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I was watching Behind Office Doors (1931), starring Mary Astor and Ricardo Cortez, and there was a catchy bit of dialogue that caught my ear.
Astor's witty but hardworking and competent Mary Linden is discussing a brash young salesman she likes with Delores Kogan, a cynical flapper type who's less enamored with him, played by an actress named Kitty Kelly.
Delores: You're goofy about him.Mary: (wistfully) Maybe.
Delores: Aw, he don't even know you wear silk stockings.
I like that. Where one might expect to hear the pedestrian and familiar "He don't even know you're alive," that much more clever riposte is pleasing on several levels.
The divine Kitty Carlisle has died at the age of 96, and that's left me feeling a little blue.
She was the quintessence of a certain kind of accessible sophistication that I very much associate with New York in the six decades of the last century. (I'd like to think my beloved burg still manages that intricate mixture of elegance and down-to-earthiness she represented, but I fear it's less true than once it was.)
Hers was the New York of The New Yorker, of Broadway first nights, of tobacco company-sponsored game shows seen in flickering black-and-white that featured elegantly attired panelists trading civilized and witty bon mots while trying to guess what a common Joe or Jill did for a living.
I met Ms. Hart once. She had an inherent decency that was immediately apparent upon encountering her. She was, despite her charmed life and elevated station, just a regular gal, bless her heart. She couldn't have been lovelier to me during our brief encounter, even agreeing to allow me to interview her at some future date.
That interview won't happen now, alas -- not in this lifetime.
Au revoir, Kitty. Rest well.
Manhattan User's Guide's daily email today recommends the following web site:
Enclosures: Photographs of Manhattan -- Irwin Klein 1964-69
Klein did some very interesting work, and the site's well worth the surf.