Take Four : Customer, Publicist, Columnist, and “Let’s do lunch, Elaine”

Amy Phillips Penn

I ALWAYS LOVED going to Elaine’s.

I don’t remember the exact date that I went there, but it was sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Glory Days.

I didn’t meet Elaine until years later, which was fine with me. She sat with her favorites, changed tables when the mood struck, and had no idea that I was alive. She didn’t radiate “warm and fuzzy,” and I was happy to keep a respectful distance.

When I first went to Elaine’s, it was as someone’s “date.” Whether it was at Elaine’s, 21, aka. the numbers, or Le Club, most of the women took an invisible note as to where they were seated. It was a reflection on their date’s allure, not theirs.

There were unspoken rules at Elaine’s, such as “please do not feed or interrupt the celebrities,” but I was oblivious.

I broke that rule before I knew it was a rule.

On my way out of Elaine’s, dressed in a maxi raincoat and floppy brown suede hat, and feeling very Annie Hall, I went over to Woody Allen’s table and announced that I had a screenplay that I wanted him to see.

I was in my twenties and believed that New York held no barriers especially when it came to writers and artists and lovers of New York like the brilliant Woody Allen.

Artists of all kinds seemed so approachable, then. The art world was booming into pop, op, and anything goes, punched with price tags as bold as a Jackson Pollock.

At museum openings, casual Saturday New York gallery going, art auctions at Sotheby’s and parties in the East Hampton, artists and writers mingled with the rest of us, flaunting no attitudes of superiority for the most part. They had all dreamed the dream once.

Woody was extremely gracious.

He told me where to send the script.

“Are you sure that I can’t send it to you?”

I was twenty, and felt that you could ask for the moon, and that it just might RSVP favorably. Everyone needs a break, and writers and artists know better than to miss their moment. Embarrassment is a small dividend for having your words published, or echoed on screen.

The screenplay had evolved in my parent’s New York kitchen. My mother had painted the walls an electric yellowish orange, which by proxy vote, we had all declared frightening. She and I had visited a famous psychic, who had described the love of my life, who I had (and have) yet to meet.

We decided to write a satirical screenplay about it. The heroine is looking for her prince-to-be, and who could be funnier in that role than Woody Allen? Since he doesn’t even know that I exist, the mother and daughter decide to stage a fake kidnapping and leave them on an island for a few days. Naturally they fall in love. The best laid plans . . . But they manage to get kidnapped for real. No one pays the ransom, because they think it’s part of the plan. The two lovers are shot. The credits read: “Better Life Next Life” or “The Girl Who Cried Love,” on the chalk outlines of their bodies.

Just another New York slice of black humor.

Sometime in the late seventies, I was working for a small publicity firm named Gifford-Wallace. It was run by a husband-and-wife team, Michael (the wife) and her husband, Ed Gifford. They were a small, but powerful team. Their clients had included: Hair, Godspell, Studio 54 (from day one), Metromedia TV, and other prime accounts.

My assignment was to go into Elaine’s with a Metromedia camera crew and organize a segment on Elaine’s. The Giffords had called ahead to Elaine to let her know that we were coming.

It was a torrential night. I arrived drenched, but on time. The camera crew was there.

In my best New York girl school manners, I politely asked Elaine where we should set up. She roared at me, a lioness predator in high hormonal gear.

“Do what your boss told you to do.”

No, “please, thank you, or would you like anything to drink?”

What stratosphere was I in and who did you have to cozy up to get out?

Shimmying, in a loose Mumu style dress, this more than ample woman, all but gathered up Woody Allen and a few other customers. Like a mother cat, she was saving her kittens from getting wet by throwing them into the downpour escorted by a chauffeur and waiting limo.

After we finished our assignment, we left without saying goodbye to Elaine. The crew from Metromedia gave me a ride home in their truck. Someone passed around a joint, and soon I was home, the gruff, dismissive woman I had tried to make friends with was soon forgotten.

Sometime in the late seventies and early eighties, I freelanced as an assistant to the world renowned society/fashion columnist Eugenia Sheppard. I covered parties, movie screenings, younger Manhattan, and pretty much anything I chose that did not conflict with Eugenia’s priorities.

When Eugenia died, I was honored to carry on her column with my own byline. I had become a syndicated New York society columnist. I gleaned instant respect, nonstop invitations to everywhere and anything, and a parcel of power, New York style.

I don’t know if Elaine and I were ever officially introduced, but I do remember her next words to me after I had written about Elaine’s in my column.

“Thanks for the plug,” she said when I came in for dinner.

The roar was reserved for elsewhere.

I have arrived.

Elaine feels free to plop someone down at our table. I’m sitting at a table at Elaine’s with my friend Patrick Shields.

Patrick was the six-foot-seven director of Le Club, a private dinner club, which hosted Caroline and John Jr. Kennedy’s birthday party on the same night.

Jackie O wrote Patrick a handwritten thank-you note. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was buried with it.

Can you stand it?

One night, when I was sitting with my friend Harvey Kirk, a publicist for the Giffords and Studio 54, Elaine came over to the table.

John Lennon wants to know if he can get into Studio 54.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Harvey, and went back to his pasta.

David Black and Barbara Weisberg’s wedding. Alec Baldwin is the best man.

Photo provided by David Black.