Lehr had at one time been the kingpin of those since-vanished Americans, the wine (champagne) agents. It never got out of his blood, though he lofted into the social stratosphere. Perhaps as a prank or caprice or a reversion to type, on a Sunday night he induced Mrs. Astor to attend a dinner he gave at Sherry's, then at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. That night Café Society was born.
Next morning, a newspaper published this astonishing lead:
"What are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry's table d'hôte! I never dreamt it would be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room."
Next day, all the newspapers featured the epoch-making feast. One society editor wrote:
"When I saw Mrs. Astor in coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest headdress, at Sherry's, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could scarcely believe my eyes. She seemed to enjoy it and nodded her head to the ragtime tunes. She wore her famous pearls and was a stunning sight."
Lehr was a crony of Tom Wanamaker, who owned an apartment above Sherry's. He gave Harry the use of a beautiful suite and arranged for him to eat on the cuff in the café and entertain friends there, likewise. His historic dinner to Mrs. Astor was a shill job, to break the ice for social patronage. Night clubs follow the same device today to pump up brilliant opening nights.
Mrs. Astor undoubtedly had no suspicion of Lehr's object, but she gave the royal nod to the first big break in the fences, which eventually permitted an infiltration of Manhattan Okies into her own 400, which expanded the circle so widely that with every year it meant less and less as it grew more and more.
Perhaps the most conspicuous disintegration is visible at a glance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Première nights in the golden days were glittering spectacles, with the women of the Astor, Vanderbilt, Drexel, Gould and other proud dynasties wearing Paris gowns and radiant tiaras, and the newspapers covering the show avidly.
Today such events are drab. Anybody with the coin can buy a box in the Diamond Horseshoe. Night club managers, Broadway gamblers, cloak-and-suit salesmen entertain where formerly only meticulously screened millionaires basked in their own glory, a thousand sets of glasses trained on them from the seats of the lowly. Now strangers in business suits and women in frocks tilt back in the front chairs, originally reserved for ladies only, and rest their feet on the storied railing.
Among the last top-name regulars were Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Orme Wilson, who shared Box 3 on different nights. Newport's famous spinster sisters, Edith and Maude Wetmore, occasionally occupy their Box 5. The Duchess de Talleyrand, née Anna Gould, retains her box, but rarely uses it. The Morgan family gave up theirs seasons ago. Most of the ladies who own rich gems no longer wear them—they're afraid of stick-ups.