Friday, December 04, 2009

And Yet Another...




Today we have another installment of "The Tented Room", this one brought to you courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Alan Jay Lerner. The renowned lyricist and his wife were devoted Francophiles, which might explain their tented dining room- a nod to Napoleon and Malmaison. (Mrs. Lerner's family was "associated" with Napoleon. Not so sure what the connection was.) The rest of the home is quite grand and well, quite French. But it's the dining room that really speaks to me. Or rather, seeing that it was Alan Jay Lerner's dining room, I should say it sings to me.


Mr. and Mrs. Alan Jay Lerner.

(Images from Town & Country, Fall, 1962)

22 comments:

  1. A long awaited installment! What is that floor? Is it linoleum?

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  2. Patricia, I can't tell but I think it's carpet.

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  3. I am a rather new reader of your blog. Any chance you could do links to other stories? Love tented rooms. I have upholstered walls but not the ceilings.Love the look. And speaking of updates. How is Alfie?

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  4. Home- I'll look into doing links. If you click on the tag at the bottom of the post that says "interior tents", you'll find related posts. And Alfie is doing fine but he's way too smart for his own good. Thanks for asking!

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  5. Love the tent...
    Am I the only one hearing whispers of Dorothy Draper??

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  6. J Tackett11:03 AM

    Decorated by Jansen?

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  7. Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention who the decorator was. I haven't a clue! The rest of the apartment was very formal and filled with FFF.

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  8. The living room is a bit grand in a Beverly Hills over the top way--but that dining room is perfect. Thanks for the great photos.

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  9. The chairs!!!!! And her bubblegum silk dress!

    The black, red, ivory and gold reminds me of my fave, Mrs. Alessandra Branca......it's so Patrician. Clean, sophisticated and refined, I love it!



    Andrea

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  10. POC: thanks for what should have been obvious but was oblivious! Yes, I do see the obsession has been growing! Look the look. The ultimate cocoon!

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  11. Lerner's wife at the time (the fourth of an eventual eight) was Micheline Muselli Pozzo di Borgo, an elegant Italian-born defense attorney, indeed "the youngest avocat ever called to th French bar" (she was 20 when she became a lawyer). As Time magazine noted in 1964, "Napoleon was her great-great-grandfather's godfather." The Lerners' house was at 42 East 71st Street. Married in 1957, they bought it in 1960, Lerner was barred from it in 1964 due the couple's divorce proceedings, and it was sold in 1965, when their divorce was finalized. Mrs Lerner's lawyer, by the way, was Roy Cohn, and one can only imagine was she must have been like; Kitty Carlisle loathed Mrs Lerner and told The New York Times, "I once hauled off and smacked her."

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  12. I take something similar to this when I go camping. :) This is absolutely brilliant! It's very surreal - I'm pretty sure the doors at left and right are fake (they must be, right?) but are the sconces real?

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  13. Joshua- Seriously. A tent like this might actually make me want to go camping. Then again, maybe not. I think the sconces are real, but don't know for sure.

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  14. Huummm,
    love the buillion fringed sofa's and the muscular attentive build of the gilded statuette & the upper torso of Mrs. Lerner!!
    Quite the specimens, and exceptionally photographed in a grand style.
    Leslie

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  15. Very beautiful the tent!!
    Your earlier posts of this week are all wonderful!!!
    Have a nice weekend!

    Greet

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  16. Lots of interest and style.
    Love that sofa used to have one very close to that, IN YELLOW
    with 6 inch fringe.

    Yvonne

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  17. Elliot J. Cohen8:54 PM

    How nice to come across your chic posting. I thought that it might interest you to know that the room with the tenting and red chairs is a nod to two scenes in "My Fair Lady" and the set designs for the original production by Oliver Smith.

    The tent is obviously inspired by the Ascot scene, while the pink stripes and the peaked doorways are taken from the entry hall of the Embassay scene before it turned itself inside out to become the ballroom...a real theatrical tour de force.

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  18. Elliot- Thank you so much for your comment. You're correct- this is of great interest! I wonder if the theatrical version was ever filmed; I think it would be interesting to see the original production and compare it to the film version.

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  19. Elliot J. Cohen11:15 PM

    While J. Andrews, R. Harrison, S. Holloway, and John Michael King performed many of their numbers on varrious television variety shows of the era, the only film I have seen of the original production comes from a black-and-white Soviet Union documentary/ propoganda film made when the national company of "My Fair Lady" undertook a good will tour there in 1960.

    I was able to watch this film while I was doing research in the Moss Hart and Herman Levin collections at the Theater and Film Study Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

    Entitled "U.S. Actors Tour Soviet Union" it includes a few excerpts from the show, the longest being the waltz at the ball sequence. The footage was so amazing that I ran it over and over several times.

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  20. Anonymous1:22 AM

    Here on this link are more information about the connection too Napoleon;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Andrea_Pozzo_di_Borgo

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