Colombia RPCV Maureen Orth writes "The Importance of being Famous"
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FAMOUS: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex
By Maureen Orth
Henry Holt & Company
($25, hardcover)
The Gutfreunds tried to keep up despite the fact that their $35 million or $40 million was only a tenth of what some of those they socialized with were worth. Who could forget the lawsuit over Susan's insistence on installing a winch on her neighbors' roof at River House to hoist a 22-foot Christmas tree up the side of the building and into her two-story apartment?
And her practice of turning out the light above a door that led to the neighbors' penthouse, apparently because she wanted visitors to think she lived on the top floor - combined with her habit of telling guests to "come to the penthouse" - led her alienated neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Postel, more than once to encounter strangers, including the designer Hubert de Givenchy, stepping off the elevator into their living room.
"We had a procession of masseurs, masseuses, piano tuners, someone delivering two thousand orchids for her ceiling," Robert Postel says. But nothing quite compared with the 2 a.m. visitation by a group of formally dressed guests, one of them carrying a harp. Postel, clad only in his Jockey shorts, told them, "Sorry, it's not my time to go."
