The Grand Surprise
Subtitle: The Journals of Leo Lerman
Contributors: Stephen Pascal (Editor)
Publisher: Knopf
Published: April 10, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 654
ISBN-13: 9781400044399
Subjects: Biography And Autobiography; Editorial Writing; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; Biography/Autobiography; General; Biography & Autobiography / General; Editors, Journalists, Publishers; 1914-1994; Correspondence; Diaries; Lerman, Leo,; Periodical editors; United States
Description: "A remarkable life and a remarkable voice emerge from the journals, letters, and memoirs of Leo Lerman: writer, critic, editor at Condé Nast, and man about town at the center of New York's artistic and social circles from the 1940s until his death in 1994. Lerman's contributions to the world of the arts were large and varied: he wrote on theater, dance, music, art, books, and movies for publications as diverse as Mademoiselle and The New York Times. He was features editor at Vogue and editor in chief of Vanity Fair. He launched careers and trends, exposing the American public to new talents, fashions, and ideas. He was a legendary party host as well, counting Marlene Dietrich, Maria Callas, and Truman Capote among his intimates, and celebrities like Cary Grant, Jackie Onassis, Isak Dinesen, and Margot Fonteyn as part of his larger circle. But his personal accounts and correspondence reveal him also as having an unusually rich and complex private life, mourning the cultivated emigre world of 1930s and 1940s New York City, reflecting on being Jewish and an openly homosexual man, and intimately evoking his two most important lifelong relationships."--Publisher's description.