"Bostonians are an elegantly athletic lot," began the story in the New York Times. "They prove it periodically by swirling, twirling and swooping about in graceful dance patterns until beads of perspiration materialize on their aristocratic brows." The byline belonged to Charlotte Curtis, 36, a supercharged, auburn-haired divorcee who probably ranks as the first society reporter in journalistic history to publish the fact that proper Bostonians sweat.
The Times's Curtis was covering an upper-crust Waltz Evening in Boston's Sheraton Plaza Hotel, and she could not resist noting that the ballroom temperature steadily ascended from 59° to 64°, impelled by all that genteel exertion. Nor did she refrain from logging the other leisure pursuits of Mrs. E. Sohier Welch, patroness and architect of the bash. In her spare time, reported Society Reporter Curtis, Mrs. Welch crusades against billboards, litterbugs, and "laws that prevent the sale of birth control devices in Massachusetts."
One-Line Profile. Until Charlotte Curtis made the scene, this sort of irreverent high-society coverage seldom got into type. By tradition, practice, choice and affinity, the typical society reporter gossips about her sources in their own terms. The Times's girl on the beat studies her subjects with the detachment of a professional sociologist.
Before descending on Boston last week, she classified Miami as "a youthful city of indeterminate social standing" with "the third largest Jewish population in the world." Then she proceeded promptly to her point: "However, there are no Jewish members in the Surf Club, the Bath Club or the Indian Creek and La Gorce Clubs." When the Miami News, which subscribes to the New York Times News Service, reprinted the Curtis story, it scrupulously deleted that part of it. In a profile on Los Angeles society, Miss Curtis needed only one line to show how that city tends to view the U.S. She merely quoted the party host, who, on being told that the young Angeleno at his elbow had just entered Harvard, responded: "What's the matter? Couldn't you get into Stanford?"
Against Copelessness. Charlotte Murray Curtis' society reporting blends a proper background with the perspective of the competent reporter. Born of strong-willed and well-to-do parents—her mother, who served in the U.S. Legation in Switzerland, was the first woman to be admitted to the U.S. Foreign Service—Charlotte grew up in Columbus, Ohio, talked her way into summer assignments for the Citizen (now the Citizen-Journal) while still at Vassar. "She had the disposition of a thoroughbred—overtrained, overbred and tense," recalls a colleague still on the paper. "She had a pride in being able to cope. She was against copelessness."