“New York,” said King, sententiously, “is a huge village with no town pump, no general store with cracker boxes, no sewing circle. People don’t know their neighbors, so they can’t hang over the back fence and gossip. But there’s a human craving for gossip that has to be satisfied, somehow."
—Lawrence Saunders, The Columnist Murder
Champagne Cholly: The Life and Times of Maury Paul by Eve Brown, 1947. This biography of the Hearst Newspapers society columnist Cholly Knickerbocker was written by his longtime assistant (Girl Friday, in 1940s lingo). By the time of its publication, its subject had been dead for five years.
"Like the champagne that he saw consumed by thousands of quarts (but which he seldom drank himself)," the Times wrote in its review, "this biography of the late Maury Paul sparkles and bubbles with intimate tales of New York's social world during the lavish Twenties and the thrifty Thirties. And unlike some vintages, it never goes flat.
"Permeating it are accounts of the Old Guard, when society life was dominated by a few first families, the advent of millionaire industrialists, and the rise of Café Society, a term Paul coined when society life became more liberal and, as he said, 'moved from the salons to the saloons.'"
Photo: Nick Harvill Libraries