95 and Not Dead Yet: Second Best is Nowhere among these Beauties

by Reg Green (January 2025)

I wrote in this column recently that Truman Capote described one of the socialites he mixed with as having “the most beautiful legs extant.” That was Nancy ‘Slim’ Keith next to whom, he said, Elizabeth Taylor looked like ‘a runt.’

“Hold on there, old chap,” I said to him in my mind. “Iconoclasm should know some decorum, some seemliness, don’t you think?” I should have remembered that every Eden has—and needs—a serpent.

I expected the piece to be of interest mainly to the cave men who read New English Review but it was a gentlewoman—Annalisa—who best summed up the response to Slim’s magic in one of her pithy comments: ‘Sigh!’

Weep some more, my lady. Since then I have come across Truman’s description of ‘Babe’ Paley, wife of Bill Paley, founder of CBS: “Babe had only one fault: she was perfect. Otherwise she was perfect.”

Wheeze!

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