17 Great Leads By A Trailblazing Writer At The New York Times
The sky’s the limit when you can make a dull topic sing
As a young reporter for The Columbus Citizen, Charlotte Curtis found herself assigned to the “society” beat, a traditional dead end that involved covering events such as weddings, engagements, and charity balls.
Curtis’ exceptionally lively reporting on such unpromising topics led to a job on the same beat for the New York Times. There she transformed the newspaper’s stodgy coverage of weddings, engagements, and social events with her dry wit, distinctive writing style, and fresh point of view she summed up as: “All brides are not beautiful.”
The Times editors who mattered liked her irreverence and assigned Curtis to cover parties not just in New York but around the world. She eventually broke out of society ghetto at the paper, became the first female editor of its op-ed page, and won many honors for her work.
None of it would have happened without the great writing that preceded her fame and place in history.
Curtis distinguished herself in part with her vibrant leads, first lines that often contained a striking fact, quote, or perception other reporters might have buried. She began a story about a party at the Democratic National Convention, thrown by the Playboy founder, by noting the guests played with a button on Hugh Hefner’s waterfall.
Curtis’ trailblazing stories included reports on famous parties such as Truman Capote’s masked Black and White Dance and a gala the Shah of Iran hosted to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of Persia.
Here are 17 of the best first lines from her stories, with datelines from around the world, collected in her book The Rich and Other Atrocities (Harper & Row, 1976).
On Bermuda
“David Frost took sixty of his better friends to lunch the other day. In Bermuda.”
On Palm Beach, Florida
“Society, which is periodically accused of having the zing of a wet tennis ball, has bounced back to life on America’s most elegant sandbar.”
On Los Angeles
“Mrs. Jerry Ohrbach wanted what she called ‘an informal country house with antiques’ and, after a year and a half and several million dollars, she thinks that at long last she has it.”
On Dubuque, Iowa
“When the late Harold Ross rejected the little old lady in Dubuque as lacking the sophistication to read The New Yorker, he inadvertently made her into a lasting symbol of American provincialism. She and her friends fought back by subscribing to The Reader’s Digest.”
On London
“England is not going to the dogs socially, but things in the mother country seem to be getting just a bit out of hand. Only a few noble households bother to iron his lordship’s copy of The Times of London before delivering it to him.”
On Newport, Rhode Island
“Money is still in style in America’s social capital, especially if it’s inherited. The best money goes back so far nobody is quite sure where it came from, but staid old Newport tries to be democratic toward outside millionaires. It accepts a new one every few years.”
On Washington, D.C.
“The allegedly beautiful people of the Democratic National Convention were playing with Hugh M. Hefner’s waterfall button early this morning, sending his waiters to the kitchen for everything from steaks to Scotch, tilting his pinball machine and clustering around the color television set that disappears behind a painting.”
On New Orleans
“There’s nothing chic about a Mardi Gras street mob, what with people fighting over souvenir trinkets thrown from passing floats, but the splendor of the ceremonial, invitation-only Rex and Comus balls is something else again.”
On Palm Springs, California
“The movie stars who frequent this remote and elegant sand pile try to be polite to everyone who comes to visit. They’ll play golf with a man even if he is President of the United States.”
On Morrilton, Arkansas
“Governor and Mrs. Winthrop Rockefeller’s cattle sale is what matters here socially, and it was a success this year, even though Elvis Presley’s parents didn’t attend.”
On Charleston, S.C.
“The women did not wear hoop skirts, and there were new wooden folding chairs in the ballroom, but apart from that, the St. Cecilia Society’s annual ball was like something out of Gone With the Wind.”
On Iran (2 stories)
“The Ancient Persian city of Persepolis had been deserted since 330 B.C., when the armies of Alexander the Great sacked the place and loaded its treasures onto the backs of 20,000 mules and 5,000 camels.”
“The Shah of Iran, who thinks of himself as politically big league, established himself tonight as one of the world’s great party-givers.”
On Hobe Sound, Florida
“There’s no law against whooping it up on Jupiter Island, the remote and sufficiently elegant little winter resort just east of here. But hardly anyone does.”
On New York City (3 stories)
“Truman Capote, still stunned by the number of prominent people who begged him to invite them to what he insisted upon calling his ‘little masked ball for Kay Graham and all my friends,’ finally gave his much-discussed Black and White Dance at the Plaza last night, and it lived up to nearly all of its extravagant advance notices.”
“El Morocco, the supper club that has never been accused of being anything more serious than a zebra-striped playpen for rich adults, has had better nights.”
“Prince and Princess Stanilas Radziwell gave what the princess called ‘a teeny, tiny dance for less than a hundred’ in their Fifth Avenue duplex.”
@janiceharayda is an award-winning journalist who has written for the New York Times and other major media.
Interested in reading more about how Charlotte Curtis blazed trails in journalism? Here’s her story:
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