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Charity has long been a broad, well-traveled bridge over which the Outs have made their way toward the Ins. For one thing, a Good Cause helps adjust the American conscience to the sin of pleasure; Boston's Old Guard ladies still meet to gossip in "Sewing Circles," though the original pretense, sewing for the poor, has long since been abandoned. There are more modern advantages in having an eleemosynary excuse for an enchanted evening: 1) costs are tax-exempt contributions, and 2) the socially ambitious will write big checks and work furiously for the chance to rub elbows with those who have arrived. Credit-by-association is used as a negotiable commodity by many of the Old Guard to do good in the world. "The very social Mrs. Lytle Hull," observes Society Photographer Jerome Zerbe, "is so obsessed by her pet charity, the Musicians' Emergency Fund, that she'd be photographed with anybody, even a bearded lady, if it would help the cause."
Charity balls have changed the pattern of Manhattan social life. There are still some private dances and private dinners, but today Society goes to these public functions because, as New York Hostess Drue Heinz says, "everybody else does. It's an enormous system into which Society has got swept up." Last year there were some 300 charity balls in New York City between October and May—an average of almost ten a week.
Ideally, the charity ball provides a useful social ladder for the rising and able newcomer to enter Society. If the parvenus seldom wangle invitations for the intimate little dinners of the inner circle, it scarcely matters; their daughters will be asked to the right deb parties and meet the right boys. And when they are married, they can give intimate little dinners of their own.
Real Gossip. Less attractively, the charity ball has spawned the Society Public Relations Agent. Manhattan's leading agents are Count Lanfranco Rasponi and Marianne (Mrs. Stephen van Rensselaer) Strong. Each also has restaurant and hotel accounts, and some "personal" accounts—Outs who want In badly enough to pay retainers ranging from $500 to $1,000 a month.
Society P.R. people maintain a symbiotic relationship with another type of pro that has burgeoned during the postwar years—the Society gossip columnist. In Manhattan there is hardly any real gossip in the daily flow of words from golf-playing Igor ("Cholly Knickerbocker") Cassini, in the Journal American, or good-natured Joseph X. Dever in the World-Telegram, or bland Nancy Randolph in the Daily News, or even the entertainingly abrasive "Suzy" (Aileen Mehle) in the Mirror. The fascinating intelligence that Mercedes de Footwork had lunch at the Purple Tulip is good for a line any time. No one may have heard of either Mercedes or the Tulip, but after both have been mentioned a dozen times and absorbed with faithful mindlessness by the people who read "the columns," Mercedes may get some invitations and the Tulip some customers.