Mingling with the guests at the Origins First Irish Theatre Festival Launch party I spotted Yoel and Avram Weisshauss — two bearded Satmars. I asked in Yiddish: “Vos epes. farvos zaynd ir do?” (“Why are you here?”) Both answered me with a Yiddish-style shrug. Held at Mutual of America’s Park Avenue headquarters and hosted by its…
I first met Joan Rivers — who died at 81 on September 4th — as a zaftig comedienne in a fringed black dress as she warmed up the audience at an April 1966 Virginia Graham TV Show on which I was a guest along with Gloria de Haven. A few months later we met at the…
Elaine Stritch, who died on July 17 at 89, was as feisty off-stage as on— whether belting out the the ode to imbibing: “The Ladies Who Lunch” or the survival anthem “I’m Still Here!.” A presence at many a New York City bash, she was a participant in the November 17, 2003 “Stella By Starlight”…
“Most men need one woman to keep ‘em straight — I need four — and these are all nurses, Dr. Mark Kris, an honoree at the 31st Annual Calvary Hospital Gala, told the 400 black tie guests at The Pierre. The lead physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering — IBM Watson Collaboration Attending Physician Memorial Hospital,…
When is a swan not a swan? The question raises mental images of Correggio’s 1531 painting of a nude woman with a swan on her lap, his elongated neck between her naked breasts or William Butler Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan.” But for the answer you need to go to Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s latest…
I first met Maya Angelou, who died on Wednesday May 27, in June, 1990 at the American Booksellers Convention at a press conference held at Washington’s Shoreham Hotel at which the towering Angelou got a roaring standing ovation from the press corp. The former dancer and actor, author, civil rights activist, poet and academic charmed,…
When I recently called Chana Mlotek about an obscure song of a girl weaving sandals, within a nanosecond, she gave me the song’s provenance, lyricist and composer. On November 4 she died at 91. Chana was among the few of a generation to call me by the diminutive Mashele — we shared a more than…
Columnist Masha Leon, who has covered social events for the Forverts and then the Forward for more than 30 years, was honored Thursday night by the government of Poland for her articles and other work that have helped further the understanding of Polish-Jewish lives, history and culture. The president of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, pinned a…
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