view raw text
ON THE BROADWAY SCENE ByBurtBoyar NEW YORK, May 4. — It happened at the Metropolitan Museum of Ait recently ... A dinner for lenders of paintings to the current Gauguin exhibition. . . To the impressive guest list of people who own fine art for arts sake had been added a few who buy and sell art. One of the latter, Rudolph Heinemann of the Knoedler Galleries, was pursuing everyone in a blunt effort to learn just who was whom. He centered his third degree on a mild, elderly gentleman across the table who had successfully ignored him until the art dealer pointed a finger at him and snapped, "And who are YOU? "My name is Gifford," was the reply. "And, what do you do?" the art dealer bellowed. Mr. Gifford mentioned that he had once been with the telephone company. "Oh yes," snobbed the interrogator "and what else have you done?" Patiently, Mr. Gifford sighed, and replied, "I was the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James." If Mr. Heinemann had checked in Whos Who he would have found that Mr. Gifford was Walter Sherman Gifford, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1925 to 1948, and chairman of the board of Americas largest corporation from 48 to 50 when he resigned to accept our highest ambassadorial post in London. A few mornings ago Jane and I had to I get up at 8 oclock in order to go to Pennsylvania. I should have known that 8 a.m. | is just not my time of day. There I was sitting on the bed where I had just gone to sleep two hours earlier. A pot of steaming hot coffee was in front of me. The phone rang. I reached for it and upset the pot of coffee. "Upset is putting it mildly. I must have made it furious because it empties itself all over my leg. My leap off the bed would have won me the lead in the Bolshoi Ballet. The leg was quite badly burned. I wont tell you the extent of the burn because I dont want to break your hearts, but I have not been able to put on shoes or a pair of long pants since then, but there have been some amusing sides to it. AAA First of all Jane leaped to my rescue and did constructive things for my leg, while I was jumping around like "Hot damn, the beach is hot!" Then she called the doctor who told her to put cold compresses on it until he could come over. Then she canceled out our trip. Then she started in with the cold compresses. Florence Nightingale never had more courage or patience. Bravely she fought me off and applied the cold packs. When our housekeeper Margaret arrived she looked at my leg and said, "You should be using hot compresses." I called the doctor and told him, "Did we understand you right? Our housekeeper says to use HOT compresses?" He was puzzled. "Thats funny," he said. "MY maid says to use cold compresses." I | Later he explained this was just a little joke and that he had learned about the cold compresses in medical school. In the meanwhile, now that I was getting better, Jane was starting to faint. All day long she would look at me and then get sick.- I limped around getting things to make her feel better a 2 supply of perfume turned out to be wonderful therapy for about half an hour. It became apparent to us both that her strength had held out during the 8 a.m. crisis but then it had taken its toll. Seeing me wounded was more than her little heart could take. I was flattered until finally I was worn out nursing her back to health. "Now, look honey," I told her, "enoughs enough! I mean, just who is it thats sick around here?" I then got the surprise of my life. "Listen," she said, "whenever you have a slight little cold you get angry because I dont give you enough sympathy. Well, now you really hurt yourself and its been necessary for me to put it on thick or else youd be impossible to live with. I actually am very weak from it all. But, you dont know yourself. Youd feel neglected if I didnt show you how badly off I think you are." I let that sink in. I never knew I was such a bad patient. A few hours later I happened to remark that none of our friends or family had sent over any gifts or sympathy cards. Jane started to get woozy. I reached for one of my nice fresh cold compresses and put it on her forehead. We understand each other now.
