"Part of a Dream"

The Grand Ballroom of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria was hung with white-dipped smilax, pink lights winking among the leaves, for the 19th annual Debutante Cotillion and Christmas Ball. On stage, young ladies dressed in white and escorted by formally dressed young men moved rapidly between rows of tall tapers, curtsied, and made their way past a ringside table where sat a handsome woman who was, in a sense, their hostess. Watching the debutantes with intense interest, Jacqueline Cochran, famed flyer and businesswoman, recalled that when she was 18 she had already been working for ten years and was, she guessed, "the sole support of several people." Now, as head of Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, Inc., she was the cotillion's sponsor. She had no part in planning the ball, but she had paid about $10,000 to cover its cost. In return, the company received some commercials during the evening, and a credit line in every society-page story the next day. On the whole, she was pleased and had only one real criticism. She thought the debutantes had been rushed through their curtsies too fast: "They ran those girls through just like Ziegfeld Follies girls--with clothes." In a more leisurely era, socially prominent young ladies made their debuts under family auspices. In recent years mass debuts have become the rule, and the modern deb has a commercial sponsor.

(Daddy still pays a good part of the bills, but has no responsibility for the arrangements.) Jackie Cochran's predecessors as angels of the New York Debutante Cotillion, biggest annual presentation of young women in the U.S., include Coty cosmetics, Evyan perfumes, Kayser gloves.

All Grown Up. In the procession that Jackie Cochran watched with such interest, 104 young women* were presented to society. About 2,000 guests bought tickets, netting $75,000 for the New York Infirmary.

The evening began with a serpentine reception line, with stragglers attaching themselves to the end as they arrived.

Some time after 11p.m., at the command of an offstage voice, the receiving line broke up and debutantes arid their escorts retired to an anteroom to prepare for the big moment. The scene was something like the prelude to a mass wedding, with mothers tearfully primping their daughters and fathers making appropriate comments ("My little girl's all grown up"). But after a while the prides of parents left their daughters and drifted up to their boxes, the Meyer Davis orchestra struck up The March of the Toys, and the formal presentation began.

As the orchestra simmered down, the sepulchral voice announced: "Miss Elenita Ziegler!" and a stately young woman entered from stage right, on the arm of a young man. To an applauding ballroom she made a deep curtsy; then her young man led her down four red velvet stairs through the photographers, to a point where the choreographer, Mrs. Beulah Phelps Shonnard ("Now just a housewife, but used to work in a dance studio"), directed her to her seat.

One by one the young ladies made their curtsies--some deep and dramatic, others stiff and jerky, others balky and bored.

There were famous names among the 104, including daughters of Laurance Rockefeller, Irving Berlin and Howard Cullman, and some who were unknown beyond the limits of Scarsdale and Greenwich (one debutante came all the way from Minneapolis). Most were greeted with a proud, polite pitter-patter of applause from their parents' boxes or tables; others got ovations. When Miss Gary Latimer, who had been dubbed the "No. 1 Glamour Deb" by New York society editors, appeared, it was like the arrival of a movie queen on the 20th Century Limited: a murmur ran through the crowd, flashbulbs popped, and Miss Latimer smiled like no one since Brenda Diana Duff Frazier.

The debs were not presented in alphabetical or any other discernible order; the last one was rumored to have been awarded the anchor position because "she got to more rehearsals later than anybody else." After she was seated, the orchestra struck up the first of the cotillion figures, the Coming-Out Waltz (original music and lyrics by Virginia Scarlett, daughter of Mrs. Eugene Ong, co-chairman of the ball). The lyrics: We're coming out tonight We're having our fling Debs dressed in yards of white Waltzing we sing 'cause Beaux flock around tonight Flowers are part of the scheme Tomorrow may be just another day But tonight we are part of a dream.

Next was Flowing Velvet (named for a Jacqueline Cochran face cream), a "garland dance" performed by eleven young ladies swirling swatches of red and pink velvet to the tune of The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. After a professional interlude by Dancers Tony and Sally DeMarco, the debs came on again with Polka Sleigh Ride, in which, after a bit of polkaing by girls and their escorts, one group managed to arrange themselves so that they were impersonating a sleigh, while the others waved them on their way. The finale, called Shining Hour (after a Cochran perfume), was a sort of community sing, with the debutantes sitting on the floor, clutching electric candles and singing White Christmas, while pink spotlights wafted over them.

"Hold My Cigar." For the next three hours the Grand Ballroom and three adjoining rooms rocked to mambos, waltzes, and sambas. In the East Foyer, pretty matrons sold raffle tickets on a 1955 Plymouth and the ball took on a fine Christmas spirit. When a photographer approached to take his picture, Veteran Actor Charles Coburn turned to a debutante. "Here," he said, "hold my cigar." Then he twinkled at the camera through his monocle. By 3 a.m., nearly all the young folks had gone off to El Morocco or the Stork Club for some serious dancing, and the last fathers, having signed the last chits, were wearily making their way to their limousines and taxis.

After the cotillion, Jackie Cochran had only praise for the debutantes. But if she had an 18-year-old daughter, she told a reporter, she wasn't at all sure she would allow her to come out. "I'd want her to know first of all how to work--how to make a living."

* Out of 106 eligibles. One was scratched because of appendicitis, the other for badly swollen neck glands.

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