Etcetera

From the Brewsters to the Buffys: The Supremes play Grosse Pointe, c. 1965

March 06, 2019, 7:15 PM

We're not the types to sling around the argot of the youths, but we think there's only one comment that works for this material:

This is everything


The Supremes, c. 1967 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The New York Times dug into its archives and reprinted photos from the 1965 Grosse Pointe debut of young Christy Cole Wilson, daughter of the late Ralph Wilson Jr., then-owner of the Buffalo Bills, among other successful businesses. And the entertainment at the Country Club of Detroit in Grosse Pointe Farms? An act you may have heard of:

Not until the eighth paragraph did the story mention that “when they were not dancing and being entertained by a rock ‘n’ roll group called the Supremes, the Wilsons and their guests were polishing off 20 cases of French champagne, attempting to create a liquor shortage (the plot failed), and heaping their plates with food from an abundantly stocked buffet table.”

The trio hardly needed an identifier at that point. Between August 1964 and June 1965, the Supremes had five No. 1 singles, including “Baby Love,” “Stop! In the Name of Love” and “Back in My Arms Again,” which had gone to the top of the charts just six days before this party. Which is exactly why Ms. Wilson’s parents hired them.

The copy is one thing, but the photos? E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

The dowagers at the Little Club (that's the Grosse Pointe Club, for you civilians). The debs. The ruffles. The hairdos, OMG the hairdos. And so many cigarettes, some wielded in close quarters, like smashed up against the stage where Diana and the girls were singing "Stop! In the Name of Love."

We can't reproduce the photos -- they're copyrighted, obviously -- so we do encourage you to use one of your limited free clicks to hit the link and check them out. Note especially the young man at the end of Diana's outstretched hand, arms crossed over his chest and a strange expression on his face. It's hard to read; it could be anything from poleaxed-by-lust to I-can't-believe-this. He's standing five feet away from the hottest number in Detroit, and all he can do is stare, dumbfounded. 

If you really want to go deep, click the links within and find the original, written by the inimitable Charlotte Curtis, who gained fame as a society writer for the Times. (Her droll style left readers amused and subjects never quite sure if they were being mocked or not; the deb's mother is described as wearing "a new diamond ring the size of a slightly undernourished ping-pong ball.")

There are two pictures of young "Rick Bourke," aka Frederic Bourke Jr., who married into the Ford family and went on to co-found the Dooney & Bourke leather-goods concern and well after that, found guilty of conspiring to pay bribes to government leaders in Azerbaijan in a 1998 oil deal. 

The deb at the center of it all is now Christy Wilson Hofmann, 72, and lives in Rhode Island. As of her father's death in 2014, she was employed as a consultant for the Buffalo Bills. As for deb parties, you don't see many of those anymore. Other things have changed, but not as much as you'd think. As the Times notes:

The year after the Supremes played Ms. Wilson’s party, the first black family moved to Grosse Pointe, and by 1974, The Times reported that three African-American families called the town home. In 2019, Grosse Pointe Farms, where the Country Club of Detroit is, remains 94 percent white, while the city of Detroit is 79 percent black.


Read more:  The New York Times


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