Class

Good Afternoon.

I dug out an old DVD of The Eddy Duchin Story last night, along with a box of Kleenex. For those of you under the age of seventy, Eddy Duchin was what was known as a society pianist during the Thirties and Forties in New York. He had his own orchestra and played for the rich and famous at their really swell parties. He married one of the very upper crust, a gorgeous young women named Marjorie who wasn't supposed to have anything to do with him but fell madly in love with the guy. Good for her. She died shortly after the birth of their only child, Peter, who ultimately followed in his father's footsteps and became a society pianist.

The entire movie is a tearjerker. There's the death of the wife, the rejection of a young boy by a grief-stricken father, a reconciliation, a second marriage to the boy's beautiful governess, and the untimely death of Duchin from leukemia. Most of the film is set in elegant, glamorous New York with the fashions, cars, mansions, and ballrooms of the era. Add to all of that nostalgia the music of Cole Porter and other composers who wrote love songs that people could actually hum in the shower. The musical arrangements in the movie are lush and designed to make people of my age flat out lose it, and that's before people start dying all over the place. They don't write songs like that anymore with real melodies and sappy, corny lyrics. I like a little sap and corn once in awhile.

They also don't dance like that anymore. New Yorkers, the ones with some dough in the bank, used to get all dressed up in the gowns and tuxedoes for an average Saturday night of sipping champagne and doing the fox trot. Everybody wanted to live like that, if they were honest, and to that end, mothers enrolled their children, both boys and girls, in ballroom dancing classes. At the place I attended for a couple of years, the girls wore chintz or taffeta party dresses and the boys wore gray slacks, white shirts, navy blue blazers, and plain maroon ties. All of us had to wear short white gloves so there would be no fleshly contact that might prematurely encourage a little curiosity, but that didn't mean we weren't getting a feel for what was out there. The women who taught the class wore ball gowns, almost always strapless with tea-length tulle skirts, and the mothers sat in the gallery in their wool dresses and felt hats with a feather or two. Their fragrances like My Sin and Evening in Paris drifted subtly onto the dance floor, just enough to be noticed, and the sights and smells of the weekly classes fostered the beginning of my campaign to dump the patent leather shoes and white cotton socks and graduate to flats or maybe something with a little heel and silky, sheer nylons. I wanted to smell good and I wanted lipstick, even if it had to be a delicate, innocent pink for the moment. It'd be awhile before any boy worth

the mention would notice me, but it was a start.

I first saw The Eddy Duchin Story at the Allyn theater in Hartford, Connecticut. I was only twelve but after the movie, I wanted to be like the people who looked and lived like that. I got a taste of it in college when we'd go to the Cafe Carlyle in New York, order a bowl of vichyssoise and a glass of bubbly, and listen to George Feyer play the piano. I've never completely recovered. Elegance and glamor have their place or at least they did at one time.

Best regards,

Elisabeth