NEW YORK: When We Were Very Young

Shakespeare might have made it up—but only after a short course in modern publicity methods. Wealthy Manhattan Attorney Walter R. Herrick didn't want his 20-year-old daughter Eileen to marry a dark-haired cafe socialite named George Lowther III. Romeo Lowther, a Yale man, would not be stopped. He hired a lawyer, made Parent Herrick produce his sheltered daughter in court, announced that they would elope if he had to get a fire department tower truck backed up against the Herrick apartment, finally collaborated with the tabloid Daily News to spirit Eileen off and marry her.

All this happened back in 1939—when...