lawsuits
COMMUNICATION phone calls
ICON Ariana Grande Mark Zuckerberg Kurt Cobain Howard Stern Harry Truman
SOCIAL NETWORK
THEY ABANDONED Instagram Tinder LinkedIn Match.com The Rotary
FACEBOOK FOR Club
$5,000 on $35 on Oklahoma

ENTERTAINMENT $26.95 on $2,000 on
EXPENDITURE $900 on Coachella “Platinum” tix to the at community
Minecraft Burning Man Rolling Stones dinner theater
MONEY- Mobile-game Limited-edition Superhero G.O.P. fund-raising

P HOTO GR A PHS BY A NDR E Y TT L ( PI CKL E ) , SCOTT C A MA Z IN E ( VI AGRA ) , MI K E CO PP O L A
DRAINING Second home F RO M NO DE RO G ( L A ND LI NE ) , BY STE V E WI SB AUER (P OT ) , A LL F RO M GE TT Y I M AGE S;
ADDICTION upgrades Nikes collectibles on eBay e-mails

( O L I VE R) , F RO M F OX PHOTOS ( T RUM A N ), F RO M HE RI TAGE IM AGE S ( T- B IR D) ,
BY KMA Z UR/ WI R EI MAGE ( COB A I N) ; F O R DE TA I L S , G O TO VF. CO M/ CR E DITS
GET-RICH-QUICK Create a video Invent an app Sell something Flipping houses Fracking
SCHEME game to Yahoo
SIGNIFICANT Being Common Core Trigger warnings and Artisanal

CONTRIBUTION The bong Defeating Hitler
TO SOCIETY guinea pigs micro-aggressions pickles
DEFINING Peanut-allergic Gluten-intolerant Attention-deficit- Erectile- Permanently

CONDITION disordered dysfunctional aggrieved
Everybody doesn’t How to pay off No longer being the America,

DEEPEST FEAR Low batteries
get a trophy? grad-school loans center of the universe 2015
AND, FINALLY, Where the fuck

THE KEY QUESTION
What’s a What’s a career? What’s the Where’s the
did we go so very,
OF THEIR LIVES landline? point? Viagra?
very wrong?
82 N OVEMB ER 2015
3 0 DAY S i n t h e L I F E o f t h e C U LT U R E NOVEMBER 2015
Æ SAM SMITH’S BOND SONG p. 88 PROENZA SCHOULER’S MOOD BOARD p. 91 CULT FAVORITES p. 92 THE FORCE BEHIND CHRISTIE’S p. 94 AND MORE ...
P HOTO GR A PH © PHI L IP PE HA L SMA N /M AGN UM P HOTO S; F O R DE TA IL S, GO TO VF.CO M /CR ED I TS
HIGH TIMES
Philippe Halsman and
Marilyn Monroe,
photographed by Yvonne
Halsman, from Philippe
Halsman’s Jump Book
(Damiani), a new, facsimile
edition that brings the
classic 1959 photo book
back into print.
NOV E M BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 85

Beltology’s
Andrew Heffernan and
Anna Lundberg.
eltology founders Andrew

Heffernan, 41, an Irish surgeon with
a Harvard M.B.A., and his Swedish
graphic-designer girlfriend, Anna Lundberg,
28, met in 2010 at Parsons School of Design,
The Warby in New York. “We discovered that men’s
Parker limited-
edition Thea wear is the fastest-growing category online,
Collection. faster than women’s wear, faster even than
groceries,” explains
Eye Spy Glamour Heffernan.
However, unlike
arby Parker, the five-year-old eyewear company that has become the go-to brand for socks or ties, there’d
millennials and grandparents alike, has set its sights on the jet set with its latest collection. Thea, been virtually zero
a limited edition of three different frames—Lovett, Grace, and Penrose—comes in two shades growth in the U.S.
(Jet Black and Red Canyon) and is hand-trimmed in a stainless-steel accent that has been triple belt market since
coated in 24-karat gold. How chic! Inspired by the ancient Greek golden mean—the notion that 2007. “Men use
true beauty lies in proportion and balance—W.P. picked as its muse the Titan goddess of light, the sock as a way
who was said to have given gold its luster, and named the new collection Thea (which means of expressing
sight). Holding steadfast to its commitment to give back, the company will donate one pair of themselves,” he
glasses to someone in need with each pair of frames sold. As always with Warby Parker, you get says. “But what’s
to feel as good as you look. (Starting at $195; warbyparker.com) — P U N C H H U T TO N going on with the
belt? It was as if
one big sleeping
giant was just lying
BEST IN SHOW there.” The Eureka!
he latest collection from Swiss moment came
jewelry designer Suzanne Syz, when the couple visited Lundberg’s family in
A N D MA KE UP BY T Y L ER CO LTO N ; F O R DE TA IL S , G O TO VF.COM /C RE DI TS
renowned for her vibrant, Gothenburg, Sweden, two years ago. They
H EF F E R NA N A ND L UND BE RG P HOTO GR A PHE D BY J UST I N BI S HO P; HA I R
eccentric, and playful pieces, will happened upon a men’s store where scores
debut this month at the annual New York of belts in myriad colors and styles were
Art, Antique, and Jewelry Show at pinned to the wall. Five months later,
the Park Avenue Armory. Much of the Beltology launched online. There are 40
eclectic array has been crafted from different designs of leather-trimmed belts
titanium, which Syz declares is “the made of stretchy Italian-inspired webbing,
ultimate material of the 21st century.” starting at $60. Cool enough for
(November 20–24; armoryonpark.org) street kids, the right side of jaunty for men
— C AT BUCKLEY in suits, and a
rainbow of
colors for
Jewelry from
Suzanne
preppy golfers.
Syz’s upcoming (beltology.com)
collection. —ALICE B-B

‘ t’s been the greatest year of my life, but also, it messed with
everything there is to mess with,” says Sam Smith, 23, about
his enormously successful debut album (In the Lonely Hour).
“It was draining and challenging,” he adds, “but nothing that a little
L.R.: How did you feel when Tom Petty claimed “Stay with Me”
was plagiarized from his “I Won’t Back Down”?
S.S.: I was completely shocked and sad. His song came out however
many years before I was born, and to this day I still haven’t listened
therapy and a few hugs from my mum couldn’t sort.” to his song on principle. Tom wrote me a
The London native, who won four Grammys and has sold more than nice letter saying there are [just] so
eight million albums with his soulful voice and sad songs (including the many notes on a piano, but it’s
No. 1 hit “Stay with Me”), talks with Lisa Robinson about fame, romance, still a shame. No matter what
landing the James Bond theme song, and singing while standing still. though, “Stay with Me”
is my song and my story—
LISA ROBINSON: How did you react to being called nothing can take that away.
“the male Adele”? L.R.: Is the next album
SAM SMITH: Every artist is always going to be compared to someone, going to be even more
so to be compared to a woman who stands for everything I personal and intimate?
believe in music, I was firstly flattered. But it just shows that there S.S.: I’m three songs
aren’t many people in pop music at the moment who just stand in and it already is.
onstage and sing. My plan is just to love
L.R.: Thankfully, you don’t have pyrotechnics, harder than I’ve ever loved
dancers, Zumba routines … before, hide nothing,
S.S.: Don’t get me wrong, I love a massive show with dancers and and embrace that I’m an
the works and I love Zumba! But I just want there to be more people imperfect human being.
who just sing. I always thought if I became successful, I’d want Oh, and sadness—
everything to be bigger and bigger, but my plan for the next album is sadness is everything.
to strip it all back. It’s important to keep it all classy. I always ask
myself, What would Frank [Sinatra] do?
L.R.: Your first album had so many sad songs about
unrequited love. Are you still lonely?
S.S.: I will forever be a lonely soul. I am, however, no longer
in love with someone who doesn’t love me back. I’ll be
totally honest; I’m finding it hard at the moment to date
and make sure people are into me and not the future
of my bank account. But I’ve never really had a boyfriend,
so I’ve never known any different.
L.R.: You’ve talked a lot about one-night stands,
but you also say you’re a romantic …
S.S.: I find short, fast
romances romantic.
There’s a beauty to
dark imagery.
I had my first-ever
relationship this
year, and my job was
S A M S MI T H
the main thing that
tore it apart. I’m not
sure that I can juggle both. When I find the right
person, nothing else will matter, but I’m prepared to
kiss a lot of frogs.
L.R.: How did you get to write and sing the always
sought-after theme song (“Writing’s on the
Wall”) for the new James Bond movie, Spectre?
S.S.: Keeping that a secret was my own
top-secret mission. I told my agents it was my
P HOTO GR A PH BY CA R STE N W IN DHO R ST; F O R
dream to do it, they planted a seed, and the next

thing I knew I was sitting in Pinewood Studios
D ETA I LS , GO TO VF.CO M/ CR ED ITS
with Sam Mendes and Barbara Broccoli and they

were handing me the script. I wrote the song with
Jimmy Napes in literally 20 minutes; the vocal
you hear is the demo vocal. I wanted to make
something timeless and classy, an epic love
song. A song that people can scream out while
heartbroken and drunk at karaoke.
88 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com N OVEMB ER 2 015

Lazaro Hernandez and
Jack McCollough
Mood Board
Proenza Schouler’s Fall 2015 collection represents an organic
mix of raw, untamed beauty. It takes its cue from the
New York School, the midcentury movement that shifted the
focus of the art world to New York for the first time.
Clothes are cut, slashed, and pieced together to create
a feeling of movement and freedom.
BY PUNCH HUTTON
Fall/Winter 2015 began

by looking at the New York School
of painting, specifically the work
“
of Helen Frankenthaler, one of the few female
Abstract Expressionists. She pioneered
the ‘stain painting’ technique—thinned paint [applied]
directly onto raw, unprimed canvas. It was
her instinctual and spontaneous approach to creation,
without preconceived ideas of what
the final result would be, that inspired the
development of the collection.
—Lazaro Hernandez ” Robert Morris,
Untitled, 2010.
Robert
BY PE TE R L IN DB E RGH ( H ER NA N DE Z) ; J OS I E M IN ER (M O DE L L O OK S) ; GO RDO N PA RK S/ THE L IF E P I C TURE
Morris,
P HOTO GR A PHS © 2 015 RO B ERT MO RR I S/ A RTI STS R I GHTS SO C IE T Y ( A .R .S .) , N E W YOR K ( A RT WOR KS);
Untitled,
1969.
CO LL E CT IO N /GE TT Y IM AGE S ( F RA N KE NT HA L ER ) ; F OR DE TA I L S, GO TO VF. CO M/ CRE DI TS
“ We were also looking at

Robert Morris’s use of materials,
specifically the sculptures he
created using felt, which he would cut,
slash, and let hang. We liked the
idea of leaving things raw
Frankenthaler in her
studio, circa 1957. and undone. We treated our fittings
in the same way, with a sense
of immediacy and spontaneity.
—Jack McCollough ”
N OV E M BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 91
TRETORN CANVAS
NYLITE SNEAKER
Still perfect—whether on the
tennis court or paired with jeans.
(us.tretorn.com)
ANY THING BY DONALD ROBERTSON

If you haven’t started collecting the fashion illustrator’s pieces,
you’re already behind. From his canvas paintings and
clothing to eyeglass cases and pillows—people can’t get enough
of the Instagram star’s work. (donaldrobertson.com)
LYNN W YAT T
In the categories of “best”—etiquette,
dressed, dinner-party companion,
living-room décor, and so forth—this
Texan doyenne is tops.
Objects of devotion, from HIGH CAMP SUPPLY
eccentric and sporty to classic and floral For gardenia lovers.
The fragrant flowers arrive, loose
BY P U N C H H U T TO N and untied, in a black lacquered
box. When you lift the lid, the aroma
P HOTO GRA P HS F RO M DE SI GN ER WA L L COVERI NGS (WALLPAPE R), BY PHO EBE RO URKE -GHABRI E L
will take your breath away. This is
( WYATT ) , TA RA S GRO I ( RO BE RTS ON A RT WO RK ), MATT SMI TH/WO O DY BOATE R (CHRI S C RAFT),

no ordinary flower-delivery company.
LE MARTINIQUE (highcampsupply.com)
F ROM V E CTOR I G/ GE TT Y I MAGE S (S I L HO UETTE ); FO R DETAI LS, GO TO VF.CO M/C REDI TS

WALLPAPER
It’s what lines the
halls, and the walls
of the coffee shop,
at the Beverly Hills
WILLIS & GEIGER JACKETS Hotel. Sure,
The now defunct American there’s Indochine,
expedition-supply company but this paper,
practically outfitted the 20th century, installed in 1949 at
designing clothing for Charles 9641 Sunset
Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, and Boulevard, makes us
Ernest Hemingway, among all nostalgic for the
others. (ebay.com, if you’re lucky) Pink Palace. THYNC
(beverlyhillswallpaper Among the myriad ways to get an
.com) energy boost, this new device,
which you attach to your temple for five
minutes, is among the most
talked about. It zaps low-frequency
electrical pulses through nerves
in the brain—and it won’t give you
caffeine jitters. (thync.com)
CADY NOL AND ART IO HAWK

Cady Noland, daughter of painter No one—except maybe Marty
Kenneth Noland, doesn’t do press and McFly—knew if these self-balancing
doesn’t make many pieces, but art skateboards (think: Segways
CHRIS CRAF T collectors worship her work, and she is without handles) would be eschewed
Mahogany-hulled powerboats, designed and built starting in the 1920s, gave widely considered an “artists’ artist.” for dorkiness or embraced as cool.
way to primarily fiberglass and metal bodies by the late 50s. (chriscraft.com) (Artwork not pictured.) (iohawk.com)

Xin Li, photographed
at Christie’s in New
York City, sits on the
Lockheed Lounge
chaise, by Marc Newson.
ST Y L E D BY C L A IB O RN E S WA NS ON F R A NK ; H A I R P ROD UCTS BY KÉ R A STA SE PA R IS ; M A KE UP P RO DUC TS BY CHANE L; HAI R BY SHI NYA NAK AGAWA;
Richard Pousette-
M A KE UP BY A S A MI M ATSUDA ; B L OO D WE D D ING F RO M THE A RTHU R A ND A N ITA KA HN COL L EC T I ON ; FO R DETAI LS, GO TO VF.CO M/C RE DI TS
Dart’s Blood Wedding
is on the wall.
Masterpiece Theater LI WEARS A DRESS

BY GUCCI; SHOES BY
SERGIO ROSSI.
early six feet without shoes, and with captivating Far that she be an artist,” Widmaier Picasso
Eastern features, Xin Li has been a center of attention since she was recalls. “But she had no inspiration and
one of the tallest girls in China’s Manchurian region: first as a teen- no inclination to create anything. So I said she should work in the auc-
age professional basketball player for the country’s Jilin Province team, tions.” Fortuitously, Emmanuel Di Donna, then Sotheby’s worldwide
then, after being scouted on the streets of Beijing and relocating to vice-chairman, was on the island, too, and an introduction was made.
Paris in 1996, as a top model on the runways of designers Yves Saint When Li got back to New York, she quit modeling and began work as
Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier. However, in her “third chapter,” as the an auction-house trainee. “Better than any school could offer,” she says
39-year-old deputy chairman of Christie’s Asia Pacific calls it, her per- of her crash course in art, wine, jewelry, and whatever else her peers
formances truly captivate an audience. You’ll spot her in the middle of thought the new girl with good style and great connections should know.
the hysteria of Christie’s live auctions—prices climbing to seven, eight, After a few months, she was moved to the private-clients sector. Wid-
nine figures—calmly poised with iPhones glued to both ears, speaking maier Picasso remembers a call from Di Donna in which he joked of
Mandarin into one and English into the other, and using yet a third Li’s potential: “Your friend is nice, but she could be dangerous.”
to snap photos of this art-world spectacle and send them to clients on How and why Li moved from Sotheby’s to its rival Christie’s, in
the other side of the planet. “I’ve sat behind her [during sales] and it’s 2010, is a touchy subject. “I was presented an opportunity that I
fascinating,” Brett Gorvy, the chairman of postwar and contemporary couldn’t refuse” is all she’ll say. But these are the facts: Christie’s
art at Christie’s, says. “She’s a force of nature!” set a new record with $4.5 billion in art sales in the first half of 2015,
“Timing in life is everything,” says Li. “And location,” she adds with Asian clients accounting for 27 percent of all sales globally.
coyly. She’s referring to St. Barth’s, her “lucky spot,” where she met This month, she will be at the center of one of Christie’s big-
not only her fiancé, music executive Lyor Cohen, last year, but also gest auctions, where Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu Couché (Reclining
Diana Widmaier Picasso, whom she was introduced to at a cocktail Nude), a glorious painting of a female nude from 1917, is the much-
party in 2008. The two struck up a conversation that would forever anticipated centerpiece. Starting bid? One hundred million dollars.
alter Li’s life. At the time she was 32, an age at which models are Li knows clients who will be bidding on the piece, but she’ll never
typically forced into retirement, and she wondered if Picasso’s grand- give names. Discretion is the biggest part of her job. “Only a few
daughter could give her some tips on how to make it in the art world. people in the world will know where a painting like this ends up,”
“I saw she had an insatiable curiosity [about art], so I suggested she says. “It’s exciting to be one of them.” — D E R E K B L AS B E R G
94 VANI T Y FA I R P H OTO G R A P H BY CL AIBORNE SWANSON FRANK N OVEMB ER 2015

The living room of
Studhorse, a house in the
Cascade Mountains
SUN KING
‘
designed by architect
Tom Kundig, from felt like almost a
Tom Kundig: Works preacher feeding the
(Princeton Architectural). gospel to hungry
souls.” The gospel was rock
’n’ roll, the hungry souls
were the people of the
world, and the
preacher was a white
Alabama farm boy
named Sam
Phillips, who
arrived in
Memphis in
1945 besotted
with blues and
R&B. When he opened a tiny
recording studio on Union
Avenue in 1950 and went on
to found Sun Records, the
preacher turned himself into
a full-blown prophet,
hell-bent on destroying pop
music’s color line, which he
did, in the form of Elvis
Presley. In Sam Phillips (Little,
Brown), Peter Guralnick lays
irls to the Time of Our Lives (Twelve). out the improbable saga of
front! Carrie Stephen Batchelor meditates the idiosyncratic man who
Brownstein writes the way she Cheever decants the history of on dharma in After Buddhism also discovered Howlin’ Wolf,
plays guitar, with raw honesty, Drinking in America (Twelve). (Yale). Susanne König and Me- B. B. King, Ike Turner, Carl
passion, and great humor, in Mary Gaitskill’s The Mare (Pan- lissa Schreiber Vaughan’s Made Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl theon) is a charged, disquieting in Brooklyn (Powerhouse) is an Roy Orbison, producing in
(Riverhead). In Lady Bird and take on race, white privilege, and insider’s guide to Brooklyn’s one decade what his friend
Lyndon (Simon & Schuster), family. New Yorker writer Lillian craft-food-and-drinks movement. and admirer Jerry Wexler
Betty Boyd Caroli redefines the Ross’s Reporting Always (Scrib- Nature’s biographer Simon Win- called “a millennium’s worth
First Lady as an iron fist in a ner) will be the talk of the town. chester gets into the Pacific of music.” —MARK ROZZO
white glove. Vladimir Nabokov’s Richard H. Brown and Paul E. Co- (Harper). Virginia Pye viv-
Letters to Véra (Knopf ) bloom hen follow the road to American idly imagines Dreams of
with exquisite writing. independence in Revolution (Nor- the Red Phoenix (Unbri-
Also this month: Divine V.F. ton). Daniel Alarcón’s fantastical dled). T erry Gilliam’s
contributing artist Hilary Knight graphic novel, City of Clowns “pre-posthumous mem-
gifts The 365 Days of Eloise (Si- (Riverhead), features drawings by oir” is Gilliamesque (Har-
mon & Schuster). Luc Sante Sheila Alvarado. David Hare be- per Design). Read John
strokes the underbelly of The comes a writer in The Blue Touch Cage’s Diary (Siglio). Greil
Other Paris (Farrar, Straus and Paper (Norton). Unmatchable Marcus boxes up his “Top
Giroux). Antonia Fraser relives Colum McCann’s got Thirteen 10” columns in Real Life
her lulu of a childhood in My Ways of Looking (Random Rock (Yale).
History (Nan A. Talese). Susan House). Peggy Noonan had The — ELISSA SCHAPPELL
IN SHORT
P HOTO GR A PHS BY BE N J A MI N BE N SCHN EI DE R ( STU DHO R SE ) ,
T I M HO UT ( BO O KS ) ; F O R DE TA IL S, GO TO VF.CO M/ CR ED ITS
The Early Stories of Truman Capote (Random House) foretell mastery. Adriana Trigiani lights up All the Stars in the Heavens (Harper).
Julie Checkoway makes The Three -Year Swim Club (Grand Central). Alex Ferguson coaches Leading (Hachette) with Michael Moritz. Editors Alexandra Brodsky
and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff launch The Feminist Utopia Project (Feminist Press). Elizabeth Tallent’s Mendocino Fire (Harper) throws sparks.
Jason Gay embraces Little Victories (Doubleday). Elias Cairo and Meredith Erickson’s Olympia Provisions (Ten Speed) is delectable. Ellen DeGeneres opens
up her Home (Grand Central). Stacy Schiff resurrects The Witches (Little, Brown). Dagon James, Vincent Fremont, and Anastasia Rygle
sort out the Brigid Berlin Polaroids (Reel Art). Donna Karan gets creative in My Journey (Ballantine). Yogi Daniel Lacerda moves through 2,100 Asanas (Black Dog
& Leventhal). Kate Spade designs it All in Good Taste (Abrams). Tomas Maier collaborates with Bottega Veneta (Rizzoli). Scott Gutterman casts
Sunlight on the River (Prestel). Cyber-attack scenarist Ted Koppel knocks the Lights Out (Crown). Michael S. Smith decorates The Curated House (Rizzoli). Andrew
Alpern gives The Dakota (Princeton Architectural) its close-up. W.W. II scholar John Kelly triumphs with Never Surrender (Scribner). Diana Nyad powers
through Find a Way (Knopf). Nick Vogelson assembles Peter Schlesinger: A Photographic Memory 1968–1989 (Damiani). The Uncollected David Rakoff (Anchor)
is now all collected. David Talbot runs The Devil’s Chessboard (Harper). William H. Gass has Eyes (Knopf) for you. Alexander Vreeland
captures Diana Vreeland (Rizzoli). The late Mary Ellen Mark shoots Tiny: Streetwise Revisited (Aperture). Richard Hell unloads his Massive Pissed Love (Soft
Skull). Jonathan Mehring’s Skate the World (National Geographic) is sick. Elvis Costello chimes in with Unfaithful Music & Disappearing
Ink (Blue Rider). Warren Zanes free-falls with Petty (Henry Holt). Maya Lin constructs Topologies (Rizzoli). John Sedgwick witnesses the Hamilton-Burr
murder-by-duel in War of Two (Berkley). Pick Drew Barrymore’s Wildflower (Dutton).

Hot Looks
Making a bottle
of La Vie Est Belle
L’Extrait de
Parfum at Mellerio
dits Meller, Paris.
Omorovicza
Blue Diamond
eye cream
Diamond-
peptide-infused
eye potion
helps eliminate
dark circles
and puffiness.
($230;
omorovicza
.com)
Chanel
Cils
Scintillants in
Jazzy Blue
Electrify your
lashes and
make them
stand out with
this vibrant
blue hue. ($32;
chanel.com)
Christophe Robin
La Vie en Rose Purifying

rmand Petitjean chose a single rose to symbolize the regenerative cycles of beauty that Hair Finish
Lancôme Paris, which he founded in 1935, would come to represent. This month, the company will celebrate Lotion with
Sage Vinegar
its 80th anniversary with a limited edition of La Vie Est Belle L’Extrait de Parfum, a refined concentration of This no-rinse
the gourmand-iris bouquet that was created by Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo. To commemorate the formula will
event, a private commission was given to Paris-based Mellerio dits Meller, one of the world’s premier and old- balance out the
est jewelry houses, to craft the bottle, which has an embellished décolleté with rose-gold-gilded silver, enhancing pH from root
to end. ($48;
the perfume’s original “twin wings of freedom.” With each of the 80 bottles numbered, the exquisite potion sephora.com)
proves to be an ageless beauty. ($950 for 10
ml.; lancome-usa.com) — S U N H E E G R I N N E L L
Dior
HOUSE OF CARDS Vernis in

Darling Blue
aster perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, the One coat
nose behind many crowd-pleasing scents is all you need
to reveal a
for mega-brands such as Burberry deep, metallic,
and Elie Saab, as well as for his own, eponymous moody blue.
fragrance line, is getting into the leather business. ($27; dior.com)
Launching this month, in collaboration with the
P HOTO GR A PHS BY THI B AUT DE SA I NT CHA M A S ( L A V IE EST B E L LE
luxury bespoke saddle- and bag-maker

L ' E XT RA I T DE PA RF UM ) ; F O R DE TA IL S, GO TO VF.CO M /CR ED I TS
L’Atelier Renard, is the new Perfumed Leather

Estée Lauder
Cardholder Collection by Maison Francis
Kurkdjian Paris. Using a patented process,
New
a piece of leather is tanned, then “infused Dimension
and soaked” in the perfume oils of Absolue and Shape & Fill
Cologne Pour le Soir fragrance notes. Expert Serum
The scented leather, which lines the cardholder, Lift the cheeks
and jawline
comes in calf or crocodile finishes, and lasts with this contour
more than two years. Presenting a business in a bottle.
Perfumed Leather Cardholder card has never smelled so glamorous. ($89; esteelauder
Collection by Maison .com)
Francis Kurkdjian Paris; ($750–$1,750; bergdorfgoodman.com)
Cologne Pour le Soir. —S.H.G. — AUDREY NOBLE

A R O U N D t h e WO R L D, O N E PA RT Y a t a T I M E NOVEMBER 2015
Michael Naomi Liam

Caine Idris Elba Watts Hemsworth
Julianne Rachel
Moore Weisz
Tom Chiwetel
Hardy Ejiofor
Tom
Hiddleston
IN FRAME
An all-star roundup
of top-tier talent visited with
Vanity Fair for on-air
conversations with V.F.’s West
Coast editor, Krista Smith,
and photographs at this year’s
Toronto International
Film Festival. For more, go
to VF.com.
Sarah Kate
Silverman Winslet
Brie Joel
Benicio Ellen
Larson Edgerton
Del Toro Page
NOVEM BE R 2 015 P H OTOG R A P HS BY JUSTIN BISHOP VA NIT Y FAI R 101

Evan
Liev Rachel Nicholas Elisabeth
Schreiber Wood Hoult Moss
John Jason Julianne

Kate Mara Slattery Bateman Nicholson
Topher
Grace
Dakota Helen
Elle Fanning Johnson Mirren
Sir Patrick Salma

Stewart Hayek
Elizabeth Josh
Olsen Brolin
Jennifer Michael Saoirse Emily

Jason Peña Ronan Blunt
Leigh
102 VANIT Y FA IR NOVEMBE R 2 015

IN THE DETAILS
What You Should Know About
BILLY EICHNER
A PANOPLY OF ECCENTRIC BIOGRAPHICAL DATA RE: TV’S MAN(IAC) ON THE STREET
B
elligerent, neurotic, and HE DOES not attribute his on-camera
raised in an outer borough, penchant for shouting to a need for Ar-
Billy Eichner—or at least thur Janov–ian scream-therapy cathar-
his performing persona—is sis. Rather, he says, “I had very loud
what native New Yorkers were like parents, and you’re in New York—it’s
before the advent of Internet wealth, loud outside. And I am someone who
matcha, and the High Line. Since likes to hit a line very hard.”
2011, the comic has channeled his HE TAKES no special care to protect his
gonzo energy into the Funny or Die– voice and has never lost it while filming
produced TV series Billy on the Street, Billy on the Street. He does, however,
in which he stampedes up and down work with a personal trainer to keep in
Manhattan’s avenues, microphone in shape for his street sprints.
hand, desperately demanding answers HE ATTENDED Stuyvesant High School, a
of passersby to such urgent prompts prestigious public school in Manhat-
as “Do you think Jennifer Hudson tan, followed by Northwestern Univer-
peaked too soon?” and “Dinklage sity, where he “did Ecstasy and did
versus Patinkin?” Equally beloved Chekhov, and it was just the greatest
by comedy’s Old Guard (e.g., David thing ever.”
Letterman and the late Joan Rivers) HE CLARIFIES that he did not do Chekhov
and new (e.g., Seth Meyers and Amy while on Ecstasy, though he grants that
Poehler, on whose Parks and Recre- “Three Sisters would be better if they
ation he had a recurring role), Eichner were all massaging each other.”
enjoyed his first taste of auteur status HE DOES not drive and has no ambition
this summer as the co-writer and co-star, with Julie MOTORMOUTH to. “I’m smart enough to know I shouldn’t be be-
Klausner, of the Hulu original comedy series Difficult Eichner, hind the wheel,” he says.
photographed in
People. Herewith, on the eve of the fourth season of HE GIVES his height as six feet three and a quarter. He
New York City.
Billy on the Street—which has its premiere this month would rather you not round that figure down to merely
on a new network, truTV—are some facts and in- six feet three.
sights gleaned from a (relatively) quiet afternoon conversation with HIS RESPONSE, when informed that his Wikipedia entry cites three
the 37-year-old Eichner. footnoted sources to confirm that he is gay, is “I can give you one
source: my dick.”
HE GREW up in a “tiny junior-four apartment” in Forest Hills, HE CONSIDERS the manic “Billy Eichner” of Billy on the Street to be
Queens, his father a tax auditor for the City of New York, his moth- a character, akin to the “Stephen Colbert” character that Stephen
er an employee of New York Telephone. Colbert played on The Colbert Report.
THOUGH HE has an older half-brother from his father’s first marriage, HE DENIED a request by the First Lady’s office to vet his questions be-
he was raised, he says, “like an only child, and spoiled,” and verily fore he performed a bit with her and Big Bird,
steeped in the arts by his parents, who took him to Barbra Strei- on the grounds that “half of what’s great about @vf.com
sand and Bette Midler concerts, age-inappropriate films such as Billy on the Street is the spontaneity.” The
ST Y L E D BY S A M SP EC TOR ; S UI T A ND TI E BY PR A DA ; SHI RT BY TO M MY HIL F I GE R;
To see Billy Eichner

recount meeting
Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and Broadway shows. First Lady’s office agreed to Eichner’s plan, F L O T U S, go to
G RO O MI N G BY J OR DA N L O NG; F OR DE TA I LS , GO TO VF. CO M/ CRE DI TS
HIS FIRST Broadway show was Starlight Express, Andrew Lloyd Web- and Michelle Obama dutifully obliged his im- VF.COM/NOV2015.
ber’s musical on roller skates. promptu request to slow-dance with Big Bird
HE BEGAN to sense that he had show-business promise when, in fourth while Eichner sang Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”
grade, he tried out for a school production of Free to Be … You and HIS LONG-TERM goal is to have a polymathic career along the lines of
Me, singing “It’s Alright to Cry”—a song popularized by the football those of Nathan Lane, Martin Short, and Neil Patrick Harris, mov-
star Rosey Grier—and, he says, “everyone turned around and was like, ing effortlessly among film, television, and musical theater.
‘Whoa, this fat Jewish gay kid can really sing.’ ” HE MAINTAINS that he would make a great
HIS BAR Mitzvah party took place at Ter- Hedwig.
race on the Park, a banquet hall in Flushing HE IS grateful to YouTube and social media for
Meadows that was originally the heliport for “I HAD helping foster his career. He believes that, had he
the 1964 World’s Fair.
HE LOST both of his parents relatively early—his VERY LOUD been born 20 years earlier, “I would have been
one of those elderly, bitter gay ushers at a Broad-
mother to a heart attack when he was 20, and PARENTS.” way theater, holding a flashlight if you come in
his father in 2011, just months before Eichner late to An American in Paris, yelling at you that
achieved fame via Billy on the Street. you can’t bring the sodas in.” —DAVID KAMP
104 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com P H OTO G R A P H BY GASPER TRINGALE N OVEMB ER 2015
CONVERSATION
Out to Lunch with
PATTI SMITH
THE PUNK-ROCK PIONEER CONFIRMS A SECOND CALLING WITH ANOTHER SUBLIME MEMOIR
P
atti Smith, the poet and sha- daughter of a factory worker who was
man of punk rock, kindly curious about everything and read
met me for a late lunch at six Plato, and a waitress who was also a
P.M. Omen Azen, a favored voracious reader and loved opera. “In
hangout of hers, is close to her home on our house, we had very little except for
Macdougal Street, in SoHo, New York, books. We had no money. But in 50s
and this American icon, whose first al- America people would dump books.
bum, in 1975, Horses, revolutionized the Whole libraries. Or someone died. So
music scene, had just returned from an we had beautiful books because my
extensive tour of Europe with her band. family would go to a church bazaar
She told me in her unassuming way and buy them for pennies. Really, no
that the biggest audience she played to one wanted them.”
on tour was about 110,000 at the Glaston- She learned to read when she was still
bury Festival, in England, the smallest, a toddler. Her mother taught her. Pa-
about 40 kids she read poetry to “in a tricia wanted to copy her parents, who
field someplace in Poland.” were forever staring into these objects.
Yet it’s as if she became a rock star She vividly remembers the first book
by accident. “It’s a mystery I’ve never she read: Silver Pennies, a collection of
solved,” she said. “What is it that drives poems mostly about elves and fairies
me to perform when I can hardly hold that included Yeats’s “Aedh Wishes for
my own at a dinner party?” the Cloths of Heaven” (“Tread softly be-
She’s a vagabond child of rock ’n’ cause you tread on my dreams”).
roll who fused it with her own, fiercely honest When she was about seven, she read Louisa
poetry. “I’m not a musician,” she added dis- By JOHN HEILPERN May Alcott’s Little Women. “I discovered that
armingly. “I can’t really play anything. I don’t a girl could write a book. I loved the character
need to perform to know who I am. I’m not of Jo. She was a writer. So at a very early age I
Judy Garland. It’s just something I do and know how to do.” decided I wanted to be like Jo.”
In the 1980s, when she was living in Detroit with her husband She’s still open to wonder. “Oh, to be reborn within the pages
(Fred “Sonic” Smith, the musician and love of her life, who died at of a book,” she exclaims in M Train, as one of her heroes, Lorca,
age 45, in 1994), she didn’t perform for 16 years. “I didn’t miss it at all,” declared, “I want to be a poet from head to toe, living and dying
she said. She wrote stories feverishly instead—working in escapist soli- by poetry!” She has just reread Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead
tude each day from five A.M. until eight A.M., before her husband and Game again, as well as her childhood edition of Pinocchio “for
two children awoke. And if she had to choose between rock and writ- about the hundredth time. I can completely meld with myself at
ing? “I wouldn’t hesitate,” she said. “I couldn’t live without writing.” that age. I can read Peter Pan again and be 11.”
When Just Kids, her rapturous labor of love about her formative Time past lives in time present for her, depending on where
days with Robert Mapplethorpe, was received with acclaim (and a she wants to go. Her silvery hair signals time passing too quickly,
National Book Award), some were surprised. The Mother Courage though. It’s hard to believe that Patti Smith is now 68 and a grand-
of Punk can write! Her new memoir, M Train (published this month mother. It’s hard enough for her. “ ‘How did we get so damn old?’
by Alfred A. Knopf), will leave no one in doubt that she has long I say to my joints,” she says with startling candor.
since been a fully paid-up member of what she calls that secret so- “As long as your knees are all right,” I said.
P HOTO GR A PHE D AT I NDU STR IA SUP ER STU DI O, N EW YO R K CI T Y
ciety of writerly bums and obsessed alchemists panning in vain for a “Yeah, my knees are fine. They’re the same bony old knees. I’m
drop of gold. M Train—the title signifies a “mind train” that goes to not unhappy with my age. I just noticed it one day three years ago,
any station it wants—is a sublime collection of true stories concern- and for the first time in my whole life I was like, ‘Whoa. I’m 65.
ing irredeemable loss, memory, travel, crime, coffee, books, and wild How much time do I have left, selfishly, to write more books? To
imaginings that take us to the very heart of who Patti Smith is. see my children? How much time do I have?’ ”
“I know what I want,” she said. “A green salad and the green- “Live forever!” I thought. Besides, she’s already writing her next
tea-soba-noodles special.” Along with a cold, book, a thriller—the kind she loves to read, or
dry sake for us both. “I have poor table man- catch on TV, like the adventures of that mess
ners, but I’ll do my best,” she announced
incongruously. “I like chopsticks. But I don’t “I’M NOT of a detective and opera-lover, Wallander. And
she’s edging back in time toward reopening the
really like utensils. Unless I’m having soup.”
She was raised in southern New Jersey
JUDY GARLAND.” notebooks she filled compulsively in Detroit
when she was writing a novel about a traveler
(and retains her Jersey accent). She’s the who never left his room, but went everywhere.
N OV E M BE R 2 015 P H OTO G R A P H BY GASPER TRINGALE www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 109
JAMES WOLCOTT
VOTING RECORD
John F. Kennedy
campaigning in Boston
during the 1960
presidential race, from
the documentary The
Making of the
President 1960.
CINEMA POLITICO
Screening campaign documentaries—from Primary, a breakthrough
look at J.F.K.’s nomination battle, to The War Room, a
F
still-riveting glimpse inside Bill Clinton’s first run—the author decides
a more lurid genre would best capture the 2016 race
I love elections. It’s so much fun. It’s even runners and premature gravediggers than the
more fun when you’re not on the ballot. cable-news punditariat. The candidates, han-
—Barack Obama, musing in dlers, consultants, and staffers on-camera are
By the People: The Election of in the thick of caffeinated, heavy-carb battle,
Barack Obama (2009). without the benefit of the foreknowledge we
possess, and we osmose their anxiety until our
or amateur political junkies, who are never on own nerves start to prickle. For all that James
the ballot and usually on our butts, campaign Carville, George Stephanopoulos, Paul Bega-
documentaries that invite us into the cockpit la, and the rest of Team Clinton in Chris Hege-
are not only fun but improbably suspenseful, dus and D. A. Pennebaker’s still-riveting The
almost Hitchcockian in their voyeuristic com- War Room (1993) know, Gennifer Flowers’s
plicity. Even though we know the election out- popping out of the birthday cake of Bill Clin-
come in advance—know which candidate on- ton’s past could be the bimbo coup de grâce.
PH OTO GRA P H © A B C/ PHOTO FE ST
screen did a victory lap and which one limped In R. J. Cutler and David Van Taylor’s roller-
home as a deflated balloon—tension builds as coaster ride A Perfect Candidate (1996), in-
the campaign being filmed smacks into turbu- cumbent Virginia senator Chuck Robb, facing
lence, polls get twitchy, and TV’s floating Wiz- the fight of his bumbling, fumbling career as
ard of Oz heads turn into a chorus of hecklers he tries to fend off former Marine Corps lieu-
and second-guessers at the first whiff of engine tenant colonel Oliver North—the disgraced
trouble, there being no more shameless front- protagonist of the Iran-contra scandal whom
WOLCOTT
Reaganite conservatives have adopted as their Kennedy, tanned and rested, looked fresh sexual, and resigned under fire. A seasoned
Dudley Do-Right hero—finds himself going from the pages of Esquire, while Nixon, recent- acolyte in the Lee Atwater school of southern-
the contrition route after a former beauty ly hospitalized, appeared wan, damp, and fried disruption, Goodin also seems to have
queen lands on the cover of Playboy by divulg- spent. Worse, he declined makeup from CBS ingested too many viewings of Goodfellas.
ing their alleged nights of white satin when he before submitting himself to the studio lights, “Putting the bullet in Robb is like shooting a
was governor. It isn’t the flickers of fleshly depriving himself of a sufficient line of cos- corpse,” he boasts when Robb looks like a gon-
temptation revived by former bedmates that metic defense for his death-warmed-over look. er in the race, and then, after Robb squeaks out
threaten the crusade in By the People, an HBO Although presidential debates may have finally a win, he vows, “Next time around, I cut the
original directed by Amy Rice and Alicia entered the McLuhan era, the campaign ads guy’s balls off.” The trash-talking and vendetta
Sams, but blasts from the past from Obama’s during that go-round remained canned corn— tactics are even more out in the open in Mar-
former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright: slogans, inane jingles, hokey placards. As Paul shall Curry’s Street Fight, a 2005 documentary
recorded sermons raining down fire that could Tait Roberts’s documentary Bombs Away about the gladiator struggle for the mayoralty
char Obama as an Angry Militant, a hate- (2014) shows, it was the subsequent Lyndon of Newark, New Jersey, between Cory Booker,
whitey in smooth disguise. Most unhelpful. Johnson–Barry Goldwater face-off, in 1964, an Ivy League–educated reformer, and incum-
From the “Swift-boating” of the John Kerry that ushered in the Mad Men age of political bent Sharpe James, who uses every dirty trick
presidential campaign, we know how easily a advertising, making the air war as crucial as in the book and a few new ones for future edi-
Democratic candidacy can be shivved and the ground war in winning the electoral col- tions to stomp his opponent, a reminder of
sent staggering through the desert like Vince lege. Though no politician was a more cajol- what machine politics looks like when it breaks
Vaughn at the end of True Detective 2. Cam- ing, arm-twisting, one-on-one, horse-trading out the muscle and brass knuckles.
paign documentaries vivify that, no matter force of nature than L.B.J., he had the futuris-
O
how carefully mapped the initial strategy, crisis tic gleam to enlist the Madison Avenue agency ne of the most microcosmic cam-
management flies on a wing and a prayer. Doyle Dane Bernbach for the campaign, paign documentaries may be the
The indisputable, illustrious granddaddy of which yielded a shock-and-awe ad that showed most pertinent one for the upcoming
the campaign documentary is Primary (1960), how much mega-tonnage could be packed circus maximus of 2016. Caucus, directed by
a pioneer look at the primary campaign in into a 60-second spot. Known as “Daisy,” it A. J. Schnack, is a salty slice of Americana,
Wisconsin between John F. Kennedy and Hu- featured a young girl picking daisy petals until a Robert Altman movie in embryo, tracking
bert H. Humphrey. A landmark in cinéma vé- the last one is plucked, and, kaboom, a mush- the 2012 crop of Republican challengers as
rité produced by Robert Drew, photographed room cloud kisses the world good-bye. In the they brave corn dogs and hay fever to advance
by Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles, and decade of the Cuban missile crisis, Fail Safe, to the next round of the elimination dance
edited by D. A. Pennebaker and others (the Dr. Strangelove, and similar doomsday pros- for the privilege of being defeated by Barack
original apostles!), Primary achieves an inti- pects, the ad couldn’t fail to jolt the fear sector Obama. We see Rick Santorum loitering
macy that never seems intrusive, presenting of the national amygdala, and it didn’t hurt with intent like a sad sack in his sweater-vest,
a pulsing memento of the sales slog that was that Goldwater did come across as a jut-jawed, Rick Perry rolling in like a cyborg with a pro-
electioneering in the low-tech, hi-fi days before rootin’-nukin’ gunslinger—Randolph Scott gramming glitch, Mitt Romney reprising his
the country became one big cathode-ray tube. with an ornery, unstable streak. (Goldwater’s Big Man on Campus routine, exorcist-eyed
An America unaware that it’s waiting for the slogan—“In your heart, you know he’s right”— Michele Bachmann evangelizing for votes as
Beatles to arrive as joyous saviors. Radiat- was instantly spoofed as “In your guts, you her husband, Marcus, hovers around on the
ing Hollywood star quality, Kennedy defeats know he’s nuts.”) The dawn of negative-ad squinty lookout for snack cakes, and Newt
Humphrey in Wisconsin and goes on to win proliferation was upon us, as Bombs Away Gingrich once again puffing himself up as a
the Democratic nomination, making Prima- shows. For the Republicans, fear-based adver- poli-sci prince regent among mere grunions.
ry the grainy prologue to the grandiloquent tising was brewed in race-baiting: their coun- Brisk and amiable, the film is a bittersweet
pomp of executive producer David L. Wol- terstrike to “Daisy” was a bizarre propaganda ode to the disposability of political dreams,
per’s The Making of the President 1960 (1963), noir called “Choice,” which intercut ghetto and you begin to feel pity for the politicians,
based on Theodore White’s best-seller, a upheaval with hellcat hot-rodding and dance- intellectually bone-dry as most of them are. In
popular history that would turn the campaign floor gyrations, joining lawlessness and licen- the pursuit of caucus votes, these vaudevillians
chronicle into an epic form climaxing with tiousness at the bongo hips. Nothing would have to indulge voters who have so many griev-
Richard Ben Cramer’s magnum opus, What stop the L.B.J. juggernaut that election year, ances and bugaboos stuck in their craw that
It Takes. Narrated by Martin Gabel, The Mak- but in his landslide triumph he lost five for- every day for them is like Festivus for old farts.
ing of the President 1960 drapes the nip-and- merly Democratic-safe southern states to Watching Caucus, you un-
tuck race between Kennedy and Vice Presi- Goldwater (who had voted against the Civil derstand the gut appeal of @vf.com
dent Richard Nixon with a prose poetry that Rights Act of 1964), and the crude alarmism a blunderbuss like Donald To visit James
Wolcott’s B L O G ,
seems to be read from scrolls to the trumpets of “Choice” would find rotten fruition later in Trump to the Republican go to VF.COM/
of an Aaron Copland score. It is an oratorical the infamous “Willie Horton” ad that knee- base: he’s as incoherently WOLCOTT.
style that would be adopted and adapted by capped Michael Dukakis. ranty as they are. (But
David Halberstam for his journalistic labors richer, so his designer gasbag carries more
S
and mocked by Nora Ephron, but in the 60s ome of the most character-driven, volume.) Whatever the irksome failings of
it was the solid, establishmentarian approach, elbow-thrusting campaign documen- scaredy-cat Democrats, they remain tethered
the middlebrow counterweight to the guerrilla taries are ones set in smaller theaters to reality, while each successive wave of “take
incursions of New Journalists such as Norman of operation where the eagle-patriot/liberal- our country back” conservatism impels Re-
Mailer and Tom Wolfe, and the J.F.K.-Nixon Commie polarization is cartoon-broad and publicans to the freak-show finale so many of
fight was so inherently dramatic that no high- mean enough to spit. In A Perfect Candidate, them seem to crave: a Civil War re-enactment
falutin hokum could dampen the excitement. the field marshal for the Oliver North cam- waged by tattooed militia on Mad Max motor-
As every Little Leaguer knows, 1960 was paign is Mark Goodin, who made a nasty cycles, only this time the Confederacy valiantly
the first election in which television played a name for himself in the capital when he re- prevails. Cinéma vérité may not suffice for
major part and being telegenic became an as- leased a memo in 1989 insinuating that House campaign 2016. Pulp surrealism may be the
set. In the first of four presidential debates, Speaker Thomas Foley was a closeted homo- only Fury Road to go.
MICHAEL KINSLEY
LOSERS
Why are Trump’s
opponents so
FOOL’S PARADISE
reluctant to call
him a goofball?
Donald Trump’s G.O.P. rivals question his conservatism. The press treats
T
him with disdain and ridicules his positions on everything from immigration
to ISIS. But few are saying what voters really need to hear about Trump
he trouble with Donald Trump is not, as Jeb victory for him right there. The trouble with
Bush and others would have it, that he’s not Trump is that he is, by temperament, by ex-
a true conservative from any perspective. perience, and by character, utterly unquali-
The trouble with Trump is not that his policy fied to be president of the United States.
positions on immigration, ISIS, health care, He is a buffoon. That’s why his campaign
Social Security, or whatever don’t stand up is a joke, not the merits or otherwise of his
to a moment of casual scrutiny. That we’re alleged policies. All he brings to the table
even talking about his “positions” means is a lot of money and a talent for publicity.
that we’ve already progressed to the danger- These are not worthless assets in a presiden-
ous Stage Two of the Trump phenomenon, tial candidate. Trump is right, unfortunately,
as if his stated views are the standard by that his billions free him from the need to
which Trump ought to be judged—a huge raise money, with all the dispiriting and
114 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com I L L U STR ATI O NS BY BARRY BLITT N OVEMB ER 2015
KINSLEY
time-consuming compro- want to deal with global
mises that that entails. And, warming, we will have to
of course, he is not the first give up plastic grocery
politician with a knack for bags and S.U.V.’s. Any
drawing attention to himself. coherent philosophy or
But he may be the first agenda will bump up
who offers little more against this limit. With a
than that. Oh, a bit of cafeteria-tray approach,
wit and charm. A sense like Trump’s, where one
of humor that always “idea” need have no con-
leaves the listener won- nection to any of the oth-
dering whether he’s seri- ers he tosses out, there is
ous or not. But where’s no such discipline.
the wisdom? Where’s the This analysis may be com-
gravitas—or, as the Brits pletely wrong, but it is not a
call it, less pretentiously, refutation to say that it is “elit-
the “bottom”? Trump’s ist.” Political journalists might
self-designated role in report breathlessly that 23
our culture has been the percent of potential voters in
clown who, because he New Hampshire agree with
doesn’t give a damn, will Trump that free cup-
say anything, including cakes should be avail-
truths that more serious able on major holidays.
people will not utter. They would present
That’s fine. I wouldn’t this as a challenge to
mind having that job. the other candidates.
But Trump is apparently Marco Rubio—what
tired of playing the Fool. He is your position on
wants to be King Lear. SERIOUSLY? free cupcakes? Will you
That we’re even
The press is so hostile to talking about
change it in light of this new evidence
Trump that it has broken new his “positions” is rand (and another victory for that voters favor Trump’s position? You can
ground in what reporters are al- a victory Trump). The appeal of Trump’s see the headlines: RUBIO CONSIDERS FLIP-
lowed to say in ostensibly “objec- for Trump. alleged views on every issue is FLOP ON CUPCAKES. (Arianna says, “Darling,
tive” news articles and broadcasts. their extremeness. That, and their we had the cupcake story 17 minutes ago.
Even Richard Nixon, the man who seeming simplicity. The fact that he Get with it.”)
kept an “enemies list” that included report- hasn’t thought them through and has more Trump is just the latest among a series of
ers he was going to get even with, was treat- or less pulled them out of the air (or out of business types who think they should run
ed with more respect. But every insult from his ass, as Trump himself might put it) is the country because they ran a company.
the hated media just makes Trump stronger. a feature, not a bug, as they say in Silicon Remember Ross Perot? This year there are
A news article in The New York Times— Valley. Trump stands for the proposition two, the other being Carly Fiorina, who ran
not an op-ed piece, a news article—about that you don’t need to know much to run Hewlett-Packard—ran it into the ground.
Trump’s immigration remarks dignifies the government. You just need to use your Businesspeople are an odd category of citi-
them with the word “plan,” even while de- common sense and to grow a pair, as Sarah zen to look to as a populist deus ex machi-
scribing them as “mixing a little policy with Palin so memorably advised. na. True, they usually have some practical
a lot of fiery bombast” and pointing out that business sense and experience, which is
S
his plan is based on ideas that have been o, why are the news media and Trump’s not worthless. But
“broadly debunked.” Pretty tough. (And ac- political opponents so reluctant to call their lives are different @vf.com
curate.) But the truth is that Trump has no him a goofball? Why do they enhance from those of people To I M AG I N E a
“plan” for anything. He just has a mouth. his respectability by taking his various off- who are hurting, and world with President
Trump, go to
the-cuff notions seriously in the very process increasingly so. (So VF.COM/NOV2015.
A
while back in the Times, Josh Bar- of criticizing them? Why does Jeb Bush, of are the lives of Wash-
ro started a debate about whether all people, try to get to Trump’s right—wher- ington journalists, but at least we are free to
Trump is really a “moderate” who ever that may be, exactly—instead of saying, admit it.) Trump’s business experience has
merely acts like an extremist because it sells. “Look, this fellow is not qualified to be been in real estate, professional celebrity,
You might say that he isn’t an extremist president. I am.” (And like it or not, that gambling casinos, and creative bankruptcy—
but he plays one on TV. Barro’s argument is Bush’s selling point. He is foolish to run not the kind of experience that is likely to be
was that if you take all of Trump’s extreme away from it.) useful as president.
views on Social Security, immigration, and The problem is populism. Talk like this Even the most cynical and demagogic
so on, some of them classified as extremely sounds elitist. But our big problem as a politician usually has something he or she
right-wing and some extremely left-wing, democracy is our inability to acknowledge truly wants to accomplish, some ideologi-
they average out to be more or less down as a nation what we accept and deal with cal goal or vision. Trump seems to be run-
the center. Ezra Klein replied in Vox, es- in our personal lives, which is that more of ning because he thinks it would be cool to
sentially, that extreme views are extreme this means less of that. If we spend money be president. No doubt that plays a role in
views, no matter how they average out. But on tax cuts, we can’t spend it on education the thinking of even as philosophical a can-
looking for some kind of ideological thread or infrastructure or all the other things the didate as Hillary Clinton. But with Trump,
in Trump’s various positions is a fool’s er- Republican candidates are promising. If we that’s all there is.
LETTER FROM LONDON
PACHYDERM
PASSION
Mark Shand with his
beloved elephant,
THE UNTAMED
Tara, in the Phalgu
River, in the
Indian state of Bihar,
October 1988.
ARISTOCRAT
The sudden death of Mark Shand—the dashing British explorer, writer, and
conservationist—plunged a swath of international society into mourning. His inner
M
circle recalls Shand’s adventures and the mission that came to define him
By BOB COLACELLO
ark Shand was having a very good night. The phant Family, the nonprofit founded by
wildly charismatic 62-year-old explorer, au- Shand in 2002 to save Asian elephants and
thor, conservationist, semi-retired playboy, their habitats in India and 12 other countries.
and adored younger brother of Camilla, Sotheby’s main auction room was packed
Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of Prince with V.I.P. collectors and Shand’s New York
Charles, had spent six months in New York friends, including his co-chairs philanthropists
putting together the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt, a Agnes Gund and Sydie Lansing, Knopf pub-
huge public-art and charity event. Nearly 300 lisher Sonny Mehta, Lee Radziwill, and Diane
artists, architects, photographers, and design- von Furstenberg (who had herself contributed
ers, including Julian Schnabel, Zaha Hadid, an egg). Shand, looking a bit haggard, stood
Ralph Lauren, and Carolina Herrera, had a few feet away from the auctioneer, Jamie
decorated three-foot-high fiberglass eggs pro- Niven. But his countenance brightened as the
vided by Fabergé, which were then placed eggs went for higher and higher prices: Peter
A D IT YA PATA N KA R
throughout the five boroughs in the weeks Beard, $21,000; Marc Quinn, $34,000; Tracey
preceding Easter. Now, on the evening of Emin, $56,000. Jeff Koons’s egg was last. It
April 22, 2014, three dozen of these eggs were went for $900,000 and the crowd exploded
being auctioned at Sotheby’s to benefit Ele- into applause as friends rushed to congratulate
LETTER FROM LONDON
Shand in his moment of triumph. The to-
tal take for the night was $1.7 million, with
some 250 eggs remaining to be sold during
the following days by the online auction
house Paddle8. (Those items would bring
in another $1 million.)
A
fter the auction, an elated Shand
and about a dozen pals, includ-
ing Elephant Family C.E.O. Ruth
Powys and creative director Alexandra
Bowes-Lyon, walked over to J. G. Melon
for dinner. Powys, a lissome 36-year-old
blonde, had been Shand’s on-and-off
girlfriend for a few years, but they had
ended their relationship a year earlier.
“Lexi” Bowes-Lyon, a striking brunette
of 28, was Mark’s latest recruit to Ele-
phant Family’s 90 percent female staff.
Shand, like many disco-era veterans,
had been a heavy drinker, but those
days were largely behind him. That
night, Powys says, “it was scotch all PLAYBOY AT REST
the way, but he wasn’t on a bender.” Shand and Clio
Eventually, everyone piled into three Goldsmith,
taxis and went on to the official after- at home in London,
1998; they were
party, at the Diamond Horseshoe married from 1990
nightclub. At about 1:30 A.M., Shand to 2009.
and Lexi Bowes-Lyon continued on to the Ayesha, was his next of kin. Tom Parker
P
Rose Bar, in the Gramercy Park Hotel. “We Bowles told me that the immediate family eople routinely com-
had some drinks,” she recalls, “talked about hurriedly gathered at his cousin Kate Elliot’s pared Mark Shand to Tarzan, Indi-
the future of the charity, and danced to the house: “We said to Ayesha, ‘This is your fa- ana Jones, and Sir Richard Burton
Rolling Stones a bit.” ther. This is your decision. But you know as (who discovered the source of the Nile,
After about a half-hour, Lexi and Mark well as we do that the idea of Mark as a veg- penetrated Mecca in disguise, and translated
stepped outside for a cigarette. As they ap- etable—just no way.’ And she said straight- the Kama Sutra into English). The late Nigel
proached the door to re-enter the building, away, ‘Done.’ She’s tough, Ayesha.” Anna- Dempster, London’s top society columnist
according to persons who have seen the hotel’s bel Elliot adds, “She was adamant and she for decades, dubbed him “He-Man Shand.”
surveillance video, Mark motioned for Lexi to was right.” It was left to Annabel, the rock “There’s no doubt about it, Shand was the
go ahead. A second later, he seemed to lose his of the family, to call the neurologist at Belle- Tarzan figure in reality,” says Don McCullin,
balance, then tottered backward, with his arms vue. “That was the most horrible thing I’ve the British war photographer who traveled
outstretched in front of him. Lexi reached to ever had to do, was turn off his machines.” with Shand to the region of New Guinea
grab his hands, but she missed by a few inches. Shand was pronounced dead at 11:25 where Michael Rockefeller had disappeared,
And Mark fell, the back of his head hitting the A.M. on April 23. According to New York’s presumably a victim of cannibals. McCullin, a
sidewalk first. And there he lay, motionless and chief medical examiner, the cause and generation older and a mentor to Shand, adds,
unconscious. Even when an ambulance arrived, manner of death was “blunt impact head “Women fell like autumn leaves into his arms.”
eight minutes later, and his body was lifted trauma with a skull fracture and subdural Among those reputedly linked to Shand
onto a gurney, there wasn’t the slightest twitch. hematoma.” At Clarence House, the official before his 1990 marriage to Clio Gold-
Shand was taken to Bellevue Hospital, London residence of Prince Charles and smith (a niece of the Anglo-French finan-
where he was rushed into the Intensive Care Camilla, a spokesman told the waiting press, cier Sir James Goldsmith): Lee Radziwill
Unit and put on life support. Within min- “The duchess, the Prince of Wales, and all and her niece Caroline Kennedy; Caroline
utes Powys and the other Elephant Family her family members are utterly devastated by Windisch-Graetz Cushing Graham; Liz Dent-
women had joined Bowes-Lyon in the waiting this sudden and tragic loss.” Brocklehurst, before she married Shand’s rich
room. “In a blur,” Powys said, they started Elephant Family lives on, however, with uncle Lord Ashcombe; Bianca Jagger, after
calling Shand’s family with the terrible news. the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of she divorced Mick; and Marie Helvin, as she
P HOTO GR A PH BY DE RRY M OO R E/ CA ME R A P RE S S/R E DUX
His sister Camilla was with Prince Charles Cornwall as its new royal presidents, and was divorcing David Bailey. At the time of his
in Scotland, at Birkhall, their retreat on the with Prince William taking up the cause as death, he was rumored to be involved with the
royal family’s Balmoral estate. She immedi- well. In November, the actor Owen Wilson bosomy London socialite Nancy Dell’Olio.
ately called her son, Tom Parker Bowles, and and Lexi Bowes-Lyon will host an Elephants (He denied it; she didn’t.)
in a voice full of anguish told him, “Mark’s Forever auction at Sotheby’s in New York. “I thought of him as Crocodile Dundee,”
hit his head on the pavement. They’re saying And Ruth Powys is organizing a celebrity says Julia Roberts, who made two PBS
he’s not going to make it.” Shand’s other sis- rickshaw race in India, with 43 rickshaws, documentaries with Shand in the late 1990s,
ter, Annabel Elliot, who was between Camilla decorated by famous artists, traversing more Orangutans, filmed in Borneo, and Wild Hors-
and Mark in age, spoke to the neurologist than 300 miles across Madhya Pradesh state es of Mongolia. “But he wasn’t a chauvin-
who had examined him: “He said, ‘Your to Kipling Camp, where Mark’s beloved Tara ist and he wasn’t a show-off.” For Goldie
brother is 991⁄2 percent brain dead.’ ” (the star of his 1991 best-seller, Travels on My Hawn, who co-starred with Shand in The
Legally, Shand’s 19-year-old daughter, Elephant) enjoys her retirement. Elephants of India for PBS, in 1996, he was “a
LETTER FROM LONDON
real Renaissance guy” and “sort of a rogue— interior decorator Jane Churchill, whose par- she says. “It was so dreary when he didn’t.”
irrepressible, contagious, maddening.” ents were best friends with the Shands. “The For a long time Shand assumed that he
“My uncle had this charmed existence,” odd thing for that sort of family is they were would inherit a substantial fortune from his
says Camilla’s son, the journalist Tom Parker brought up in a completely unsnobbish way. thrice-married yet childless Uncle Harry
Bowles. “Mark was either crossing India on That’s where Camilla has the edge. It’s no dif- (known as Mad Harry). The fourth Bar-
a private jet or on an elephant. He wasn’t ferent to her to talk to a duke or a dustman. on Ashcombe was chairman of Holland,
very good at Economy.” And Mark was the same.” Another old family Hannen & Cubitts, which controlled the fam-
friend, antique dealer Duncan McLaren, re- ily’s vast property holdings in London. Unfor-
M
ark Roland Shand was born on June members, “Mark was always the joker in the tunately, as William Astor puts it, “he was the
28, 1951, to Major Bruce Shand and pack, the one who was getting up to trouble. His nicest man—and the worst businessman. He
the Honorable Rosalind Maud Cu- mother adored him. His sisters adored him.” owned Pimlico and he sold it for nothing.”
bitt. His father’s family had made its money (According to The Telegraph, the Pimlico es-
A
importing calico fabric from India. Major nnabel told me that a few years before tate, covering 27 acres, including 480 houses,
Shand, a Sandhurst graduate, served as an of- their mother died, in 1994, “Camilla was sold for £4.4 million in 1970.)
ficer in the 12th Royal Lancers during World and I were having lunch with her. And Shand’s first job was as a porter at Sothe-
War II. He spent two years in a German she said, ‘Darlings, I’ve always been complete- by’s. “Mark was allocated to come and work
prisoner-of-war camp and was twice awarded ly fair between the three of you, haven’t I?’ for me,” says Duncan McLaren, who was
the Military Cross for bravery. “Mark’s father Camilla’s and my jaws dropped. Because that running the auction house’s new international
was one of the guys on whom The Great Es- was not the way it was. Literally, Mark could division in the early 1970s. “He didn’t come
cape was based,” says writer Gita Mehta, do no wrong. There’s the theme that should in very often. And he never was going to be
referring to the 1963 movie starring Steve run through your whole story: Mark, having contained by four walls. I came upstairs one
McQueen. Don McCullin recalls, “Major been worshipped by my mother, was spoiled day and there he was chopping cocaine on
Shand was the archetypal English gentleman by women his whole life.” my desk. And the senior director came in
with decorations, good manners, impeccable Annabel recounted the unsuccessful effort and asked, ‘Mark, what are you doing?’ ‘Oh,
dress. That was quite a hallmark for Mark to to get her brother into Eton: “By the time I’m separating talcum powder.’ The man be-
live up to.” Mark’s mother was the daughter he’d had about 10 math tutors, it was clear lieved him and walked out.” Shand was fired
of Roland Cubitt, the third Lord Ashcombe, there was no hope. So he went to this ropy soon enough, however, when he and a fellow
whose great-grandfather had made a fortune school called Milton Abbey.” At 16, Mark porter were caught in the packing room
building much of Belgravia and Pimlico in the was expelled for smoking marijuana. His fa- dressed up in rare 14th-century Japanese ar-
first half of the 19th century. Her mother, So- ther decided it was time for him to shape up. mor, dueling with samurai swords.
nia Keppel, was a daughter of Alice Keppel— Along with William Waldorf Astor III, Mark In 1971, Shand met Harry Fane, who would
the official mistress of King Edward VII. was sent to work on a sheep farm in Australia become his closest friend, business partner,
Bruce Shand and Rosalind Cubitt made a for six months. “We were each given about and fellow explorer. “It was the beginning of
highly attractive couple when they married, in £100 and a plane ticket,” says William Astor. an intense and legendary friendship which was
1946, at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, with a re- As luck would have it, on their stopover in to last 25 years,” Fane told me. “Little daunt-
ception following at Claridge’s. Camilla was Delhi, the 17-year-olds ran into the grandson ed us, and ‘Why not?’ was always a good
born the following year, and Annabel two of Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of In- enough reason to do something or go some-
years after that. They lived in the village of dia, and spent the next several weeks touring where.” The Honorable Harry St. Clair Fane
Plumpton, about 50 miles south of London. the subcontinent in deluxe style, going from was the second son of the 15th Earl of West-
Their house, the Laines, was surrounded by lunch at the Indian presidential palace to the morland, who was lord-in-waiting to Queen
Rosalind’s garden, which had been laid out Taj Mahal under army protection. In Jaipur, Elizabeth II and later Her Majesty’s Master
by the distinguished landscape designer Rus- the boys were received by the Maharani Aye- of the Horse. A year younger than Shand, he
sell Page. Bruce Shand spent weeknights at sha and her son, Prince Jagat, both of whom had just returned from his sheep-farm experi-
the family’s residence in London, where he would become Shand’s close friends. After ence. The following year, Fane and Shand
rented an apartment in New York, on East
73rd Street. Tall, handsome, aristocratic, and
“SHAND WAS heterosexual in a decade when androgyny was
all the rage, they were sought after by the city’s
THE TARZAN FIGURE most fashionable hostesses. Diana Vreeland

doted on them, as did Jackie Onassis. They
IN REALITY,” SAYS DON MCCULLIN. were regulars at Mortimer’s and Elaine’s, War-
hol’s Factory lunches and Studio 54’s base-
ment. Willing models and heiresses were never
was a partner in the Mayfair wine merchants putting in their time in the Australian out- in short supply—on either side of the Atlantic.
Block, Grey and Block. His passions were back, “riding horses and getting thousands In 1975, when 18-year-old Caroline Ken-
polo and fox-hunting, and from 1956 to 1975 of sheep ready to be sheared,” Astor recalls, nedy enrolled in an art-appreciation course
he was Master of Southdown Foxhounds. they spent four months meandering through at Sotheby’s in London, the British tabloids
“We had this enchanted childhood,” says Nepal, Afghanistan, and Turkey in a jeep. were quick to link her to Mark. That Novem-
Annabel Elliot. “Unlike a lot of our genera- ber, People magazine reported that Shand dis-
L
tion, we had this incredibly warm, easy re- ee Radziwill got to know Mark missed the idea, “saying she is ‘too young.’ ”
lationship with our parents. We didn’t have Shand in the late 1960s at Helms- The rumors had started the previous month,
nannies. All our friends growing up would ley, the shooting estate in Yorkshire after Caroline and Mark were photographed
immediately be drawn to my mother. She was that her husband Prince Stanislas Radziwill leaving Lady Anne Lambton’s party for Andy
completely straightforward, and one of the leased with Harry Ashcombe, the younger Warhol’s Philosophy book at five in the morn-
warmest, kindest people.” brother of Mark’s mother. “I was always ing. (I remember Andy getting a call from
“Life at the Laines was wonderful,” agrees so happy when I knew Mark was coming,” Jackie, berating him for inviting her teenage
LETTER FROM LONDON
mer while Shand spent Mark: ‘This man friend of prime minister of
the next nine months re- England.’ In fact, Mark’s uncle was Sir Geof-
storing a 28-foot yacht frey Howe, the foreign secretary. He had
in Fiji. “Mark sold his nothing to say about me. I had no pedigree
flat in London,” Fane at all. But he saved our asses.”
said. “He sold every Around that time, Mark began a romance
single thing he had for with Marie Helvin, the sultry British Vogue
this boat.” In March cover girl whose marriage to photographer Da-
1982, Mark, along with vid Bailey was near an end. In her 2007 book,
a more experienced The Autobiography, Helvin described their
local sailor, set out first encounter, at a London dinner party: “I
BUDDIES-IN-LAW
Shand and
from Fiji, to Ho- still remember … the sheer heat I felt when he
brother-in-law niara, in the Sol- said hello… It didn’t take long for that initial
Prince Charles omon Islands, ember of attraction to explode into a bonfire
at St. Paul’s Church, dropping an- of lust.” Nonetheless, she says she turned him
in Knightsbridge, chor in the har- down when he proposed marriage, in late 1987.
London, 2006.
bor just in time for That June, however, Mark had met his
a hurricane to hit. future wife, Clio Goldsmith, at a ball given
“The boat was like a by her uncle Jimmy Goldsmith at Cliveden,
bucking bronco,” Shand the former Astor stately home in Bucking-
wrote. “I decided we hamshire. Clio, a daughter of Jimmy’s older
had to get off, otherwise brother, Teddy Goldsmith, had been previ-
daughter to “that kind of party.”) In his Dia- we were dead… We both were cut to pieces, ously married to Pirelli-tire heir Carlo Puri
ries, Warhol wrote, “Mark Shand was Caro- lacerated by the coral while being swept Negri. “For dinner it was a very serious older
line’s first love. He swept her off her feet, then ashore… The boat had no chance… I saw crowd, all these English politicians and aristo-
dropped her without a second thought.” Wil- her rise up once more, topple backwards, and crats,” says Clio. “Exactly at midnight, these
liam Astor told me, however, that Mark had snap in two like a matchstick. I was numb. My double doors opened and in stepped Mark
brought Caroline to stay at Ginge Manor, the dream had ended. I had lost everything.” and Imran Khan with a whole bunch of
Astors’ country house, on several occasions, young, groovy people behind them. Mark and
S
and he was sure they weren’t having an affair. hortly after he returned to London, I looked at each other and that was it. We sat
By 1979, the Daily Mail was asking, “Is Shand was introduced to war pho- and we talked till six o’clock in the morning.”
this the sexiest man in London?” Playboy, tographer Don McCullin, who asked Mark and Clio seemed custom-made for
however, was not a job description. “We were Mark to accompany him on an expedition each other. Her father was an ecologist, po-
both at a loss as to what we were going to do to the Mentawai Islands, in Indonesia, to lemicist, and philosopher, who traveled exten-
for a living,” Harry Fane explained. “So we photograph the lost Sakkudei people. After sively among the tribal peoples of Africa and
decided we would go into business selling 18 years covering wars from Vietnam to El Asia. Clio recalled he would dictate to his
objets d’art. We had no idea what objets d’art Salvador for the London Sunday Times, Mc- secretary in full Masai gear from Kenya. Her
meant.” They launched their company, Ob- Cullin had been pushed out by the new Mur- mother was an English beauty aptly named
sidian, in 1978, and started out by trawling doch regime, and, as he wrote in his 1992 Jill Pretty. As a young girl, Clio devoured the
the Portobello Road for inexpensive silver autobiography, Unreasonable Behaviour, he exotic adventure novels of the 19th-century
candlesticks and antique clocks but soon wanted to “get rid of the rubbish in my mind English writer H. Rider Haggard, and Sir
graduated to Art Deco jewelry by Cartier and and record the disappearing tribes of the Richard Burton was her idol. She left home
Van Cleef & Arpels. Shand later wrote, “Like world, before it’s too late.” McCullin, the son when she was 16, modeled in Paris for a few
posh swagmen in linen suits, with sacks of of a fishmonger, told me, “When I first met years, then in 1980 made her first film, in
beautiful booty over our shoulders, we hit the Mark, I didn’t think he’d be my cup of tea. Rome. “It was called La Cicala, the Gypsy
rich and famous, the old and new wealth in He was brought up in that kind of aristocrat- girl,” she said. “That was me. I always played
the money-drenched capitals of the Americas: ic world. But he chose a freer world.” Gypsy girls or prostitutes.” When she met
Caracas, New York, Dallas, Houston, Los An- In 1985, Shand and McCullin, joined by Mark, she had been “living in a car in Guate-
geles, Palm Beach, and Miami.” In 1980 they Fane, made their expedition to New Guinea mala, being a textile dealer.”
opened an office on Duke Street, near the Lon- (then called Irian Jaya). “One day, we found “A few months after I met Mark, he got up
don Ritz, where clients could come to them. ourselves in this strange place called Ots- one morning and he said to me, ‘I’ve got this
By then they were spending every February janep, which has a reputation for cannibal- fabulous idea. I’m going to travel India on an
with Prince Jagat at his ancient fort in the cen- ism,” recalls the photographer. “We were elephant.’ I said, ‘Wow, can I come too?’ ‘No,
ter of Jaipur, hunting for gems by day and ca- chased by what I thought were pirates, but you can’t, because it’s a man’s expedition.’ ”
rousing by night. July and August were reserved they were Indonesian paramilitaries, and they
S
for Bali, where they built, in Shand’s descrip- surrounded us. They were pointing M16s at hand published his first book, Skuldug-
tion, “a beautiful Robinson Crusoe house on a us. This guy who was looking after us was gery, about his New Guinea trip, in
surfers’ beach. We lived a bohemian life, chilled- somebody Mark had found in Jakarta’s bus 1987. Four years later he produced the
out and very anti-social.” Fane recalled, “We station—he did all the interpretation. The unexpectedly affecting Travels on My Elephant,
did some amazing trips. We did this huge sail paramilitaries said, ‘You’ve been looking for which recounts his 600-mile journey on a she-
through Indonesia in a dug-out tree.” But, Fane skulls,’ and we said, ‘No we haven’t.’ But elephant named Tara from the Bay of Bengal
added, “Mark came to me one day and said, Mark and Harry had bought some human to the world’s oldest elephant market, on the
‘Look, I really want to give up work. I want to skulls and had them in biscuit tins on the Ganges River. It became an enormous best-
F RO M RE X US A
spend my life out here, not back in the other boat. The guy that Mark picked up at the bus seller and won him the British Travel Writer of
world. Let’s sell everything and buy a boat.’ ” station started saying about Harry, ‘This man the Year Award. Shand’s third book, Queen
Fane returned to work at the end of the sum- friend of the Queen.’ And then he pointed to of the Elephants, about the first female mahout
LETTER FROM LONDON
(elephant driver), Parbati Barua, won the 1996 truly recognized how wonderful it was. But says Tom Parker Bowles. “They were very sim-
Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in Britain our marriage just broke to pieces.” Shand ilar in their views. They just got on. And when
and the Prix Littéraire 30 Millions d’Amis in and Goldsmith divorced in 2009. they went to India, Mummy said, ‘Thank
France, and was accompanied by a BBC doc- God for Mark. I’ve never been happier to
S
umentary. Clio recalls, “We went off together hand had launched Elephant Family in see my little brother in my whole life.’ ”
on that one… Mark and I had eight years of 2002, with Ayesha of Jaipur and Lon- “Mark was absolutely full of his new role
complete bliss. After that it got complicated.” don banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild being sort of the palace wit,” his art his-
They had married three years after they as its leading patrons. In the afterword of the torian friend John Richardson says. “And
met, in 1990, at the Laines. Clio wore a cream 2012 edition of Travels on My Elephant, Shand Charles finally had a buddy. Mark put ev-
lace dress by Ossie Clark, and the wedding explained the organization’s mission: erybody at their ease. And he had all these
cake was in the shape of the Taj Mahal. They stories to tell. And he told them brilliantly.”
took a four-month honeymoon, Clio says. Ninety percent of the Asian elephant popula- Mark could also be relentless and rude.
“Marie-Hélène de Rothschild lent us her tion had been wiped out in the previous hundred He wanted more artists, more press, more
house in Marrakech. Then we went down the years. Ninety-five percent of their forest homes real-estate tycoons to place his eggs around
had been destroyed to make way for plantations,
Nile and to Singapore and Bali, to Mark’s farms, mines, roads, railways and villages… their buildings and sponsor them for $10,000
house, where my father joined us.” The last remaining elephants were forced into each. “His view was ‘You’re so fucking rich,
Ayesha Shand was born in 1994. As far tiny pockets of forest where they were competing give me the fucking money,’ ” says Ben El-
as Mark was concerned she was named after with their human neighbours for food, water and liot, whose international concierge company,
Ayesha of Jaipur, but, for Clio, the name came space… In India alone, a person kills an ele- Quintessentially, helped organize the project.
from Haggard’s 1887 novel, She: A History of phant and an elephant kills a person every single “But to get shit done, you have to be relent-
day of the year… Elephant Family is dedicated
Adventure, in which Ayesha is the 2,000-year- less.” Even the devoted Annabel admits,
to ending this daily battle.
old white queen ruling over a tribe of central- “He was a user and abuser; we all knew that
African savages. “We bought a house at the Elephant Family didn’t really get going in the family. But we all went back for more.
bottom of a valley in Wiltshire,” Clio told me. until 2004, when Shand found the 26-year- And that’s the interesting thing.”
“Very dark, very miserable, very isolated. old Ruth Powys, daughter of an evangelical “When Mark died, his diary was full,”
Mark set off traveling, and I was alone with preacher from the north of England, who notes Mary Powys. “There were at least eight
this baby. I had had a terrible birth, so I had to would turn out to be his perfect creative, ad- cities that had expressed interest in hosting Big
be operated on. And I was very traumatized.” ministrative, and romantic partner. “They be- Egg Hunts, including Hong Kong.” Shand’s
The success of his books had given Shand came this incredible force together,” says Indian friend Uma Dubash, the sister of the
the legitimacy, the sense of purpose, that he’d Ruth’s twin sister, Mary Powys, who joined last Maharaja of Morvi, told me, “There’s still
always lacked. “He was looking for some- the charity in 2008. “They were on and off for a lot of work to be done for the Asian elephant,
thing,” says William Astor. “And it wasn’t many years, but what was consistent was the but the ground has been broken by Mark. He
until he met an elephant that he found it, and huge respect and love between them. Because became the Elephant Man for a lot of Indians.”
redeemed himself.” The books and the TV together they were making stuff happen.”
C
documentaries with Goldie Hawn and Julia When I asked Ruth about her relationship at Stevens (also known as Yusuf Is-
Roberts that followed also made Shand a with Shand, she said, “Basically, I comforted lam) sang “Baby, baby, it’s a wild
celebrity, complete with groupies. Astor says him through his horrible divorce.” world” at the private family funeral
that the in-joke around London was that “for The first big fund-raiser Shand and Powys at the Holy Trinity Church, in Stourpaine,
a whole generation of English upper-class pulled together was the 2006 Elephant Dur- Dorset, where Annabel and her husband, Si-
girls, their gap year was going to India, going bar at the Petersham Nurseries, outside Lon- mon Elliot, live. It was the song Mark and his
to the elephant camp, meeting Mark, sleeping don, which was attended by Prince Charles daughter, Ayesha, liked to sing together. Ben
with Mark. It was like a rite of passage.” and Camilla, who had wed the previous year. Elliot, Tom Parker Bowles, and Don McCul-
“One day I decided I’ve got to react,” Clio Then came the Elephant Parade in London lin each read, and Ayesha delivered a eulogy
recalled. “He’d been months away, so I wrote in 2010, Jungle City in Edinburgh in 2011, and that left everyone in tears.
him a note that said, ‘Gone to live in Rome the first Fabergé Big Egg Hunt, in London in When I talked to Ayesha, a straight-A stu-
dent at Edinburgh University, a month later
in London, at the Chiltern Firehouse hotel,
“HE BECAME THE she was remarkably stoic about her father’s
passing. “In my opinion it was his time to go,
ELEPHANT MAN FOR as much as that seems really odd,” she said.
“Dad lived an extraordinary life, but he was
A LOT OF INDIANS,” SAYS UMA DUBASH. never truly satisfied. And I felt that at that mo-
ment he was. He’d just raised so much mon-
ey. He was the talk of the town. Me and him
with Ayesha. If you want to join us, here’s the 2012. Henry Wyndham, a chairman of Sothe- were on incredible terms like we’d never been
plane ticket.’ ” For the next seven years, Mark by’s Europe, estimates the Sotheby’s auctions before. My mum and him were finally best
made a halfhearted attempt to cohabit with that were part of these events took in as much friends again. He would have hated to be an
his wife and daughter in Italy. “He was so ter- as $10 million. old man. He would have hated to sit by a fire,
rible! He wouldn’t utter a word of Italian. But In July 2013, the Prince of Wales and the grumbling, bored, his life without adventure.”
I loved him. In a big, big way. We decided we Duchess of Cornwall hosted Elephant Family’s “My brother was a larger-than-life charac-
should go back to England and make a fresh Animal Ball, with drinks at Clarence House ter who left a mark on everyone he met,” the
start. Unfortunately, by that time I’d lost him, followed by dinner next door at Lancaster Duchess of Cornwall told me in an e-mail.
basically. And I couldn’t live with Mark in House. That November, Mark met up with his “I miss him every day … ”
that indifferent way. It was too painful. He got sister and brother-in-law on their official tour Annabel confided, “Because Mark was
very very obsessed by his charity, Elephant of India, taking them to see some of Elephant always traveling, living here or there—I’m wait-
Family. Which was fantastic for him, and I Family’s projects. “My stepfather adored him,” ing all the time for a text saying, ‘I’m back.’ ”
SCANDAL
HALL OF SECRETS
After devoting much of his life to Saint Anthony Hall—Columbia University’s
secretive high-Wasp society—Walter Perry was convicted of stealing $650,000
from its coffers. Did he betray his club, or was something else at play?
By JOHN SEDGWICK
I
ACCUSED
Walter Perry,
former St. A’s board
president, across
the street from the
t was nearly midnight and drizzling outside “Just don’t use my name.” fraternity.
Columbia’s Saint Anthony Hall fraternity, He had arrived wearing
and I was trying to sneak into its annual Hal- New York black, no costume,
loween party. Before me, the building’s giddy but I had brought along an owlish mask, the
F O R DE TA I LS , GO TO VF.CO M/ CRE DI TS
Beaux-Arts façade glowed in the lamplight. I closest thing I could find to the scarlet num-
was keen to move among the beautiful young ber in the Venetian-orgy scene in Eyes Wide
things as they writhed to a D.J.’s beat. But Shut. I’d heard the stories: about the rivers of
mostly I just wanted to get inside. alcohol, the stacks of 20s by the backgammon
I had come with an out-of-towner who was board, the supposed drug use, the hot tub
genetically St. A’s—“Probably the 10th or 12th on the roof, the beauties reared back against
member in my family,” he told me, conveying the antique billiard table. An Asian slave was
the tone of the place, then adding nervously, rumored to be kept in the basement to do
128 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com P H OTO G R A P H S BY JONATHAN BECKER N OVEMB ER 2015
SCANDAL
laundry for what is referred to as The son replied that the whole Perry business was
Membership. As part of their initia- E. DIGBY
“very sad,” but no. When I called Dawson
tion, new members were said to be re- BALTZELL directly, he replied “No comment” to each of
quired to buy and then burn a plane Who coined my questions.
ticket to China. the term Here were some of the questions I had:
As my friend pressed the front “Wasp” What happened to the two boxes of financial
(University of
doorbell, I peered through the glass records—potentially exculpatory material that
Pennsylvania).
into a deep, dimly lit foyer that led to Perry says disappeared from his office—when
some stone steps. There was the creak the case broke? Is it true that two board mem-
of an opening door, then a soft tread. A bers arranged, over Perry’s objections, to get a
young woman with dark, Pre-Raphaelite third member onto the board, creat-
hair came toward us. ing the coalition that ultimately led to
LEWIS LAPHAM the audit that in turn resulted in The
“No Comment” Editor People of the State of New York v.
I
t is fitting to enter St. A’s in disguise, for and author Walter Perry? And why, after every-
nothing here is quite as it appears. I had (Yale thing Perry had done for the Hall,
University).
come to investigate a crime that may did the Hall send the matter to crimi-
seem like something out of the game of Clue. nal court rather than to civil court,
But the scandal created an uproar in the Hall where the fraternity would have had a
that has tarnished its image, caused shot at quietly getting back its money?
heavy soul-searching among some And there was something else. The
members, and led to prison time. Hall first took the matter to Manhat-
The crime? Grand larceny, inside tan district attorney Robert Morgen-
job. Upwards of $650,000 stolen thau, in 2008, but the office issued no
by the genial, erudite Walter Perry, indictment until Cyrus Vance took office,
a devoted member with a Ph.D. two years later. The son of a former secretary
STROBE
in classical Greek whose heavy of state, Vance had attended Groton School,
TALBOTT
eyebrows, slim mustache, and glit- Journalist as did Perry and his younger brother, Proal.
tering eyes suggest a kindly but and diplomat Vance had once been close to Proal—who is
perhaps unreliable uncle. By uni- (Yale a wine importer in the Fort Lauderdale area—
versal agreement, Perry kept the University). and had always been friendly to Walter. Until
Hall together with Krazy Glue “the cops showed up at six A.M.,” Perry
for three decades, serving as chief recalls bitterly, to roust him out of bed, ar-
undergraduate officer, then as a rest him, slap him in handcuffs, and take
trustee, and finally as president of the board, him to the Tombs, a jail in Lower Man-
often doubling as treasurer and secretary hattan and one of the more miserable
when those gentlemen failed to show up. He places on earth.
worked out of a small office off the front hall
at St. A’s, just inside the doorway. For all this A Sacred Bond
T
time, Perry says, he was the resident historian here are other Saint Anthony
and keeper of the secrets; a bill collector; a Halls, about a dozen of them,
scrutinizer of accounts; a fixer for several va- most notably at Yale and M.I.T.,
rieties of “girl trouble”; and a chauffeur for but Columbia’s is the first, the al-
the alcoholically disabled. ST. A’S NATION pha chapter. It is the model for
Then there was the matter of the 362 Historically, the raucous, hyper- elite
checks Perry wrote to himself on a Saint An- the chapters at Hamilton House in Gossip
thony Hall account, which led to an internal elite schools Girl. Drawn from the same
have produced an
investigation and ultimately to criminal pros- WILLIAM “BULL” HALSEY impressive list
source, all St. A’s chapters
ecution, the outcome of which landed Perry Wartime fleet commander follow more or less the same
BY ROBERT NICKELSBERG/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETT Y IMAGES; © CORBIS
of members.
C E N T E R , U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N SY LVA N I A ; BY E VA N AG O ST I N I / G E T T Y I M AG E S ;
in the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility, in (University of Virginia). practices. Members call one an-
P H OTO G R A P H S : F RO M TO P, F RO M T H E U N I V E R S I T Y A RCH I V E S A N D R E CO R D S
upstate New York. Did he steal the money? other Brother (or, now, Sister), tim-
When I asked him, his face tightened, like as much as any crime, may be what got him ing weekly meetings to the slant of the sun; in-
that of a prizefighter about to deliver a into so much trouble. It may also be why stalling hidden rooms in their elegant chapter
punch. “It wasn’t there!” he told me firmly. nobody believes him, making Perry about houses; calling the true president, his name
“The whole question is absurd.” He insists the loneliest man on the planet. “Everybody known only to members, “Number One,” and
that the finances of the organization were has left me,” he says. “Everybody.” the titular president “Number Two”; and end-
so tight that, if he had stolen $650,000, the But everybody is not always right. Being ing most get-togethers with the members in-
organization’s bills couldn’t have been paid a secret society, the Hall initially declined to sentient and horizontal. Details of the rituals
and he would have set off alarms all over respond to any specific questions about the are closely held, but at Princeton they are said
the place. Perry maintains he has said the case, instead furnishing a one-page official to involve an oath of loyalty to a hooded fig-
same thing every time he’s been offered a statement followed by a two-page legal reit- ure known as the Most Noble Archon, along
chance to confess his guilt in exchange for eration. At my request a loyal brother tried, with the recitation in Latin of a vow from
leniency, and then has gone on to say a lot through a St. A’s intermediary named John Scripture, with the speaker agreeing to give all
more, with elliptical baroque flourishes. A Dawson, an investment adviser with LDR his possessions to the poor. (St. A’s members
better answer might just have been “No.” Capital Management, to interest members of have not been known to follow through.)
This is not Perry’s way, however, and that, the board of trustees in speaking to me. Daw- Saint Anthony Hall was founded in the
SCANDAL
mid-19th century by a 15-year-old English case to which is hidden behind a secret panel)
schoolboy, Edward Forbes Travis, who had to the three residential floors at the top. St.
come to Columbia with an odd fascination A’s members live there, in rooms that house
for St. Anthony the Great, the gnarled fourth- about 20 people of both sexes. Members eat
century mystic who wandered the Egyptian their meals at St. A’s. Two full-time employees
desert and inspired early monks with his soul- are there to serve them, a steward and a cook.
purifying asceticism. In 1847, on the saint’s There is a library, a well-stocked bar, and a
feast day—January 17—Travis introduced a ballroom, whose chandelier graced the cover
friend to certain rituals he’d brought from of the group Vampire Weekend’s first album.
England. The two students forged a sacred The financial picture is not public, but a few
bond that was soon extended to others, the ap- years ago, when Perry was still in charge,
peal being not so much the invented mysteries each semester’s dues ran to just $400. The
as what underlay them: the age-old collegiate meal plan added another $1,800 per semes-
yearning for bromance. In its high-Victorian ter, and the residential fees per semester could
moment, St. A’s also cultivated something of run to $2,200. Despite many efforts, there is
a literary flavor: members would spend hours little by way of an endowment.
reading essays to one another for general cri- Of late, the Hall has become slightly more
tique or amusement. multicultural, but for the longest time it was
When the fraternity was founded, Co- 200-proof Wasp, its 40 or so undergradu-
lumbia was down by Wall Street. Then it ate members drawn not just from the elite
moved to Midtown. When Columbia moved boarding schools—Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s,
to Morningside Heights, a St. A’s man got Choate, and the Cate School, in California—
advance word, because he was a Columbia but from the secret societies of that elite. More
trustee, and, on the cheap, snapped up a very than anything else, the distinguishing charac-
desirable piece of property on Riverside Drive teristics of a St. A’s member are two: an ex-
with a Hudson view. The jaunty clubhouse tremely rich mother and father.
was designed by another Saint Anthony Hall
member, Henry Hornbostel, who also de- A Little Digging
I
signed the Williamsburg Bridge. know Walter Perry, or at least I think I
The various St. A’s are like franchises—all do. We went to Groton together, where
the same but all a little bit different. Collec- he was two years ahead of me. I remem-
tively, they have produced an impressive list ber him as brainy and a little aloof. He was
of members: Charles Kuralt, of CBS; Lewis smallish and southern, with an accent you
Lapham, the longtime editor of Harper’s; the didn’t normally hear in New England, and
baseball writer Peter Gammons; the cartoon- he celebrated Robert E. Lee’s birthday every
ist Jeff MacNelly—and those are just the ones year with cake and candles. I recall an after-
in the media world. Other members include noon when we stayed together at the table after
the diplomat Strobe Talbott, World War lunch—he wanted to show me how he was go-
II’s Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, C.I.A. ing to do away with the Pentagon (a popular
troublemaker Cornelius Roosevelt, and E. notion back then). He made a pile of sugar,
I HAD COME TO ST. A’S TO INVESTIGATE

A CRIME THAT MAY SEEM LIKE
SOMETHING OUT OF
THE GAME OF CLUE.
Digby Baltzell, the sociologist who coined the bent down, and blew. Then he smiled as he
term “Wasp.” Unlike the usual campus frater- looked up. It may be for this reason that a
nities, most of the St. A’s own their buildings, Groton friend calls him a “shape-shifter.” I
making them little worlds unto themselves. hadn’t seen him again until I bumped into
Think of them, perhaps, as a cross between him at a school gathering at the Colony Club,
Skull and Bones and a Princeton eating club, in Manhattan, almost two years ago. I asked
with a large heaping of Society and more him what he’d been up to.
than a dash of Animal House. It is an open “I’ve been in prison,” he said, above the
question how much a university can interfere din of cocktail conversation. He might have
with admission policies at any of the St. A’s. said he’d been in California. It was either the
At Columbia, the answer seems to be: very neutrality of the utterly innocent or the neutral-
little. In New York, the Hall rises six stories, ity of the utterly not innocent. I couldn’t quite
from the mysterious basement crypt (the stair- tell. I didn’t pop the obvious question, “What
132 VA NI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com N OVEMB ER 2015
SCANDAL
the hell happened?” Instead, I let it go for a
full year, until we met again at the same event
and picked up where we’d left off. This time,
he offered a few details of his experience—
about St. A’s and about the Tombs, with its
mingling of drug dealers and subway pick-
pockets, and about the toughs he lived among
at Ogdensburg. After that, I had to know
more, and I arranged to meet Perry in various
places—in the coffee shop of the Gershwin
Hotel; near the clock at Grand Central Ter-
minal; at the fourth-floor apartment he shares
with his wife, on 157th Street; and finally on
a park bench by the Hudson, the nearest he
could come to Saint Anthony Hall without
violating the terms of his parole.
If I was being played, I was being well played,
for I liked Perry—his astounding politeness, his
good-humored forbearance, and his astonish-
ingly broad learning. All of our conversations
were delightful, a bit like talking to an Oxford
don who knows as much about Herodotus as
about the unique action of a Remington rifle.
I also came to appreciate the fact that, while
Perry and St. A’s were irreconcilably at odds,
they were well matched too, which may be why
Walter had made the place his second home, if
not his first, for so much of his adulthood. Both SECRETS?
The fraternity’s
aspired to something better, and both worked
historic
hard to keep up appearances. building on
To get at the truth of Walter Perry takes a own a selection of clothes in my size which A’s friends, and gradually Riverside Drive,
little digging. To start with, you have to under- she permits me to borrow from time to time.” made the Hall his home. in Manhattan.
stand his father, Walter Emmett Perry Jr., and To Walter III, his father consisted of “two He got married a few weeks
to understand him, you need to understand his sets of facts that never touched.” One was after graduation, to a former
father, Walter Emmett Perry Sr. That first Wal- designed to show his magnificence, the other Manhattanville student of distinguished lin-
ter Perry was a Birmingham prosecutor who, to demonstrate his absolute lack of net worth. eage named Mary Gamble Kennard. Walter
in 1957, took on six Klansmen for castrating a But Walter III could never quite tell which set took Mary to Trinity College, Dublin, where
black man named Edward Aaron with a ra- of facts was the true measure of the man. he studied for a Ph.D. in classics with the
zor blade. Two of the men confessed and were reigning Homeric scholar at the time, Wil-
given suspended sentences. The other four The Gray Cloud liam Bedell Stanford. Back in the U.S., he
W
were found guilty and sentenced to 20 years. alter’s life fell apart when he was discovered that the degree wasn’t good for
“A magnificent old pillar of the law,” says our thrown out of Groton a few weeks much and had to settle for teaching Latin at
Walter Perry III. before graduation. He and two the Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York.
No one would say that about his father. classmates were caught in town, a hanging of- Then the fidgets set in. He jumped to a
Walter Perry Jr. served in the Alabama legis- fense in those years of upheaval. Walter regu- Manhattan securities firm called Laidlaw,
lature during the George Wallace years, and, larly made the honor list and was a devoted which was kept afloat at times by the hefty
with his barrel chest and booming voice, he Grotonian. He’d been admitted to Harvard, backgammon winnings of the chairman, Bob
could fill the entire chamber with his charm. but that was off now. He’d have to settle for Clayton. Backgammon couldn’t carry Laid-
The charm gradually dissipated as alcohol Columbia, but not before the fabled Harry law forever, and, in 1983, Perry shifted briefly
flooded in. Coleman, Columbia’s dean of students, had to the investment firm Rooney Pace, whose
Walter junior sent “Sticks,” as he called him in for a little talk about “his values and chairman would later be indicted in a $100
his son, to Groton. There was no scholar- purpose in life.” Coleman believed in second million fraud scheme. Perry then teamed up
ship—Walter junior just never paid, and the chances. Incredibly, he’d once been shot five with a partner to buy a small company that
headmaster for a while decided the whole times by a deranged student upset for being developed computer systems to assist foreign
thing was amusing. Walter III woke up to re- suspended because of his grades, but Coleman firms with regulatory compliance. Fiduciary
ality the summer he turned 13, when he got reappeared at his desk, his arm in a sling, a few Automation, it was called. That one clicked,
out of bed to discover that most of the fam- weeks later—and never pressed charges. Cole- and he made a good bit of money. In 1997
ily’s possessions had suddenly been seized by man, a St. A’s alum, was favorably disposed to- he joined with another St. A’s man to get in
state marshals. Young Walter was stupefied, ward the studious, well-mannered Walter Perry. on the dot-com boom with Net Dot Unique-
his father cavalier. Later, in bankruptcy court, As a Groton boy—Greek ace in need of ness, which offered a database for business
the opposing counsel asked Walter junior, redemption—Perry was perfect for a high- transactions. It wasn’t actually a dot-com, but
“You mean to tell this court you own nothing end frat, but Perry himself wasn’t so sure come 2001 it imploded all the same.
but the clothes on your back?” Perry replied about St. A’s. It wasn’t exactly a literary soci- By then Walter had created a sweet life,
in his courtliest tones: “Oh no, sir. I do not ety anymore, what with everybody drinking with a charming house in Short Hills, New
own these clothes. Or any clothes at all. My themselves silly. But he took a room on one Jersey, four children he’d soon put through
wife is simply accommodating enough to of the upper floors, acquired a few close St. college, and a cherished spot in the Social
SCANDAL
Register. He had also returned to Saint An- operated computers, doing St. A’s business. to the account so he could pull the records.
thony Hall, at first just to keep in touch, then Perry’s reign was not entirely glorious. It That’s when Thurston found the first
to help out, and eventually to do everything was in fact a near-total pain, because the check. It was for $30,000, and it was made
imaginable. One of the major draws of the St. A’s members weren’t just drunken louts; out to W. E. Perry, signed by Walter Perry,
place was John Shurtleff, known universally they were immensely entitled drunken and endorsed by Walter Perry. There were
as Boly, who had attended Groton and was louts. He describes his job as “cleaning up many more such checks—$90,000 worth that
thought to have been a member of the society after irresponsible children who haven’t one year. Ultimately 362 checks were found,
called the Raven, but such secrets were not to been toilet-trained.” I’ll leave aside his com- totaling about $650,000.
be divulged. At Harvard, Shurtleff had ma- ments about sex and drugs. Many tasks Perry was summoned to an emergency
jored in Sanskrit, then settled into life as gener- were mundane. One year, the sprinkler sys- meeting of the board, overseen by Brian Maas,
al counsel for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. tem froze, bursting the pipes, because an a criminal-defense lawyer since 1986. The
It’s not clear what made so many people wor- undergraduate had left the oil bill unpaid. board figured it would need that sort of exper-
tise. In the official statement furnished to me,
the board maintains that Perry was given every
chance “to explain his actions and restore the
THE DISTINGUISHING missing funds.” Perry says that he was imme-
CHARACTERISTICS OF A SAINT ANTHONY diately cut off from contact with anyone at the
Hall, and that he would not have accepted
HALL MEMBER ARE TWO: the offer in any case, because he wasn’t guilty.
A RICH MOTHER In his indignation, he declared that the board

was complicit in any financial improprieties,
and demanded that the board vote “up or
AND FATHER. down” on whether the Hall should even con-

tinue to exist. Instead, Perry was asked to resign
from his position as president, which he did.
Ultimately, the board was advised by Maas to
ship Boly, but it is plain to see what got to Per- Later, when Perry found another one un- hand Walter Perry’s case over to the D.A.’s of-
ry: he was the respectable version of his father. paid, he himself drove a check over to the fice for further investigation. And in May 2011
Boly introduced Walter to a higher realm oil company in Queens. the Perry case got under way in the New York
of Hall mysteries and lured him into them. It County Courthouse, in Lower Manhattan.
was all about the Gray Cloud, a secret cluster Those 362 Checks If a lawyer who defends himself has a fool
A
of national Saint Anthony Hall eminences so nd so it went until the fall of 2006, for a client, that must go double for a non-
exalted that their names were never written when the graduate treasurer, Vance lawyer who defends himself. In the trial tran-
down, but their powers were thought to be Thurston, with whom Perry had been script, all 3,500 pages of it, Perry plays the
unbounded. Boly apparently was the current close, sensed that there was something amiss brilliant fool, the man who knows everything
supreme ruler of the Gray Cloud; before him, in the accounts. It tells you a lot about how the about legal theory but nothing about how
the art historian Winslow Ames, of the Boston place was run that Thurston lived in San Fran- to ask a witness a simple question. By going
Ameses, had held the invisible scepter. Some- cisco and almost never attended the trustee pro se, as it’s termed, Perry wanted to avoid
day, Walter dreamed, the job would be his. meetings in New York. But no one else would the hammy theatricality of the law in favor of
Perry could not get enough of Boly. They do the job at all. Thurston coped by leaving something more intellectually satisfying. Plus,
spoke on the phone every day they didn’t hud- it to Perry to produce the financial numbers he relished the prospect of facing down his ac-
dle in person at the club. When Boly drank every month. He later told the story at Perry’s cusers. But it was hopeless.
himself legless at the Hall dinners, as he some- trial. Thurston had just been diagnosed with
A
times did, Walter would be the one to drive cancer (erroneously, as it turned out), and he dozen members of St. A’s testified over
him home. But now that Boly was pushing felt it prudent to add backup signatories to the the course of the month-long trial, and
80, Perry was dismayed to learn that the Gray Hall’s various bank accounts. He asked Perry each landed a heavy blow. But it was
Cloud was to be replaced by something called to switch his transactions from the Chase ac- Thurston who finished him off by describing
a “policy committee.” Was nothing sacred? count that Perry primarily used—ending with in detail the hundreds of checks that Perry had
Perry’s father died in 2001, under shocking the numbers 6363—to one of the new ac- made out to himself. Perry would contend that
circumstances, slamming his car into a bridge counts so everything could be consolidated. the 6363 account was always intended to be
abutment at 80 miles an hour. “Eight o’clock Months went by, and Perry still had not com- personal, and that the deposits from the Hall
on a Sunday morning,” Perry says in a kind plied. At one point, Thurston tried to get into were reimbursements for funds that he himself
of trance. “Clear road. Bright sunshine.” And the 6363 account himself, but he had only had put into St. A’s to cover its ordinary opera-
no skid marks. Two years later Perry’s wife Boly’s old ID number, and it didn’t work. tions. Aside from $40,000 he seemed to have
succumbed to cancer. Boly died a year after Meanwhile, the Hall got together an audit paid a contractor to renovate the windows,
that. By then Walter had moved to 105th and committee to derive some firm numbers of most of his contributions had dated from the
Broadway to be closer to the Hall, which be- its own. Perry told Thurston he was furious Boly era, when the Hall was run much more
came home once more. “It was my anchor about that. Some “Young Turks” who weren’t like a private house than a proper institution.
to the city,” he says. “It was also my anchor to really doing any work of their own were un- But the records that might prove his core con-
youth, to youthfulness.” Perry was already dermining him. Finally, in March of 2008, tention—that the money he took out replaced
president of the St. A’s board. Now, in ef- Thurston got word from Chase that the 6363 money he had put in—were the very ones, Perry
fect, he was also Boly. He married again, to account was being summarily closed. Thur- claimed, that had disappeared from his office.
a woman named Lilian Chance. The wed- ston called up Perry to find out what was go- Unfortunately for Perry, the prosecu-
ding was held at Saint Anthony Hall, and ing on, and Perry told Thurston he didn’t like tor had plenty of information about Per-
Perry spent some of the honeymoon in the audit committee snooping around. When ry’s spending habits—his hefty American
Paris at a storefront Internet café with coin- Thurston insisted, Perry gave him the codes Express–card payments; his memberships in
SCANDAL
the Knickerbocker Club and the Downtown had spent “a lot” of Saint Anthony Hall acknowledges a puritanical streak that may
Athletic Club; a $21,000 wedding for his money without a good explanation, and then not have gone down too well at a frat. If Per-
daughter; a $16,500 wedding ring for Lilian. got indignant at a demand for restitution, the ry was on both ends of the checks, it may be
When it was time for Perry to cross- board believed that it was obliged to take because of the nature of a shoestring opera-
examine, after Thurston’s testimony, he had the matter to the district attorney’s office. Ul- tion he ran largely by himself. It doesn’t help
to take a moment to collect himself; he was timately, it was the D.A.’s call to prosecute, that Boly Shurtleff, the one witness who might
too choked up to speak. During his opening not the Hall’s. As for the idea of a vendetta, have understood, is dead.
defense, Perry had turned on his accusers, in- the source dismissed that as ridiculous. “No-
T
voking “a coordinated, biased attack against body said, ‘We want to get this Walter Perry he Hall, in the end, is a place of se-
me by members of a cult.” And his friend guy. Let’s crucify him.’ ” And, he added, crets. I’d hoped to penetrate some of
was one of them. It was Perry’s only display where’s the logic? “If I’m sitting on the board them that drizzly Halloween night,
of grief at the trial, and he never repeated it of Saint Anthony Hall, and I know Walter to see the thing up close. But my friend had
with me. A brother had taken him down. Perry knows something really bad about me, it wrong—or perhaps he’d meant to get it
Perry was sentenced to two to six years in the last thing I am going to want to do is turn wrong. The party had been the night before.
prison. He served one year at Ogdensburg, up him in to the criminal authorities.” The dark-haired woman who answered the
near the Canadian border, then did another Is Walter Perry guilty? I look at him from a door was welcoming, though. My friend acted
year on work release in Manhattan. In Novem- certain angle, and I think, Yes, of course. Then like a member, and that was good enough for
ber 2013 he was released on parole. For a time I look at him from another, and I think, No, her. I put my mask in my pocket. She didn’t
he was denied a bank account and a credit absolutely not. It may be that, like his father, care. When I got inside the Hall, I under-
card; with his record and at his age, he does not he encompasses two sets of facts that don’t stood that, as is so often the case, exclusivity
have much chance of an ordinary job. (He has overlap. One thing is clear: he did write those concealed a certain suppurating shabbiness.
his own business designing software.) The state checks. But (you could argue) the very obvi- Saint Anthony Hall is, by nature, a fraternity,
is demanding $20,000 annually for 35 years in ousness of his guilt may be the clearest proof a place for beer kegs, blasting music, hook-
restitution, and the federal government is after of his innocence. Was Walter Perry so stupid ups. It was sparsely furnished with leather
him for back taxes. He has been filing appeals. as to think that nobody would ever notice that couches, a piano that was out of tune, a drab
By way of vengeance he harbors an unlikely he’d cashed 362 checks to himself? Or was dining-room table. The French windows
ambition, if he can ever exonerate himself, of this one of those banal cries for help one reads didn’t look out on anything much. Maybe the
running against Cyrus Vance for D.A. in 2017. about? Perry has created plenty of spread- scene seemed forlorn because there were just
He must stay away from Saint Anthony sheets with the intention of showing there was two people in evidence, the woman who had
Hall. Perry was in Ogdensburg when he re- no money to steal. Annual revenues during his let us in and her boyfriend, a smooth, likable
ceived notice that St. A’s was planning to time amounted at most to about $300,000, guy keen on finance. She intimated that he
drum him out—a ritual, he knew, that involved barely enough to keep two people on staff, was the club’s “Number One.” There was no
members putting on robes and then reciting plus pay for meals, parties, utilities, and main- nimbus of authority around his GQ hair. The
the words that would end Perry’s affiliation. tenance. All the bills are known to have been glory of yesteryear was on the pockmarked
Still loyal to St. A’s, Perry would not tell me paid, leaving not much by way of surplus walls—an oil portrait of a former club mem-
what these words are, but he acknowledged to siphon off. So maybe Perry has a point, ber, an etching of the U.S. Senate, a print of
that he was the “custodian of all that ritual and though the court did not think so. But he a cricket match. Perry had occupied the tiny
procedure for many years.” (“It’s your basic can go on, and I do know that when he starts office, like a bellman’s, off the foyer, trying to
bell-book-and-candle excommunication,” he using the phrase “the ontology of money” I make St. A’s more than it could be.
told me.) Perry was allowed one last chance want to drive him back to Ogdensburg myself. The alpha chapter lost a large number of
seniors to graduation in 2013 and of late has
frankly been pitching “diversity” to replace
I ASKED HIM WHAT HE’D BEEN UP TO. them. A recent crop includes a Korean, an
Austrian, a Mexican, a German, and a for-
“I’VE BEEN IN mer U.S. Marine. The members continue to

be people with money. In its newfound desire
for “decorum,” the club has turned to ath-
PRISON,” letes, primarily rowers. It has also tried to
summon its literary heritage at least once a
PERRY SAID, ABOVE THE DIN OF COCKTAIL semester. One event included a visit from
D. T. Max to talk about his biography of Da-
CONVERSATION. vid Foster Wallace, a writer who might well
have had sport with St. A’s. Other events in
recent years have raised money for such
to plead to stay on, and scrawled a long, beg- Knowing what I do about the mysterious causes as research on tick-borne Lyme disease
ging letter in pencil, the only writing instru- and seemingly inept operation of the Hall, I and, according to a Hall summary published
ment he was allowed. His plea was rejected. don’t feel my heart warming to that crowd. in The Columbia Lion, “children embroiled in
At Columbia, “St. A’s” is sometimes trans- the Arab-Israeli conflict.” But the Hall will
“Ontology of Money” lated as “St. Asshole,” and its smugness has party on to the 40s swing-band sound of Les-
I
t wasn’t until I was deep into the Perry earned the scornful envy that is the burden ter Lanin for its annual Valentine’s Day Black-
matter that the board furnished me with of the young rich everywhere. Could the criti- Tie Gala. It remains committed to the core
a “source close to the board” to tell me cal records that might prove “money in” to values of “intellectual rigor, literary exercise,
what the trustees themselves had refused to pay for the club’s expenses really have been secrecy, constancy, and devotion.”
divulge, namely why it had gone after Walter deep-sixed by people who didn’t like Perry’s That is to say: I hadn’t missed anything
Perry so hard. The short of it was, the board attitude or his pencil mustache? Noting that on Halloween. At Saint Anthony Hall, the
had no choice. Once it appeared that Perry his wife sometimes calls him Malvolio, Perry party is always last year.
Rihanna’s
CUBA LIBRE
Rihanna, parked at
F OR D E TA IL S, GO TO V F. CO M/ C RE D I TS
Bar la Rosa, on La Rosa

Street in Havana,
Cuba, with a 1956
Lincoln Continental
Mark II (once owned by
First Lady Marta
Fernández de Batista).
RIHANNA WEARS
CLOTHING BY CARINE
GILSON; SHOES BY GIUSEPPE
ZANOTTI DESIGN. NOVE MBER 2 015
Solo Scene
Rihanna is firmly in control of her life and career—but not of her image,
which has veered between club-hopping temptress and
poster child for victims of domestic abuse. As the 27-year-old singer, songwriter,
producer, actress, designer, style setter, entrepreneur,
and philanthropist readies a long-awaited new album, she talks candidly
with LISA ROBINSON about the chasm between her reality
and her reputation and what she’s learned from her relationships
P H OTOG R AP H S BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ • ST Y LED BY JESSICA DIEHL 139

What makes Rihanna special—outside prom queen, the sexy girl allegedly at the
of the music—is that she is someone who is center of a jealous, bottle-throwing brawl
genuinely herself. People connect with her. in a nightclub, nor the habitué of L.A. and
You are seeing the authentic version of who New York hot spots 1Oak and Up &
she is. You can see her scars and her flaws… Down. Nor is she the woman who has
She’s gone through things that everyone’s been described as badass, shocking,
gone through—dysfunctional relationships, naughty, tough—pictured in tabloids and
things that played out in front of everyone’s online with various rumored rapper/actor/
eyes—and she’s done a real good job of keeping athlete boyfriends. She is elegant, funny,
her life private, but just living her life as a straightforward, and downright horrified
young person … unapologetically. You have (and laughs hysterically) at all of the ru-
to have a tough skin in this business; you’re mors I toss at her. And while people may
going to hear some things about yourself that assume that her life is just one big, long,
you’re going to think, What?? Are you crazy? sexy night out on the town, she insists it’s
—Jay Z not true. I ask about her bad-girl reputa-
tion. “Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately
I honestly think how much fun it would about how boring I am,” she says. “When
be to live my reputation. People have this I do get time to myself, I watch TV.” Now
image of how wild and crazy I am, and I’m we’re off and running, both of us mourn-
not everything they think of me. The reality ing the end of Breaking Bad. She loves
is that the fame, the rumors—this picture Bates Motel and forensics shows. What
means this, another picture means that— about NCIS and CSI? “I used to watch
it really freaks me out. It made me back them,” she says, “until I found The First 48
away from even wanting to attempt to date. [homicide detectives, cold-blooded mur-
R
It’s become second nature for me to just ders at convenience stores] and Snapped
close that door and just be O.K. with that. [true stories of women who lost control and
I’m always concerned about whether people committed murder]. Those are things that
have good or bad intentions. actually happened in real life,” she says.
—Rihanna “I’m stuck on the fact that these things ac-
tually happened. All those other things are
just made-up stories.”
When it comes to made-up stories, Ri-
hanna knows whereof she speaks. Despite
all those rumors of sexual liaisons, Ri-
hanna says her last real, official boyfriend
was Chris Brown—when they briefly got
back together three years after his arrest
for assaulting her in 2009 (more about that
MA R A IS ; MAN I C UR E BY JE N N Y LON GWORTH; SE T D E S IG N BY MA RY HOWA R D STU DI O; SPE C IA L THANK S TO ROSA BOSCH

H AI R PRODU C TS BY MATR IX ; MA K E UP PROD U CTS BY DI OR ; N A IL E N A ME L BY I BD ; HA IR BY YU SE F ; MAK EUP BY ST ÉPHANE
later)—and, prior to that, then Dodgers out-
fielder Matt Kemp, who she says she was
OF C UB AN STA R A N D PA ME L A R UI Z OF THE C UBA UN TI TLE D FO UN DATI ON ; FO R DE TA IL S, G O TO VF.COM/ CR ED ITS

just getting to know when the paparazzi got
a picture of them together. “We were still
dating … we were just three months in and
I liked his vibe, he was a good guy, and then
paparazzi got us on vacation in Mexico. He
handled it well; I didn’t. I got so uncom-
ihanna sits fortable because now what? He’s not even
across the table from me in the private able to be seen with [another] girl, because
room at Giorgio Baldi, her favorite restau- I’m dragged back into
rant in L.A. Her hair is reddish, wavy; her headlines that say he’s
face seems free of makeup. She’s even cheating on me, and I RUN THIS GOWN
Rihanna takes a break
more beautiful in person than she is in her don’t even [really] know
in the Josie Alonso
photos. She’s wearing a white crop top, this guy. Some guys … House, on Calzada
denim cutoff shorts, Puma sneakers, and a I don’t even have their Street, in Havana’s
flowing Chinese-patterned robe. When she number. You would not Vedado neighborhood.
orders three half-portions of pasta dishes even believe it,” she says
RIHANNA WEARS A
(spaghetti pomodoro with basil, gnocchi, with a laugh. “I’m seri- GOWN BY RALPH LAUREN
and ravioli), I ask how she maintains her ous, hand to God.” Giv- COLLECTION; SHOES
BY GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI
curvy but slim figure. She says, “Legit, I en that she’s supposed to DESIGN.
have been in the gym every day this week be so freewheeling, can’t
because I am not willing to give up my she just have sex for fun?
food. But I will sacrifice an hour for the “If I wanted to I would completely do that,”
gym.” The 27-year-old woman in front of she says. “I am going to do what makes me
me is not the provocative, wild hip-hop feel happy, what I feel like doing. But that
140 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com NOVE MBER 2 015
NOVEM BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 141
“[Fame] looks very glittery,” Rihanna says,
F OR D E TA IL S, GO TO V F. CO M/ C RE D I TS
UNAPOLOGETIC
Rihanna bares all
in the bedroom
of the Josie
Alonso House.
RIHANNA WEARS
SHOES BY
MANOLO BLAHNIK
FROM ALBRIGHT
FASHION LIBRARY.
“but it’s way too scary and unrealistic.”

would be empty for me; that to me is a hol-
low move. I would wake up the next day
feeling like shit.
‘W

hen you love some-
body, that’s differ-
ent,” she continues.
“Even if you don’t
love them per se,
when you care
enough about somebody and you know that
they care about you, then you know they don’t
disrespect you. And it’s about my own respect
for myself. A hundred percent. Sometimes it’s
the first time I’m meeting this person—and
then all of a sudden I’m ‘with them.’ It freaks
me out. This industry creates stories and envi-
ronments that can make you uncomfortable
even being friends with someone. If you see
me sitting next to someone, or standing next to
someone, what, I’m not allowed to do that?
I’m like, are you serious? Do you think it’s go-
ing to stop me from having a friend?” But, she
adds, “I’m the worst. I see a rumor and I’m
not calling [them] back. I’ve had to be so con-
scious about people—what they say and why
people want to be with me, why people want
to sleep with me… It makes me very guard-
ed and protective. I learned the hard way.
“I always see the best in people,” she says.
“I hope for the best, and I always look for that
little bit of good, that potential, and I wait for
it to blossom. You want them to feel good be-
ing a man, but now men are afraid to be men.
They think being a real man is actually being
a pussy, that if you take a chair out for a lady,
or you’re nice or even affection-
ate to your girl in front of your
boys, you’re less of a man. It’s SCENE AND HEARD
so sick. They won’t be a gentle- Fans surround
Rihanna
man because that makes them in Old Havana.
appear soft. That’s what we’re
dealing with now, a hundred RIHANNA WEARS A
JUMPSUIT BY
percent, and girls are settling VALENTINO; EARRINGS
for that, but I won’t. I will wait BY JENNIFER FISHER.
forever if I have to … but that’s
O.K. You have to be screwed
over enough times to know, but now I’m hop-
ing for more than these guys can actually give.
“That’s why I haven’t been having sex or
even really seeing anybody,” she says, “be-
cause I don’t want to wake up the next day
feeling guilty. I mean I get horny, I’m human,
I’m a woman, I want to have sex. But what
am I going to do—just find the first random
cute dude that I think is going to be a great
S, GO TO V F. CO M/ C RE D I TS
ride for the night and then tomorrow I wake

up feeling empty and hollow? He has a great
story and I’m like … what am I doing? I
can’t do it to myself. I cannot. It has a little
bit to do with fame and a lot to do with the
ILRE
woman that I am. And that saves me.”

E TAHE
DTS
Is she lonely? “It is lonely,” she says, “but I

RE DI
FCOR
have so much work to do that I get distracted.

144 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com NOVEMB ER 2 015
F OR DE TAI LS , G O TO V F. COM/ C R E D ITS
“People connect with Rihanna,” says Jay Z. “You

146 VAN IT Y FAIR www.vanityfair.com NOVE MBER 2 015
I don’t have time to be lonely. And I get fear-
ful of relationships because I feel guilty about
wanting someone to be completely faithful
and loyal, when I can’t even give them 10 per-
cent of the attention that they need. It’s just
the reality of my time, my life, my schedule.”
R
Island Girl
ihanna, born Robyn Rihan-
na Fenty 27 years ago in
Bridgewood, Barbados,
grew up in a family so close-
knit that her report card had
to be taken around to every
aunt and uncle, and if she didn’t take it to
them, they came over to her house to see it.
She says that everybody knew what every-
one else did and how well every child did in
school—you couldn’t hide your failures; you
had to face them. She memorized textbooks
(her mother was very strict about grades) and
played sports with her two younger brothers,
Rorrey and Rajad. But from an early age she
was obsessed with music: first reggae artists
Barrington Levy and Beres Hammond, then
Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and Whitney
Houston. Rihanna’s career began in 2004
when two American record producers, Evan
Rogers and Carl Sturken—
both of whom were mar-
REBELLE WITH A CAUSE ried to Bajan women and
Rihanna in a
contemplative
vacationed in Barbados—
moment, alongside a heard her sing at a local
1959 Chevrolet audition, made demos
Impala, at the with her, and eventually
paladar La Guarida brought her to the U.S.,
on Concordia Street.
where she lived in Stam-
RIHANNA WEARS A COAT ford, Connecticut, with
AND BRIEFS BY DIOR; Rogers and his family. They
SHOES BY GIUSEPPE
ZANOTTI DESIGN. made more demos and tried
to get her a record deal. In
2005, at age 16, she audi-
tioned for Def Jam Records’ then group chair-
man, L. A. Reid, president and C.E.O. Jay Z,
and executives Jay Brown and Tyran “Ty Ty”
Smith. Jay Brown, now part of the Roc Na-
tion team that manages her, remembers her
wearing all white, with her hair pulled back
off her face. Rihanna says she wore white
jeans, white boots, and a turquoise tube top
from Forever 21. She remembers that her
hair was wavy, parted to one side, and “I
had just gotten my first weave.” She recalls
sitting in the hallway when she saw Jay Z
walk by, and she was so freaked out she
made sure he didn’t see her. According to
Ty Ty, “When she walked in the room and
started singing, what got my attention was
how she looked at you and the tone of her
are seeing the authentic version of who she is.”

NOVEM BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 147
voice. She was very serious.” Jay Z recalls, len face were leaked to TMZ by, says Ri- not friends, but it’s not like we’re enemies. We
“You see someone who comes in and you hanna, “a very nasty woman who thought don’t have much of a relationship now.”
know if they have that look about them, that a check was more important than morals. While Rihanna and Brown did a duet on
star quality—you can’t deny it.” Jay Brown says That shocks you? A check trumps morals by a song in 2012 with a telling title (“Nobody’s
she had a fire in her eyes. But Rihanna miles.” And in 2014, nearly six years after Business”), her bigger collaborations have
says she had no idea she had any fire in her that attack, Rihanna was dragged into the been with Jay Z and Kanye West—as well
eyes: “These are people who worked with the Ray Rice domestic-abuse scandal when as two huge hits with Eminem, “Love the
most talented people in the music industry, the N.F.L. and CBS chose not to play “Run Way You Lie” and “The Monster.” Accord-
and I’m a little seed, from an island far away; This Town”—her hit with Jay Z and Kanye ing to Eminem, “I would definitely consider
to even have the opportunity to audition for West—during an opening-week broadcast Rihanna a friend. She’s always been there
them seemed so out of reach. I was terrified; of the N.F.L. season. She reacted with anger for me, and I really enjoy working with her.
my knees were shaking.” She’d already been on Twitter, and, says Jay Z, “Her response As an artist, we have similar work ethics, so
turned down by another label, but Def Jam was appropriate. The N.F.L. felt it was a dis- I’ve always been able to relate to her in that
wanted her, and she—along with her lawyer— traction, and she was like, ‘You’re punishing sense.” As for Rihanna’s take on him: “He’s
stayed in the building for 12 hours, until three me for what happened with Ray Rice?’ ” I one of my favorite people. He’s got so many
A.M., when she signed what she still refers to ask Rihanna if she thinks she’s always going layers and he’s such a good person—focused,
as a “great deal.” (Jay Brown laughs and says to be a poster child for victims of domestic disciplined. I mean you can’t tell me that you
Ty Ty jokingly told the lawyer that the only abuse. “Well, I just never understood that,” have to be in the club when Eminem is legit at
way they were getting out of the building with- she says, “like how the victim gets punished home and being a good father and is still one
out signing was through the window.) over and over. It’s in the past, and I don’t of the most prestigious rappers of our genera-
Rihanna’s rise happened fast. “Pon de Re- want to say ‘Get over it,’ because it’s a very tion. He’s one of the most talented poets of
play,” an island-inspired dancehall tune, be- serious thing that is still relevant; it’s still real. our time. It was such a brilliant moment to
came a hit, followed by “SOS,” “Umbrella,” A lot of women, a lot of young girls, are still have him ask me to be part of a record; I felt
“Rude Boy,” “Only Girl (in the World),” “We going through it. A lot of young boys too. … anointed, because he thought I was cool
Found Love,” “Diamonds,” and many others. It’s not a subject to sweep under the rug, so enough to be on [“Love the Way You Lie”].
She worked nonstop, releasing seven albums I can’t just dismiss it like it wasn’t anything, But also, the lyrics [about a dysfunctional re-
in eight years, and today, 10 years after her de- or I don’t take it seriously. But, for me, and lationship] were just so true to what I felt and
but, she’s accumulated 54 million album sales, anyone who’s been a victim of domestic couldn’t say to the world at that time.”
13 No. 1 singles, and 210 million downloaded abuse, nobody wants to even remember it.
A
tracks. She’s toured and performed live con- Nobody even wants to admit it. So to talk Talk That Talk
certs for millions of people around the world. about it and say it once, much less 200 s our conversation continues
She’s got 7 billion video views on YouTube, times, is like … I have to be punished for it? into what technically is the
50.7 million followers on Twitter, 25.4 million It didn’t sit well with me.” next day, Giorgio’s keeps
on Instagram, and 81.7 million Facebook fans. Rihanna is quiet and thoughtful when the restaurant open for her
After her acting stint in the 2012 action movie she talks about getting back with Brown and we discuss a variety of
Battleship, her fans called themselves her for the second time and asking the court to topics: how little she sleeps
“navy.” She’s a singer, songwriter, producer, lift the restraining order against him. “I was (three to four hours), the tight team of friends
actress (most recently she voiced a character that girl,” she says, “that girl who felt that as she works with (her childhood friend Melissa
in the animated movie Home), a mentor on much pain as this relationship is, maybe some Forde, right-hand woman Jennifer Rosales,
this season of The Voice, fashion designer, people are built stronger than others. Maybe and creative director Ciarra Pardo), how
style setter (she was the Council of Fashion I’m one of those people built to handle shit we’re both basketball fans in general and fans
Designers of America’s 2014 Fashion Icon, like this. Maybe I’m the person who’s almost of LeBron James in particular. (“I woke up
was named to the International Best-Dressed the guardian angel to this person, to be there at seven A.M. in Japan to watch the last game
List for the first time this year, is the creative when they’re not strong enough, when they’re of the finals,” she says. “I felt so bad when he
director for Puma and the face of Dior’s Se- not understanding the world, when they lost.”) And she talks about Rachel Dolezal,
cret Garden campaign), entrepreneur (seven just need someone to encourage them in a the white N.A.A.C.P. executive who pretend-
fragrances, a creative director for the Stance positive way and say the right thing.” So, she ed to be black, saying, “I think she was a bit
sock company), philanthropist (her founda- thought she could change him? “A hundred of a hero, because she kind of flipped on so-
tion helps build cancer-treatment centers in percent. I was very protective of him. I felt ciety a little bit. Is it such a horrible thing that
Barbados, among other charitable activities), that people didn’t understand him. Even after she pretended to be black? Black is a great
and eight-time Grammy winner. … But you know, you realize after a while that thing, and I think she legit changed people’s
in that situation you’re the enemy. You want perspective a bit and woke people up.”
B
SOS the best for them, but if you remind them of Rihanna lives in downtown New York City,
ut on February 7, 2009— their failures, or if you remind them of bad which she says she loves, and L.A., where she
the night before the Gram- moments in their life, or even if you say I’m had to find a house with enough bedrooms to
mys—following Clive Davis’s willing to put up with something, they think turn into closets for her ever expanding ward-
party, an episode occurred less of you—because they know you don’t de- robe. Some of the most photographed gar-
that would change her life serve what they’re going to give. And if you ments from that wardrobe include a blue fur
and probably forever be put up with it, maybe you are agreeing that jacket, a green fur coat, a coat with the Roll-
linked to her. Rihanna’s then boyfriend, you [deserve] this, and that’s when I finally ing Stones tongue logo on the back, a tuxedo
her first love, R&B singer Chris Brown, as- had to say, ‘Uh-oh, I was stupid thinking I jacket worn with nothing else, fluffy bedroom
saulted her in his rented Lamborghini and was built for this.’ Sometimes you just have to slippers worn in public, the gorgeous red
left her bloodied and battered on the side walk away.” Now, she says, “I don’t hate him. Azzedine Alaïa dress she wore to the 2013
of a street. Photos of her bruised and swol- I will care about him until the day I die. We’re Grammys, the pink strapless Giambattista
04
1 08
0 VANI T Y FA
A II RR www.vanityfair.com
www.vanityfair.com NOVEMB ER 2 015
Spotlight
Valli gown she wore to the 2015 Grammys,
the chic lavender Dior suit worn to the launch
SWINGING on a CENTURY
of the Tidal streaming service, and, of course,
the embroidered, fur-trimmed, yellow satin
Guo Pei–designed extravaganza at this past
spring’s Met Ball—where she stole the show
and appeared above the fold on the front
page of the next day’s New York Times. It was
typical of how Rihanna likes to mix things up;
she accepted her C.F.D.A. award wearing a
semi-nude, sheer gown covered with sparkly
Swarovski crystals. “I wanted to wear some-
thing that looked like it was floating on me,”
she recalls. “But after that, I thought, O.K.,
we can’t do this again for a while. No nipples,
no sexy shit, or it’s going to be like a gimmick.
That night [at the C.F.D.A. awards] was like
a last hurrah; I decided to take a little break
from that and wear clothes.”
The same attitude extends to her music. She
has recorded everything from the beautiful
ballad “Stay” to the reggae/rock-inspired an-
them “Rude Boy.” Her new, much-anticipated
album—her first in more
@vf.com than three years (which,
For more on as we spoke, she was
Rihanna’s STYLE,
go to VF.COM/
still working on)—has
NOV2015. taken a while because,
says Jay Z, “she wants
it to be perfect.” One of the songs on it, the
hypnotic “American Oxygen,” was released
accompanied by a moving video with images
of Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Power
salute at the 1968 Olympics, J.F.K. Jr. salut-
Frank Sinatra in
ing his father’s coffin, Muhammad Ali, im- Hollywood,
migrants, ghettos, rocket launches, and more. boarding a Palm
Then there’s the 180-degree turn that was the Springs–bound
single—the vengeful and humorous “Bitch helicopter;
D
Better Have My Money”—in which, Rihanna photographed
by Yul Brynner
says, she plays a character but which is also a
in 1964.
song about female empowerment. In the mu-
sic business, Rihanna is a powerful woman;
she recently made a deal to own all of her ecember 12 (circle the date, baby) will mark the hundredth anniver-
past and future master recordings, and from sary of Frank Sinatra’s birth in a humble little manger in Hoboken,
now on she’ll release her music through her New Jersey. To remind the rest of us cats that it’s Sinatra’s century,
company, Westbury Road. Says Jay Z, “What we’re just living in it, comes James Kaplan’s Sinatra: The Chairman
took me 15 or 20 years to get has taken her (Doubleday), the avidly awaited follow-up to Frank: The Voice
10, and will take the next person 5 years. It’s (2010), the first volume of Kaplan’s compendious biography of the crooner turned kingpin.
great to be able to help fight that fight.”
W
As its title suggests, Sinatra: The Chairman covers the conversion and consolidation of vocal
genius and stardom into cultural and political power, with plenty of Now on
hile many people dames on the side. It charts the rebound of Sinatra’s ailing career af- Newsstands
describe Rihanna as ter his Academy Award–winning performance in From Here to Eter- Vanity Fair Icons:
“fearless,” Jay Z says Frank Sinatra, featuring
nity to his final repose near Palm Springs, where he is rumored to an adaptation from
he sees her more
CO URT ESY O F VI CTO RI A BRY NN ER /T RUN K A RCHI VE
Sinatra: The Chairman.

have been buried with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a pack of Camels,
as “fiery.” What
and a Zippo lighter, just in case he wanted to make ring-a-ding-ding after the Resurrection.
Rihanna herself
fears—aside from “haunted shit” and child- “Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody” was insult comic Don Rickles’s famous
birth (even though she says she wants a child taunt, and The Chairman is a bruising record of Sinatra’s greatest hits, feuds, and romances
“so bad … eventually”)—is the pedestal that gone flooey. The Rat Pack (Sammy, Dino, the hapless Peter Lawford), Ava Gardner, Mia
comes with fame. “It all looks very glittery Farrow, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, J.F.K., R.F.K., L.B.J., Ronald Reagan, Mob boss Sam
and blinged out,” she says, “but it’s way too Giancana—they’re all here playing their historical parts, a Sgt.-Pepper-album-cover memo-
scary and unrealistic. There’s a long way to rial assemblage of postwar America in action. Yet The Chairman never neglects the fact that
fall when you pretend that you’re so far away beneath the fisticuffs and tabloid scandals Frank Sinatra was first and foremost an artist, as
from the earth, far C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 9 5 soulful and committed an original as this country will ever produce. — JA MES WOLCOT T
NOVE M BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 149

H OWAR D STU DI O; FOR DE TA IL S, G O TO VF. CO M/C RE D ITS
G ROO MIN G BY R HE A N NE WHI TE ; SE T DE S I GN BY MA RY
SHER GENIUS
Bartlett Sher,
photographed at the
Broadway Theatre in
New York City.
150 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com NOVE MBER 2 015

V. F. P O RT RA I T
Bartlett Sher
What makes a great theater director? Lincoln Center
Theater’s ANDRÉ BISHOP reveals the secrets of Bartlett Sher,
whose revival of Fiddler on the Roof hits Broadway
next month. Photograph by ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
B
ing.” This can be infuriating, but you know
that it is the right thing to do because with
time (and it’s all about enough time) every-
thing becomes better. Bart understands and
believes in “process.”
Someone once said that great art can only
come from chaos, and if that is true, then Bart
is a really great artist. He goes into rehearsal
seeing the whole picture, but he insists on
pulling it apart, making a glorious mess, and
eventually creating order again. He knows that
artlett Sher is my the picture in his head must be illuminated by
dear friend and the younger brother I always every single detail onstage—every acting mo-
wanted. He also happens to be a genius. He ment, every prop, every note of music.
grew up in a large, loud, crazy Catholic- His greatest strength as a director is his
Jewish family in the San Francisco of the insistence on telling the story simply and
1970s, and that has informed everything he has clearly. That is the North Star that guides him
ever done in the theater. He thrives on sponta- all along the way. But, God forbid, he is not
neity, looseness, and occasional insanity, and above the occasional breathtaking coup de
then, because of his acute intelligence and vig- théâtre—the unexpected reveal of the orchestra
orous Jesuit education, he creates order and as they played the South Pacific overture, The
sense. He can throw a whirling dervish out of King and I ship that sails right into the audi-
whirl, to quote from a Rodgers and Hammer- ence, the tenement wall that suddenly rises, of-
stein show he hasn’t directed, and will then fering a glimpse of a better world to the young
re-assemble the pieces so that the dervish will hero of Awake and Sing!
whirl more effectively than ever. While we’re on the subject of Clifford
Most people who go to the theater don’t Odets, I should add that Bart is intensely po-
really know what a good director does. They litical: racism, the education of women, the
assume a show is well directed if the actors class system, freedom, human dignity … all
can be heard and the scenery is pretty. Indeed, these concerns find their way into his work.
good theater direction is hard to describe be- Bart is the busiest of busy bees. He keeps up
cause the process of putting on a show changes with everyone, juggles 10 projects at once, flies
from project to project, and the responsibility all over the world to check up on those proj-
for the show’s success or failure or anything ects, and devotes a lot of time to—yes, just like
in between basically falls to the one person his plays—creating order in the life of his fam-
audiences know nothing about: the director. ily (talented wife, adorable daughters, dog, cat,
Yet all great directors have a method and books, pots and pans, plants, paintings), who
a set of principles that they apply to every- live in a tiny topsy-turvy East Side apartment
thing they do, no matter how varied. Here much like the Jellyby family in Bleak House.
is what Bart believes in: Everything starts I told Bart that I was afraid my article
with preparation, research, and study. Then about him was too solemn and that I needed
continues with the actors, exploration, and to make it zippier and funnier. He protested,
discovery. Sitting around a table in rehearsal “But making theater is solemn work.” Indeed.
asking questions, endless questions. Then He is a director who is equal parts conduc-
putting the show up on its feet. Staging. Re- tor and choreographer, whose work is driven
staging. Constantly changing. Bart can be far by storytelling, politics, and history. His artist-
along in the rehearsal process or even in the ry has raised the bar for all of us who work in
preview period and he will still be “explor- the theater. He leads and we eagerly follow.
NOVEM BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 151

FORTRESS
STAND BY ME
Faces change, but Hillary
Clinton has long operated
behind a tight circle.
From left: Maggie Williams,
Cheryl Mills, Clinton, Huma
Abedin, Mandy Grunwald, and
John Podesta.
152 VANIT Y FA IR P H OTO I LLU ST R AT I ON BY SEAN M C CABE NOVE MBER 2 015

HILLARY
No presidential candidate has ever been as battle-hardened and well defended

as Hillary Clinton. But the protective human wall she has built up around
herself—a tight-lipped cadre of lawyers, aides, and advisers, some of whom started
with her a quarter-century ago—is also a major liability. Talking to past and
current staff, SARAH ELLISON reports on that vicious circle

T
I. The Praetorians Bill Clinton had campaigned so hard, and State Department e-mails provide ample
which he’d handed over to Hillary upon evidence of the hermetic circle that exists
his election, had failed spectacularly under around Clinton—a world of gatekeepers and
her leadership—undercut by the insurance advisers, but favor seekers too. “I consider
industry’s aggressive opposition to it, and you to be the best friend and the best per-
by her secrecy and high-handedness. Clin- son I have met in my long life,” wrote Lan-
ton told the group that she was considering ny Davis, a Washington lawyer and long-
withdrawing from the kind of policy and time Clinton associate, who went on in
political work that had defined her. “This the e-mail to ask Hillary for some help.
was all my fault,” she said, according to the A top aide, after a television appearance
participant. She didn’t want to damage her by Clinton, wrote to her of the public reac-
husband’s administration. tion: “Three people even told me they
Years later, in her memoir Living His- teared up.” Another top aide sent Clinton
tory, Clinton herself described this moment an e-mail, linking to a video of Hillary
in trademark humblebrag style: “One by dancing, with the subject line “Secretary of
one,” she wrote, “each woman told me why Awesome.”
I couldn’t give up or back down. Too many
H
other people, especially women, were count- II. Control, Control, Control
ing on me.” As we well know, Clinton didn’t illary Clinton’s network
back down. She stayed in the game and has is vast and stretches be-
stayed in it ever since. The anecdote as Clin- yond those involved in
ton conveyed it seemed designed to make her 2016 political op-
hey were her three points. First, she is not in politics to eration. Compiling a list
darkest days yet as First Lady, though there slake her own ambitions. Second, she’s a of people in the inner-
would be far worse to come. In 1994, after fighter. And third, if it hadn’t been for this most circle is like giving thanks in an Oscar
her health-care-reform plan imploded and her circle of nurturing intimates, she couldn’t speech—someone is always going to be left
party suffered a devastating midterm defeat, possibly have gone on. out. Twenty-five years ago the group would
Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Maggie Wil- Throughout her many years in public mainly have consisted of women, but that’s
liams, gathered 10 women whose opinion life—through all the disappointments and tri- no longer the case. John Podesta, who was
Clinton held dear. The group included Man- umphs, the scandals real or alleged—Clinton chief of staff during Bill Clinton’s second
dy Grunwald, senior media consultant to the has surrounded herself with protectors: a term, is the chair of the campaign. Huma
president, whose ties to the Clintons went tightly knit Praetorian Guard, mute and loy- Abedin, one of Clinton’s longest-serving
back to the 1992 campaign; Susan Thoma- al. The result has been the opposite of what aides, is the vice-chair. Mandy Grunwald
ses, who had worked as the Clintons’ per- was intended. When troubles arise—some- is a senior adviser. Robby Mook, the cam-
sonal lawyer during the campaign; and Patti times of Clinton’s own making, sometimes paign manager, helped Clinton win Nevada
Solis Doyle, Clinton’s scheduler and later the not—she retreats into a defensive crouch, in 2008 and more recently steered Terry
first head of her 2008 presidential cam- shielding herself inside a cocoon of secrecy, McAuliffe, himself a Clintonite, to the gover-
paign. Called the “Chix meeting” by one with a small circle of intimates standing norship of Virginia. Cheryl Mills, who de-
participant, the group had been getting to- watch. With each new round of trouble and fended Bill Clinton during the impeachment
gether to discuss the First Lady’s agenda, scandal, the circle seems to draw tighter. proceedings, and Maggie Williams, both of
and the conversations usually ranged wide- The penchant for secrecy—for all operations them alpha girls in Hillaryland, have no offi-
D PA / A .P. I MAGES , KE IKO HI RO MI /PO L A R I S, MAYE R RCF / SP L A SH N EW S, R ICHA R D E L LI S /HU LTON A RCHI VE /GETT Y
PAGE S 152– 53 : P HOTO GR A PHS , F RO M LE F T, BY DE NN IS CO O K/A .P. I MAGE S, RON S ACHS/ PI CTUR E - A LLI ANC E /
ly—to media strategy, policy debates, politi- to be closely and privately held—increases cial role in the campaign but are actual
cal fights, personal lives. The off-the-record by yet another increment. But this never friends of Clinton’s. Joel Benenson, Clin-
gatherings were an outgrowth of her regu- proves to be a solution. The secrecy and the ton’s chief strategist, and Jim Margolis, a
lar staff meetings, which were scheduled closed nature of her dealings generate prob- senior adviser, are former Obama aides.
for an hour but often went for two or three lems of their own, which in turn prompt ef- Jake Sullivan, who was close to Clinton when
and into the evening. A few bottles of wine forts to restrict information and draw even she was secretary of state, is now a senior
I M AGE S, PE T E MA ROVI CH /GE TT Y IM AGE S, © SE A N PAVO NE / A L A M Y ( B ACKGRO UND )
might be opened, and the women would talk more tightly inside a group of intimates. It policy adviser. Philippe Reines, Clinton’s at-
about “who was dating whom, who was is a vicious circle. The current controversy tack dog and public-affairs adviser at the
cute,” and “whose kids were going to the over Clinton’s State Department e-mails— State Department, and a former aide to Al
prom,” according to one of the Chix I spoke the use of a private “clintonemail.com” ac- Gore, is currently “in hibernation”—mean-
with recently. In the weeks after the mid- count for government business—is a classic ing not speaking publicly to the press, ac-
term defeat, the meetings were “healing” case in point. cording to a campaign spokesman, as if that
ones and designed to be “nutrition for the Clinton’s way of doing business is by makes him exceptional. Jennifer Palmieri,
soul,” this participant said. now so entrenched that it is hard to imagine special assistant in the Clinton White House
During one such meeting, toward the she could ever behave differently. And the in 1994, is communications director. Min-
end of 1994, Clinton walked into the room people around her have their own interests yon Moore, who was the director of White
and the distress of the past weeks and to consider. There certainly are many who House political affairs for Bill Clinton and
months spilled out. She fought back tears, believe in Clinton. But, for some, she is also worked for Hillary’s 2008 campaign, pre-
and was “quite emotional.” She told the the world’s most high-maintenance and sented crucial research when Hillary Clin-
group that she was sorry—sorry if she had high-profile meal ticket. To get into her cir- ton was considering whether and how to
let people down, sorry if she had contrib- cle, one must behave with extraordinary run in 2016. She is involved in the current
uted to the recent political losses, as indeed loyalty. Once you’re in, it’s like Fight Club. campaign on an informal basis.
she had. The health-care overhaul, on which The first rule is to never talk about it. The Some of the original Chix no longer offi-
cially work for Clinton, driven out by fatigue ered her and run campaigns against her.
or controversy. But they remain Clinton sur- Most of those I spoke to insisted that the
rogates and help form the wall around her conversations be off the record. They had to
that keeps outsiders at a distance. The wall be cajoled even into “background” attribu-
has narrow doorways to control what comes tion. The most common refrain I heard was
in and what goes out—the routing pathways “I just don’t want anyone to know we had
of the Clinton e-mails make that clear. Op- this conversation.” Setting up an interview
erations are closely held. In 2009, when with Nick Merrill, the Clinton campaign’s
Clinton wished to give Russia’s foreign min- traveling press secretary, who himself has
ister, Sergey Lavrov, a button saying RESET, his own scheduler, required more than 40
to signal a fresh start to relations, her staff e-mails, and it took place only after six can-
kept the Russia experts at arm’s length and celed calls. This is the man who is Clinton’s
insisted on making it themselves—and got public interface with the world. One long-
the Russian word wrong. Her behavior is so time Clinton adviser agreed to meet with me
controlled that she recently had to protest and made an appointment, and then, when
on national television: “I am a real person.” I e-mailed to confirm the meeting, retreated
Even something unscripted comes across as into radio silence.
planned—like her stop at a Chipotle in Ohio The first thing many people I spoke to
during a campaign swing last spring, which for this story told me was to watch out for
has been widely spun as an exercise in the people who weren’t really close to Hil-
woman-of-the-people pandering. In truth, lary but pretended to be. It was a reminder
Clinton and Huma Abedin entered the res- of the constant jockeying for position within
taurant in sunglasses, like Thelma and Lou- her world. Nick Merrill told me that he had
ise, wanting simply to get something to eat. worked with Clinton for nearly 10 years, but
Hillary ordered a chicken burrito bowl and if he were going to give me a list of 10 people
picked up the tray. They were recognized by who really knew her, he himself wouldn’t be
no one. A New York Times reporter, alerted on it. “Everyone says they have a deep and
by a passing remark, confirmed the visita- abiding relationship with her,” he said, “but
tion later only by reviewing the restaurant’s you have to be careful.” Being in her inner
security video. circle is as much about keeping people out
By now, the people who constitute the as anything else. It is a recurring theme, and
wall—a changing cast of characters over it has deep roots. “The biggest mistake of
time, but some of them in place for a the American press,” Maggie Williams told
quarter-century—have built walls of their The New York Times in 1999, “is thinking
own and can be as hard to reach as Clinton they know her.”
herself. It is like the fortified Western Front
M
after years of bloody stalemate. Try to pen- III. Rosebud Moment?
etrate, making your way across a landscape aybe there was a time
strewn with lethal briefing books, and you’ll when it was different,
come face-to-face with people who are au- HOARSE WHISPERERS but if so, you’d proba-
In recent decades there has not
thorized to speak but deliberately say noth- been a more secretive or
bly have to go back to
ing; people who know everything but delib- insulated candidate for president than the 1970s, before Hillary
erately never speak; and people who talk all Clinton. Her penchant for control, Clinton, a young lawyer
P HOTO GR A PHS : FRO M TO P, © PE TE R TU RN LE Y /CO RB IS , © J O N ATH A N ER NST / RE UTE R S/ CO R BI S , BY J O E
the time but don’t know what they’re talking meant to limit damage, can actually newly married to Bill, first experienced the
make it worse.
about. There has never been such a well- sharp-elbowed indignities of public life.
R A E DL E/ GE TT Y IM AGE S, KA R EN B L EI E R/ A .F. P. /G ET T Y IM AG ES , A LE X WON G/ GE TT Y I M AGE S
defended and battle-hardened candidate for From the moment she had to live as a pub-
president of the United States. Bill Clinton, lic figure, the pattern we know today be-
Obama, Carter, even Nixon—they all went gan to assert itself.
through periods in the early stages of their After he was elected governor of Arkan-
campaigns when they were more or less sas, in 1978, Bill Clinton was asked by an
open books, accessible to almost anyone, A.P. reporter about his wife’s decision to
eager to talk. If Hillary Clinton wins, she keep using her maiden name, Rodham, as
will be the only president in history to have her own—a practice that raised eyebrows
already had 24 years of Secret Service pro- in Hillary’s socially conservative adopted
tection before she even takes the oath of of- state. “She decided to do that when she
fice. As anyone who has had the experience was nine, long before women’s lib came
knows, even a single day with the Secret Ser- along,” Bill answered. “People wouldn’t
vice can be isolating. mind if they knew how old-fashioned she
In reporting this story, I spoke with cur- was in every conceivable way.” It was an
rent and former members of Hillary Clin- early nod to the distance that has always
ton’s staff, going back to Bill Clinton’s first existed between Hillary’s public persona
campaign for the presidency; with people and her private one. After the election,
who have advised Hillary at every stage of Hillary herself gave a lengthy interview to
her career; and with people who have cov- a local news program; the video was un-
N OVE M BE R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 155
earthed by BuzzFeed earlier this year. The “that’s all we’re going to say”—could be the
soft-spoken First Lady of Arkansas was 31, motto on her coat of arms.
wearing her then signature thick glasses, After this, there were no more jokes about
and she patiently answered questions about how much more money she made than her
why she insisted on continuing to work at husband. She grew more guarded and oc-
a Little Rock law firm, why she and Bill casionally she lost her sense of humor. With
didn’t have any children yet, and whether a group of reporters in March of 1992 she
she felt Arkansas was unprogressive. On the faced questions about whether her corporate
traditional responsibilities of a First Lady, law job at a prominent firm in Little Rock
the interviewer commented, “One gets the posed a conflict of interest, given that her
impression that you’re really not all that husband was governor. Frustrated, she re-
interested.” In Clinton’s voice a soft south- plied, “I’ve done the best I can to lead my
ern accent came and went—grafted onto a life… I suppose I could have stayed home
default accent that comes from northern and baked cookies and had teas.” This came
Illinois—and at one point she responded to across as a denigration of women who baked
a question, again, about her name, noting cookies and had teas—meaning stay-at-home
that “a lot of people have images that are moms—and Clinton was attacked. Once
in no way related to reality… And there’s again she pulled back. Gone was the “two
really not much that one can do about presidents for the price of one” idea that the
that.” But in the end the Clintons did do EARS ONLY Clintons had floated for a time. In January
something. After Bill Clinton lost the 1980 Clinton was once more open, 1993, when asked about her future role in the
more willing to enter the fray. Now she
election, he cut his hair a little shorter relies on others to reveal her
White House, Clinton was playing second
and hired some older advisers. And Hil- “real” self to the public. It’s not fiddle: “I’m going to do what my husband
lary pulled back. Hillary Rodham became something she herself is seemingly asks me to do.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton and campaigned able or willing to do. Press reports at the time referred to how
with Bill full-time to prove she was just as hurt she was during the campaign by the de-
old-fashioned as her husband said she was. piction of her as a modern-day Lady Mac-
For reasons of expedience, she suppressed beth. A U.S. News & World Report article
her own identity. If Clinton’s attitude has a mentioned her portrayal in the media as an
Rosebud moment, this may be it. “overbearing yuppie wife from hell.” Even as
O
she tried to soften her image, Clinton was re-
n occasion, in the early treating from the media and taking refuge
days, she was willing to en- within a close circle of her own making—the
ter the fray—until circum- Chix. When she set out to draft health-care
stances made it clear that legislation, she assembled another group, a
she wasn’t very good at it, cadre of policy experts, and held all discus-
or that she hated it, or that sions behind closed doors. The result was
it accomplished very little. When Bill Clinton anger, suspicion, and a lawsuit. A USA To-
in early 1992 was thrown back on his heels day article from May 1993 quoted Andrew
P HOTO GR A PHS : FRO M TO P, BY J O HN MI N CH IL L O /A .P. IM AG ES , © HO R ACI O VI L L A L OB O S/ E. P. A ./ CO RBI S, BY SAUL LO EB/A.P.

by allegations of an affair with a woman Rosenthal, who was then the Washington
I M AGE S, DAVI D LO N GSTR EATH/ A .P. I MAGE S, P ET E R F O L E Y/ E .P.A ./ NE WS CO M , G RE G E . M AT HIE S ON S R./MAI /L ANDOV
named Gennifer Flowers, Hillary dismissed editor of The New York Times, on Hillary’s
the rumors by reminding people that the studied aloofness: “I’m quite astonished.
Star supermarket tabloid, which had broken Given the fact that this woman is one of the
the story, was a publication that ran articles key policymakers in the United States of
“about people with cows’ heads.” At a roast America, we’re very interested in talking to
for then Democratic National Committee her and we have almost no access to her.”
chairman Ron Brown, a week after the story And they would never get much. The
appeared, Hillary engaged in a lengthy, play- Clinton White House generated a series
ful, and (from today’s perspective) cringe- of scandals and run-ins with the press
inducing speech in which she said she had that prompted Hillary to tighten the circle
the answer to the question “It’s 10 o’clock around herself. Even before the health-
and where is Bill Clinton?” She told the au- care implosion there was a major New
dience that her husband was back in Little York Times article, in 1992, about a Clin-
Rock, Arkansas, “with the other woman in ton investment in a real-estate venture, the
his life”—his daughter, Chelsea. Whitewater Development Corporation,
But she changed course quickly, and that eventually failed. Questions about the
permanently. In the famous 60 Minutes ap- arrangement blossomed into a full-blown
pearance after the Flowers story surfaced— rolling investigation into every aspect of the
an interview in which Bill Clinton denied Clinton presidency; to deal with it, Hillary
the Flowers affair but neither Clinton would would come to rely on a group of legal ad-
address whether he had ever been unfaith- visers that included attorney David Kendall,
ful—Hillary told Steve Kroft, “We’ve gone who told her not to read the newspapers or
further than anybody we know of, and watch television and who became, as Clin-
that’s all we’re going to say.” Those words— ton put it, “my main link to the outside
world.” Staff members were tasked to tell what the New York Post called “Hillary in aide went as far as to suggest that Clinton’s
Clinton what they felt she needed to know. Hiding.” Clinton won the Senate election, first political instincts were generally mis-
In the spring of 1993, the Travelgate scandal and a second one, and in due course began guided and that she has little sense of how
hit: the Clintons were suspected of firing the to explore a White House run. Most of her deficient she is as a campaigner.
staff of the White House travel office in or- veteran White House and Senate staff would There are still some prominent old faces.
der to replace it with a firm that had ties to prove themselves to be notoriously close- Chairing Clinton’s campaign is Democratic
themselves. The Clintons were absolved of mouthed throughout the 2008 campaign, Party stalwart John Podesta, a former coun-
the charges, but Hillary unwittingly made though internal divisions among a few advis- selor to Obama, who left the White House
false statements to investigators. That July, ers led to leaks of strategy documents and in February. Podesta, 66, served as Bill Clin-
her close friend and confidant Vince Foster other private campaign communications. Af- ton’s chief of staff during his tumultuous
committed suicide after enduring intense ter Hillary finished third in Iowa and Obama second term. As the Monica Lewinsky story
pressure from the press throughout the ear- swept four later primaries, she pushed out played out, Podesta reportedly threatened
ly scandals of the Clinton presidency. Then, her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, to fire anyone caught talking about the mat-
in December 1993, The American Specta- who had been with her since her earliest ter, not just in the press but in the hallways
tor, a conservative monthly, printed an ar- days in the White House, and brought in of the White House. Podesta is disciplined
ticle sourced to four Arkansas troopers who Maggie Williams. One of the original Chix and strategic, and is often referred to as the
claimed they had helped procure women had replaced another. “adult supervision” that will prevent any-
for Bill Clinton when he was governor. As thing like the disarray of 2008. He is not an
I
Whitewater dragged on, Harold Ickes, a IV. Like a Daughter apostle of openness.
lawyer who had become Bill Clinton’s depu- n the first three months of her cur- Mandy Grunwald, a senior adviser for
ty chief of staff, headed up a Whitewater Re- rent presidential campaign, Hillary communications, has perhaps the longest
sponse Team and became a crucial Hillary Clinton spent around $6 million on relationship with the Clintons of anyone in
defender. The scrutiny unleashed by White- more than 300 employees, among the current campaign. Grunwald faced her
water soon turned to Clinton’s “improper the largest expenditure categories first big political challenge with the Genni-
relationship” with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary of the campaign. One observer noted fer Flowers allegations. Appearing on Night-
spoke to hardly anyone about the Lewinsky that her team seemed set up to fight the last line, with Ted Koppel, then at the height of
affair but evidently leaned heavily on Diane battle: “If you watch her decisions, it’s mak- his popularity, she berated him for letting a
Blair, an old friend from Arkansas. Blair’s ing up for what she didn’t do the last time.” “trashy supermarket tabloid” set the agenda.
husband, James, had been the chief coun- She was criticized in 2008 for being too During a victory press conference the day
sel to Tyson Foods and had helped Hillary insular and working only with people who after Clinton won the ’92 election, Grunwald
earn nearly $100,000 in profits from trading were blindly loyal. The Praetorian Guard was the only female adviser onstage, in the
in commodity futures in the late 1970s. has been expanded to include men close shoulder pads and sneakers of the era. She
In 1999, as the Senate was voting on her to Obama, such as Joel Benenson and Jim advised Hillary during the Whitewater in-
husband’s impeachment, Clinton was con- Margolis. Both were central to Obama’s vestigation and during her 2008 presidential
templating the next chapter in her career, 2008 campaign, and in fact Benenson had campaign. Her sister, a novelist, once wrote
one that Maggie Williams herself called spent some of it sharpening a message that, about Grunwald in Glamour magazine: “She
“kooky”: running for the Senate. Clinton in part, portrayed Clinton as poll-driven and was older. Braver. Taller. Meaner. Stronger.”
eventually embarked on a highly orchestrat- inauthentic. The influx of these new advis- Though never far from the Clintons, Grun-
ed “listening tour” through New York State, ers may have been deliberate, but it comes wald has amassed an impressive array of oth-
during which she relied on many of her old with a downside. As one former Clinton aide er clients, including Senator Elizabeth War-
advisers, including Williams and Grunwald, told me, the management of Hillary Clinton ren. It was in fact Grunwald’s appointment
and later added new ones, such as Philippe is not always straightforward: “If you don’t to Clinton’s campaign that signaled Warren’s
Reines. (At the State Department, Reines know Hillary Clinton and she yells at you decisive move not to run in this election.
would be the person responsible for the and says, ‘That’s a stupid idea,’ these people The circle around Clinton includes
mistranslated RESET button.) As a candidate are listening to her. They don’t realize you some decidedly odd characters. When
for senator, she briefly opened up. The local need to give it time, and then go back”—at Clinton went to the State Department, in
press noticed how she was emerging from which point she may be persuadable. This 2009, she wanted C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 9 6
THIS CAMPAIGN IS LIKE

A TURING TEST OF
WHETHER HILLARY IS
INDEED HERSELF.
Spotlight
158 VAN IT Y FAIR www.vanityfair.com P H OTOG R AP H BY MARK SELIGER NOVEMBE R 2 015

Producer and composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber with
some of the cast of his
new musical, School of Rock,
photographed at
Grace Church School,
in New York City.
LLOYD WEBBER
WEARS CLOTHING BY
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA;
SHOES BY TOD’S.
ST YL E D BY S AM S PE C TOR ; HAI R BY CHAR L IE TAY LO R; MA K E UP BY ROBE RT GR E E N E ; C AST’ S COST UMES BY ANNA LOUIZ OS;
S E T D E SI GN BY BR IA N C R U MLE Y; PRO DU C E D ON L OC ATI ON BY R U TH L E V Y; F OR DE TAI LS , G O TO VF.COM/ CR ED ITS
SCHOOL SPIRIT
T
he old, possibly apocryphal W. C. Fields adage “Never Garden Theatre, is remarkably faithful to the movie, with Alex Bright-
work with children or animals” is not one that Andrew man bringing his own manic rawk-ishness and meatball physicality
Lloyd Webber has ever felt compelled to heed. As the to Dewey Finn, the role originated by Black. “I really consider my-
composer points out, his first major work with the lyricist self a custodian of Mike White’s work, just adding a little of what
Tim Rice, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, began the stage can do,” says Lloyd Webber. What he’s added—working
its life in 1968 as a pop cantata performed by boys aged 8 to 12 alongside director Laurence Connor, lyricist Glenn Slater, and, on
at a London preparatory school. (As for animals, he dryly notes, the book, Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes—is more depth and, es-
“Cats have been very good to me.”) And now Lloyd Webber has pecially, more material for the kids, each and every one of whom is
come full circle, writing songs for kids in the same age range as the a winningly assured performer, though special notice must be given
original Joseph’s for his new musical, School of Rock, an adapta- to the four who play their own instruments onstage: guitarist Brandon
tion of the 2003 Richard Linklater film, which starred Jack Black Niederauer, keyboardist Jared Parker, drummer Dante Melucci,
and was written by Mike White. and tiny bassist Evie Dolan (whose “bass face” rivals Este Haim’s).
The show, which opens on Broadway in December, at the Winter Fists of all ages and sizes shall be pumping. — DAVID K A MP
NOVEM BE R 2 015 VA NIT Y FAI R 159

Irreconcilab Known to her friends, family, and Gossip Girl co-stars as a
in 2012, her five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter were allowed by
fights to get her children back, SHEILA WELLER goes inside
TORN UP
Daniel Giersch walks
daughter Helena
from school in Mougins,
France, June 17, 2015.
Opposite, Kelly
Rutherford with son
Hermes and Helena
in Bridgehampton, New
York, August 3, 2013.
PHOTOGR A PH, L E F T, BY JAN E T TE PELLEG R INI/ G ET T Y IMAG ES
le Distances devoted parent, Kelly Rutherford is living a mother’s nightmare:

an L.A. court to live with their wealthy father in Monaco. As Rutherford
the legal drama that shattered the actress’s world
O
T
character’s mother and has remained a Trials and Errors
friend, says, “When she’s with her kids”— his dramatic chain of events
Hermes, now nine; Helena, now six—“they began on that undramatic
cling to her in her cute, tiny apartment; September morning in 2005.
they just putter about with Mom, and she After walking her dog through
keeps a simple, very comforting routine.” her childhood streets, Ruther-
Yet, for all her maternal ardor, Ruther- ford—who was best known for
ford has been living a mother’s nightmare. a role on Melrose Place in the late 90s—stopped
In 2012, her two children were sent to live in at her favorite café, Il Fornaio, at Beverly and
with their German-citizen father in foreign Dayton. She was at an anxious crossroads: a
countries, France and Monaco, after a con- divorced, single woman past her mid-30s up
troversial, well-publicized custody decision. against that great cliché, the ticking biological
If her Gossip Girl colleagues are among clock. She’d been dating a man she was “really
those who best remember her daily life crazy about,” but the romance had ended.
with her children, that’s because, except for Three and a half years earlier, she had bro-
rare vacation time when the children are ken up with Venezuelan banker Carlos Tara-
allowed to come to New York (which La- jano. The two had wed in June 2001 in a lav-
gerfelt is describing), the years of the show ish, media-covered church wedding in Beverly
were the last they were able to live with her. Hills. Shortly thereafter, what Rutherford de-
Last August, Rutherford’s nightmare scribes as Tarajano’s heart condition mani-
escalated to tabloid-headline-making pro- fested itself. She says she nursed her husband
portions. After a Los Angeles court said through his illness, yet, for reasons she de-
it no longer had jurisdiction over the cus- clines to discuss, she filed for divorce in Janu-
ne morning al- tody dispute, and a New York court then ary 2002, seven months after they were mar-
most exactly 10 years ago, Kelly Rutherford, declined jurisdiction, Rutherford took a ried. He died in 2004; she describes the entire
a willowy blonde TV and movie actress, risky step: she felt she had no choice but situation as “traumatic.”
then 36, got up early, and, per ritual, led her to “wait a beat,” as she put it to me, be- There was a waitress at Il Fornaio who
Australian cattle dog, Oliver, into her Range fore deciding what to do for the children, had been telling Rutherford, over the previous
Rover and headed down from her Holly- who, she claims, exhibited anxiety at the mornings, that a handsome young German
wood Hills home to the Beverly Hills flats— imminent prospect of leaving her side businessman had glimpsed her there one day
the charming, intimate lower flats, between to return to their father in Monaco. So, and wanted her to get in touch with him. Ruth-
Charleville and Olympic. That’s where, after Rutherford declined to abide by a June 22 erford was sufficiently intrigued to e-mail the
her birth in Kentucky and a spell in Arizo- agreement made in the Monaco court that man. He e-mailed her back. They got together,
na, she’d spent some happy years of her required her to return Hermes and Helena she recalls, a month or two later, “in October
youth, as the responsible oldest child of a to Giersch after she had custody of the or November.” His name was Daniel Giersch,
glamorous woman who’d had her children children for a five-week summer vacation and he was a boyishly handsome, wealthy go-
very young and been a model for Bill Blass, in the States. Rutherford contended that, getter—at 30, six years younger than she. “I
but then endured a hard divorce and ended since California had dropped jurisdiction thought he was cute, incredibly charming, a
up scrambling. In that admittedly “not- and New York had declined it, no Ameri- little bit of a playboy,” Rutherford says.
white-picket-fence family—but whose is?,” as can court could compel her to send her Giersch was a tech entrepreneur who’d
Rutherford puts it, there was love but not children back to Monaco. Her ex-husband made his first killing, at 19, on a same-day-
stability, and teenage Kelly, in the role of ju- believed otherwise; his lawyer lambasted postal-service company in Germany and who
nior mom, tried to bridge the gaps. “Our her as a child abductor. Within days, she was now taking on Google in that country. In
mother included my sister in raising me,” was ordered by a New York judge to turn 2000, he had purchased the German rights to
says her half-brother, Anthony Giovanni over the children’s American passports the trademark name “G-mail” (“G” as in
Deane, who is five years younger. “Kelly and to immediately put the kids on a plane “Giersch”) for his patents, and he was suing
was my guardian angel.” back to Monaco. the tech super-giant for infringement: standing
According to her friends, Rutherford’s She was now at a great disadvantage, remarkably tough and spending, by his own
childhood maternal instincts never aban- and, during her next trip to Monaco, for a account, more than a million dollars to keep
doned her. When she was nursing her court hearing in the first week of Septem- up the long fight. (In 2012, Giersch settled for
second baby on the set of Gossip Girl, on ber, legal pundits considered it a triumph an undisclosed amount from Google.)
P HOTO GR A PHS : CLO CKWI S E F ROM TO P L EF T, BY N IKK I N EL S ON /
which she played Upper East Side ma- that she was able to see her children at all. Rutherford fell for Giersch and found her-
W E NN , F RO M WE NN , © T HE C W/ PHOTO F E ST, F RO M W EN N
triarch Lily van der Woodsen during the Another Monaco court hearing, scheduled self pregnant within two months of their meet-
show’s 2007–12 run, “she was a very de- for October 26, could determine her fate. ing. On August 18, 2006, two months before
voted and passionate mother. Her first When she refused to turn over the chil- she was to give birth to Hermes, they married.
priority was always her kids,” recalls the dren on August 7, some thought Ruth- Rutherford appeared to be happy, and
series’s show-runner, Stephanie Savage. erford’s desperate move to hang on to she was thrilled to be a mother, but those
“She was amazing and caring to her chil- them had been self- destructive. Comment close to her wondered about her new hus-
dren,” says Ed Westwick, who played bad boards on news Web sites bristled with band. “He seemed very, very cold and cal-
boy Chuck Bass on the show. “She was insults directed at her. Others saw her ac- culated,” her half-brother says. “But I love
how you would want your ideal mother tions as the principled and understandable my sister, and if this guy was going to make
to be. Most of the rest of us were teenag- response of a mother who, as she herself her happy, I was not going to be the one to
ers and she was like our mother.” Caro- puts it, has long been the David in a “Da- bring up any negativity.”
line Lagerfelt, who played Rutherford’s vid and Goliath” custody battle. Two years after Hermes’s birth, Rutherford
WORLDS APART
Clockwise from top left: Rutherford,
Giersch, and Hermes in Fallbrook,
California, March 3, 2007; Rutherford
with Helena and her estranged
husband in Los Angeles, April 23, 2010;
Blake Lively and Rutherford in a
still from Gossip Girl; Giersch, with
his lawyer Fahi Takesh Hallin,
leaves L.A. Superior Court, in Santa
Monica, January 22, 2009.
NOVEM BE R 2 015 163

became increasingly uneasy. “Daniel was sub- mains Giersch’s counsel today. Rutherford Rutherford did agree that “it is important
tly verbally abusive,” she says when I meet her has gone through nearly 10 attorneys. that they see their father; that’s the goal.” Yet
at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar, in Manhattan in Rutherford was now living in New York she worried. When Beaudet ruled that Giersch
late June. It seemed “he was trying to alienate with Hermes and working on Gossip Girl, on could have young Helena for a week alone,
me from everyone in my life—my parents, my an intentionally limited schedule to enable Rutherford said, “She hasn’t spent more than
brother.” Confoundingly, for all his wealth, he maximum parenting time. She gave birth to two nights away from me!” She then added,
lived in her house in L.A., and she signed a their daughter on June 8, 2009, in a Los An- “It is hard, the stresses they are under every
bridge loan for him. And, as she would later geles hospital, during the series’s hiatus, but day.” An evaluator for the children agreed, say-
testify in court, “he did not want my son to the months before the birth were difficult, she ing that the “adorable, bright, gentle” Hermes
have a U.S. passport. Only a German pass- says. “Daniel made me go through a custody was showing signs of “anxiety, separation, and
port.” Rutherford says she didn’t mind her evaluation while I was pregnant. He sued me demonstrating struggles at school” because
son’s having a German passport but wanted like he’d sued Google. He served me custody of all the movement. Rutherford claimed,
him to also have an American one. Further- papers right up until I went into labor.” It was “Hermes says, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to go
more, as she recounted in a court deposi- a very difficult labor, and Giersch, Rutherford back and forth.’ ” Poignant, for sure. But in
tion, “[Daniel said he] never wanted to pay says, requested to be in the delivery room. a custody culture where equality of both par-
taxes in the U.S. or be on the U.S. radar.” Feeling vulnerable and upset, Rutherford says, ents is paramount (long gone are the days
(Giersch and his lawyer declined to answer she refused. Giersch told the press that his when mothers automatically got preference),
questions from Vanity Fair.) lack of invitation to attend the birth “sickens such maternal cavils can be interpreted as a
I
me… I would’ve wanted nothing more than mother’s attempt to hurt a father. Giersch and
n December 2008, when she was to hold our newborn daughter.” Rutherford Hallin vigorously seized upon the possibil-
three months pregnant with Helena, says that he visited their daughter in the hospi- ity of Rutherford’s excessive “gatekeeping.”
Rutherford initiated divorce pro- tal, and held her, the very next day. Even issues of child safety were turned into
ceedings, citing “irreconcilable dif- Although she listed the baby’s name on exhibits of parental hostility. When a child
ferences.” “I didn’t want any money the birth certificate as “Helena Giersch,” evaluator admitted to being “perplexed” that
from Daniel,” she says. “I wanted she left the “father” field blank. She says she Giersch had recently driven the “infant”—
us both to be great parents. I wasn’t asking feared that, with his name on the birth cer- Helena—around in a car seat in the front seat
for full custody”—rather, 50-50 legal custody, tificate, he could take Helena out of the of a Porsche convertible, Hallin pounced on
with her as the primary residential parent. country without her knowledge. The reason the fact that it was Rutherford who had alert-
Giersch went further. He sued for sole legal for her concern? As she later testified, at one ed the evaluator to the incident.
and physical custody of Hermes and of the point in their marriage when she, Giersch, Hallin and Giersch also counted as part of
not-yet-born infant daughter, Helena. He re- and his mother were out of the country to- their argument the fact that Rutherford had
tained Fahi Takesh Hallin, a partner in the gether, “his mother made comments to me hired a private detective to take pictures of
prestigious L.A. firm Harris-Ginsberg, who like ‘Why don’t you just go back to the U.S. Giersch’s swimming pool. But Rutherford’s
is an expert on international family law and is and leave the child with us?’ I was obviously concern about her children’s pool safety
regularly named on top-lawyers lists. In ad- very shocked by this.” The blank space on would prove warranted. During a vacation in
dition to other work, she has, on behalf of the birth certificate would eventually prove to Bermuda in May 2012, Giersch left his chil-
foreign fathers, effected the removal of Amer- be a tactical error for Rutherford. dren on the far side of an un-lifeguarded pool
B
ican children from the United States in at from where he was sitting; Helena, three,
least three other recent cases, including that y the time, in late 2009, that the could not swim, and her father had not put
of an attorney named Sarah Kurtz, who was eventually 33-month-long cus- her in water wings. A pregnant woman, Layla
forced to relinquish to Sweden the infant tody trial commenced in the Lisiewski, noticed that Helena had fallen into
ST Y L E D BY C L A IB O RN E S WA NS ON F R A NK ; J ACKE T BY MA X MA R A ; S HI RT BY TH EO RY; J E A NS BY J . CR E W; SHO ES

daughter she was still breast-feeding. (In June L.A. Superior Court room of the pool and was submerged underwater.
of this year, Rutherford and Kurtz were invit- the Honorable Teresa Beaudet, Lisiewski jumped into the pool and rescued
BY TR ETO R N; E A RRI N GS BY S EA M A N SCHE PP S; HA I R P RO DUC TS BY J UL I E N FA RE L ; M A KE UP P RO DUC TS BY

ed to speak at a congressional briefing held Giersch’s original attempt at Helena, whose eyes were “huge with shock
CHA N EL ; HA I R BY J UL IE N FA R E L ; MA K EU P BY SUZ Y GE R STE I N; F O R DE TA IL S, GO TO VF.CO M /CR E DI TS

with the aim of creating legislation to ensure sole custody was off the table and the two par- and fear” and who was “not gasping for air,”
“that American children living abroad have ents had agreed to joint legal custody. Giersch Lisiewski said in a declaration, until she pat-
access to their American parent.”) Hallin re- now sought completely equal parenting time. ted Helena firmly on the back, causing Hele-
“I DIDN’T WANT ANY

MONEY FROM DANIEL.
I WANTED US BOTH TO
BE GREAT PARENTS.”
MOTHER COURAGE
na to finally cough up the Rutherford
water in her lungs. In his own and her children,
deposition, Giersch didn’t photographed in
Central Park,
deny the incident. (Lisiewski’s New York City,
declaration was lodged after July 23, 2015.
the judge had written her ini-
tial decision.)
In his deposition testimony,
Giersch accused Rutherford of
shortening his visits with the chil-
dren and of making negative re-
marks about him in their presence.
(Rutherford claims, “I have not
spoken negatively about him.”) But,
notably, he also said that Ruther-
ford loved the children very much—
and that she, then the residential
parent, was a good mother. And,
during his testimony throughout
the trial, his enthusiasm for being
a father was touted by himself, his
lawyer, and a court evaluator who
said Giersch loved having a child
“on his hip.”
A
turning point in
the proceedings
came on Decem-
ber 12, 2011, when
a shocking disrup-
tion took place. A
lawyer named Matthew Rich, em-
ployed by attorney Michael Kelly,
who was then representing Ruther-
ford, arrived at the courthouse.
Rutherford insists she had never
seen him before, nor did she know
(much less approve of) what he was
going to do. Rich describes himself
as a tough crusader, who “follows
the law to achieve goals quickly ac-
cording to what is good for my cli-
ents, not what pads my pocket.” He had by Rich’s behavior. Afterward, in front of had had nothing to do with Rich’s gambit,
learned of what he claimed were some ques- Beaudet, Rich was emotional, saying that he and that only the State Department—not any
tionable aspects of the visa Giersch said he was “very stressed” and that he’d had a big threat from an attorney in a custody case—
had obtained in 2009. For instance, Giersch, fight with his boss, Michael Kelly, who had can effect decisions on a visa revocation.
Rich contended, had set up a shell corpora- not wanted him to do what he had just done. Giersch would claim that his visa was re-
tion, a possible violation of the terms of his Beaudet nonetheless agreed to let Rich depose voked a month later, in Germany—and that
particular kind of visa. Standing in the hall Giersch, who conceded that when he ob- his ex-wife was to blame—and he proffered an
outside the courtroom, Rich whipped out tained his visa in 2009, his company—as he e-mailed revocation notice as part of his
his cell phone, called the State Department would later reiterate in a deposition—had “no strong argument for a plan that would let the
to, as he puts it, follow up on prior conversa- life” in it and “no investor.” Rich continued to children primarily reside with him in Mona-
tions with them regarding “information they press Giersch about his involvement with the co, since he could presumably no longer re-
had that Giersch was in the country unlaw- alleged shell company, but Giersch denied it enter the United States. Beaudet took the visa-
fully and was thus a risk for abducting his ever was one. The session ended for the day revocation e-mail at face value. (Requests to
children.” Rich claims that he thought State and no more time was allotted. Rich, now in verify its date and authenticity were turned
Department agents might be dispatched to private practice as a family lawyer, zealously down by the State Department, which, by
arrest Giersch. defends his controversial action. He says he law, is not permitted to disclose such details.)
The incident was explosive and bizarre, and was following a basic child-protection statute— In Skyped courtroom testimony from
Hallin forcefully argued that it was straight- according to him, California Family Code Germany in February 2012, Giersch—again
up-and-down harassment of her client. (The Section 3048b—and that he was on his way to contending that he was no longer able to en-
move, in fact, would be interpreted by some being “victorious” on behalf of his client. ter the United States—said he was “speech-
observers as an effort to have Giersch de- Rutherford and Kelly’s firm parted ways, less” over Rutherford’s “extreme behavior,”
ported.) Rutherford was, she says, appalled and Beaudet initially agreed that Rutherford then referred to the C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 9 8
N OVE M BE R 2 015 P H OTO G R A P H BY CL AIBORNE SWANSON FRANK VAN IT Y FAIR 165
166
VANIT Y
FA IR
www.vanityfair.com
NOVE MBER
2 015
COSTU ME S D E SI G NE D BY TOM S C UT T (ME N ) ; ST YLE D BY JA N E TAYL OR -HAY HUR ST ( WO ME N) ;
H AI R BY D OR A ROB E RTI ( WOME N ); MA K E UP BY SA R A H MI E R AU; G ROOMI NG BY SE L E N A
M ID D LE TON ; P ROD UC E D O N LOC AT IO N BY SA S HA R ICK E R D ; F OR DE TAI LS , G O TO V F. COM/ C RE D ITS
Spotlight
AT LONG LAST KING
A
lthough the American War of Independence Charles—permanently worried, blindly principled—goes
was won some time ago, British actors and the beyond his powerless, traditionally ceremonial role and re-
royal family continue to reign supreme on An- fuses to rubber-stamp a new parliamentary law limiting the
glophile Broadway! Following on the sturdy freedom of the press in the wake of the Murdochian hack-
heels of Dame Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth II in The ing scandals. The outcome is in the best Shakespearean
Audience last season comes the West End transfer of Mike tradition: potential civil war, double-dealing politicians,
Bartlett’s audaciously entertaining King Charles III, open- a ghost (Lady Diana), a “ginger joke” (feckless Prince
ing this month on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. Harry), a surprising Lady Macbeth (the smiling Duchess of
In another age, playwright Bartlett would have been Cambridge), and Lear-like tragedy for Charles.
sent to the Tower for treason. The opening scene of his Shrewdly acknowledging that the two godheads of
slyly insurrectionary drama begins with the funeral of the British life are the royal family and Shakespeare, Bartlett
beloved Elizabeth II. “The only truth: I am alone,” says has dared greatly by writing his play in pastiche Shake-
Charles at the thought of kingship at long last. “Except for spearean blank verse. But we say: Worry not, one jot!
me,” Camilla chimes in. Directed by Rupert Goold, King Charles III stars Tim Pigott-
In its irreverent essentials, King Charles III is a futur- Smith giving the performance of his career as the man
istic history play about the world’s most famous family. who would be king for a very long time. — JOHN HEILPERN
Richard Goulding,
Tim Pigott-Smith,
Margot Leicester,
Oliver Chris,
and Lydia Wilson,
photographed
on the London Eye.
LEICESTER WEARS
A DRESS BY
GIORGIO ARMANI;
SHOES BY RUPERT
SANDERSON; HAT BY
PHILIP TREACY;
BROOCH FROM
HANCOCKS. WILSON
WEARS A DRESS BY
BEULAH LONDON;
SHOES BY RUPERT
SANDERSON; HAT BY
JANE TAYLOR
MILLINERY; EARRINGS
FROM HANCOCKS.
NOVEM BE R 2 015 P H OTOG R A P H BY JASON BELL www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 167

For 90 years, the world’s finest restaurants have been navigating by the
stars—those coveted Michelin awards. And yet, in recent years, a handful of talented
chefs have refused the honor. Talking with New York’s biggest culinary
names, SAM KASHNER discovers the power of Michelin’s ranking system as it
affects a kitchen’s creativity, morale, and bottom line
The Fault in
168 VAN IT Y FAIR www.vanityfair.com P H OTO I LL UST R AT I ON BY DARROW NOVEMBE R 2 015
OR YOUR SUPP
GF ER
IN
!
Chefs Eric Ripert,
Jean-Georges Vongerichten,
Thomas Keller; restaurateur
Will Guidara; Bibendum,
the Michelin mascot; chefs
Masayoshi Takayama,
Daniel Humm; Michelin-guide
head Michael Ellis; chefs
César Ramirez, Mario Batali;
chef/author Anthony Bourdain;
chefs Michael White,
Daniel Boulud; restaurateur
Danny Meyer.
Their Stars
I
W
When it’s suggested to him that some Chopped!
chefs are so afraid of the pressure of living hen Daniel Bou-
up to their Michelin stars that they actually lud’s flagship res-
give them back, Ellis says, “You can agree taurant, Daniel, on
with it or you cannot, but you can’t give it East 65th Street in
back. That’s not an issue.” The giving back Manhattan, had
of stars—that’s “kind of an urban myth.” one of its three Mi-
And yet, according to Fortune, in 2013 chelin stars chopped off last year, the news
chef Julio Biosca returned the Michelin stunned the culinary world. The day after
star held by his restaurant, Casa Julio, in Boulud received the bad news, Pierre Siue,
Valencia, Spain, not because he’d lost faith his dapper general manager, gathered the
in the Michelin rating system but because troops in the gleaming kitchen, where they
the star, he felt, meant that he could no assembled for the daily (except Sunday)
longer innovate. He was tired of his com- 5:05 P.M. pre-service meeting, in order of
plicated tasting menu and he wanted to rank, from floor captain to assistant cap-
do something simpler, so he gave back his tain to food runner to busser. As in a dégra-
star. The following year, chef Frederick dation militaire—the ritual of having your
Dhooge, in East Flanders, Belgium, also sword broken and insignia ripped from
returned his star because he wanted to be your uniform—Boulud faced his team. His
able to cook simpler food, like fried chick- staff felt the loss was like taking a star away
en (not considered a “star-worthy dish”), from God. “We cried for one day—24
without his customers’ expecting a grand hours,” Siue recalls. Daniel’s assistant som-
spectacle at his restaurant, ’t Huis van melier, Christine Collado, remembers how
Lede. And in 2011, Australian chef Skye “Daniel came in and he said, ‘I’m disap-
n 2003, Gyngell, of Petersham Nurseries Café, in pointed, too, but we all have to do service to-
the renowned, 52-year-old French chef Ber- London, called a star “a curse” because of night. And everyone needs to smile, and we
nard Loiseau, then one of the most famous the high expectations it raises among cus- need to pick up where we left off. And we’re
chefs in France and an inspiration for the chef tomers. She gave hers back, too, after din- going to make this better. Vas-y, team. Let’s
Auguste Gusteau in the Pixar film Ratatou- ers complained about the dirt floors of her get back to work.’ ”
ille, shot himself in the mouth with a hunt- “shabby chic” restaurant. On a late-spring afternoon, chef Bou-
ing rifle amid speculation that the Michelin But losing a star can mean a dramatic lud met with V.F. in his tiny office, floating
restaurant guide was about to pull his restau- drop in business. Ahmass Fakahany, the co- above the kitchen at Daniel. The kitchen
rant’s third star. owner with chef Michael White of the wild- is dominated by a giant, blown-up pho-
The pressure of maintaining Michelin ly successful Altamarea Group (their Man- tograph of the first Café Boulud, his fam-
three-star status (their highest rating) and hattan restaurants include Ai Fiori and ily’s restaurant in France. Wearing his chef
the possibility that he might lose it were Marea—the former has one star, the latter whites, Boulud, 60, appeared bright and
blamed by some for Loiseau’s suicide. True, two) believes that “Michelin is the global brisk, calling to mind the French actor
there were other factors—he suffered from currency. People are flying into New York Marcel Dalio in Jean Renoir’s The Rules of
depression, was overworked, and was mired from Asia, from Latin America. It’s a mark- the Game. “I didn’t choose this profession
in debt—but in point of fact he had actually er for the global traveler… I have yet to because the only thing I wanted was stars,”
told Jacques Lameloise, then chef-owner see someone who has one who hasn’t hung he explained. “I chose this profession be-
of the three-star Maison Lameloise, “If I it up in their restaurant.” cause I love cooking.”
lose a star, I’ll kill myself.” Loiseau “was so A great number of today’s most cele- He described his time from 1986 to
scared of Michelin,” says Daniel Boulud, brated chefs trained under Michelin-starred 1992 at the famed Manhattan restaurant
a good friend of Loiseau’s who is now the chefs, which creates a reverence for Michelin Le Cirque, back in an era when French res-
celebrated chef-owner of Daniel in Manhat- that is part of the culture in so many restau- taurants in New York were run like private
tan. “There was gossip that he was going to rant kitchens. Ellis remembers his own expe- clubs. Important people went to them to
lose his star, and I think he was devastated rience as a younger man, when he thought see and be seen, and less important people
by the idea of that. He couldn’t cope with he might want to be a chef in France. were tucked away in the back room—gener-
the pressure.” “There were 12 of us in the kitchen, and we ally referred to as “Siberia.”
“Stars are not given to a chef,” the in- were proud to have our one star. It felt as if Regular customers were catered to
ternational director of the Michelin guides, we were part of a Michelin family. It’s like above all else. Flounder was one of Le
Michael Ellis, is quick to explain. “It’s not joining an exclusive club. Chefs tend to be Cirque’s signature dishes, and Boulud was
like an Oscar—it’s not a physical thing. artists, but they also tend to be competitors. told that the businessman and investor
It’s really an opinion. It’s recognition.” El- They judge themselves against other chefs.” Ronald Perelman “ ‘will eat his flounder
lis, a 57-year-old American, supervises all The involuntary loss of a star is indeed a well done every day. Burn, burn, burn the
editorial content for the guide as well as bitter pill. When Gordon Ramsay’s Manhat- shit out of it!’ ”
the awarding of stars. He fell in love with tan restaurant, the London, lost its two-star The reason Michelin gave for taking Dan-
France on a high-school trip when he was Michelin rating, in 2013, chef Ramsay wept. iel’s star back was lack of consistency. It’s a
16 years old and now lives in Paris with his Even though he had previously sold the res- word that haunts many chefs at Michelin-
French wife and 6-year-old son. He started taurant, he told the Daily Mail it was “a very starred establishments. “I know many of
as head of sales for Michelin’s motorcycle- emotional thing for any chef. It’s like losing the three-star Michelins never change their
tire division —motorcycling being another a girlfriend.” He still can’t talk about it and menu in order to have perfect consistency,”
of his passions. wouldn’t do so for Vanity Fair. Boulud explains. “It’s basically robotic cui-
sine; they cannot afford to change, because prior relationship, and harsh, even punitive, ing without chefs? I see them as essentially
that was the winning formula… Emotion- to others,” he says. “It’s like sausage—no a predatory organization—all of them.”
ally, I’m going to want to cook something one wants to see how the hell it’s made.” Michael Ellis naturally disagrees. He
else than what I’ve done.” Asked about the importance of consisten- insists that Michelin is “much, much
G
cy, Bourdain answers, “It’s funny that you happier awarding stars than taking them
iven the controversy, does use that word. The French take that shit a away.” For a chef, gaining a Michelin star
the Michelin guide have the lot more seriously than we do. It means “will definitely change your life,” says Ellis.
same prestige in the U.S. it something different in France, and particu- “When you get your first star, your second
has enjoyed in France and larly in the Michelin-starred-chef world… star, your third star, your life changes, your
much of Europe for nearly There’s no other profession where it’s all customer base changes.” When Daniel lost
100 years? Or have other about consistency. It’s one thing to do the
guides and food critics stolen some of the greatest plate of the greatest
limelight—the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, piece of fish in New York,
for example, or the James Beard Awards, but that’s not enough. You
PHOTO GRAPHS: C LO CKWI SE FRO M TO P, FRO M R UE DE S ARCHI VE S / GR AN GE R ,
the New York Times reviews, Zagat surveys, have to do it exactly the
even Yelp? same, and do it forever.”
“I’ll tell you this,” says Anthony Bour- Bourdain has had a raffish
NYC ; BY DANI E L KRI EGE R; THI ERRY ZO CCO L AN / GAMMA-R APHO
dain, the irreverent, globe-trekking former reputation in the food world

chef, best-selling author, and host of ever since the 2000 publica-
CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, tion of his lively and iconoclas-
in a phone conversation with V.F. “The tic best-seller Kitchen Confi-
only people who really care about Mi- dential (“never order fish on a
chelin stars in New York are French Monday”). Michelin’s “princi-
guys… We could live without it quite pal enterprise,” he’s convinced,
nicely. I don’t know how the game works, “is keeping itself in business
but I think it’s bullshit that Daniel lost a and maintaining relevance, as-
star—it’s utter bullshit.” suring another 10 years of chefs
Bourdain is suspicious of the way stars kissing its ass… Now that
are awarded. “Michelin is very generous to [also] goes for [the James Beard
some chefs with whom they seem to have a awards]. What would they be do-
OR THOUG
DF H
OO
T
F
Clockwise from top:

A 1920 advertisement for
the Guide Michelin.
The New York City
restaurant Daniel.
Bibendum at a collectors’
convention, 2001; he
was created to resemble
a stack of tires.
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 171

its star, Boulud says, Ellis called him as a tastic ingredients. Both countries have an al- scribed a typical day of preparation. First,
courtesy. Ellis says he often speaks to chefs most religious appreciation for produce and the prep-kitchen team comes in around 6:30
to discuss the direction of their restaurants. the seasons’ ingredients. Both have tremen- A.M. to “receive the merchandise. There’s a
dous technique.” lot of work in the background, between re-
I
The Stars Are Born When a chef loses a star—particularly a ceiving, cutting vegetables, and cleaning the
t took only 105 years for Michelin French chef—that’s news. To appreciate the restaurant,” he explained. The staff starts at
to reach the United States. Found- devastating experience, Bourdain notes, “it’s three P.M., and from three to four they do
ed by the Michelin brothers, An- worth remembering how hard these chefs the mise en place, making sure everything’s
dré and Edouard, the guide was work.” In Europe, “most of them started ready for service—polishing glasses, pressing
first published in August of 1900 cooking in their teens, at an age that would the tablecloths and table skirts. “We pre-iron
BODY), LLOYD BISHOP/NBCU PHOTO BANK (RIPERT’S HEAD), FABRICE DIMIER/BLOOMBERG (BIBENDUM), NOAM GAL AI (BATALI’S FEET), BEN HIDER (BOULUD’S BODY, BOULOUD’S HEAD), KEVIN MAZUR (BATALI’S HEAD), ETHAN MILLER (TAKAYAMA, VONGERICHTEN’S
during the Exposition Universelle, be completely illegal in the States. These are them for the night because we don’t want to
in Paris. An engineer (André) and an art- abused children… They worked 17 hours a iron during service.” A training session takes
PAGES 168–69: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JACQUES BRINON/A.P. IMAGES (ELLIS); © DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/ART RESOURCE, NY (THE L AST SUPPER); BY TAYLOR HILL/FILMMAGIC (KELLER’S BODY, KELLER’S HEAD); BY BRYAN BEDDER (HUMM’S ARMS, HUMM’S HEAD AND
ist (Edouard), the two brothers were also day, seven days a week, for most of their ca- place daily from 4 to 4:30, which might in-
competitive auto racers who created the reer. Their entire self-image—creatively, invest- clude “a wine class from Christine Collado,
H E A D ) , J E F F N E I R A / A B C ( B ATA L I ’ S B O DY ) , S P E N C E R P L AT T ( M E Y E R ’ S H E A D ) , M O N I C A S CH I P P E R ( W H I T E ’ S H E A D ) , A L L F RO M G E T T Y I M AG E S ; BY J A M I E M C C A RT H Y ( R A M I R E Z ’ S H E A D ) , M I CH A E L N . TO DA RO ( B O U R DA I N ) , B OT H F RO M W I R E I M AG E
first detachable automobile tires. The little ment of time, every morsel of food—matters. or coffee training with Mark or Evan, or
book with its red cover started out as a free Every harsh word on Yelp matters. So, to lose tableside with one of the older maître d’s.”
A
guide for motorists, and it quickly became a star means a lot. It hurts them personally.
Europe’s most popular travel guide. Their identity and who they are—their very t any time of the day, Col-
At first it was all about cars and places to essence—is wrapped up in how people react lado will receive a delivery
stay. But suddenly you could go to Brittany to their food.” of wines, ranging from 2
and eat the food there, whereas before you Bill Buford, a former editor of the British lit- cases to 60. “I’m dressed in
could only read about it. You could go to Bur- erary magazine Granta and now a contributor usually ripped-up jeans and
gundy, you could go to the Jura and up into to The New Yorker, knows that tradition well. a T-shirt when I’m receiving
the mountains. You could go to Marseille. In 2002, inspired by his friendship with New those wines—it can be a bit of a dirty job.
Even the trains didn’t serve all these places. York chef Mario Batali, Buford decided to ex- Caring for the wines, receiving them, enter-
By 1920 the guide was no longer offered free; perience being a kitchen apprentice (“extern”) ing them is a job that a team of sommeliers
by 1923 it had added a new element: recom- at Batali’s famed Manhattan restaurant Babbo do for about two and a half hours,” she says.
mendations of restaurants independent of ho- in order to write about it. He worked his way Just before the guests arrive, at 5:30, the
tels. In 1926 the Michelin stars were born, not- up from “kitchen slave” to “line cook” to lights are dimmed and two captains from
ing not just the comfort of this or that hotel “pasta-maker,” which he later described in his opposite sides of the room meet at the door,
but the excellence of its kitchen as well. Eleven 2006 book, Heat. An imposing man with an opening it together: it’s showtime. “I like to
years later, the transformation was complete: affable, open face, he saw firsthand how the think we are artists,” says Siue. “As I say to the
the guide was devoted to gastronomy. kitchen at a fine-dining restaurant works. “In team all the time, the regular guest is like a
There are currently 24 guides for 24 differ- the French system,” Buford recalls, “you get girlfriend or a boyfriend. We know the name
ent countries. Their reach extends to “War- beaten. I was told to hit someone at one point. of the parents sometimes, the name of the
saw and Kraków, in Poland, Oslo, in Nor- I almost got hit. You get hit. And working con- dog. And to make a connection you have
way, Stockholm, in Sweden, and Athens, in ditions are appalling. There’s a law now sup- three hours… When you succeed, you’re an
Greece,” explains Ellis. There are 30 three- posedly in France that you can’t work more artist, but you have to start again the next
star restaurants in Japan, as of this writing, than a 38-hour week, but then the kitchens get day—or the next table.” And when more infor-
compared with 26 in France and 12 in the a special dispensation if they apply for it. And mation is needed, servers are not above
U.S. Michelin began rating restaurants in Ja- then they do a 45-hour week. We were doing Googling their diners or overhearing their
pan around the same time the guide came eight A.M. to midnight every day, five days a conversations, all in the name of good service.
to America. When asked why Japan had the week … and bad stuff happened because peo- Buford attributes Boulud’s loss of the star
most three-star restaurants in the world, Ellis ple got tired and accidents happen—people to the New York Times food critic Pete
answered, “There’s a great symbiosis between wrecked their cars going home.” Wells’s “hatchet job” in July of 2013.
France and Japan. Both countries have fan- At the restaurant Daniel, Pierre Siue de- Though Wells described Boulud’s “exquisite
“I DON’T THINK
[MICHELIN] IS
AS IMPARTIAL AS IT
PRETENDS TO BE.”
Spotlight
refinements on French peasant food,” he took
umbrage that a diner at the next table suppos-
BETTER INSTALL SAUL
edly did not get the same attention that he—a
recognized critic—received. But then, that Artist Peter Saul,
neighboring diner turned out to be a colleague photographed
of Wells’s, there to help sample the service. at his studio
in Germantown,
“I like Pete, but I thought that was bullshit,
New York.
unwarranted, and uninformed,” Buford says
of Wells’s review. Buford appreciates that Bou-
lud is “working very much in a French tradi-
tion. He’s known all his life what it means to
be a three-star Michelin chef. It’s a very elite
club. There’s no question that he belongs in
that club. It was a very big deal for him to be
officially recognized—and then, to take it
away! It just feels irresponsible… I don’t get
the sense that Michelin is corrupt, but I don’t
think it’s as impartial as it pretends to be.”
Michelin, he feels, is juggling stars as “a jour-
nalistic ploy.”
If Wells is often recognized, one important
guest the staff will almost never recognize is the
Michelin inspector. On a phone call with an
inspector, arranged by Michael Ellis—we were
not allowed to know her name—she explained
that for the job the inspectors, on average, eat
two restaurant meals a day almost every day of
the week except weekends, at least 200 meals
a year. They are on the road constantly. “It’s
not that we’re trying to be secretive for its own
sake,” she said, “but … we want to maintain
the quality and integrity of the process.”
Like Ellis, the inspector insisted that they
much prefer to award stars than to take them
away. “We’re almost giddy when we find a
new star,” she says, “or when we go back to
a one-star that is maybe headed towards two
or three. That’s something we still get very
excited about. And in the case of a decision
like Daniel, we go to a restaurant over and
over and over again.”
A
When asked to define what the stars actu-
ally mean, she explained, “A three-star ex- n unapologetically irreverent, iconoclastic, and stylistic synthesizer, Peter Saul,
perience should be almost perfect… at 81, is a beloved if curmudgeonly father of Pop art. In November, New York’s
There should be Mary Boone Gallery features his newest paintings based on “historical clas-
something memora- @vf.com sics,” including Rigaud’s full-length portrait Louis XIV, Géricault’s The Raft of
ble about it—some- For more on the state the Medusa, and Cabanel’s The Birth of Venus. In these spirited re-interpretations, Saul is
of F R E N C H food, go
thing that sparks. At to VF.COM/NOV2015. looking at the classics, he explains, according to his “will or whimsy. I let the subject guide
the three-star level, me”—and that’s an understatement. His work is steeped in art-historical reference with influ-
it’s a meal you’re not going to forget.” ences ranging from “Smokey Stover” comics and the pages of Mad magazine to the paint-
When you start as a Michelin inspector, ings of Francis Bacon, Paul Cadmus, and George Tooker. The result of the uncorking of this
your first weeks of training are abroad, she artist’s id is unruly and imaginative: cartoony mayhem, hilarious brutality, social commentary
says. “You go to the mother ship in France. delivered with maniacal glee. The graphic intensity is cut only by the humor and a unique
Depending on your language skills, maybe blend of social narrative and catastrophic comedy, rendered in signature psychedelic hues,
you go to another European country and train vivid acidic colors that burn with brightness. Saul’s figures look as if a balloon bender had
with an inspector there.” There’s no prescribed run amok, creating rubbery SpongeBob-style mythological figures, psychosexual sub-
G RO O MI N G BY DIA N E N OO R L A NDE R
path to becoming a food inspector, “though

consciousness spillover that is at once grotesque, lurid, and spot-on. Artist Eric Fischl says,
inspectors are all lifers in one way or another,”
“He paints what came out of the mouth of Munch’s Scream. He paints why he screamed.”
she explained, and they usually come from
“Peter has elbowed out his own place in the contemporary-art world,” says Brian Donnelly,
families devoted to food and the table. “One
inspector was a chef at a very well-known, the artist/toy-maker known as KAWS. “He’s never been an artist you could put a label on or
three-star restaurant, another came from a add to a group. He’s created his own lane on the highway, and he’s not looking back.” Peter
hotel… I think you’re either built for this Saul is an artist comfortable with the uncomfortable, a charming if goofy contrarian, who says
or you’re not,” she C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 2 0 0 with a self-deprecating smile, “I’m not a team player,” and carries on. — A . M . HOMES
N OVE M BE R 2 015 PH OTO GRA PH BY JOHN HUBA 173

174
VANIT Y
FA IR
www.vanityfair.com
Spotlight
P H OTOG R A P H
BY
B RYA N A DA M S
NOVE MBER
2 015
ST YL E D BY HA N N AH TE A R E ; HA I R PROD U C TS BY J O HN F RI E DA ( BE L LU CC I , SE Y DOU X ) A ND PHY TO
( H AR R IS ) ; MAK E U P PROD UC TS BY CHA NE L ( S E YD OUX ) , D I OR ( BE L LU CC I ), A ND L A N C ÔME (H AR R I S);
HA I R BY C É D R IC K E RG UI LLE C ( BE LL UCCI ) , PE T E R LU X ( HA RR I S) , AN D P E RR IN E ROU GE MON T ( S E YD OUX);
M AK E U P BY A L E X BA BS KY ( HA R RI S) , LE TI ZI A C A RN E VAL E ( BE L L UCC I ) , A N D MARY WI LE S ( S E YD OUX );
P ROD UC E D O N LOC AT ION BY THE PROD U CT IO N C LU B; FO R D E TA I LS , GO TO VF. COM/ C R E DI TS
Monica Bellucci,
Léa Seydoux, and
Naomie Harris,
photographed in the
Hamilton Penthouse,
at the Corinthia
Hotel London.
BELLUCCI WEARS A
GOWN BY HERVÉ
LÉGER. SEYDOUX
WEARS A GOWN BY
VICTORIA BECKHAM;
JEWELRY BY CHOPARD.
HARRIS WEARS A
GOWN BY ALEXANDRE
VAUTHIER; BRACELET
BY BULGARI.
@vf.com
For a H I ST O RY
of Bond women, go to
VF.COM/NOV2015.
BOND’S TRIPLE PLAY
T
he term “Bond girl” is at least four decades past its sell-by again. Spectre, though, will try to keep pace by featuring three Bond
date. So, the “Bond woman”: hers remains, arguably, the women: the English actress Naomie Harris, returning for her second
most narrowly prescribed role in movie history. Traditional- go-round as Eve Moneypenny, former field agent now sitting behind
ly there have been two: a good-ish one, who is romanced the late Lois Maxwell’s old desk; the Italian actress Monica Bellucci
and discarded by 007 early on, and a bad-ish, more intriguing one, (Irréversible and the two Matrix sequels); and the French actress Léa
who is eventually persuaded to join Her Majesty’s team and who may Seydoux (Inglourious Basterds, Blue Is the Warmest Color). The latter
survive long enough to see the “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN … ” memo in two women play, respectively, the wife of an assassin and the daugh-
the closing credits. Given those prerequisites, and given the series’s ter of another. “As such, they reflect Bond back to himself,” Mendes
other obligations—martinis, swanky locales, a villain with mental-health says. “I know it’s the cliché now to stoke up the roles of women in
issues—“doing a Bond is an act of reverse engineering in a sense.” large commercial movies by saying, ‘They’re so strong’ and ‘They’re
Or so says director Sam Mendes. He is currently putting the finishing his equal.’ It’s quite difficult to construct roles which actually conform
touches on the upcoming Spectre, the 24th “canonical” Bond film and to that.” But with this trio, he continues, “I think the combination of the
Mendes’s 2nd, following 2012’s Skyfall, the series’s most lucrative roles and their authority as actresses help massively the feeling that
yet. In that one, perhaps not coincidental to its success, Judi Dench’s they’ve lived lives before meeting Bond. They’re not simply adjuncts”
M was a full-fledged co-star to Daniel Craig’s Bond—the ultimate Bond or “wide-eyed innocents jogging around after him, sort of just over his
woman, boss as well as surrogate mum. We likely won’t see her kind shoulder.” Yes, we knew the type. — BRUC E H A N DY

STRONG SUIT
Tom Wolfe, in his
New York City study, in
2012. He started
wearing white suits in
1962 because it was
the custom in summer
in his hometown
of Richmond, Virginia.
Nailing one cultural phenomenon

after another (Radical Chic, the
“Me” Decade, the Right Stuff, etc., etc.),
Tom Wolfe gave America a different
way of thinking about journalism—and
about itself—before turning his
focus to fiction. Trawling the author’s
newly available archives, then
paying a visit to the white-suited icon,
MICHAEL LEWIS discovers that the
one story Wolfe has somehow failed to
tell is this: how he got all the others
176 VANI T Y FA I R P H OTOG R AP H BY GASPER TRINGALE N OVEMB ER 2 015

I was 11 or maybe 12 years old when I discovered
my parents’ bookshelves. They’d been invisible right up to the mo-
ment someone or something told me that the books on them were
stuffed with dirty words and shocking behavior—a rumor whose truth
was eventually confirmed by Portnoy’s Complaint. The book I still re-
member taking down from the shelf was Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing
the Flak Catchers. The only word in the title I understood was “the.”
The cover showed a picture of a bored-looking blonde housewife nes-
tled in the lap of a virile black man. It seemed just the sort of thing to
answer some questions I had about the facts of life. It didn’t. Instead,
it described a cocktail party given in the late 1960s for the Black Pan-
thers by Leonard Bernstein in his fancy New York City apartment.
I’d never been to New York City, or heard of Leonard Bernstein, the
conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and had only a vague no-
tion of who or what a Black Panther revolutionary might be—and none
of that turned out to matter. The book started out with this weird old
guy, Leonard Bernstein, rising from his bed in the middle of the night
and having a vision of himself delivering a speech to a packed concert
hall while being heckled by a giant black man onstage beside him. I
remember thinking: How would anyone know about someone else’s
bizarre private vision? Was this one of those stories that really hap-
pened, like Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak to beat the Dallas Cow-
boys, or was it made up, like The Hardy Boys? Then, suddenly, I felt
as if I were standing in Leonard Bernstein’s apartment watching his
waiters serve appetizers to Black Panthers:
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. THESE ARE NICE. LITTLE

Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts. Very tasty. Very subtle.
It’s the way the dry sackiness of the nuts tiptoes up against the dour sa-
vor of the cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Pan-
thers eat out here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little
Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts this way, and aspara-
gus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi, all of
which are at this very moment being offered to them on gadrooned sil-
ver platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons?”
P HOTOG R A PH © CON D É N A ST
Were the books grown-ups read supposed to make you laugh? I had POSED
no idea but … FOR FAME
Wolfe, by Irving
“But it’s all right. They’re white servants, not Claude and Maude, but Penn, in
white South Americans. Lenny and Felicia are geniuses. After a while, 1966. The writer
it all comes down to servants. They are the cutting edge in Radical had already
become “the
178 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com object of a cult.” N OVEMB ER 2 015
www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 179
2
1 7
8
180 VANIT Y FA IR NOVE MBER 2 015

4
MAN-ABOUT-TOWN
(1) Wolfe, in the early 1970s.
(2) At the Leo Castelli Gallery,
in 1966. (3) Milton Glaser,
Gloria Steinem, and Wolfe at a
New York magazine party,
in 1967. (4) Wolfe’s 1972 New York
cover story “The Birth of
‘The New Journalism.’ ”
(5) The jacket of Wolfe’s first
novel. (6) A letter from Wolfe,
aged 12. (7) The cover of
New York, featuring “Radical Chic.”
(8) Felicia and Leonard
Bernstein with Black Panther
Donald Cox at the infamous party
in the Bernsteins’ New York
City apartment, in 1970. (9) Wolfe
in his white Cadillac
DTS, by Annie Leibovitz, 2007.
3
FROM RAREBOOKCELL AR.COM (5); © STEPHEN SALMIERI (8); FROM TOM WOLFE PAPERS, MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, NEW
PHOTOGRAPHS © BOB ADELMAN (2); © EVERETT COLLECTION/AL AMY (1); BY DAVID GAHR/GETT Y IMAGES (3); © ANNIE LEIBOVITZ (9);
YOR K PU BL IC LI BR ARY ( 6) ; BY THOMA S V IC TOR ( 5 , P ORT RA IT ) ; COURTE SY O F WA LTE R BE R NA RD D ESIG N (4, 7 )

Chic. Obviously, if you are giving a party for the Black Panthers, as I can’t say I blame her. So I try all over again to explain why, to travel
Lenny and Felicia are this evening, or as Sidney and Gail Lumet did last quickly from Martha’s Vineyard to Long Island, you can’t fly in a nor-
week, or as John Simon of Random House and Richard Baron, the pub- mal plane, only a small one or a helicopter, and that the weather’s too
lisher did before that; or for the Chicago Eight, such as the party Jean
dicey for a helicopter. That’s when our pilot finally appears. He’s got
vanden Heuvel gave; or for the grape workers or Bernadette Devlin, such
as the parties Andrew Stein gave; or for the Young Lords, such as the a swagger about him, which might be reassuring, or the opposite, de-
party Ellie Guggenheimer is giving next week in her Park Avenue duplex; pending on your feelings about male confidence. He leads us onto the
or for the Indians or the SDS or the G.I. coffee shops or even for the Martha’s Vineyard airport runway and into a maze of Gulfstreams
Friends of the Earth—well, then, obviously you can’t have a Negro butler and Lears and Hawkers. The sight of the jets perks Dixie up—private
and maid, Claude and Maude, in uniform, circulating through the living planes aren’t nearly as small as she imagined. They’re sleek and in-
room, the library, and the main hall serving drinks and canapés. Plenty of destructible, like the chariots of visiting gods. When our pilot stops,
people have tried to think it out. They try to picture the Panthers or who-
ever walking in bristling with electric hair and Cuban shades and leather
though, it is not beside a Hawker or a Lear or a Gulfstream. It’s not
pieces and the rest of it, and they try to picture Claude and Maude with clear what it is. When I first spotted it I thought it might be a drone. I
the black uniforms coming up and saying, ‘Would you care for a drink, half expected the pilot to pull out a remote control and show us how
sir?’ They close their eyes and try to picture it some way, but there is no to play with it. Instead he produces a step stool and shows us how to
way. One simply cannot see that moment. So the current wave of Radi- climb up on the wing without breaking it. My child looks at me like,
cal Chic has touched off the most desperate search for white servants.” well, like a 13-year-old girl being taken on a suicide mission to visit a
At some point came a thought that struck with the force of rev- 2,000-year-old man—and then crawls on all fours across the wing, to
elation: this book had been written by someone. Some human being squeeze into the doggy door on the side.
must have sat down and scribbled the Hardy Boys series, along with “Where’s the other pilot?” I ask, before following.
the Legends of the NFL—how else would I have ever known that “It’s jes’ me,” the pilot says, with a chuckle. It’s a reassuring
Dallas Cowboys defensive lineman Bob Lilly lifted a Volkswagen by chuckle. A faintly southern chuckle—though he’s not from the
himself? I’d never really stopped to ask who had written any of those South. “Something happens to me, here’s what you do,” he says as
books, because … well, because it didn’t matter to me who had writhe straps himself in. “This lever here.” He grabs a red knob beside
ten them. Their creators were invisible. They had no particular identi- his seat. “This shuts down the engine. Jes’ pull that back and you
ty. No voice. Now rolling around a living-room floor in New Orleans, shut it down. And this lever here … ” He grabs a bright-red handle
Louisiana, howling with laughter, I asked a new question: Who wrote on the ceiling over his head. “Yank down on this with 45 pounds of
this book? Thinking it might offer a clue, I searched the cover. Right pressure. That’ll release the parachute.”
there on the front was a name!!! Tom Wolfe. Who was Tom Wolfe? “The parachute?”
“No sense having the engine running with the parachute open,”
‘ I
Parachuting In he says, ignoring the 10 questions that naturally precede the one to
s he, like, really old?” Dixie asks. Dixie is my 13-year-old which this is the answer.
daughter, who, a few days earlier, had been told that her spe- “What did you say your name was?” I hadn’t paid attention the
cial trip with her father needed to be interrupted for the bet- first time. Now that I was going to be parachuting into the ocean
ter part of a day so that he might pay a call on Tom Wolfe. with his inert body I needed to be able to explain to the authorities
“Eighty-five,” I say. “But he’s a very young 85.” As if who he was.
that helps. To a 13-year-old, 85 might as well be 2,000. She “Jack Yeager,” he says.
doesn’t like the idea of this trip at all. “Look,” I say, or something “Yeager?”
like it. “I want at least one of my children to meet him. I think he’s “Uh-huh.”
a big reason it ever occurred to me to do what I do for a living. Be- “As in—”
cause the first time I ever thought ‘writer,’ I also thought ‘delight.’ ” “I get that all the time. People think we’re related.” He fires up
She’s not listening. She knows we’re going to see Tom Wolfe for his toy propellers.
reasons that have nothing to do with her. She doesn’t care what I do “You know who Chuck Yeager is?”
for a living. She doesn’t care who Tom Wolfe is—it was all she could “Everyone knows who Chuck Yeager is.”
do to drag herself to click on his Wikipedia entry. What she cares Dixie doesn’t know who Chuck Yeager is, but her brain is on tilt.
about, intensely, are plane crashes. She hates flying, and, in this case, One day, perhaps, she’ll want to know.
IF I WERE “THRUST
INTO DIGITAL MEDIA …
I DON’T KNOW WHAT
182
THE HELL I’D DO.”
VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com N OVEMB ER 2 015
“You know why—right?” I holler. ashes and the dust are just now settling. But it’s a bit different from
“He broke the sound barrier.” the story Wolfe has long told. That story shifts the focus away from
“No, I mean, you know why anyone knows Chuck Yeager broke his particular self and stresses his techniques. The unaided imagi-
the sound barrier, or cares?” nation—Wolfe’s story goes—is a poor substitute for reporting and
He shakes his head. He’s busy declaring to the airport authorities experience. At some point in his checkered career The American
his improbable intention to take off from their runway in his toy plane. Novelist forgot that he needed to venture into the world and learn
“It’s because of Tom Wolfe,” I shout. how it worked before he wrote about it, and left the field wide open
“Who’s Tom Wolfe?” for The American Journalist.
T
In the late 1960s a bunch of writers leapt into the void: George
here’s a new answer to that question. Back in No- Plimpton, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Gay Talese, Norman Mail-
vember 2013 the New York Public Library an- er, Hunter S. Thompson, and the rest. Wolfe shepherded them into
nounced that it would pay $2.15 million to acquire an uneasy group and labeled them the New Journalists. The New
Wolfe’s papers. It wasn’t until earlier this year that Journalists—with Wolfe in the lead—changed the balance of power
they became available for inspection. It’s not hard between writers of fiction and writers of nonfiction, and they did it
to see why it took them so long. Wolfe saved what chiefly because of their willingness to submerge themselves in their
he touched—report cards, tailors’ bills, to-do lists, reader letters, lec- subjects, and to steal from the novelist’s bag of tricks: scene-by-scene
ture notes, book blurbs, requests for book blurbs, drawings, ideas construction, use of dramatic dialogue, vivid characterization, shift-
for drawings never executed (“Nude Skydiver Devoured in Midair ing points of view, and so on.
by Ravenous Owls”), and dozens of sexually explicit and totally in- I doubt I was ever alone in failing to find the whole New Journal-
sane letters from a female stalker, including one consisting chiefly ism story entirely satisfying. (Hunter Thompson, for instance, wrote
of 17 pages of red lip prints. He just tossed all this stuff in steamer Wolfe, “You thieving pile of albino warts… I’ll have your goddamn
trunks and hauled the trunks up to the attic, where some of them femurs ground into bone splinters if you ever mention my name
had sat undisturbed for 50 years. He kept postcards from friends again in connexion [sic] with that horrible ‘new journalism’ shuck
with hardly anything written on them; he kept all the Christmas you’re promoting.”) For a start, there wasn’t anything new about
cards; he kept morning-after notes from New York society ladies: the techniques. Mark Twain used them to dramatize his experiences
as a riverboat pilot and a gold miner. George Orwell set himself
“Dear Tom, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I am a prevert [sic] or up as a destitute tramp and wrote up the experience as nonfiction.
a sex fiend or something but actually, I have never tried to give anyone
Virtually every British travel writer who has ever left an unpaid bill
after dinner gropes before. Well not at the table anyway…
Don’t be mad at me. might be counted a New Journalist. When you look at that list of
Please.” [Dated November 17, 1964.] New Journalists, what pops to mind is not their common technique.
It’s their uncommon voices. They leapt off the page. They didn’t
There’s a thrill to be had in an old-fashioned archive—of poking sound like anyone else’s.
around letters and papers and reporter notepads stuffed with ran-
T
dom scribblings while the lady behind the library desk glances over Out of the South
to make sure you aren’t doodling on the papers. It’s the thrill of en- homas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was born on March 2,
tering a private space, where the characters are unaware they are be- 1930, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the son
ing watched. When some poor sucker’s e-mails or texts wind up in of a conservative, God-respectful southern editor of
public they offer everyone a thrill, but it isn’t really the same—who an agricultural trade magazine. Home was never
writes an e-mail these days entirely free of the thought that he’s being something he was looking to get away from; it was
watched? The other pleasure of an old-fashioned archive is the plea- never even something he was looking to pretend he
sure of words on paper. Letters are different from e-mails and texts. was looking to get away from. He was accepted at Princeton but
They have stuff jotted in their margins; they reveal a bit more about chose to attend Washington and Lee, to remain close to home.
the writer. And with nothing in them to click on, the words have to Every now and then one of his teachers would note that he had a
do a lot more work, to enable the reader to see what you mean: way with words, and some artistic talent, but artistic ambition, for
a conservative southern male in the 1950s or really any other time,
“I hate to say this but David McDaniel is the most devlish looking was too vague and impractical to indulge. After college, he took the
and the most devlish acting person I’ve ever seen. He looks like the advice of his professor and went to Yale, for a doctorate in Ameri-
typical “comic book” Jap. He is short—not over 4’2”—has a very,
can studies—and right up to this point in his life there isn’t a trace
very, very, very short monkey’s shave—high cheekbones—squinted
eyes—wears glasses—a stubby nose—a toothy grin—and to top it all, of institutional rebellion in him. He pitches for the baseball team,
he actually has pointed teeth!!!!!!!!!!!! He is as mean as he can be, he pleases his teachers, has an ordinary, not artistic, group of pals, and
has no consideration for anyone, he acts spoiled to death. he is terribly is devoted to his mother and father.
babyish, unhumanly babyish for anyone 12 years old. This is what he The moment he leaves the South, something comes over him.
looks like [see drawing on page 185, top right] … Whatever it is, the feeling seems to be heightened by the sight of a
The description and drawing seem terribly exaggerated I know, but blank sheet of paper. For instance, he creates (while he’s meant to be
every bit of it is true—and the picture is one of the most perfect like-
writing a Yale dissertation) an elaborate parody of a Beat poet, “Jocko
nesses I’ve ever drawn.” [Tom Wolfe, aged 12, letter to his mother and
father, 1943.] Thor,” complete with a small book of poems and a short biography.
Jocko Thor has given birth to a “new poetic genre called Bonkism.”
The documents tell the story of the leading journalistic observer In his preface he explains: “Most of these poems were composed be-
and describer of American life, in a time of radical cultural trans- neath a Coca-Cola sign in the town of Accident, Maryland, in Feb-
formation, and of the sensational explosion in American literary ruary of 1956. They are dedicated to my childe bride whom I first
journalism that occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s—on which the met on that very spot.” There follows what is essentially a book of
1
184
4
5
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ULF ANDERSEN/GAMMA-RAPHO (8); © DEBORAH FEINGOLD/CORBIS (2); BY MARINA GARNIER (1); © ANNIE LEIBOVITZ/
T R UN K A RCHI VE ( 4) ; © P BS/ PHOTOF E ST ( 6) ; BY J E F F RE Y S CHA D/ CON D É N A ST A RCHI VE (5); F ROM TOM WOLF E PAPER S, MANUSCR IPTS AND
A RCH IV E S DI VI SI ON , N E W YOR K PU BLI C L IB RA RY ( 3) ; COURTE SY OF WALTE R B E RN AR D D ESIG N (7 )
2
ARTS AND LEISURE

(1) Wolfe, Fran Lebowitz, and Gene Shalit in the
greenroom of the 42nd Street branch of the 3
New York Public Library for “An Evening of Literary
Laughter,” in 1990. (2) Wolfe at his desk, in
Southampton, New York, in 1997. (3) The second
page of Wolfe’s childhood letter to his “Mother
and Daddy.” (4) Wolfe, by Annie Leibovitz, in 1980.
(5) The first edition of Wolfe’s book The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test, published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1968. (6) Wolfe posing with a helicopter
for the PBS television special Tom Wolfe’s Los Angeles,
1977. (7) The cover of New York featuring
Wolfe’s article “The ‘Me’ Decade,” 1976. (8) Wolfe
reclines at home, in New York City, 1988.
NOVEM B E R 2 015 www.vanityfair.com VA NIT Y FAI R 185

186 VANIT Y FA IR P H OTOG R AP H BY JONATHAN BECKER NOVE MBER 2 015
IN ST YLE
Wolfe in short poems written, it seems, purely for Wolfe’s own
his Manhattan amusement—he never mentions them to anyone.
apartment. Lewis’s
daughter Dixie, “Regular Fellows
13, called his suit We walk the sidewalk brick by brick
an “outgoing
We climb the brass-clapped stairs
fashion choice.”
We spit into each other’s faces
And never put on airs.”
“The Martyr
… A Freudian Poem
In a moment I’ll resume my martyrdom
In a moment, ready to trick myself,
Goad myself, to vex myself
With expert taunts,
I’ll exhale and open my eyes.
Small designs will writhe
Behind my eyelids
Like bullwhips.”
And so on. For the first time in his life, it appears, Tom Wolfe
has been provoked. He has left home and found, on the East Coast,
the perpetual revolt of High Culture against God, Country, and
Tradition. He happens to have landed in a time and place in which
art—like the economy that supports it—is essentially patricidal. It’s all
about tearing up and replacing what came before. The young Tom
Wolfe is intellectually equipped to join some fashionable creative
movement and set himself in opposition to God, Country, and Tra-
dition; emotionally, not so much. He doesn’t use his new experience
of East Coast sophisticates to distance himself from his southern
conservative upbringing; instead he uses his upbringing to distance
himself from the new experience. He picks for his Ph.D. dissertation
topic the Communist influences on American writers, 1928–1942.
From their response to it, the Yale professors, who would have ap-
proved the topic in advance, had no idea of the spirit in which Wolfe
intended to approach it:
“Dear Mr. Wolfe:

I am personally acutely sorry to have to write you this letter but I
want to inform you in advance that all of your readers reports have
come in, and … I am sorry to say I anticipate that the thesis will not
be recommended for the degree… The tone was not objective but was
consistently slanted to disparage the writers under consideration and
to present them in a bad light even when the evidence did not warrant
this.” [Letter from Yale dean to T.W., May 19, 1956.]
To this comes appended the genuinely shocked reviews of three

Yale professors. It’s as if they can’t quite believe this seemingly
sweet-natured and well-mannered southern boy has gone off half
cocked and ridiculed some of the biggest names in American lit-
erature. The Yale grad student had treated the deeply held political
conviction of these great American artists as—well, as a ploy in a
game of status seeking. This student seemed to have gone out of his
way to turn these serious American intellectuals into figures of fun.
“The result is more journalistically tendentious than scholarly…
Wolfe’s polemical rhetoric is … a chief consideration of my deci-
sion to fail the dissertation.” To top it all off … he’d taken some
license with the details. One outraged reviewer compared Wolfe’s
text with his cited sources and attached the comparison. Sample
Wolfe passage: “At one point ‘the Cuban delegation’ tramped in. It
was led by a fierce young woman named Lola de la Torriente. With
her bobbed hair, leather jacket, and flat-heeled shoes, she looked
C RE DI TS HE RE
as though she had just left the barricades. Apparently she had.
‘This is where our literature is being built,’ exclaimed she, ‘on the
barricades!’ ” Huffed the reviewer: “There is no description of her
www.vanityfair.com VAN IT Y FAIR 187
in the source, and the quotations do not appear in the reference.” his work. The Post sends him to be the Latin America correspondent,
Which is to say that, as a 26-year-old graduate student, just as a and from Havana he sends dispatches that read just like the dispatches
12-year-old letter writer, Tom Wolfe was already recognizably him- of the guy he replaced. But in Washington, when he’s in his early 30s,
self. He’d also found a lens through which he might view, freshly, all come the first signs that he isn’t entirely satisfied with the path he’s
human behavior. He’d gone to Yale with the thought he would study on. He writes to his parents to complain of the Post’s “chronic mania
his country by reading its literature and history and economics. He for bleeding heart stories on the poor and downtrodden.” He writes a
wound up discovering sociology—and especially Max Weber’s writ- 10-page single-spaced letter to interest the editor of The Saturday Eve-
ings about the power of status seeking. The lust for status, it seemed ning Post in a piece for which there is no place in The Washington Post,
to him, explained why otherwise intelligent American writers lost on “status-seeking in Washington D.C.” “I don’t believe there is any
their minds and competed with one another to see just how devoted subject, with the possible exception of the neighbors’ finances, which
to the Communist cause they could be. In a funny way, Yale served people enjoy having lugged out into the open more,” he writes. In his
him extremely well: it gave him a chance to roam and read and notebooks he catalogues his careful observations of the locals, in their
bump into new ideas. But he didn’t immediately see that: hand-over-hand status climbs: the way the black Lincoln has replaced
the Cadillac as the status car (because Jack Kennedy drove a black
“These stupid fucks have turned down namely my dissertation, Lincoln); the way they used Cabinet members as cocktail-party status
meaning I will have to stay here about a month longer to delete all the
objects (“bagging a cabinet member”); right down to the way they had
offensive passages and retype the sumitch. They called my brilliant man-
uscript ‘journalistic’ and ‘reactionary,’ which means I must go through turned dog licenses into status symbols—by handing out low-number
with a blue pencil and strike out all the laughs and anti-Red passages licenses to the dogs of high-ranking officials. Wolfe appears to have
and slip in a little liberal merde, so to speak, just to sweeten it. I’ll dis- walked back and forth across Washington to determine which neighbor-
cuss with you how stupid all these stupid fucks are when I see you.” hood said which things about which people. His notebooks list the ad-
[T.W., aged 26, letter to a friend, June 9, 1956.] dresses of all the important people and the high-status buildings. (The
street with all the African embassies on it he labels “Cannibals Row.”)
H
Offbeat Reporter But he never writes the piece, maybe because his heart is only half
e re-writes his thesis. He lards it up with aca- in it: he is genuinely convinced that status concerns are at the heart of
demic jargon and creates a phony emotional most human behavior. But the human behavior in Washington doesn’t
distance from his material (he refers to “an strike him as all that interesting. When people think about writers they
American writer E. Hemingway”), and it is ac- notice the things they have chosen to write about. What writers choose
cepted. Then he flees Yale as fast as he can. He’s not to write about is worth noticing, too. The man who would become
entering his late 20s with only the faintest idea of the foremost chronicler of American life for a generation would de-
what he might do to earn a living. But he’s ambitious, eager to find cide, from his position inside The Washington Post, that Washington
his place in the world. His father introduces him to business associ- wasn’t all that important. Decades later he writes a letter to a young
ates. Wolfe writes to the head of a sales institute and sends “excerpts friend in which he explains, in an aside, why:
from work I have done on the subject of Communist activity among
American writers and other ‘intellectuals.’ ” He applies for jobs in “The Republican Party as now constituted is obviously too stupid to
survive… What is to be done? Of course, that was Lenin’s line and the
public relations. He writes to American Airlines to inquire about a
only lucid one he ever wrote. The answer is nothing. America’s position
post. He even considers, briefly, a position teaching economics. is unassailable. We are the imperial Rome of the 3rd Millennium. Our
In short, he doesn’t have any clear idea of what to do, although he government is a CSX train on a track. People on one side (the left) yell
has long liked the notion of being a writer or an artist. In May of 1955 at it, and people on the other side (the right) yell at it, but the train’s
he had written to the dean of Washington and Lee University, “I am only going to go down the track. Thank God for that. That’s why I
thinking very seriously of going into journalism or a related field,” find American politics too boring to write about. Nixon is forced from
but he was slow to pursue it, as he was sure it would disappoint his office. Does a military junta rise up? Do the tanks roll? Give me a
break.” [February 28, 2000.]
parents. He writes to one of his father’s friends and confesses what he
T
really wants to be is a sportswriter. Finally, he sends letters and curri-
The Joker Is Wild
cula vitae to newspapers, offering his services as either a journalist or
a graphic artist. (As a child he had enjoyed drawing and still seems he Washington subject that catches Wolfe’s fancy, at
at this point in his life as interested in drawing as in writing.) Only some deep level, is Hugh Troy. Hugh Troy is the first
one newspaper writes back to express interest: the Springfield Union, documented case in which Tom Wolfe set out into the
in eastern Massachusetts. In 1956, at the age of 26, he takes the job. world looking for one thing and found another, much
A young man who had once assumed he’d become a professor more interesting thing. He’d been assigned to write a
now roams the streets of small-time America looking for car acci- story about practical jokes in England and America.
dents or house fires or “color” stories—and he doesn’t seem at all Someone told him there was a man living in Washington named Hugh
troubled about it. There’s not a peep in his papers that suggests his Troy, who was “the most fabulous practical joker in the history of
parents are disappointed or that Wolfe is anxious about his career. America.” Wolfe had no interest in any of this—he was just doing his
Just the reverse: when he writes a story about the new fad of scuba job—but he dutifully went off to meet Hugh Troy. The piece Wolfe wrote
diving and gets his picture in the paper in scuba gear, he is thrilled. on practical jokes could have been written by anybody. The long obitu-
He mails the clippings to his parents. ary Wolfe foisted unbidden upon a New York newspaper after Troy’s
Still, he hasn’t figured out who he is, at least on paper. When his by- death three years later could have been written only by Tom Wolfe.
line is not merely “a staff reporter,” it’s “Thomas Wolfe,” and the stuff “Troy wasn’t the fat little Shriner I had figured him for. He was huge,
that appears under it could have been written by anyone. He’s a good almost six feet six… He must have weighed close to 240 pounds. He
daily journalist—first for the Springfield Union and then, two and a half was in his mid-fifties. He dressed in soft white shirts, hard worsteds and
years later, for The Washington Post. But there’s nothing special about boned leather shoes, like a lawyer in the financial district. He had the

I REMEMBER
[MY FATHER] SAYING,
“GOD, YOU’RE
REALLY A WRITER.”
charm, voice, manners … the whole business … of the kind of individu- raised him right.” He holds doors open for others, stands until the
al who grew up in the right schools, clubs, fraternities, cotillions … they ladies are seated, and listens politely to the dullest conversation, and
hadn’t raised little Hugh to go around goosing the universe.” he always will—even when he’s 85 years old and has earned the right
to ignore idiots and take the first open seat. But something comes
Troy didn’t see himself as a practical joker: he didn’t even really over him when he stares at a blank sheet of paper and is forced to
understand the impulse to think up practical jokes. He was, at heart, contemplate other people, especially people convinced of their own
a social satirist. His jokes were responses to stuff that bothered him. brilliance or importance. Thoughts he’d never utter in public come
During the Depression, for instance, he’d been bothered by the sight bursting out of him. So long as he was a newspaper reporter, there
of New York City police officers harassing the homeless sleeping on was not much risk his private thoughts would get him into trouble.
benches in Central Park. He bought a bench, took it to the park, and There are limits to what a reporter can say about people in a daily
lay on it until the cops came—whereupon Troy picked up the bench newspaper; there is the need to at least seem objective. And so Tom
and ran. “This was just a buildup for the vignette he was waiting for Wolfe, as he enters mid-career, finds himself wearing handcuffs: he’s
… in court … the look on their faces as he whipped out his bill of sale just good enough at writing for newspapers that he doesn’t need to
and demanded the return of his bench.” Or another time, in the early do anything else. And he doesn’t have the money to stop writing for
1950s, Troy found himself bothered by the boom in “ghost writing.” newspapers, even if the job keeps his inner dog on a leash.
M
“Dignitaries no longer even thought of writing their own speeches. The
The Man in the White Suit
new president of a leading university had been caught delivering an in-
augural address lifted by his lazy hulking ghost writer from an article in an oney is actually an important part of his story.
educational journal by another university president. When he moved to New York he owned two
“One night it just came to Troy: Ghost Artists Inc. He placed an ad sports jackets. Herald Tribune reporters all wore
in the Washington Post & Times Herald of February 5, 1952: ‘Too busy suits, and so he went out and bought a suit: a
to paint? Have the talent but not the time? Call on The Ghost Artists,
white suit. The suit wasn’t some kind of state-
1426 33rd Street N.W… We paint it—You Sign It! Any Style! Impres-
sionist, Modern, Cubist, Primitive (Grandma Moses), Abstract, Sculpture ment; it was what you wore in the summer in
… Also, Why Not Give an Exhibition?’ Immediately orders began com- Richmond, Virginia. The first time he wore it, however, he realized
ing in, which Troy turned down, saying the firm was swamped with work. the suit wasn’t of summer weight. It was thick enough to wear in
Then the newspaper and wire service reporters started calling up. In the cold weather, too. That’s how strapped for cash he is: he wears his
most sincere and courtly tones he told each reporter that he would break white suit into the fall so he doesn’t have to buy another.
down and tell the whole story if they would only please not use his name. Then comes a glorious accident. On December 8, 1962, every
“The next day the story was going out all over the country: of how
this ring of ghost artists had been operating for three years in New York
newspaperman in New York went on strike. Tom Wolfe is a news-
and was now opening a branch in Washington to fill many orders from paper journalist without a paper to write for. He would soon turn
‘high in government circles.’ ” 33: he was no longer a young man. He had no real savings, and now
he had no paycheck. He put out feelers to see if he could find work
Tom Wolfe had found his first kindred spirit. When he describes writing ads. He wrote to his father, seeking advice:
him he might as well be describing himself:
“I’m not terribly anxious to be writing ads, but they pay very well… As
“I had the feeling Troy never wanted to explore himself that deeply, as if yet, of course, no money has come rolling in from all this. Until it does
he weren’t sure what he would find… At every juncture there seemed I wonder if I should apply for state unemployment benefits? This per-
to be two Hugh Troys—the one, well-brought-up, courtly, serious, con- plexes me, and I would like your advice, because I have a great loathing
cerned, sympathetic, and the other one riding off like hell, like Don Qui- of the idea of going on the dole. Perhaps it is only false pride.” [T.W.,
jote in the Land of Logical Lunacy.” letter to his father, January 13, 1963.]
In the summer of 1962, Wolfe quits his job at The Washington Post His father wrote back to say he saw no shame in unemployment
and moves to New York City, where he takes a job as a daily reporter benefits. For some reason Wolfe didn’t agree. Instead of going on
at the Herald Tribune. There’s a doubleness about Tom Wolfe, too. the dole he went looking for work, and the work that naturally pre-
In person he is courteous and considerate and polite and teacher- sented itself was magazine work. Esquire hired him to fly to Califor-
pleasing: a nice boy of whom everyone would say, “His parents nia and explore the strange new world of C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 9 2
Spotlight
OLÉ for HOLLYWOOD!
Filmmakers Guillermo
del Toro, Alejandro
González Iñárritu,
Emmanuel Lubezki,
Alfonso Cuarón,
and Jonás Cuarón,
photographed
poolside at the Viceroy
Santa Monica hotel.
T
o hear Alfonso Cuarón tell it, when he first met Guiller- and the cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki is like be-
mo del Toro, more than 25 years ago, things weren’t ing at a family reunion where the tales have become legends.
all lovey-dovey: “I heard about this genius from Gua- As Jonás Cuarón, Alfonso’s son, whose own film, Desierto, pre-
dalajara and I was jealous. But apparently he felt the miered this fall, puts it, “I grew up seeing them as uncles.” Im-
same way about me, this chilango, this guy from Mexico City!” pressively, the group has maintained its closeness and thrived
Then there is the story of how del Toro was enlisted to help res- together, from Mexico to Hollywood (a land of notoriously
cue Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2000 masterpiece, Amores fair-weather friends). Cuarón and Lubezki both won Oscars for
Perros. “Years later, Alfonso called me up and said there’s this 2013’s Gravity, while Iñárritu won best director for last year’s
guy in Mexico who has this brilliant movie,” recalls del Toro, Birdman. Iñárritu and Lubezki are putting finishing touches
“but it’s really too long, and we thought the only guy who can on The Revenant, out in December, while del Toro’s new goth
talk sense into him is you!” The upshot? “I just showed up at his thriller, Crimson Peak, was tweaked over marathon Skype ses-
place,” del Toro laughs, “and I ate all the beans in the house!” sions with Cuarón. “Every time we see each other,” says Lubez-
Listening to Cuarón with his compatriots del Toro, Iñárritu, ki, “it’s like an explosion of creativity.” — A N D E RSO N T E P P E R
190 VANIT Y FA IR www.vanityfair.com NOVE MBER 2 015

ST YL E D BY A SH LE Y F UR N IVA L; G ROOMI NG BY I S AB E LL BÖ TTCHE R ( A LF ON SO
C UA R ÓN ) A N D JH IZE T PA NOS IA N ( A LL OT HE R S ) ; PROPS ST YLE D BY PATR ICK MÜL L E R;
P ROD UC E D ON LOC ATI ON BY JO SH MA DS ON ; FO R DE TA IL S, G O TO VF. CO M/C RE D ITS
NOVEM BE R
2 015
P H OTO G RA PH
BY
JASON BELL
www.vanityfair.com
VA NIT Y
FAI R
191
in ten thousand has heard the sound of tearing raddled old slattern on her knees in your hallway,
Tom Wolfe silk since 1945.” waxing the floor when the phone rings and rising
When he was done, his letter ran 49 pages. slowly, painfully, resentfully, to answer it and snarl
‘He ain’t here.’ … What stage is the Kesey book
CON T I N U ED F ROM PAGE 189 custom-made The exotic punctuation, the ellipses, the rococo in?” [To T.W. from Hunter Thompson, February
cars. Wolfe wrote a letter to his parents to de- mannerisms that sometimes enhance and 26, 1968.]
scribe what he’d seen there: sometimes detract from his later work aren’t
yet there, but his ability to see what others have Wolfe’s response to his new status—like
“The trip was one of the most interesting I ever missed, or found unworthy of attention, is sen- Hunter Thompson’s—is to create a public per-
took. Los Angeles is incredible—like every new
suburb in America all massed together in one sational. The effect is of an opaque protective sona as particular and distinctive as the sounds
plain… Everyone drives, and drives and drives. gauze being peeled back from the surface of he’s making on the page. Once he becomes
Twenty-five miles for a hamburger is nothing… the society to expose what’s really under it. famous, people start to notice and remark
The car-o-philes, or whatever they ought to be What really matters. In the morning, he upon his white suit, in a way they don’t seem
called, were an intriguing lot, especially the cus- walked his letter over to Esquire. “It was like to have done before: they take it as one of
tom car designers. They starve for their art, such he discovered it in the middle of the night,” those eccentricities that are a natural by-
as it is, have many of the mannerisms and anti-
Dobell now recalls. “Wherever it came from, it product of genius. He bought the thing be-
social attitudes of artists, and, in general, are the
Pentecostal version of High Culture’s Episcopal, seemed to me to tap a strain of pure American cause it was just what you wore in Richmond
if I may make such a comparison.” [April 1963.] humor that wasn’t being tapped. He didn’t in the summer and kept on wearing it because
sound like Truman Capote or Lillian Ross … it kept him warm in winter. Now it becomes
To his parents he has no trouble describ- or anyone else.” Dobell scratched out the Dear this sensational affectation. He buys an entire
ing what he has seen. Putting the words onto Byron salutation and ran the letter as the piece, wardrobe of white suits, and the hats and
paper for Esquire proves more problematic. called “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That canes and shoes and gloves to accessorize
He’s written hundreds of thousands of words Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhhh!) Tangerine- them. His handwriting changes in a similar
in newspapers. He has a subject that interests Flake Streamline Baby Around the Bend way—once a neat but workman-like script, it
him intensely—it’s not just about cars, it’s (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) . . . . . . ” becomes spectacularly rococo, with great
about the sincere soul of American life. He In Wolfe’s papers there is a copy of a letter swoops and curlicues. In his reporter note-
sits down to write and … he can’t do it. The from early 1965—less than 18 months after he books he tries out various new signatures and
words simply won’t come. In the end he calls first got his voice on the page, and after he’d eventually settles on one with so many flour-
up his editor, Byron Dobell, and tells him he published a dozen or so magazine pieces, ishes that the letters look as if they are under
just can’t get the piece out of himself. Do- mostly for the New York Herald Tribune’s new attack by a squadron of flying saucers. The
bell tells him that Esquire desperately needs color supplement, New York magazine. The let- tone of his correspondence becomes more
something, and soon. They’ve spent $10,000 ter came from Rosser Reeves to the president courtly and mannered, and, well, like it is com-
on a photo spread and they need the text to of the Herald Tribune. Reeves was the splashi- ing from someone who isn’t like other people.
explain it. Just write up your notes in a letter to est adman in the 1960s; he’s been fingered as a Nine years after he bursts onto the scene he
me tonight, says Dobell, and I’ll have someone model for Mad Men’s Don Draper. He begins, receives an honorary doctorate from Washing-
hammer out the text for the piece. And that’s ton and Lee. “While a feature writer for New
“There is a man named Tom Wolfe who is York magazine he, like Lord Byron before him,
what Wolfe does. “Dear Byron,” he writes— currently writing for the Herald Tribune. He
though he might just as easily have written awoke one morning to find himself famous,”
is one of the sharpest and most perceptive talents
“Dear Mother and Father:” that has appeared on the scene in many, many said the college president. And, like Lord By-
years… I discover that he is becoming the ob- ron before him, Wolfe had a pretty good sense
“The first good look I had at customized ject of a cult.” [Rosser Reeves to Walter Thayer, of what the public wanted from its geniuses.
cars was at an event called a ‘Teen Fair,’ held March 30, 1965.] Yet the elaborate presentation of self never
in Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles beyond really interferes with the work or the effort he
Hollywood. This was a wild place to be taking a Status Update
look at art objects—eventually, I should say, you puts into it—at least not in the way it would do
have to reach the conclusion that these custom-
ized cars are art objects, at least if you use the
standards applied in a civilized society.”
E ighteen months! That’s what it took for
Wolfe, once he’d found his voice, to go
from worrying about whether or not to go on
with Hunter Thompson. It doesn’t even seem
to interfere with his ability to report on the
world. Wolfe gets himself on the psychedelic
the dole to a cult figure. By early 1965, liter- school bus Ken Kesey and his acolytes are
A few pages in and he’s not just relating ary agents are writing him, begging to let them taking cross-country to proselytize for LSD.
what he’s seen in a matter-of-fact way, the way sell a book; publishers are writing to him, beg- There, in his white suit, he sits and watches
you would if you were just trying to supply ging him to write one. Hollywood people are Kesey and his groupies more or less invent the
some poor editor with information to use in writing to ask if they might turn his magazine idea of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. No one
captions to some photos. He’s letting it fly. pieces into movies—though really all they want who reads Wolfe’s take on it all, The Electric
is to rub up against him. Two years earlier his Kool-Aid Acid Test—at least no one whose let-
“Things have been going on in the develop- fan letters had come mainly from his mother. ters or reviews are preserved—asks the obvious
ment of the kids’ formal attitude toward cars Soon they came from Cybill Shepherd. He’s question: How the hell did he do that? How
since 1945, things of great sophistication that booked on The Tonight Show with Johnny
adults have not been even remotely aware of,
did he get them to let him in, almost as one
mainly because the kids are so inarticulate about Carson. He’s now as likely to use the margins of them? Why do all these people keep let-
it, especially the ones most hipped on the sub- of his notebooks to tally his lecture fees as to ting this oddly dressed man into their lives, to
ject. They are not from the levels of society that accommodate drawings of nude skydivers. He observe them as they have never before been
produce children who write sensitive analytical has a stalker. He also has a strange new kin- observed?
prose at age seventeen, or if they do, they soon dred spirit, and pen pal: And it’s not just attention seekers, like Ke-
fall into the hands of English instructors who put sey, who throw open the doors to the man in
them onto Hemingway or a lot of goddamn-and- “Dear Tom:
hungry-breast writers. If they ever write about a I just got back from a quick shot in the East, the white suit. Wolfe writes a piece on the ori-
highway again, it’s a rain-slicked highway and the and called from the airport but you weren’t home gins of this new sport called stock-car racing
sound of the automobiles passing over it is like again. Who are these old crones who answer and its greatest legend, Junior Johnson. Junior
the sound of tearing silk, not that one household your telephone? I have a picture of some gout- Johnson doesn’t talk to reporters. He’s fa-
mously reticent: no one outside his close circle tended to be born oldest sons, in the mid- This from a long letter Wolfe writes, as
of family and friends has any idea who he real- 1920s, named after their fathers, and raised in much to himself as to his editor, to explain
ly is. Without a word of explanation, Tom small towns, in intact Anglo-Saxon Protestant what he thinks he’s up to. It’s not really a book
Wolfe is suddenly describing what it’s like to families. More than half of them had “Jr.” af- about the space program. It turns out that it’s
be in Junior’s backyard, pulling weeds with his ter their names. In other words, they were just not even, really, about flying. It’s about the im-
two sisters and watching a red rooster cross like him. What was it about this upbringing, portance of status to men, and what happens
the lawn, while Junior tells him everything … he wondered, that produced these men? It when the rules of any status game change.
and the reader learns, from Junior himself, that was another way of asking: What strange so- There had been a status structure to the life of
NASCAR racing basically evolved out of the fine ciological process explains me? U.S. fighter jocks before the space program,
art, mastered by Junior, of outrunning the The more famous Wolfe became, the less and it was clear to everyone involved. At the
North Carolina federal agents with a car full often he wrote to his mother and father—at top of the pyramid were combat pilots, and at
of bootleg whiskey. Wolfe’s Esquire piece least to judge from his archives. His father still the tippy top were the combat pilots who
about Junior Johnson, “The Last American wrote to him, however, and it’s clear that he found their way to Edwards Air Force Base, in
Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!” is another sen- still felt listened to, and consulted. At the end the California desert, to test new fighter planes.
sation—and still no one writes to ask him: of a letter written after the moon landing he The courage and spirit required not just to get
How did you do that? How did you get your- adds a note to his son: to Edwards but to survive the test flights, the pi-
self invited into the home of a man who would lots themselves never spoke of, but it’s at the
sooner shoot a journalist than talk to him? “Apropos … astronauts center of their existence. That unspoken quality
(This fall, 50 years after Wolfe introduced the A hamlet breeds heroes Wolfe calls the right stuff. The embodiment of
world to Junior Johnson, NASCAR Productions a city breeds eunuchs. the right stuff—everyone knows it and yet no
—Socrates”
and Fox Sports released a documentary about [To T.W. from his father, 1969.] one says it—is Chuck Yeager. Hardly anyone
the piece. That’s the effect Wolfe routinely has outside the small world of combat pilots has
had: to fix people and events in readers’ Chasing that idea, Wolfe spends the better ever heard of him. Here is how Wolfe, in a
minds forever.) part of a decade crisscrossing the country. single sentence, will change that:
He pays for his research by publishing several
N ew York City was—and still is—the only

place on earth where a writer might set
himself up as a professional tour guide and at-
other books. Some of these are forgettable
(Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine);
“Anyone who travels very much on airlines
in the United States soon gets to know the voice of
the airline pilot … coming over the intercom …
some are long essays that still hold up amaz- with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a
tract the interest of the entire planet. That’s ingly well (The Painted Word ); all of them are particular down-home calmness that is so exag-
mainly what Wolfe was, at least in the begin- less important to him than the astronauts. gerated it begins to parody itself (nevertheless!—
ning: his job was to observe the sophisticates in Reducing their story to a narrative proves to it’s reassuring) … the voice that tells you, as
their nutty bubble for the pleasure of the rubes be incredibly difficult. The archives here tell the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes
in the hinterlands, and then, from time to time, the story of a writer working his ass off. Nev- bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single
venture out into the hinterlands and explain gulp, to check your seat belts because ‘it might
er mind what percentage of genius is talent;
what is really going on out there to the sophisti- get a little choppy’ … the voice that tells you (on
this feels like all perspiration. There’s no a flight from Phoenix preparing for its final ap-
cates inside the bubble. He moves back and main character. There are the seven astro- proach into Kennedy Airport, New York, just
forth like a bridge player, ruffing the city and the nauts scattered across the country, plus a lot after dawn): ‘Now, folks, uh … this is the captain
country against each other. He occupies a of other people to track down. The reporting … ummmm … We’ve got a little ol’ red light up
place in between. He dresses exotically and is alone takes him seven years. His original idea here on the control panel that’s tryin’ to tell us
talented and intellectually powerful, like the so- of the story, he decides, is wrong. The astro- that the landin gears’re not … uh … lockin into
phisticates in the bubble. But he isn’t really one position when we lower ’em … Now … I don’t
nauts were all drawn from the officer ranks in believe that little ol’ red light knows what it’s
of them. To an extent that shocks the people the U.S. military. They were indeed invari- talkin about—I believe it’s that little ol’ red light
inside the bubble, when they learn of it, he ably Wasps; men born before the Great De- that iddn’ workin’ right’ … faint chuckle, long
shares the values of the hinterland. He believes pression; and often oldest sons. So of course pause, as if to say, I’m not even sure all this is
in God, Country, and even, up to a point, Re- they shared his basic background. But so did really worth going into—still, it may amuse you …
publican Presidents. He even has his doubts everyone else in the pool from which the as- ‘But … I guess to play it by the rules, we oughta
about the reach of evolutionary theory. tronauts were drawn. So, that alone was not humor that little ol’ light … so we’re gonna take
None of this really matters. What matters is her down to about, oh, two or three hundred feet
interesting. over the runway at Kennedy, and the folks down
his X-ray vision. By the early 1970s it was as if At great expense—and this is just about there on the ground are gonna see if they caint
there were, in the United States, two realities. the best example a nonfiction writer could give us a visual inspection of those ol’ landin’
There’s the reality perceived by ordinary peo- set for others—he abandons his first theory of gears’—with which he is obviously on intimate
ple and the reality perceived by Tom Wolfe— the case. But because he is looking so hard, ol’-buddy terms, as with every other working
until Wolfe writes his piece or book and most and so well, he finds another. The story Wolfe part of this mighty ship—‘and if I’m right …
people just forget their original perception discovers isn’t precisely about the forces that they’re gonna tell us everything is copacetic all
and adopt his. He might be forgiven for believ- the way aroun’ an’ we’ll jes take her on in’ …
made him possible. On the other hand, it isn’t and, after a couple of low passes over the field,
ing that he is in the possession of some very precisely not: the voice returns: ‘Well, folks, those folks down
weird special power. The entire planet might there on the ground—it must be too early for
be fixated on some event and fail to see an es- “This is really a book not about the space pro- ’em or somethin’—I ’spect they still got the sleep-
sential truth about it—until he files his report gram but about status battles between pilots in the ers in their eyes … ’cause they say they caint tell
on the matter. highly competitive world of military flying. To be if those ol’ landin’ gears are all the way down
Then, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong successful the book should not expand our view of or not … But, you know, up here in the cock-
stepped out of Apollo 11 onto the moon. man into the dimensions of the cosmos—but draw pit we’re convinced they’re all the way down, so
the entire cosmos into the dimensions of man’s we’re jes gonna take her on in … And oh’ … (I
Like everyone else, Wolfe took an interest love of himself or, rather, his ceaseless concern almost forgot) … ‘while we take a little swing out
in the moon landing, but less in the mission for his own standing in comparison to other men. over the ocean an’ empty some of that surplus
than in the men. The early astronauts had This should not seem like a cynical discovery, but fuel we’re not gonna be needin’ anymore—that’s
some traits in common, he noticed. They it should be amusing.” [T.W. letter, Box 126.] what you might be seein’ comin’ out of the

Anyway, it resonated with Wolfe, to incred- be devoured by it. He seems to have been en-
Tom Wolfe ible effect. Never mind journalism, new or old. tirely free of pre-professional angst. The no-
The Right Stuff, in my view, is a great work of tion of roaming the earth and groping toward
wings—our lovely little ladies … if they’ll be so American literature. It’s also the last nonfic- a purpose in life now seems ridiculous to
kind … they’re gonna go up and down the aisles
and show you how we do what we call “assumin’ tion story Wolfe ever tells. The book sells well 22-year-olds, but that’s the notion Wolfe more
the position” ’ … another faint chuckle (We do enough that it provides him with the financial or less embraced. By waiting until his late 40s
this so often, and it’s so much fun, we even have cushion to avoid jobs as difficult as this one. to marry and have children he eluded his gen-
a funny little name for it) … and the steward- He’ll use the cushion to prove a point he has eration’s tool for sacrificing the freedom of
esses, a bit grimmer, by the looks of them, than always wanted to make, to High Culture but youth. He’d had time to figure out what he
that voice, start telling the passengers to take also to himself, that he can report a novel. That really loved to do. He’d written 20 letters to
their glasses off and take the ballpoint pens and
novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, will sell nearly newspapers, and the Springfield Union was
other sharp objects out of their pockets, and they
show them the position, with the head lowered … three quarters of a million copies in hardcover the only one to write back and offer him a job.
while down on the field at Kennedy the little yel- and another two million in paper. The market- “On the train to Springfield I was so happy that
low emergency trucks start roaring across the place will encourage Wolfe to write nothing but I just sang, over and over, “Oh, I am a member
field—and even though in your pounding heart novels. And a funny thing happens. The mo- of the working press … Oh, I am a member of
and your sweating palms and your broiling brain- ment he abandons it, the movement he shaped the working press.” He did indeed worry that
pan you know this is a critical moment in your will lose its head of steam. The New Journal- his parents would be disappointed with him,
life, you still can’t quite bring yourself to believe
it, because if it were … how could the captain,
ism: Born 1963, Died 1979. R.I.P. What was but they turned out, instead, to be relieved.
the man who knows the actual situation most in- that all about? It was mainly about Tom Wolfe, “They just wanted me off the payroll.” The
timately … how could he keep on drawlin’ and I think. memory of Hugh Troy brings a smile to his
chucklin’ and driftin’ and lollygaggin’ in that face, but he has no immediate memory of
particular voice of his— Going to the Source writing Troy’s obituary. He doesn’t recall his
Well!—who doesn’t know that voice! And
who can forget it!—even after he is proved right
and the emergency is over.
‘ L ong Island’s jes’ ahead,” says our Yeager,
with his faint, yet still detectable, drawl.
stalker either—or any of the many long letters
she sent, along with her (surprisingly well
That particular voice may sound vaguely The drone descends, and soon Dixie and I done) pornographic drawings of him in vari-
Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically are back on the ground, in the Hamptons, ous situations with her. He must have just
Appalachian in origin… In the late 1940’s and and driving to the house in which Wolfe now tossed them into the steamer trunk along with
early 1950’s this up-hollow voice drifted down spends a lot of his time. everything else. He does recall, vividly, the
from on high, from over the high desert of Cali- We find the writer in his kitchen, with his dilemma of taking unemployment benefits.
fornia, down, down, down, from the upper wife, Sheila, whom he met when she worked “If you wanted the benefits you had to
reaches of the Brotherhood into all phases of as the art director at Harper’s. The streets march,” he says. “I thought it was so de-
American aviation… Military pilots and then,
soon, airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Mas- near his house are teeming with people in meaning to be out there picketing.” He also
sachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and ev- shorts and T-shirts, but he still wears his white recalls the night he spent writing his letter to
erywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow suit and has it dressed out with a white fedora. Byron Dobell, and finding his voice. At that
West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they Dixie meets him and sweetly hides her alarm stage of his career he always kept the same
could bend their native accents. It was the drawl (“When I saw him I was like, Whoa! That’s a books near at hand when he wrote: Céline’s
of the most righteous of all the possessors of the very outgoing fashion choice,” she says later), Journey to the End of the Night and Death on
right stuff: Chuck Yeager.” [From Chapter 3,
then takes off for the beach with his dog. The the Installment Plan, plus some of Henry Mil-
The Right Stuff.]
next couple of hours Tom Wolfe supplies the ler. “I thought they put me in the mood,” he
answers to questions I’ve had since I was a says, “but maybe I was fooling myself.” Even
Such was the grip Chuck Yeager held on child, along with some new ones. after paging through Céline he couldn’t get
the imaginations of brave young men. Then Radical Chic was all Legends of the NFL the words out of himself. “There are two
came the Russians, and the seemingly exis- and no Hardy Boys. Leonard Bernstein’s kinds of writer’s block. One is when you
tential need to beat them to the moon. NASA’s weird private vision of the giant black man freeze up because you think you can’t do it.
rockets required none of Yeager’s skill or protesting the maestro’s speech as he deliv- The other is when you think it’s not worth do-
nerve. The astronaut’s job could be done—was ered it actually happened: Wolfe plucked it ing.” His was not the second kind. The mate-
done—by a monkey. By the old standards—the from an interview Bernstein had given. “Jocko rial, and what he had to say about it, caused
true standards—the astronauts weren’t even Thor” was more Hardy Boys than Legends of him to freeze up. “I suppose I kind of feared
flying. The job was to sit still and cooperate the NFL. “I don’t know what I was doing with doing something different,” he says, “because
with technocrats—and not alert the wider pub- Jocko,” Wolfe says. “I never showed them [the I was doing this other thing perfectly well,”
lic that whatever you were doing required any poems] to anybody.” He harbors no ill will to- meaning newspaper journalism. “But pretend
less of the right stuff than it had before. The ward the professors who failed his thesis, and you are writing a letter and you are all right.”
space program vaulted the astronauts to the thinks, in retrospect, that “Yale was really im- Fame, to him, didn’t come naturally. The
top of the heap and reduced Chuck Yeager portant for me.” He recalls the epiphany of world expected him to be a character he
to an afterthought. The world needed them to reading the sociologists—and especially We- wasn’t. “I was so used to interviewing other
be heroic pilots, and so they played the part, ber—on the subject of status. “I kept saying people,” he says. “I had never been inter-
but no one (except for one American writer) that’s right. That’s exactly the way it works. I viewed by anyone. People were expecting me
thought to look more deeply into the matter. honestly think that everyone—unless they are to be a ball of fire. They felt so let down!” His
No one noticed the best story. Process had re- in danger of losing their lives—makes their de- gaze had been relentlessly outward-looking—
placed courage. Engineers had replaced war- cisions on status.” one reason he saw so much, so well—and he
riors. A great romantic way of life, a chivalric The idea that leaving Yale and becoming a didn’t respond well when he was required to
code, had been trampled by modernity. Not beat reporter at a small-town paper should respond to the gaze of others. He wasn’t like
for the first time! (As Wolfe might write.) It’s have created anxiety—well, he doesn’t even Hunter Thompson or even Norman Mailer or
the story of the American South in the 20th understand my question. He had no student George Plimpton, all of whom seemed to en-
century—or at least the story a lot of white debt—no one did—and no sense that he had joy playing themselves, maybe even more than
southern men told themselves. to make his way in the world immediately or they enjoyed writing about it. Hunter Thomp-
son played his character so well and so relent- much as anyone else, but to get them he had The invitation is right there, in one of the files
lessly that he eventually became his character. to write. His public persona he could buy stuffed with party invitations and thank-you notes
Wolfe recalls a lunch he had with Thompson from his tailor. and Christmas cards, without comment. Tom
in New York. “He comes into the restaurant. His career, he suspects, is no longer pos- Wolfe is at this point the leading satirist of his age.
He’s got this bag. ‘Hunter, what’s in the bag?’ sible. I also think that is true, for all sorts of That age appears intent on staging events for his
Hunter says, ‘I’ve got something in here that non-obvious reasons—the career turned on benefit. He seems simply to stroll off Park Ave-
will clear out this restaurant.’ ” What’s in the the distinctiveness of his voice, and he found nue in his white suit and into Leonard Bernstein’s
bag, it turns out, is a marine distress signal. that voice only because he was given lots of party for the Black Panthers, as if he belonged.
“Hunter says, ‘This thing can travel 20 miles time to do it. The voice also came from a I now admit to him that I still wonder: How
across water.’ He blows it and the restaurant particular place, now dead and gone. Not the hell did he get himself invited to Leonard
clears out. Now, to Hunter, that was an event.” New York in the 1960s and 70s but Rich- Bernstein’s cocktail party? He smiles and sur-
The Great White Males of that moment mond, Virginia, circa 1942, when he was a prises me again.
had decided that rather than be bus-tour guides boy and figured out what he loved and ad- He’d gone to Harper’s magazine one day in
they’d become stops on the bus tour. George mired. Wolfe thinks his career would no late 1969, to pay a call on Sheila, then his girl-
Plimpton set himself up as New York City’s longer be possible for a more obvious rea- friend. Sheila was busy, and so he went looking
fireworks commissioner, Norman Mailer ran son: the Internet. Electronic media aren’t as around the offices, to see what he could see.
for mayor, and Truman Capote hosted masked able or as likely to pay for the sort of immer- He came upon the office of the Pulitzer Prize–
balls at the Plaza hotel. Wolfe now recalls a sion reporting that he did. And the readers winning journalist David Halberstam. Halber-
conference at which both he and Hunter of it aren’t looking—or at least don’t think stam wasn’t in it. The door was open; Wolfe
Thompson were paid to speak. Hunter failed to they are looking—for a writer to create their walked in. On top of a great pile on Halber-
show. He’d made it to the conference, but then view of the world. “I wouldn’t have the same stam’s desk he spotted an invitation—how could
had gone off on a bender and never made it to pathway from the bottom to the top,” he says. he not? It came from Mrs. Leonard Bernstein.
the podium, resulting in all manner of trouble. “At some point you get thrust into the digital He picked it up and read it … and had an idea
The organizer tracked down Wolfe, who he media. God, I don’t know what the hell I’d … How could he not … These people … they
knew was Thompson’s friend. “He was out- do.” had no idea … it was as if they were determined
raged. I said, ‘Sir, you don’t schedule Hunter Then he surprises me. Looking back on to insult the Gods … how could they not see
for a talk. You schedule him for an event. And it, he says, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the themselves the way others would see them …
you just had yours!’ ” Flak Catchers is his favorite book. His second all you would have to do is tell everyone in
Tom Wolfe wasn’t like that. For years after novel, A Man in Full, published in 1998, sold Richmond or anyplace else outside of a certain
he became famous for his writing he was un- the most copies, but Radical Chic was the one Manhattan zip code about this and the entire
able to stand up and give a talk without writhe wouldn’t change a word of. In the same country would soon be collapsing in laughter
ing it out first. He simply hadn’t been raised breath he says that he recalls his father’s re- … or outrage … but … really, when you think
for the job of being a famous American writer action to the book. “I remember him saying, about it … laughing or screaming: does it even
circa 1970. “I got by on the white suit for quite ‘God, you’re really a writer.’ ” matter which?… Oh God … This really is
a while,” he now says. The white suit reas- too good… He called the number to R.S.V.P.
sured people that he was busy playing a char-
acter when he was in fact busy watching them.
In truth he had no sense of himself as a char-
T hen there’s this:
“This is Tom Wolfe,” he said, “and I accept.”
And they just take his name down, and he’s
on the guest list. He never tells Halberstam
acter; he thought of himself as a normal guy Mrs. Leonard Bernstein what he’s done. He simply takes out a brand-
requests the pleasure of your company
in an abnormal world. That he had no great at 895 Park Avenue new green steno notebook with the spirals on
ability to attract attention to himself except on Wednesday January 14 at 5 o’clock top and writes on the cover, in his new rococo
through his pen proved to be a huge literary To meet and hear from the leaders of the script: Panther Night at Leonard Bernstein’s.
advantage. He wanted status and attention as Black Panther Party. And then he’s off, to see the world, anew.
Rihanna to be, she says her everyday conversations with Even tragedy, every trial in your life, is a test. It’s
her friends center on: how normal a life can she like a class—you take an exam, and if you pass,
actually have? I mention that Eminem once you move on to the next. You still have to take
told me he would trade a lot of his fame just another test and prove yourself again.”
to be able to go to the mall, and she exclaims, And, having been through drama, dysfunc-
“Dude! Oh my God—this is scary and sad all tional relationships, and all those tests, when it
at the same time. I literally dream about buying comes to her personal life, Rihanna says that
my own groceries.” Come on, I say. “Swear to for now “I’m fine being with myself. I don’t
God. Because it is something that is real and want to really let anybody in. I’ve got too
normal. Something that can keep you a little bit much on my plate, and I’m not even worried
uncomfortable.” Uncomfortable? “A hundred about it.” I say it will take a very special per-
percent. Because life is not perfect, and the son to share her life. “A hundred percent,”
minute you feel it’s perfect, it’s not real. Artists she says. “A very extraordinary gentleman,
away from reality,
C O N T I N U E D F RO M PAG E 14 9 sign a deal to make music; we didn’t sign to be with a lot of patience, will come along when I
floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame perfect, or to be role models. We’re all flawed least expect it. And I don’t want it right now.
or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear human beings who are learning and grow- I can’t really be everything for someone. This
the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. ing and evolving and going through the same is my reality right now.” So one day, I say,
It can be poison to you, fame.” bullshit as everybody else. The fact that people someone will come in on a white horse …
So, even though she is more accessible—and expect the day we sign we’re supposed to be “No,” she says, laughing. “Not on a white
polite—to her fans than some stars who pretend perfect does not make any fucking sense to me. horse. Probably on a black motorcycle.”
Clinton is deeply reliant on Abedin, who, Even so, some of those closest to Clinton
Hillary Clinton in addition to her other campaign responsi- advised her to stay on the sidelines. Cheryl
bilities, occasionally fills in as tech support. Mills, her former chief of staff at State, told
In an exchange with Clinton, revealed in the Clinton that “you don’t have to do this,” ac-
State Department e-mails, Abedin walks her cording to someone with knowledge of the
boss through a “secure” fax connection. The conversation. Maggie Williams was equally
subject line from Abedin to Clinton reads, forceful about her concerns. Her sentiment
“Can you hang up the fax line, they will was “I wish you wouldn’t do it,” this person
call again and try fax.” Clinton responds, “I said. A former Clinton aide laid out for me
thought it was supposed to be off hook to one rationale that circulated last year, argu-
work?” ing against a run: that Clinton had achieved
“Yes but hang up one more time. So they enough success as Secretary of State—“icon
can reestablish the line.” status”—to wash away all the bad memories
“I did.” of 2008. She could now have a global voice
C ON T I N U E D F ROM PAGE 157 to bring along “Just pick up phone and hang it up. And on any issue she wanted. If she ran for presi-
Sidney Blumenthal, a former reporter who leave it hung up.” dent again, she risked being dragged into the
had served in the Clinton White House and “I’ve done it twice now.” muck of a political campaign, and attacked,
been a senior adviser during her 2008 cam- At a celebration for Huma Abedin’s wed- and all of that aura of greatness would be
paign. Rahm Emanuel blocked the effort, ding, Clinton said, “I have one daughter. But if washed away.
mainly because Blumenthal had been so vi- I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma.” Mills, in particular, has become a focal
cious about Obama during the election. But point of the current campaign, even though
Clinton kept Blumenthal in a shadow ca- V. “You Don’t Have to Do This” she is not officially a part of it and may nev-
pacity, and he was employed by the Clinton
Foundation. From the evidence of the State
Department e-mails, he remained in close
T he precise moment that Hillary Clinton
decided to run for president a second
time is a matter of debate. A Saturday Night
er be. Like her former boss, Mills has come
under criticism from some members of the
House Select Committee on Benghazi, in
contact with Clinton. His tone is at once Live skit in March featured a sonogram of particular for what they characterize as her
sycophantic and preachy, and he weighs in Hillary in utero, waving a campaign sign. attempts to align talking points of various of-
on many subjects. He wrote Clinton with an But people close to Hillary say that she wa- ficials in the aftermath of the 2012 attack on
analysis, based on “an extremely sensitive vered for years about the decision to run in the U.S. diplomatic compound there. Mills,
source,” of the political situation in Libya. 2016. Some of the recently released e-mails like Abedin, was given special-government-
He described John Boehner, soon to be the indicate that Clinton had carefully watched employee status, an affiliation that allowed
House Speaker, as “louche, alcoholic, lazy, the political ambitions of other potential her, at the end of her tenure at the State
and without any commitment to any prin- candidates, such as David Petraeus, and Department, to continue working on Haiti
ciple.” He attempted to pull Clinton into ef- used her circle to gauge the political climate. reconstruction as special envoy. The status
forts to endorse Tony Blair for president of After her excruciating 2008 loss to Barack permits people to work for the government
the European Council and offered advice for Obama, she told people she would not run while pursuing careers in the private sector;
a speech she was delivering in Germany. In again. Eventually, aided by polling and re- Senator Chuck Grassley, who heads the Judi-
another e-mail, with the subject line “H: Yes, search carried out by the Dewey Square ciary Committee, has questioned Clinton’s use
there is a vast right wing conspiracy,” Blu- Group, a political consultancy where Min- of the program. Mills’s e-mails with Clinton
menthal forwarded Jane Mayer’s 2010 New yon Moore is a principal, which sketched a reveal a relationship far more egalitarian than
Yorker piece on the Koch brothers’ funding possible route to victory, she came around to is the case with other advisers. In one e-mail,
of right-wing causes. “Ah, a little lite vacation the idea. Moore had been an assistant to Bill Mills joked to Clinton about a video of her
reading!,” Clinton responded. Clinton when he was president and grew dancing: “You shake your tail feathers girl!”
One of Clinton’s most trusted aides is close to Hillary. She was a senior adviser in More than Abedin, Mills is an equal. She also
Huma Abedin, vice- chairwoman of the cur- the 2008 campaign. With roots in Chicago has a long history with the Clintons. In 1999,
rent campaign, who began her work with the and an expertise in state and local affairs, as deputy counsel to the president, she became
Clintons in 1996 as an intern. Abedin is as Moore is a key liaison with the African- something of a star during the impeachment
secretive as Clinton herself, if not more so, American community. When Clinton left the trial for defending Bill Clinton against allega-
and she is the primary gatekeeper. She often State Department, Moore told me, there was tions of obstruction of justice. “If you love the
forwards press coverage and other messages, “an instant hue and cry from many of her rule of law, you must love it in all of its appli-
highlighting once again the mediating mem- supporters” for her to run for president cations,” she argued. “You cannot only love it
brane that exists between Hillary and ordinary again. “But she had not had a chance to when it provides the verdict you seek.”
reality. Abedin is one of the State Department think, eat, sleep.” What she wanted to do Maggie Williams’s relationship dates back
employees who had a clintonemail.com e-mail was take some time to unwind. “If there is to the 1980s, when she was working at the
account, and in 2012, after she stepped down such a thing as normal for Hillary Clinton, Children’s Defense Fund and Clinton chaired
as deputy chief of staff, she was granted “spe- she wanted to do that,” Moore said. “She the board. Williams served not only as Hil-
cial government employee” status, which al- had to get that space.” Chelsea was thinking lary’s chief of staff when she was First Lady
lowed her to continue at the State Department about starting a family. The Clinton Founda- but at the same time as an assistant to Bill
while working as a consultant for the Clinton tion was always there as a comfortable roost. Clinton. She was the first person to hold both
Foundation and Teneo (a firm co-founded by During that time of contemplative unwind- positions at once. In 1995, in the middle of
Douglas Band, a former Clinton aide). That ing, Clinton made more than $12 million, the congressional hearings on Whitewater,
Abedin’s husband, former congressman An- according to Bloomberg, mostly from her Williams had to testify about her actions in
thony Weiner, was caught tweeting photos second memoir and by giving dozens of the immediate aftermath of Vince Foster’s
of his crotch and then lying about it adds a speeches to corporations and other groups. suicide. A Secret Service officer claimed
strange symmetry to Abedin’s relationship Chelsea did have a baby. And soon after, that he had seen Williams carrying folders
with Hillary Clinton. Clinton was largely decided. out of Foster’s office the night he was found;
a tearful Williams said she had not done so. J. Crew size out there. Everything she did is graced candidate John Edwards, and there
In 1997, after Bill Clinton was re-elected, Wil- actually human-scale stuff and totally relat- may be clues in that relationship to her bond
liams got married and decided to take off for able. It may not be completely on the level, with Hillary. Palmieri worked on both of Ed-
Paris with her husband, who would work at but it’s completely relatable.” But that’s not wards’s presidential campaigns, in 2004 and
the U.S. Embassy there while she did com- the problem, this official said. “It’s all the ob- 2008. According to testimony she gave during
munications consulting. But this didn’t mean fuscating and the ‘Fuck this shit’ attitude.” John Edwards’s 2012 trial—he was charged
a break with her former bosses. In the fall of That said, it’s worth noting that other govern- with using campaign funds to hide his preg-
1997, Bill Clinton flew Williams and some oth- ment employees manage to maintain a per- nant mistress, Rielle Hunter, and was later ac-
ers to Washington as a surprise for Hillary’s sonal account for personal matters and a gov- quitted on one count, with a mistrial declared
50th birthday. And just a short while later, ernment account for official business. Clinton on the others—Palmieri told Edwards to his
in 1999, Williams was back in the fold, along has come to acknowledge that the use of a face that she didn’t think he was telling the
with a few other formerly burned-out Clinton private e-mail account was something she re- truth about the paternity of Hunter’s child.
aides, helping Clinton as part of the explorato- gretted. She has also said that she is sorry She also testified that she had frequently told
ry committee for her Senate campaign. Then, that some people have found her actions Elizabeth Edwards, in moments when Eliza-
in the early 2000s, she worked for Bill again, “confusing.” She finally got around to plain- beth was in denial, that she thought her hus-
managing his Clinton Foundation staff. After old sorry in September, but only after months band was lying to her.
a short break, she returned in an attempt to of saying she did nothing wrong.
salvage Hillary’s nose-diving 2008 presiden- The persistence of the e-mail scandal has VII. Wounded Warrior
tial campaign. In June of 2014, Williams was
named the director of the Institute of Politics
at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
surfaced frustration among other Democrats
about the campaign’s inability to move on. Her
advisers have been second-guessed and nit-
W hatever the changes in her name, her
hair, her role, and her identity, Hillary
Clinton has always been a lightning rod.
picked about their responses. David Axelrod, From the moment she entered public life, she
VI. “Fuck This Shit” the former chief campaign strategist and senior has had people selling her softer side, start-
H illary Clinton’s campaign spent the

summer on its heels. In March 2015,
when The New York Times reported on Clin-
adviser to President Obama, defended her
team: “I’ve worked with a lot of these people,
and they are smart and talented. They didn’t
ing with her husband. She has always relied
on other people to open her “real” self up to
the public, because it is not a job she herself
ton’s exclusive use of a private e-mail account become less smart or talented overnight.” But is seemingly able or willing to do. On the rare
while secretary of state, it must have looked the bright lights on Clinton and her campaign occasions when it happens, it is an acci-
to many in the campaign a lot like every other affect all of them. dent—as when, this past summer, she spoke
middling scandal that Hillaryland had ever Going to battle with the press is still one of candidly backstage to organizers of a Black
dealt with. Her advisers seem to have a model Clinton’s most reliable fallback measures. In Lives Matter event, a conversation that was
that works for this kind of thing: (1) Make a late July, The New York Times published a sto- captured on a participant’s cell phone and
strong legal case. (2) Come out guns blazing. ry erroneously alleging that a criminal inquiry soon went public. In it, Clinton told activists
(3) Don’t yield an inch. was potentially being sought into Clinton’s use that they needed a specific agenda to get
The e-mail scandal is the perfect distillation of her private e-mail while secretary of state. more than “lip service.” When pressed, her
of how Hillary’s wall of protection makes mat- The Times tweaked the online story slightly voice hardened, and she said, “Look, I don’t
ters worse. Her exclusive use of the Clintons’ but significantly and didn’t issue a correction believe you change hearts. I believe you
personal e-mail server while secretary of state until later, clarifying that the inquiry was into change laws; you change allocation of re-
appears born out of a defensive instinct for “the potential compromise of classified in- sources; you change the way systems oper-
secrecy. The eye-rolling dismissiveness with formation in connection with” her e-mail ac- ate.” Clinton learned early, from experience,
which Clinton herself initially greeted the rev- count, not specifically into her. Soon after, the that honesty and candor rarely serve her well.
elation, and the stonewalling nature of the re- Times also conceded that the inquiry was not She prizes loyalty to the point that staffers
sponse by her surrogates, have only fed the criminal, either, and even issued an editor’s who can tell her what she doesn’t want to
scandal more oxygen. Before Clinton began at note, attempting to account for the errors. hear are notable exceptions to the rule. Be-
the State Department, she and her aides ar- Just as the story seemed to be dying down, cause she has been burned, exposed, misun-
ranged to create a private e-mail account on a Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications derstood, and mocked, she has grown ever
server linked to her home in Chappaqua. An director, sent a nearly 2,000-word letter to the more guarded. She listens to plenty of advis-
Obama-administration official whose tenure paper’s executive editor, accusing the Times of ers on policy issues, but on matters close to
coincided with Clinton’s at the State Depart- an “apparent abandonment of standard jour- home she is a student of her own history.
ment empathized with Hillary. “I understand nalistic practices.” When the paper did not And, as one administration official told me,
why she did this. We are targeted all the time publish Palmieri’s letter, the campaign then for all the troubles she faces, “There’s not a
in the U.S. government, and there is no more forwarded it to other media outlets. It didn’t single candidate out there who wouldn’t
vulnerable feeling than putting your thoughts escape notice that Palmieri’s letter was longer trade places with her.”
on a government e-mail.” In July, the Office than the initial article in the Times. According to current and former members
of Personnel Management said that two ma- Palmieri’s history with Hillary Clinton of the inner circle, there is something extremely
jor breaches last year of U.S.-government da- dates back to 1994, when she was special as- winning about Clinton that only these people
tabases potentially compromised sensitive in- sistant to Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s chief of see: her wit, her generosity, her intelligence,
formation involving at least 22 million federal staff. (It was at a birthday party for Palmieri or some combination of all of those things.
employees and contractors, together with in 1995 that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewin- Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary at State,
their families and friends. “If you are Hillary sky, a White House intern, made eye contact cited her loyalty, and “not just to the people
Clinton and coming into government, of as a prelude to their first sexual encounter.) who worked for her.” Despite the fierce battle
course she would use a personal e-mail ac- She eventually became a deputy press secre- with Obama during the 2008 campaign, her
count,” this administration official said. tary for Bill Clinton and later served as direc- State Department was decidedly quiet in any
When she finally handed over the e-mails, tor of communications for Obama. She is criticism of the White House: “She wouldn’t
she likely “erased stuff to protect her kid or best known in Washington for her ties to the tolerate it.” One of the most potent elements of
her husband. Maybe she doesn’t want her late Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of the dis- her personality is her woundedness, what she’s
The wall around Clinton has a self- Turing Test of whether Hillary is indeed herself.
Hillary Clinton sustaining, self-justifying nature. It may have There is a moment in the State Department
been built with an understandable purpose, e-mails when Cheryl Mills sends a Washington
been through, and how she soldiers on despite but it now exists partly because it has been Post story about a bank heist in Virginia where
all that. Her image as a “fighter” has become around for a long time, and living behind it has the assailant wore a Hillary Clinton mask. In
a central tenet of this current campaign, and for Clinton become a part of whatever “nor- response, Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall,
as much as she must want to shed her history mal” is for her. To a great degree, she is her deadpanned about his client: “She does, uh,
and its embarrassments, she would be nothing staff and her staff is she. Most politicians have an alibi, I presume?” Clinton wrote back,
without them. “She’s built up such an army maintain a separation between themselves and “Should I be flattered? Even a little bit?” Later,
of allies and allegiances that it’s very difficult the people who work for them. The staff’s rela- she seems to have begun to worry. “Do you
for her to hand over the strategic thinking to tionships with Hillary are co-dependent and think the guy chose that mask or just picked
one person,” the administration official told intertwined. They’ve been protecting her for so up the nearest one?” One wonders if that’s a
me. “It’s not about the parts—it’s the sum of long—sheltering her, telling her what to read question Clinton ever asks of herself.
the parts. A lot of what holds her back is this and what not to read, praising her, and occa-
unwieldy apparatus that doesn’t have a lot of sionally talking tough with her—it’s hard to tell Carlene Bauer contributed historical research
direction from her.” who is running things. This campaign is like a on Hillary Clinton and her advisers.
Kelly Rutherford panies, in addition to Google, including an candor,” calling her self-contradicting on
8.5-million-euro claim against A-Trust, a those same “employment situation” issues.
security-systems company. On the issue of the children’s emotional
continuity, the judge sounded breezy—yes,
I n the end, the Matthew Rich visa incident,

along with the fact that Rutherford had
left Giersch’s name off Helena’s birth cer-
they “have doctors and friends in New York
that they will not see as often as they have
in the past,” but “at this early age,” friends
tificate, would prove to be pivotal. In Beau- are not “irreplaceable.” She said the bur-
det’s 23-page tentative decision, rendered on den had been on Rutherford to prove that
August 28, 2012, she ordered Rutherford to “the health, safety or welfare of the children
put Giersch’s name on Helena’s birth cer- [would] be jeopardized” by their moving to
tificate, and she wrote that Rich “did more Europe (Giersch would reside in Monaco,
damage to not only Daniel but also to Kelly but his caretaking mother lives 45 minutes
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 6 5 Matthew Rich if not more so to her; but most importantly, away in Mougins, France) and that Ruther-
incident. He had earlier claimed she was sui- [it] took away one parent’s ability to be with ford hadn’t proved it. She gave Giersch even
cidal and homicidal. (“A complete lie!” says his children.” (She would render a similar more time to have the children before resi-
Rutherford.) He now called himself “the pri- but much more detailed permanent decision dential custody would be up for reconsidera-
mary caretaker” of the children, faced with on October 24, 2013.) tion than he’d requested.
the painful loss of time with them. Beaudet essentially gave residential cus- In effect, Beaudet had decided that the
In a subsequent deposition, Giersch in- tody to Giersch because, having had his visa children had a better chance of seeing their
voked the Fifth Amendment on key ques- revoked, he ostensibly could not re-enter the mother in Europe than of seeing their father
tions from Rutherford’s new lawyer, Lisa United States. Whether he could and can still in the United States. But that pragmatic rea-
Helfend Meyer, including whether he’d ever do so on his German passport is a question soning—based on the apparent stark reality
been arrested or been contacted by law en- shrouded by State Department privacy rules. of Giersch’s visa situation—only told half the
forcement about a possible criminal investi- Another of Rutherford’s lawyers, Wendy story. Beaudet also made her decision accord-
gation of him. Meyer called him “less than Murphy, claims that she has never seen any ing to which parent better facilitated the chil-
cooperative” and said he’d refused to answer proof that Giersch cannot enter the country dren’s bonding with the other—in lay terms,
at least 40 percent of her questions. As a on his passport alone (for the usual 90-day which parent seemed more accommodating
judge in a civil rather than a criminal matter, increments allowed to German citizens). to the other. Reversing her earlier position,
Beaudet had the discretion of drawing ad- Giersch’s lawyer, Hallin, says he has done ev- Beaudet took the fact that Rutherford had
verse or negative inferences from Giersch’s erything the State Department requires to try not forced Rich to cease his phone call to the
asserting of the Fifth Amendment. She did to re-obtain a visa. (The need for that effort State Department as evidence of her desire to
not do so. was part of Beaudet’s decision.) Murphy says undermine Giersch’s parental rights. (Ruth-
Indeed, there is much about Giersch that she has a State Department letter stating that erford says she was too stunned and that she
remains something of a mystery. Daniel Ri- a new visa application for Giersch is not in had been asked not to interrupt any lawyer.)
bacoff, a private investigator and the C.E.O. the pipeline. Beaudet held it against Rutherford that she
of International Investigative Group, Ltd. (a Beaudet wrote that she found Giersch to didn’t have pictures of Giersch in her home.
firm that has rescued kidnapped children and be “halting, overly technical and reluctant” She gave Giersch credit for buying an expen-
done sleuthing for media stars, C.E.O.’s, in his testimony, but she understood his hesi- sive present for Helena’s birthday and saying
and foreign royalty), did some investigat- tance to “make legal statements”—presum- it came from “Mama.” Using these examples
ing into Giersch. “The guy seems to have ably referring to his taking the Fifth—because and others, Beaudet ruled that Rutherford
made a good living suing people,” he said. he “may fear [they] could be used against him could not be trusted to facilitate the children’s
Giersch Ventures recently reported a four- by Kelly.” She added that his “financial and relationship with their father.
million-euro profit. Giersch’s company in- employment status”—the subject of much of Giersch moved the children abroad. A
vests in trademarks, patents, and domain his reluctance to answer—“are not at issue in tentative order cannot easily be appealed, so
names, and has initiated warnings and law- this case.” Rutherford was straitjacketed. It would be
suits for infringement to a number of com- Beaudet criticized Rutherford’s “lack of more than a year before Beaudet issued the
permanent order. By then, the clock toward Alan Dershowitz, Murphy filed a civil-rights pointed out the possibility of them was held
Monaco’s assumption of jurisdiction was al- lawsuit in the Court of Appeals for the Sec- against her and became grounds for her los-
ready ticking. ond Circuit on behalf of Hermes and Helena, ing her kids.
claiming their life abroad is a form of “invol-
Worst Decision Ever? untary expatriation,” which is unconstitution- Children in Exile
T he custody decision generated an unusu-

al amount of attention, including strong
opinions by lawyer-pundits. ABC News legal
al. (The court declined to pick up the case.)
Murphy—deeply cynical about the custody
court system and fond of the word “corrup-
I n May, things became, as Rutherford stated,
“confusing.” A California judge granted
Rutherford sole temporary custody. Subse-
analyst Dan Abrams’s take was headlined tion”—has been working around the clock quently, Giersch counterfiled and, according
TWO AMERICAN KIDS SHIPPED TO FRANCE IN for Rutherford, but, even with her creative to Murphy, any decision was put on hold un-
ONE OF THE WORST CUSTODY DECISIONS. EVER. ideas and proactivity, so much of the news til it could be determined whether or not Cali-
Just before Mother’s Day of this year, Ruther- has turned bad. By mid-September, Murphy fornia still had jurisdiction. (Giersch’s conten-
ford’s friend Sara Ell, who herself survived a was referring to herself not as Rutherford’s at- tion was that Monaco did.) In June, Monaco
grueling custody ordeal (but won), launched torney but as a “consultant” and Rutherford granted Rutherford the right to fly the children
a petition drive to “implore the Obama ad- was referring to the Monaco-based Donald to the United States for five weeks over the
ministration to return” Rutherford’s children Manasse as her lawyer. summer.
to the U.S. The drive surpassed the necessary “Divorce is a total racket—let’s call it what During those weeks she e-mailed me: “I
100,000 signatures a petition must have to it is,” Rutherford says. “Everyone’s making am so happy to be with my kids… Helena
be reviewed by the White House. On July 28, tons of money off of stupid people who don’t learned how to ride her bike and Hermes is
the White House responded: “Your petition settle out of court … And for somebody like playing electric guitar. We have been seeing
raises issues that appear to be the subject of my ex-husband, [who has] unlimited funds, friends [and] having play dates… We are all
ongoing legal proceedings, and that’s why who sued Google, this is just his sort of side relieved and happy.”
we’re declining to comment on it.” fun project.” But that was before the Los Angeles Supe-
Meanwhile, over the last three years, Ruth- One criterion explains why Rutherford lost rior Court dropped jurisdiction in mid-July.
erford has traveled to see her children about her children: a parent’s impeding, or even For a court to have made such a consequen-
every third weekend—more than 70 round- wanting to impede, or even appearing to im- tial custody decision and then ceded jurisdic-
trip visits in all. By the terms of Beaudet’s pede, the other parent’s access to their chil- tion might seem stunning to the losing parent.
decision, Giersch must pay for six round-trip dren. As Bernard Clair, a prominent Manhat- Then New York declined to pick up jurisdic-
coach tickets a year for her to travel back and tan divorce attorney who has had numerous tion. And so, on Friday, August 7, the day she
forth to Europe. But Rutherford was later famous clients, explains it, having read Beau- was to have put Hermes and Helena on the
able to secure permission for her children to det’s decision, “If you have a situation where, plane back to Monaco, Rutherford released a
fly back to New York with her for occasional from the micro level—a refusal to put the dad’s statement saying that she was keeping them.
visits. Provision for extra money for those tick- name on the birth certificate—to the macro Because “no state in this country is currently
ets was not included in Beaudet’s decision; level—‘Let’s get him the hell out of the coun- protecting my children,” she wrote, “it also
it comes out of Rutherford’s pocket. In May try!’—you find that one parent isn’t facilitating means that no state in this country currently
2013, she was forced to declare bankruptcy: the children seeing the other, then that parent requires me to send my children away.” She
seven years of lawyers’ fees (reportedly total- is dead in the water.” concluded, “I pray that officials in this coun-
ing $1.5 million), travel costs, and the lack Might it be time for what is sometimes try and in Monaco will agree that three years
of time and concentration to reboot her ca- called the “friendly parent” criterion to be in exile is a very long time in a child’s life, and
reer left her broke. “I sold everything—ev- jettisoned? Dorchen Leidholdt, the director that my children have a right to remain, once
ery stock, everything I owned,” she says. “I of legal services at New York’s Sanctuary and for all, in the United States.”
went through my pension; I was living in my for Families, thinks so. “Truth be told, few Giersch’s lawyer, Hallin, immediately blast-
friend’s maid’s room. My family helped me, parents engaged in a battle over custody are ed Rutherford in the press and contacted me
but they said, ‘You can’t keep this up, Kelly. ‘friendly parents,’ ” she told me. According via e-mail. “It is an unbelievable event that
Nobody’s gonna keep up with it. It’s a money to Leidholdt, wielding this unreal yardstick— Kelly has now turned herself into a felon,”
pit.’ ” Although they have Skyped daily, Ruth- forcing mothers and fathers into “niceness” Hallin wrote. “[She] has kidnapped the chil-
erford says she and her children were able to under penalty of loss of their kids—can mean dren… Child abduction is a crime, and ev-
see each other only 11 days from June 2014 that judges can all too easily overlook larger eryone involved in kidnapping or abducting
through June 2015. considerations, even questionably legal acts. the children will face the appropriate legal
In the meantime, she has been living in a She also suggests that this criterion can un- consequences.” Four days later, New York
tiny Manhattan apartment, and her career has fairly impact mothers, as they tend to be the State Supreme Court justice Ellen Gesmer,
been in a holding pattern (scattershot TV ap- primary caretaker during separation and di- acting on a writ of habeas corpus filed by Hal-
pearances and the recent Syfy-channel movie vorce, and, as such, have more opportunities lin, ordered Hermes and Helena to be imme-
Night of the Wild) since Gossip Girl ended its and inclination for proprietariness, protective- diately turned over to Giersch’s mother, who
run, in 2012. She has long been unable to af- ness, and distrust, all of which can be used was already sitting in the courtroom, three
ford any more child-custody lawyers. Ruth- against them later in a custody battle. This is plane tickets in hand.
erford has been represented for a year, pro not to say that fathers don’t also have a hard
bono, by Murphy, a women’s-, children’s-,
and victims’-rights lawyer. The Boston-based
Murphy calls herself an “impact litigator.” A
time. “Although I have experienced monu-
mental strides being made by the legal system
concerning father equality,” Clair says, “there
N ow the children are back in Monaco,
where Rutherford flew to visit them when
they started school. To walk her kids to school
tough-minded, tack-sharp zealot, she gives remains a lingering whiff of prejudice against for a few days—Rutherford wonders how her
her all to her clients. She once took her two- even good dads in many contested custody early years of loving, daily, dutifully shared
day-old baby (she has five children) to court cases.” parenting have been reduced to these sad, tiny
rather than miss the chance to ensure a bat- At any rate, Judge Beaudet made any visa slices of visitation.
tered woman safety (and, incidentally, make irregularities immaterial. But the fact that Lawyer-pundits have predicted that she
case law). In May, with an initial assist from Rutherford sat still while Rich theatrically will end up, at best, with supervised visitation,
the graceful resignation of one who had lost gether at the Polo Bar in June. “My children
Kelly Rutherford something that, in her youth, she never even and I have lost years of dailiness. How do you
expected was losable. For it is true: most moth- get those years back?” Her plaintiveness was in
which is the standard fate of so-called nonresi- ers feel that their young children are their own, such contrast to the carefree élan of everyone
dential parents who have defied a court order. that they belong to them, even if they made bad else in the room, it seemed piped in from an-
One legal analyst, Lisa Green, speaking on the decisions in a heated custody fight. Decades of other world—a world of sorrow, now redoubled.
Today show, went as far as to suggest that Ruth- feminism have done little to change this. But I also remember something else Ruth-
erford should go on a “judicial apology tour.” But aside from that unshakable motherly erford said, words that suggest the battle is not
When I last spoke with Rutherford, shortly possessiveness, there’s a deep sadness. I remem- over: “There is no way I am not going to fight
after the kids flew back to Monaco, she exuded ber something Rutherford said when we sat to- to get my children back.”
Michelin Stars Side, and two restaurants in Las Vegas. Before he dropped out of school to earn money for a
he opens a new restaurant, he plans the food $2,000 racing bicycle. The only place he could
to fit the neighborhood. “I spent many days find a job was in a restaurant kitchen, chop-
standing in the street,” he explains. “I see all ping vegetables. While there, he learned how
the people walking—I see what they eat, where to make hollandaise and how to debone a pig.
they’re going, what they wear. Then I create the As a young man he graduated to what was then
kind of menu that works for this location.” He a three-star restaurant, Le Pont de Brent, near
notes that on New York’s Madison Avenue “the Lake Geneva, where he was mentored by chef
people are fashionable, very thin, they move Gérard Rabaey. The rest is history: Eleven Mad-
quickly. So I designed a fish pasta—100 percent ison Park is ranked No. 5 in the latest World’s
fish, no gluten, no wheat—only for Madison 50 Best Restaurants, the only New York restau-
people. They love it.” rant listed in the Top 10. (Le Bernardin comes
He was 12 when he began cooking in his in next, at No. 18, then Per Se, at No. 40.)
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 7 3 added. “You have home in Japan, helping his father and mother’s Will Guidara, who is Humm’s business part-
to really be an independent personality. You catering business deliver sashimi to neighbors, ner, grew up in the restaurant trade. His father,
have to be somewhat solitary but also work as for weddings, wakes, and funerals. He remem- Frank Guidara, was for 10 years the president
part of a team. You have to be comfortable din- bers a dish called kai, which is sea bream: of the restaurant division of Restaurant Associ-
ing alone. Most of the time, I think, inspectors “It’s a kind of happiness. Twelve inches of sea ates, the fabled company from the Mad Men
all live in a perpetual state of paranoia. That’s bream, grilled. If there are a hundred people era that once owned Tavern on the Green, the
the job: the C.I.A. but with better food.” at the wake, we’d grill a hundred pieces.” He Four Seasons, Forum of the Twelve Caesars,
worked in Tokyo’s renowned Sushi-Ko before La Fonda del Sol, and Brasserie. They were
Cooking Up a Storm moving to Los Angeles, where he eventually the inventors of the theme restaurant in New
O f the six three-star restaurants in New York,

five of them are in Manhattan: Masa,
Eleven Madison Park, Le Bernardin, Per Se,
opened Ginza Sushi-Ko, one of the city’s most
expensive restaurants, which he owned for
nearly 20 years. “Then [California restaurateur]
York. “In my era,” Frank recalls, “Michelin
stars were unobtainable outside of Europe, and
pretty much outside of France.”
and Jean Georges. Masa, in the Time Warner Thomas Keller called me. He said, ‘We have a Back then the restaurants in New York were
building, at 10 Columbus Circle, on the same new project in the Time Warner building.’ ” run by the maître d’s, such as Henri Soulé, at
floor as Thomas Keller’s Per Se, is the only su- Attempting to explain why Japan has more Le Pavillon, or Sirio Maccioni, at Le Cirque.
shi restaurant in New York to have earned three Michelin restaurants than any other country, The chef was little more than an employee, and
stars. Masayoshi Takayama is the owner, creator, Takayama says, “We are always looking for the food was often beside the point. “There was
and chef. The room is small, with only 26 seats, beauty, simplicity, and detail… The Japanese no incentive to become a cook—all the incen-
and I entered through a massive door opened have a philosophy in all of their best things— tive existed in becoming a restaurateur,” recalls
by a welcoming Japanese woman. looking to make them better, better, better… Will. But that all changed in the decades that
Chef Takayama, 61, a tall, youthful-looking Early morning when I wake up, I’m cooking in followed. Today chefs at two-star restaurants
man with a shaved head, sat at a table while an my head. I can smell the cooking, even in bed. generally make six-figure salaries, and celebrity
assistant poured green tea into tiny cups. The I can taste it, I can feel the texture. The Mi- chefs make tens of millions a year.
restaurant was designed by the chef—including chelin people realize how beautifully done, how When Will started working service in fine
a small pond, and an impressive sushi bar that perfectly done—all the details. But the real crit- dining the chefs terrified him. “I tried not to
cost $60,000. “It’s hinoki wood,” Takayama ex- ics,” he adds, “are the people… They judge. get yelled at by the chef. I found that in fine
plained, “which is the wood used in a Japanese Every single day I have to hit the home run.” dining, the higher up the food chain you got,
shrine. It’s very special, especially the smell—it’s the more maniacal and tyrannical the chef was
beautiful. Very dense, very hard wood, white,
clean. That’s the spiritual wood.”
Such spirituality doesn’t come cheap. Din-
F or quite a while, Eleven Madison Park had
only one star, chef Daniel Humm explains,
“and people thought we were underrated, but
becoming.” He subsequently worked for the
famed New York restaurateur Danny Meyer
(who owns Union Square Café, Gramercy Tav-
ner at Masa can run around $500 a person I never cared. I almost appreciated being the ern, and Shake Shack, among others), helping
and might feature kue flown in from Kyushu restaurant that was underrated—it’s kind of a him open restaurants at the Museum of Mod-
Island—“a very, very rare fish available only beautiful place to be. It’s a lot easier to exceed ern Art. Two and a half years later, Meyer had
eight weeks out of the year, only in the winter- expectations. Then Michelin moved us from his vision for Eleven Madison Park, housed
time. It costs $2,000 for 12 pounds of fish. It one to three, right away. You can’t deny it—it’s on the ground floor of the Metropolitan Life
has a really extraordinary taste—it’s an amazing an unbelievable feeling to get three Michelin North Building. “Danny came to me,” Will
fish,” explains Takayama. stars… It was a goal so big that I was afraid recalls, “and said, ‘What about Eleven Madi-
The chef also has the restaurant Kappo of even the thought.” Humm’s restaurant ca- son Park?’ So, I was like, ‘Dude, I told you I
Masa, on Madison Avenue on the Upper East reer began when, as a 14-year-old Swiss boy, didn’t want anything to do with fine dining!’ ”
But meeting Daniel Humm changed his believes that Michelin still has power. “Even The His first restaurant in New York, Bar Blanc,
mind. “I believe he’s one of the best chefs in New York Times very often in its reviews refers which opened in 2007 in the West Village,
the world. He became my closest friend,” says to the stars that a restaurant has in Michelin.” didn’t survive the economic downturn. He
Will. It helped that the two men decided early The tasting menu at Le Bernardin runs $170 went to Brooklyn somewhat reluctantly, feel-
on that “the kitchen and the dining room need- per person, or $260 with wine pairing, and can ing that Manhattan was “where it was at,”
ed to play nice together. That’s not often the include barely cooked scallop, warm peekytoe but then he met and clicked with Moe Issa,
case in restaurants like this… It’s mostly like Maryland lump crab with shaved heirloom now his business partner. They opened their
an arranged marriage, but for us it’s true love.” cauliflower, wild striped bass, and coconut industrial-style restaurant, and in 2014 it be-
Dinner at Eleven Madison Park might in- yuzu sorbet. came the first in Brooklyn to receive three
clude slow-cooked halibut with clams and sor- stars. Given its small size and lack of atten-
rel or slow-baked venison with beets and onions.
The tasting menu, at $225 per person, fea-
tures such delicacies as seared foie gras with
‘B rooklyn is booming!” Michael Ellis says en-
thusiastically, but right now there’s only one
three-star Michelin restaurant there: Chef’s Table
tion to “the front of the house” (i.e., the din-
ing room), you might say that Chef’s Table
helped bring Michelin into the 21st century.
Brussels sprouts and eel. at Brooklyn Fare, where “it’s not the décor, it’s Its 18 seats are situated sushi-bar-style around
the food,” says 44-year-old chef César Ramirez, the kitchen, where chef Ramirez and his staff
‘O n June 11, 1991, I walked into the kitchen at

Le Bernardin, and I never left,” says chef
Eric Ripert, perhaps the most famous of famous
from the small Mexican town of Zimapán,
about five hours north of Mexico City, known
for its barbacoa: lamb or goat cooked overnight
prepare their meals. Gone are the linen table-
cloths, the table settings that look as if they are
waiting for dinner to be served at Versailles.
chefs due in part to his presence on television on in an earthen pit. Zimapán is where “the mata- Ellis insists that Michelin has adapted to
the popular show Top Chef and appearances dors used to come from Spain,” recalls Ramirez. changing times, putting less emphasis on décor
on Anthony Bourdain: No and more emphasis on
Reservations and The Lay- the quality of the food and
over, and in cameos on recognizing the vibrancy
HBO’s New Orleans– of restaurant venues other
themed series, Treme. than the traditional ones,
Le Bernardin began life Manhattan and Paris. The
in Paris in 1972, founded inspector we spoke with
by Gilbert Le Coze and concurred: “The stars are
his sister, Maguy. It was awarded for what’s on the
named after a lullaby plate. It doesn’t have to be
their father used to sing in an overly opulent set-
to them. A second Le ting,” she said.
Bernardin opened in New Specializing in French-
York in 1986. When Gil- Japanese cuisine, Chef’s
bert died suddenly of a Table has a prix fixe din-
heart attack at age 49 in ner of $306 per person
1994, Ripert succeeded including service charge,
him as head chef. Now and might feature Hok-
50, he and his eight sous- kaido sea urchin with
chefs devote an hour each black truffle and toast-
TASTING VENUE
day to experimenting. It’s Le Bernardin restaurant, in New York City.
ed brioche, or Ossetra
the only time they don’t have to worry about caviar with crispy potato and dashi sabayon.
“consistency”—the great buzzword in Michelin.
“We start with the mentality of saying, ‘No idea
is ridiculous.’ So whatever we do, even if it’s dis-
gusting, we don’t feel bad about it.”
“I remember as a kid I wanted to be a bull-
fighter, because they used to come all the time
to eat at my grandmother’s house. She was a
T hough chef Boulud admits that it hurt him
and his team to lose a star, he still trusts Mi-
chelin. “I hope they will continue to watch me
“I think it’s a mistake to be obsessed with very, very good cook.” The family moved to closely and see the changes I’ve continued to
ratings,” Ripert says. “It’s like an actor who be- Chicago, where Ramirez grew up. Instead of make… I have seen two presidents at Michelin,
comes obsessed with winning the Oscar and he going to cooking school, he apprenticed at sev- I have seen eight food critics at The New York
forgets about acting… When I wake up in the eral Chicago restaurants, working his way up to Times, and I’m still standing, taking pleasure ev-
morning and I come to work, I don’t think about sous-chef at the Ritz Carlton. In 1998, Ramirez ery day at what I do… I accept the loss, but I
DA NI E L KR I EG ER
stars and ratings—Michelin or The New York moved to New York, and it was love at first sight. will not accept for my team to think we are now
Times. I’m busy running the restaurant, men- “When I landed, I knew I was meant to be here. disqualified as the best restaurant in New York,
toring, and living my passion.” Nonetheless, he I just knew—the energy and everything!” and in America. Vas-y!”
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PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE
George
TAKEI
The Star Trek alumnus and L.G.B.T. rights activist makes his Broadway debut
this fall at 78 in the musical Allegiance, based on his own life.
Here he reflects on Pope Francis, internment camps, and green-tea ice cream
W hat is your idea of

perfect hap-
piness? I
don’t know about per-
fect, but a creamy scoop
What is your most treasured pos-
session? Good health. What is your
favorite occupation? I love being an
actor. What is your most marked char-
acteristic? Intellectual curiosity—which
of green-tea ice cream some call nosiness. What do you regard as
comes fairly close. the lowest depth of misery? Internet fo-
What is your greatest rums. What is the quality you most
fear? There’s no point like in a man? Hunkiness. What
living at my age with is the quality you most like in a
many ingrained great fears. woman? Intelligence. What is the
Though I do have that dream trait you most deplore in others?
that I walk out onto the stage Impatience and temper. Enough
nude. Does that count? Which already! Who are your favorite
living person do you most admire? writers? Arthur Miller, Tennessee Wil-
Pope Francis, who left the Vatican to wash the liams, William Faulkner, Eugene O’Neill,
feet of non-believers. Which talent would you Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, William
most like to have? It’d be nice to be what they Shakespeare. Who are your heroes in real
call a Renaissance man. Which words or phrases life? The men and women of NASA. Unsung he-
do you most overuse? Oh my. I don’t know. What roes, truly. What is it that you most dislike? End-
is your greatest regret? I once argued with my ings. What is your favorite journey? The journey
father about why he let the government put us of humankind, ever toward its destiny among the
all in internment camps instead of protesting. I stars. On what occasion do you lie? Weddings
said he’d led us like sheep to slaughter. He replied, and funerals. How would you like to die? Like
“Maybe you’re right,” then got up and went to his my grandmother, who died in her sleep at 104.
room and shut the door. I had hurt him, deeply. I If you were to die and come back as a person
never apologized. In a way, my show, Allegiance, or thing, what do you think it would be? I’d
is my own way of saying, “Daddy, I’m sorry.” come back as the dog of a gay couple. They
What or who is the greatest love of your life? have it great. What is your motto? “Boldly go
I’m in trouble if I don’t say my husband, Brad. where no one has gone before.”
202 VANI T Y FA I R www.vanityfair.com I L L U STRAT IO N BY RISKO N OVEMB ER 2015

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DONALD TRUMP : A JOKER WHO HILLARY’S WOMEN : POLITICS’

DOESN’T GET THE JOKE K I N S L E Y

MICHAEL THE MOTHER OF ALL

MEETS HOW TOP CHEFS FIGHT THE

Everyone’s “Bad Girl” Talks Music, Sex, and

149 SWINGING ON A CENTURY

150 V.F. PORTRAIT: BARTLETT SHER

152 FORTRESS HILLARY By SARAH ELLISON

158 SCHOOL SPIRIT

160 IRRECONCILABLE DISTANCES By SHEILA WELLER

with her ex. Photograph by Claiborne Swanson Frank.

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166 AT LONG LAST KING

168 THE FAULT IN THEIR STARS By SAM KASHNER

173 BETTER INSTALL SAUL

174 BOND’S TRIPLE PLAY

176 THE WHITE STUFF By MICHAEL LEWIS

190 OLÉ FOR HOLLYWOOD!

S A I NT A N THO N Y HA L L P HOTO GRA P HE D BY J O NAT HA N B E CK ER . R UT HE RF O RD P HOTO GR A PHE D BY C L A I BO RNE

DA F Y DD J O N ES ( S HA N D) . I L LU STR ATI O N BY R IS KO . F O R DE TA I L S , G O TO VF. CO M/ CR E DITS

FANFAIR & FAIRGROUND

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101 AROUND THE WORLD, ONE PARTY AT A TIME

114 FOOL’S PARADISE By MICHAEL KINSLEY

118 THE UNTAMED ARISTOCRAT By BOB COLACELLO

L I P HOTO GR A PHE D BY CL A I B OR NE SWA N S ON F R A NK ; CL OTHI N G BY BOTTE GA VE N ETA . DAVI S P HOTO GRAPHE D

case raises intriguing questions. Photographs by

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society very seriously, which was part of

his charm,” Colacello says. Shand

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KATHRYN MACLEOD &

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