government or a rotten one is pretty much up to Tammany, but if the government is a misfit, nothing much happens except crime waves and graft and epidemics and catastrophes.
If the Ziegfeld Follies didn't exactly fit New York, there's no telling what might happen. They've got to fit. They've got to be just so. Esthetically and morally, New York has no other standard. Not that Mr. Ziegfeld sets the styles in either morals or esthetics. But he registers them, which is a much more responsible job.
He's like the Prince of Wales. H. R. H. must dress correctly, but he can't dress as he'd like to and call that correct. A style isn't really a style until he approves it, but he cannot approve a style until it has become stylish.
Ziegfeld is like that. Every so often, he must produce a "Follies." But he can't experiment; for it is preordained that his show must be absolutely correct. If he puts it on, of course, it becomes correct forth-with; while if Earl Carroll puts it on, it might not become correct for months and months. This is the agony of being an institution and this is what H. R. H. was always belly-aching about.
What does one ribbon, more or less, matter to the average producer of revues? One less might land him in jail, to be sure, but he can always take a chance.Ziegfeld has no such latitude. He must glorify the American Girl to the limit, but he must know in advance exactly where that limit is.
Mr. Ziegfeld seems to imagine (Folly No. 2) that New Yorkers go to the Follies to be entertained.They don't. They go there to worship-and to discover where the exact limit of propriety has moved.
Lastly, Mr. Ziegfeld doesn't know that he is the greatest moral influence in the city. There are many far greater moralists, but they are not influential. New York is instinctively proper, and it insists upon having a standard of propriety. Give it one that is too uncomfortable, however, and it won't wear it very long, but give it one that exactly fits, and New York will scrupulously live up to it. As between John Roach Straton and utter abandonment, it might quite easily choose abandonment. But as between Ziegfeld and anything improper, it votes almost unanimously for Ziegfeld.
I forget whether it was a good show or not, but as a barometer of New York, it can't be excelled.
In Our Midst
Alfred Harcourt is forgetting the publishing business for a while in the Southland.
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Charles B. Falls was at the party at Mrs. and Mrs. Charles Wrenn's last week and ate Dorothy Gish's share of sweets, the latter having to stay thin for a picture she is making.
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Arthur Hiram Samuels, the pianist, came back from a trip South last week.
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Ruth Hawthorne, the playwright, who has been sick, is getting along fine.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda are in Rome, Scott having about finished a novel to be called "The Great Braxton."
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Hundreds of persons were kept up late last Friday dancing at the Kit Kat ball.
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Stewart Edward White, of California, is in town for the first time in three years, noting the improvements and vice versa.
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Harry Wagstaf Gribble is confined to his left hand owing to a broken finger on his right one.
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Mrs. Irene Castle McLaughlin, of Chicago, was in town last Friday, calling on Miss Joan Baragwanath, a contemporary of her daughter.
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Mrs. Hilda Gaige gave a grand farewell party to Miss Beatrice Lillie last Thursday night, and then Bee came back with a grand luncheon Friday on the Olympic on which she sailed back to England Saturday, thus rounding out the week.
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Among those late for the opening of "Starlight" last Tuesday was Herbert Bayard Swope.
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Gilbert Miller, got back from England last week looking a little thinner, he thanked God.
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Mary Brandon Sherwood is on the lamb chop and pineapple list.
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Roland Young was in town one day last week seen running like everything for a train to Boston, where he is in business.
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Mrs. James Stephens was on the sick list the other day, but feels better at this writing.
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Jane Cowl is giving a party this coming Thursday night for some of her friends.
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Bill Tilden. II, has gone to Palm Beach, presumably on literary business.
Philip A. Payne, the dynamic managing editor of the Daily News, is bon vivanting around town quite a bit these days, as High Guest of clubs ranging from Rotary to Cheese. Last time Phil was heard of he was assisting in the rescue of Imogene Wilson from Frank Tinney's (ell clutches, it being early in the morning when Imogene telephoned 25 Park Place for assistance and no reporters of the Strong Arm Squad being available.
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Eugene O'Neill is vacationing in Bermuda, far from the dirt farmers of Broadway.
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Miss Dorothca Antel conducts what is known as a "Bedside Agency" at 600 West 186th Street. Considerable agitation among the younger bloods followed receipt of this information until a grey-head advised it probably meant trained nurses.
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Anne Morgan gave a large tea for many of the elite lately, parts of France still needing reconstruction.
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Among those feeling the recent earthquake were Minna S. Adams, upper West Side; Christine Norman, upper East Side; Man in Yonkers.
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Scott Bone is returning, after an illness, from his exile in Alaska and friends are talking of arranging a surprise for him in the shape of Managing editorship of a metropolitan daily.
