The New York Observer » Henry Kissinger

A Very Fashionable Week At The Grill: Photographers, Actors and Style Icons Storm the Four Seasons

We had a beautiful event last weekend for Todd Eberle, the photographer, celebrating his new book, Empire of Space--which features the Four Seasons 50th anniversary portrait Mr. Eberle took two years ago, with lots of regulars including Michael Ovitz, Peggy Siegal, Dolly Lenz, Aby Rosen, Ed Koch and, of course, me! Larry Gagosian, Vanity Fair Read More

Drunken Diners, Angry Royalty—It’s Springtime at the Grill!

This week everyone was celebrating the arrival of spring at the Grill. Henry Kissinger and Michael Korda were seen noshing together. Michael Ovitz came in with a man wearing very fancy shoes (I always notice these things), and Georgette Mosbacher was here with a good-looking woman ... muy caliente, as they say in Spain! Arne Read More

Shoes Too Big to Fill: More About My Air Jordans, Henry Kissinger’s Amorous Meal and the Moneymen

Mike Ovitz was telling a group of people at the Grill on Thursday about the $30 Air Jordans he bought me for Christmas. "Julian," he says, "I actually meant to buy you Prada shoes, just like my shoes that you approve of. But I called Prada myself and they said, 'I'm very sorry, Mr. Ovitz. Read More

He’s So Vain: Carly Simon and The Wannabe Madoff

On a recent Thursday morning, Internal Revenue Service agents walked up to a shiny new building on East 74th Street. Bernie Madoff's younger son has a $4.4 million condo on the fifth floor, but they were looking for his neighbor. "Tell them I'm not here," the money manager Kenneth I. Starr said to the Read More

The Has-Been

River House, the co-op so snooty that it makes 15 Central Park West seem like a hippie-dippy Woodstock for the monied classes, is, in a heartening development for those who yearn for a less obnoxious society, declining in prominence.
Consider this. While co-op owners at the 52nd Street and East River apartment house have listed rambling Read More

The Neighborhood Changer

Sirio Maccioni, the legendary Le Cirque owner, needed a new location for his restaurant. He asked Henry Kissinger, a regular customer, for advice. The Bloomberg Tower, Dr. Kissinger answered. Le Cirque moved there in 2006.
Such is the deserved luck of the ballyhooed tower at 731 Lexington Avenue-half-luxury condo, as One Beacon Court (owners have included, Read More

Kissinger, Rushdie, Star Jones Splash Into Pool Room For Four Seasons’ 50th

The Four Seasons Restaurant, modernist shrine of food and power, celebrated its 50th anniversary on Thursday night. It was cold for June, but fortunately the red carpet was made of always-in-season Astroturf. “The red carpet is green,” co-owner Julian Niccolini lamented. “Alex wanted it to be pink.” He was referring to co-owner Alex von Read More

Henry Kissinger Recalls Long Walks With ‘Close Friend’ Brooke Astor, Kisses Court Officer on Way Out

“Who is the black fellow who is sitting next me?” Brooke Astor had asked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a dinner at her apartment in January 2002.
“He is Kofi Annan,” Mr. Kissinger replied.
“Is he a distinguished fellow?” Ms. Astor asked.
In fact, the sitting secretary general of the United Nations was Read More

How Rude of Henry Kissinger! How the Man That Brooke Astor Named Her Dog After Later Broke Her Heart

Brooke Astor’s long friendship with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his wife, Nancy Kissinger, almost ended abruptly on her 80th birthday.

“My husband made a bad choice of comments,” Ms. Kissinger testified in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, May 6.

In a toast, Mr. Kissinger had publicly congratulated the prominent Read More

Brooke Astor’s British Cousin Testifies Against Accused Scion Anthony Marshall

“Good Lord, what’s happened to the picture?” wondered Lord William Waldorf Astor when he saw the empty wall space in Brooke Astor’s red-lacquered library, where her cherished Childe Hassam painting had hung.
For decades, the two Astors had visited each other across the Atlantic—two sides of the same vast Read More

Defunct Astor Foundation Director Linda Gillies Testifies Against Anthony Marshall

The late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor had a "very nice, cordial relationship" with her son, Anthony Marshall, said Linda Gillies, longtime director of the now-defunct charitable foundation set up by Ms. Astor's husband, Vincent Astor. “They spoke, they laughed together and they worked together."
Yet, mother and son inevitably had their moments. Ms. Gillies Read More

Resolved: There Is Only One Way to Portray Office Life

Let's say you're a magazine editor and you need to illustrate a special issue about office life: What do you do for art? If you're the editor of Businessweek and you're compiling a special Business @ Work issue in collaboration with readers (a first, according to the magazine's Web site), you just do what Read More

Test-Driving the New Neoconservatism
The Return of History and the End of Dreams
By Robert Kagan
Alfred A. Knopf, 115 pages, $19.95
Consider the natural history of the Detroit muscle car: The Mustang began life in 1963 as a stripped-down roadster in the European tradition. As the culture and market matured, Ford responded each year with ad hoc modifications and additions, so Read More

Karol’s Night Out with Kissinger

Henry Kissinger loves the bloggers. Or at least one blogger, Karol Sheinin. She's got the lowdown on last night's dinner in celebration of Commentary Magazine.
In addition to collecting some fun photos, Karol picked up on a bit of news: The New York Sun's Ira Stoll said he'll be writing again Read More

Pat Buckley, Remembered at the Met

On the morning of May 14th, a certain Dr. Henry Kissinger was remembering the time the late, great Patricial Taylor Buckley received a phone call at her house at about 8 a.m.
The hour, close friends like Dr. Kissinger knew, was far too early to be calling Mrs. Buckley from any place but a hospital.
When a Read More