[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s.

[00:18] Jessica: I am Meg and I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live and where we.

[00:28] Meg: Podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do rip from the headlines and.

[00:33] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: So I got a missive from somebody who worked closely on the pilot episode of Moonlighting.

[00:44] Jessica: Get out of town, Diana.

[00:48] Meg: And she wrote in and said, hey, I checked out the pilot Watch Party. And first of all, you both have beautiful voices to listen to. Thank you, Diane.

[00:56] Jessica: Thank you.

[00:57] Meg: I can understand how you can see it now with some cringe,

[01:01] but back then it was so original, original and at times outrageous that we just laughed at some of the stuff that came out of David's mouth. The show was a modern take for the 80s of the battle of the sexes.

[01:15] I was like, right. I do now. When she said that, I was like, that sounds familiar, right? And I said,

[01:21] oh, thank you for listening. Mood Lighting was my absolute favorite show when it was on the air. The pilot was insane, but the show certainly found itself.

[01:30] One thought I had after we recorded was that the violence,

[01:35] which I talked about a bit when we recorded,

[01:38] and comedy and action in the pilot was maybe fashioning itself after Looney Tunes. What do you think?

[01:44] And she wrote back, the physical comedy and violence were fashioned after Looney Tunes and the Three Stooges.

[01:52] Wait till you get to Symphony in Knocked Flat and Atomic Shakespeare in season three Altos and Martin and Lewis.

[02:01] I was like, okay. Cause it was so extreme watching it.

[02:07] I just found it kind of shocking. But now I'm like, no,

[02:11] it was like a Roadrunner cartoon.

[02:13] Jessica: I mean, I know how much we all loved the show, but again, as with on this show, all things are hindsight.

[02:20] It certainly made the pilot hard to understand because we were so used to seeing nighttime soaps having a very particular tone. Right. They're dramatic with a little touch of comedy or whatever, but something that is intentionally,

[02:37] you know, Larry, Moe and Curly,

[02:40] but dressed like Dynasty and also is really.

[02:44] Meg: They. I would say they were doing, like.

[02:47] That was maybe one of the 10 things they were trying out. In the pilot. There was so much going on in terms of style.

[02:55] Jessica: It was crowded. Yeah, I'll say that's my friends,

[02:59] as we keep saying, yes. So crowded and long. But how wonderful that Diana listened. So if you are still listening, Diana, thank you very much. And what an incredible insight.

[03:22] Meg: This is going to be an odd engagement question.

[03:25] Jessica: Are they ever. Are they ever normal?

[03:28] Meg: Okay. But you know how gossip columnists used to have quite a name for themselves.

[03:36] Jessica: In the city, certainly, and for easily a hundred years prior to our.

[03:42] Meg: Fair enough.

[03:42] Jessica: You know, being privy to that.

[03:44] Meg: But specifically in the 80s, I'm thinking, you know, the Liz Smiths or whatever did you.

[03:50] And you were a kid at the time, and it would be completely inappropriate for you to be reading some of these gossip columns. But did you have any knowledge or access to them?

[04:01] To any of them?

[04:02] Jessica: Well, I'll, I'll tell you what I really do remember because in our household there was only the New York Times. So there were no tabloids that had. It's only the Post and the Daily News that had gossip colonists and some of the other smaller papers.

[04:17] But Liz smith was on WPIX, Channel 11 with some regularity. So I was really familiar with her.

[04:26] And she basically did her column on tv.

[04:32] And I don't, I didn't hear her voice.

[04:34] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[04:35] Jessica: And I, and I don't think that it was sanitized in any way.

[04:41] It was just what it was.

[04:44] And she didn't do any of the blind items. You know, like a certain bachelor is seen diddling a certain young lady at a certain.

[04:52] None of that.

[04:54] It was, it was gossip barely masquerading as news items. But that's, that's how I can answer that question.

[05:01] Meg: Yeah, that's a great. Actually that's a great recall local news having a segment with a gossip column.

[05:08] Jessica: Like many gossip columnists before her,

[05:12] she ruled what happened. She was the one who controlled a lot of what the society chatter was. Not unlike Hedda hopper in the 40s and 30s, I think,

[05:26] in Hollywood.

[05:27] Meg: Right. And she was very good friends with the people that she was writing about. And sometimes they used that to their.

[05:33] Jessica: Advantage and sometimes they used it to their advantage by making it someone else's disadvantage.

[05:41] Meg: So yes,

[05:42] my sources are New York Magazine, New York Post,

[05:47] Roger Friedman's Showbiz411 and the Miami Herald.

[05:53] In June 1988,

[05:56] Eileen Mayle,

[05:58] Society columnist known as Susie.

[06:01] Had you ever heard of her?

[06:02] Jessica: Absolutely, Sure.

[06:03] Meg: I had not.

[06:04] Printed in her regular column in the New York Post that Nan and Thomas Kempner were separating. Nan Kempner. Nan was the original social X ray who Thomas Wolfe described in Bonfire of the Vanities.

[06:19] Quote, the skinny middle aged women, the social X rays,

[06:23] wear puffy dresses to disguise their juiceless bodies, while the lemon tarts, sexy young blondes, hang on the arms of rich financiers.

[06:35] Thank you.

[06:36] Jessica: It's such a great, I mean that, that Phrase social X ray just captured everybody's imagination.

[06:44] Meg: Tommy Kempner was a banker, descended from the Loeb banking and real estate family.

[06:51] Jessica: Really?

[06:52] Meg: Yes.

[06:53] Huh. I did not know that Eileen,

[06:56] our gossip columnist, had been fed the scoop by the Kempners themselves.

[07:03] How strange.

[07:04] And no one was particularly shocked by the news they had lived separate lives for quite some time.

[07:12] Nan needed to be in Paris for the couture showings in mid January.

[07:17] She would return to celebrate her anniversary in late February and then head to Park City to ski. She would pass through New York on her way to Nassau and be back in time for the spring season.

[07:30] Gullahs and benefits and parties until the end of May.

[07:34] Memorial Day weekend, she was in Southampton and from there to London for Ascot.

[07:39] The rest of her summer is spent between Southampton, Paris for July couture and Salzburg with her friend Anne Getty.

[07:48] She also sailed with Valentino, who said, quote, nan always looks so wonderful in my clothes because has the body of a hangar.

[07:56] Jessica: I'm exhausted just hearing about what Nan was up to. Well, you know why Nan could do all of that and was so skinny.

[08:04] That woman was munching on handfuls of amphetamines.

[08:08] Meg: Oh, really?

[08:08] Jessica: Like there's nobody's.

[08:10] Meg: I did not know that.

[08:11] Jessica: I. It's. I'm not. Okay, I'm not saying that as fact. That is my presumption, because there. There literally is no other way she.

[08:22] Meg: Would be that skinny, that.

[08:23] Jessica: Well, that active and that skinny. Like, forget it.

[08:28] Meg: She would spend a week in Venice with her husband Tom,

[08:32] pick up her July purchases in Paris, and be back in New York for the fall season opening of the Opera and the Costume Institute ball, which we now know as the Met Gala.

[08:43] Thanksgiving is in Nassau.

[08:45] Christmas is in Vail.

[08:47] I mean, when is she ever in her Park Avenue apartment? One wonders.

[08:52] Tom Kempner mostly held down the fort in New York, but he wasn't alone.

[08:57] It was an open secret that he had a lady friend for seven years.

[09:02] Iris Sawyer.

[09:04] Do you know?

[09:06] Do you know Iris?

[09:07] Jessica: No.

[09:08] Meg: You will.

[09:10] Jessica: Let's hope so.

[09:11] Meg: And that's what Billy Norwich wrote about in his column in the Post a few days after Eileen Mayo article.

[09:19] Jessica: Oh, he was such a outing.

[09:22] Meg: Iris by name. Which wasn't exactly what the Kempners had in mind when they fed the article to begin with.

[09:32] Jessica: Well, they fed it to one gossip columnist and the other needed the scoop.

[09:37] Meg: Iris was very different from Nan.

[09:40] She was born in the Bronx, went to Columbia Grammar and Barnard, worked in TV production and magazine publishing, and married David Sawyer,

[09:49] with whom she started Sawyer Miller. A film consulting group.

[09:54] She hung out with Mark Hampton and Alexandra Isles.

[09:58] Jessica: Oh, yes, Alexandra Isles. We know who she is.

[10:01] Meg: We do. She was the sometime mistress of Klaus Van Bulow, and Iris was part of a salon that met regularly to read Proust, as one does.

[10:15] Jessica: What a bore. Seriously, like, that's the party you don't want to get invited to? I don't know.

[10:22] Meg: I was so, like, all these interesting people sitting around talking about Proust. Why not? My mom actually does that. But I do think that they met for a reason that wasn't just, like, let's talk about.

[10:35] I don't know.

[10:35] Jessica: Yeah, let's talk about someone's, you know, boob job while we have the book open in front of us.

[10:41] Meg: I. No, I feel like it was more elevated than that. And. And, you know, they appreciated an intellectual conversation. Iris met Tom Kempner in first class on a flight to LA in 1981, and they talked for seven hours straight.

[10:57] And thus began their affair.

[10:59] Now, their affair didn't seem to profoundly affect the Kempner marriage until Iris divorced David in 1984.

[11:10] Feeling an uncomfortable shift,

[11:13] Nan and Tom went to a sex therapist.

[11:17] Iris and Tom split up for a while,

[11:20] but not for too long.

[11:22] Jessica: So, not a couples counselor, A sex therapist.

[11:26] Meg: That was what was printed.

[11:28] Jessica: I am now really engaged.

[11:33] Meg: And once 1986 rolled around,

[11:35] so that now we're five years into the affair,

[11:39] it was really no longer convenient for anyone.

[11:43] Nan was out of patience,

[11:45] Iris was tired of her second banana status,

[11:49] and Tom was exhausted from keeping up with two women with very clear expectations.

[11:56] Jessica: He could have had some of Nan's pep pills.

[11:58] Meg: That might have helped.

[12:01] According to Iris,

[12:02] Tom was planning to finally leave Nan, and He gave Iris $10,000 to hire a PI to get some dirt on Nan.

[12:12] But no dirt was to be found.

[12:15] Nan was into clothes, not men.

[12:18] Oh,

[12:20] all right, so he won't have any leverage in a divorce proceeding.

[12:24] Now, Iris had been getting into the real estate game in a very serious way after her divorce.

[12:31] Tom,

[12:32] very wealthy man, didn't pay for her flights or give her expensive gifts.

[12:38] But he did form a company,

[12:40] Gray & Co.

[12:42] And secured a $2 million loan to buy a carriage house on 63rd between Lexington and 3rd that Iris could renovate and sell.

[12:54] Jessica: Interesting move, Tom.

[12:57] Meg: Yeah.

[12:58] Jessica: Bury the dirt.

[12:59] Meg: Is that what.

[13:01] Jessica: Well, he's. He's siphoning his funds off and keeping it. If it's a corporation, then whether or not Nan has access to it becomes questionable.

[13:12] Right. Oh, okay, so he's protecting a nest egg in the form of A nest for Iris.

[13:20] Meg: Right.

[13:20] Jessica: Right.

[13:21] Meg: Well, I'll be interested to hear what you think when you find out what happened.

[13:25] Jessica: Oh, good God. It's gonna get ugly.

[13:28] Meg: Yeah. Okay, so iris kicked in $400,000.

[13:33] So she was an investor. His company owned the carriage house. And as an investor,

[13:41] he put in 2 mil, she put in 400,000.

[13:44] Their contract stated, quote, gray and investor shall mutually decide at what time and for what consideration the premises shall be sold.

[13:57] Jessica: Oh, I thought he bought it for her.

[14:00] Meg: No, it was like they went into business together.

[14:03] Jessica: Oh, okay. Well, I retract my earlier statement then.

[14:06] Meg: It was incredibly bad timing to go into a business relationship because the affair was sputtering out.

[14:16] At some point, Tom decided he would remain married to Nan and that the relationship with Iris was too consuming to maintain.

[14:26] Tom and Iris called it quits for good,

[14:29] and Iris started trying to find a buyer for the house.

[14:33] Okay, fine. Affair is over.

[14:36] Let's just sell this house and I can move on with my life,

[14:39] is her side of it.

[14:41] She rented out her own home to help finance the renovation and moved into a construction site.

[14:49] Buyers were not hard to find.

[14:52] There were a number of offers, including a fabulous one at $3.7 million.

[14:59] Not a bad flip.

[15:01] Jessica: I'm feeling that Tommy was blocking all of these.

[15:05] Meg: Iris totally elated,

[15:07] but Tom,

[15:08] at this point, would not take her calls.

[15:12] Then he declined the offer through an intermediary.

[15:17] Iris started to panic.

[15:20] She was hemorrhaging money.

[15:22] She got the carriage house featured in Manhattan ink, and another 3.7 million dollar offer came in.

[15:30] Again,

[15:31] Tom rejected it without explanation.

[15:35] It was,

[15:36] by all accounts, a generous offer.

[15:39] Then Iris found someone willing to rent it for $25,000 a month.

[15:46] What's the problem if you're waiting to get an even bigger offer, Tom,

[15:53] can we at least rent it out?

[15:56] Tom rejected that as well.

[15:58] Then the real estate market crashed,

[16:02] and Kempner's people told Iris the bank was going to foreclose on the carriage house,

[16:09] which is like, come on, Tom,

[16:13] foreclose? You are such an insanely wealthy man, and you're gonna let the bank foreclose?

[16:20] Jessica: I mean, that must have been like, God, what a. What a jerk.

[16:26] Meg: Desperate, Iris accepted a buyout of.

[16:30] Brace yourself,

[16:32] $40,000. She didn't know what to do. She didn't have any. She was so cash poor at this point.

[16:38] Two days later,

[16:40] Tom sold the carriage house for $1.7 million.

[16:49] Jessica: Ridiculous.

[16:51] Meg: Huge loss. But he accepted that offer. As it turns out, the bank wasn't going to foreclose.

[16:57] Jessica: Well, clearly not Please tell me that she murdered him.

[17:03] Meg: A few weeks after that, Iris filed for bankruptcy.

[17:08] While she had been discreet during their seven year affair,

[17:12] she had no intention of quietly slinking away.

[17:17] Especially because she couldn't really afford to.

[17:19] And again, he could have just given her some money and she would have gone off somewhere. She was like, I'm over this.

[17:27] But nope,

[17:29] it was like he wanted to see her suffer. I don't know. Or someone wanted to see her suffer. I don't know.

[17:36] Lots of theories there.

[17:38] Jessica: Were there theories about Nan?

[17:40] Meg: Yeah. Going like, okay, this is how we're gonna handle this situation.

[17:45] Iris leveraged the only thing she had left.

[17:47] Her story.

[17:49] She spilled the beans on the whole sordid affair,

[17:53] perhaps hoping that Tom,

[17:56] who until rather recently cared deeply about her,

[18:02] hoping that he would feel remorse or even guilt and just throw her a bone.

[18:09] But he decidedly did not.

[18:12] And his friends eagerly disparaged her publicly as crazy, unhinged, and possibly dangerous.

[18:20] Fatal Attraction was referenced.

[18:23] People who used to sit next to her at dinner parties crossed the street when they saw her coming.

[18:29] To make matters worse, Iris had been too distracted by her love affair during her divorce proceedings to ensure that she got a good deal. In fact,

[18:41] she allowed David Sawyer to pay for their divorce and use one lawyer,

[18:48] his.

[18:49] Jessica: You're joking.

[18:50] I mean, Iris,

[18:52] come on. Like there is a. There is a point at which you have to be like Iris.

[18:57] Some of this is just the result of your bad decision making.

[19:01] Meg: Absolutely. No. No question. And she trusted all the men in her life, even when she wasn't on good terms with them. Yeah.

[19:09] Jessica: Women. Let's let this be a lesson to you.

[19:11] Meg: Yeah. She tried to muscle more money out of David Sawyer, her ex, but he wasn't having it. Iris had no one.

[19:20] Jessica: And she had no kids.

[19:21] Meg: No, with him.

[19:23] By 1994, she was living on a fold out couch in a one bedroom she shared with a roommate.

[19:29] She was able to start a jewelry design company under the name Susan Lennox. And that kept her afloat for a while.

[19:37] In the meantime, Nan and Tom leaned into the sordid story.

[19:43] They talked about it all the time.

[19:45] Very strange.

[19:47] Nan described Iris as an embittered refugee of a one night stand.

[19:55] She also said this. All marriages go through something like this man was not meant to be monogamous.

[20:02] If a girl wants to go to bed with your husband, lucky him.

[20:06] I'd much rather Tommy had an affair with someone who was attractive rather than run around with a hooker.

[20:12] We did separate briefly because I figured he just had to see the light.

[20:18] Fortunately, we Got back together again. I'm very grateful.

[20:22] I've never liked being alone, even when I was a little girl.

[20:25] Imagine what it must be like after 30 something years of marriage to have to start over.

[20:31] Jessica: These are the most evil people who have ever lived. And by the way, when we have on the Instagram a photo of Nan Kempner,

[20:39] let's make sure it's one that really has not been retouched, because we know what she.

[20:44] She looks as evil as she was.

[20:47] Meg: Well, as it turns out, there is a photo that supposedly Tom gave Iris to give to the PI to pass around to see whether she was sleeping with anybody.

[21:03] And it is definitely unflattering.

[21:07] She's in a bikini,

[21:09] and it's not a good angle.

[21:11] Jessica: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[21:15] Meg: Nan Kempner died in 2006, and Tom married his secretary seven months later. Iris, brace yourself.

[21:26] Jessica: I'm braced. I'm not happy.

[21:28] Meg: It's not happy. No. Iris was evicted from her Sublette in 2016 at the age of 83.

[21:36] Jessica: Shut up.

[21:37] Meg: I mean, what the actual fuck?

[21:40] She moved into a Marriott where she had a bad fall,

[21:44] and she was relocated to the Amsterdam nursing home, which I actually checked out when my dad needed to go.

[21:50] Jessica: I've actually been to that nursing home. Not where you want to be.

[21:57] Meg: And that is where she died in 2017.

[22:00] Jessica: May the souls of the Kempners burn in the fires of Gehenna.

[22:05] Meg: Well, guess what? Tom Kempner's obituary. Guess what? It didn't mention.

[22:12] Jessica: Iris, of course.

[22:14] Meg: Guess who else it didn't mention?

[22:16] Jessica: Who? Nan.

[22:18] Meg: Nan.

[22:18] Jessica: Get out.

[22:19] Meg: Is unmentioned in his obituary.

[22:25] These people did not like each other.

[22:31] Roger Friedman,

[22:32] who interviewed Iris for the New York magazine article the woman who would not get lost,

[22:39] remembered her for her intellect, humor, and resilience.

[22:44] Back in 1988, Iris quipped to James Revson of the Miami Herald,

[22:52] I guess the advice. Never have an affair with a married man is good advice.

[22:59] Iris.

[23:00] Jessica: Well,

[23:01] okay, so when you said what happened to Iris, as you know, like, I have this. This deep, deep fear of dying in Port Authority in a cardboard box. Like everyone who knows me knows this,

[23:13] which of course, is not based in reality.

[23:15] I've come to. I've come to accept that however,

[23:19] this story pushes every button that I have.

[23:24] Meg: I'd already started writing, and I had.

[23:26] Jessica: To before I had a moment. Really, Meg, this is the one you chose the deal.

[23:31] Meg: I just. I have to report it as I find it. I. I.

[23:35] Let me put it this way. That last part about her decline, it could have been longer and it could have been darker, and I spared you that.

[23:45] Jessica: Well, I guess thanks for that, but the real thing.

[23:49] Meg: But I want you to know that, you know, she.

[23:51] Jessica: Well, trust no one and rely on yourself is really the lesson.

[23:55] Meg: And actually, it was one of the gossip columnists who really had the most respect for her and stayed in touch with her. And that's how, you know, he knew that she was at the Amsterdam nursing home.

[24:08] And he's the one who said after she died, printed,

[24:12] that she was resilient, amazing person who definitely made some mistakes in her life, but was funny and, you know, obviously smart and.

[24:24] And resilient. Yes. And, I mean, she did have to refashion herself a number of times,

[24:31] and she might not have trusted the right people all the time.

[24:35] Like, how are you not supposed to trust people who.

[24:39] I don't know. I don't know if there's a lesson there.

[24:41] Jessica: Well, you know who you trust? A really good lawyer. That's who you trust.

[24:45] Meg: Oh, that was the other thing. And that's not a lawyer. She could not find a lawyer to go up against the Kempners.

[24:52] When they turned on her hardcore like that,

[24:56] no one would take her case.

[24:59] Jessica: Well, that's when we get an Erin Brockovich story. Like, she should have gone to Queens because there would have been some lawyer on the make in Queens who was ready to do that.

[25:08] Meg: Can I tell you something really horrible that I didn't even include in here because it was just so over the top?

[25:13] Jessica: Is it. Is it in line with what I'm saying?

[25:16] Meg: Yeah. David Sawyer, her ex husband, they had that company together.

[25:21] And that company,

[25:23] she had a pension. And that company did very well before he died. And she was down on her luck. People were like, why aren't you helping her out? And he's like, she can get a job.

[25:34] I don't have to help her out. So he was just not horrible person. He was not sympathetic at all. And then when he died,

[25:41] she found out that he had siphoned her pension out years before.

[25:47] Poor woman.

[25:48] Jessica: But she just believed that she would be taken care of. And that's.

[25:54] Meg: I don't think that's fair to say. She didn't think she was going to be taken care of. She'd started a business with these men, and they screwed her over.

[26:03] Okay? She was not asking for handouts, ever.

[26:07] She sunk everything that she had into the business she started with Kempner. All right? Then he bankrupted her,

[26:18] we think, out of vengeance.

[26:20] Jessica: So I'm going to amend my statement, which is don't put all Your eggs in one basket.

[26:27] Meg: Yeah.

[26:27] Jessica: Iris.

[26:27] Meg: Poor Iris. And I mean, I guess if I print a picture of Nan, I should print a picture of all the people involved in this affair.

[26:36] Jessica: Well, it's a real rogues gallery with these two guys and Nan.

[26:42] Meg: And the guys, too. When they're quoted, they're so, like, above the fray. Like, no, you're not.

[26:49] Jessica: You are doing her dirty for fun.

[26:52] Meg: Like, come on, you're not above the fray.

[26:55] But so interesting, too, that the Kempners were like,

[26:59] actually,

[27:00] we're going to lean into this.

[27:02] We talk about it all the time.

[27:04] Jessica: That's the ultimate in spin.

[27:07] You can't hurt me if I'm saying it myself. Yeah,

[27:10] I don't even know if they wanted to destroy her. They just wanted her out of the way. And this was the one.

[27:16] Meg: That is one roller.

[27:17] Jessica: She was an inconvenience. Just go away. And because they didn't give a shit, the easiest way to make her go away was basically to kill her.

[27:27] Meg: Except that's what.

[27:29] That's what everyone was confused by.

[27:31] If they hadn't destroyed her,

[27:33] she would have gone away.

[27:35] It was the destroying of her that made her go, well, now I have to talk about it, because I have nothing else to my name.

[27:44] Jessica: Right? But once she did that, I'm saying there was even more need and desire to destroy her. That's when the real sliminess comes in. Cause it's like, now you're a pest and we're gonna sweep you out the door.

[28:01] I mean, they could have gone back, I guess, and paid her at that point. Even then.

[28:06] Meg: I mean, that's what the article talks about. It's like literally the reporter saying to Tom Kempner, why don't you just give her what she put into the townhouse?

[28:19] Jessica: And what did he say?

[28:20] Meg: I don't talk about those things.

[28:22] Jessica: Oh, my God. All right, well, I. I am now so angry that I can't see straight.

[28:26] Meg: But there is a rumor that.

[28:28] Jessica: That her ghost haunts the Kempner family.

[28:31] Meg: That it was intentionally orchestrated by Nan. But who knows? Maybe that's also sort of woman slamming.

[28:38] Jessica: But it's not. It's not a wrong thing to slam Nan in this scenario. Well, thank you for this really, really interesting and completely distressing story.

[28:59] Meg: So that story was requested by Barbara Goodwin.

[29:04] Jessica: Ah, Barbara.

[29:06] Meg: Yes.

[29:07] And she also said in that missive, thank you for the Sylvia Miles show coverage a few weeks ago. I own a fab mid century garish lamp from her living room.

[29:18] Jessica: Stop it. Oh, my God, that's fabulous. Here's one of my Infrequent engagement questions. Meg, when you were a little girl, did you want to be a witch?

[29:28] Meg: Sure.

[29:30] Jessica: What inspired you?

[29:31] Meg: Bewitched.

[29:33] Jessica: Did you ever read those books?

[29:35] They were really popular. I think they were written in the 70s by Richard Peck,

[29:40] and it was like, Ghosts I have Been.

[29:42] And they were all of these, like, semi occult books that were written basically for little girls.

[29:48] Meg: Oh, no, I don't think so.

[29:50] Jessica: Ugh. They're so good.

[29:52] And I've now inspired myself to do a piece on them, but they're phenomenal.

[29:57] So, yeah, I was deeply into all things witchy and loved it. And as I got older, it turned into a great love for the occult.

[30:07] One of the things that really, really interests me is how right after World War I in New York City, and I think I've talked about it on the podcast before, but mediums were proliferating because so many people had lost sons in the war.

[30:24] It was particularly a big thing in England,

[30:27] but it was also a thing here. And, you know, all things English become the rage here.

[30:33] So there were mediums who were just popping up out of every place.

[30:39] There was one medium in Philadelphia who managed to stump the editors of Scientific American because there was a contest that if you could prove you were a real medium, you won some huge cash prize.

[30:56] And of course, no one won it, but they couldn't disprove this one woman.

[31:02] Meg: Fun.

[31:02] Jessica: Yes. So anyway, it was a really, really big deal.

[31:06] But other things as a result that were sort of adjacent became very popular as well. And even though, like mediums, they had been around forever, for well over 200 years,

[31:20] people had been practicing fortune telling,

[31:24] palm reading,

[31:25] crystal balls,

[31:27] tarot, which you love.

[31:29] But I saw something that happened in 1982,

[31:33] and it made me do a dive backwards. So we can do a dive forwards. Here's a little bit of information about fortune telling in New York city.

[31:45] In the 1920s,

[31:47] it was made illegal.

[31:49] Meg: Oh.

[31:50] Jessica: And then in the 1930s, there were raids on tea parlors all over the city.

[31:56] The police were going bananas and they were shutting them down. They were allowed to read palms and tea leaves if it was for entertainment.

[32:05] But if you did it for any money at all, could be 25 cents,

[32:09] you're busted.

[32:11] And there was $100 fine. So if you can imagine at the time,

[32:15] that is a lot of money.

[32:18] Now think for a second. Who are the people who are doing this?

[32:22] Women.

[32:23] Meg: Yes.

[32:23] Jessica: Who are they doing it for?

[32:26] Mostly women and working class women.

[32:30] It was easy to be like, screw you and screw your livelihood.

[32:34] You're done.

[32:35] But because of the American fear of witches and the occult,

[32:42] these rules had been on the books in one form or another forever.

[32:47] So I thought that was very interesting.

[32:50] Let me tell you a little bit about the late twenties.

[32:54] In 1929,

[32:57] Miquette, Cuba, was fined that hundred dollars for illegal fortune telling.

[33:04] She accepted 25 cents from a cop, a lady cop who busted her undercover.

[33:10] Yes, the police was. Were waging a war against, quote, tea rooms of occult nomenclature.

[33:18] The people who were telling fortunes were trying to,

[33:22] if they weren't actually of Romani descent, they were creating this look, this gypsy look. That was a big deal. And it also made it very easy for a racial profiling to take place and for them to be even more discredited simply as human beings.

[33:38] So now they're. They're women and they're dark women.

[33:42] One of the things they would do to get women to come in, particularly these working class women, was they would provide food.

[33:50] So it was very common to have tuna sandwiches,

[33:53] angel food cake, and pimento cheese sandwiches at these tea rooms.

[33:57] Meg: Sounds lovely.

[33:59] Jessica: Indeed,

[33:59] I said that it was for women only, but not quite.

[34:03] I found from July 31, 1936, in the New York Times,

[34:08] an article that says, fortune tellers demanding legal rights meet to nationalize prediction industry.

[34:16] Okay,

[34:17] so here's a little excerpt. Eleven fortune tellers, half of them clad in the colorful peasant costumes of Romany,

[34:25] met yesterday morning on a Hudson river excursion steamer to discuss ways and means of having governor Lehman legalize their profession. And how did they make a claim to do this?

[34:39] Because they said that stockbrokers are predicting the market.

[34:44] Meg: Clever.

[34:45] Jessica: And so they were like, we're all in the pretty addiction business.

[34:49] This article says in 1936 that part of the problem they're having is that, quote, they are still associated with witches and seldom command more respect than a horse thief. Remember I said these have been on the books for a long time.

[35:03] Quote, under the statute of prediction in New York state,

[35:08] I can be fined and fingerprinted for telling fortunes openly.

[35:14] Now, where does that put those stock market predictors?

[35:17] I don't classify brokers as psychics,

[35:20] but they are definitely making predictions every day of the week.

[35:25] It gives a little description, and of course, it's making fun of them.

[35:28] So if it is a real thing, that happened. But of course, the New York Times doesn't want to take it too seriously. So here's how they end the article.

[35:37] Rifts opened up in the ranks of fortune tellers when William Craig, an astronomer, declared that teales held no scientific message. And Madame X Objected Rama,

[35:48] A Hindu mentioned his belief that only Persona of his race were truly psychic. Virtually all in attendance except another Hindu contradicted Rama Rita Rivera, a stoutish soothsayer. So now she's fat.

[36:03] They're just calling her fat. A stoutish soothsayer caused further disquiet by claiming women were better fortune tellers than men by their natural endowments.

[36:13] Harry Spurson argued against this notion. He presented an impressive appearance and in a yellow gown of silk and elaborate Turkish headgear,

[36:23] eventually all agreed with his figures. Fortune tellers are 30% male today against 10% a century and more ago.

[36:32] Okay, okay, so he's trying to say, no, no, we're legitimate because we're men. And the Times is like,

[36:38] not so much Yellow robe.

[36:42] I don't think so.

[36:45] What do we find in 1982?

[36:48] Basically, that article updated for the time for the times of the day. I don't mean just the New York Times, but it's in the New York Times,

[36:57] Written by Clyde Haberman. Cloudy crystal ball for gypsy rights group.

[37:03] Sister Sabrina,

[37:05] having finished breakfast, sat down yesterday in the front room of her emporium on Bedford street in the village and held her visitor's palm in her left hand as she studied it.

[37:16] His work was going maybe okay, she decided, but perhaps all was not well in every other aspect of his life. Quote, I say one thing to you gentlemen, she said.

[37:26] Don't tell your business to nobody.

[37:28] Sister Sabrina was on duty, even though gypsies, against stereotypical propaganda.

[37:35] Gasp. A new civil rights group had declared yesterday day one of a week long halt to all readings of palms,

[37:43] tarot cards and horoscopes. Nobody tells me, said Sister Sabrina. I hear nothing over Bleecker and Perry Streets. Ms. Ray was on the job, too.

[37:54] Excuse me, my friend, but you do not look happy in the face, is what she says to Clyde Haberman. All of this is very disappointing to Jojo, an organizer of the gypsy protest.

[38:06] Quote, repeated slurs against our character are taking place.

[38:10] The latest being the Congressional gypsy moths,

[38:14] meaning the gypsy moths that are eating the trees.

[38:17] Meg: Oh.

[38:18] Jessica: Will there ever be mention of our finer qualities? Now, wait.

[38:22] Meg: Okay, hold on.

[38:24] Jessica: Yes.

[38:26] Meg: So what they are protesting is that people have bad associations with gypsies. And the way that they are protesting is saying, we will not predict anything.

[38:37] Jessica: We won't tell your fortunes. Okay, they're going on strike, we're going on strike.

[38:40] Meg: Got it. Exactly. Just double checking. I caught that.

[38:45] Jessica: Now here's the thing.

[38:48] Jojo, the king of the New York Gypsies,

[38:51] very pissed off about the gypsy moth situation,

[38:55] who started.

[38:56] Gasp.

[38:58] He had sent out a press release calling for the citywide week long gypsy strike, and particularly again about the nomenclature about the moths. He said,

[39:09] call it the Ayatollah moth,

[39:11] call it the IDI Amin moth, call it the Hitler moth, but never again the gypsy moth. Wow.

[39:19] He and a band of other gypsies set up shop outside of the governor's office in New York City,

[39:26] marching and yelling, rename the gypsy moth.

[39:30] Rename the gypsy moth.

[39:32] Meg: Okay, I just have to say that is your biggest complaint. That's really interesting. What does a gypsy moth look like? I was assuming it was colorful.

[39:44] Jessica: It's just a moth.

[39:45] Meg: It's just a moth. So it really is derogatory. Like it's. It's a. It's called a gypsy moth because it eats stuff.

[39:52] Jessica: Well. Or so says. So says Jojo.

[39:57] Meg: Okay.

[39:58] Jessica: However, this all sounds a little weird, doesn't it?

[40:01] Meg: Yes, it sounds weird.

[40:04] Jessica: Well, guess why. Because Jojo was a performance artist named Joey Skaggs.

[40:11] Meg: Thank you, Joey Skaggs.

[40:13] Jessica: And Joey Skaggs was part of performance artists who called themselves culture jammers, using the word jammers in the same way that CB radio users used it. Which is the. For the illegal practice of electronically interrupting radio broadcasts.

[40:30] Meg: Yes.

[40:32] Jessica: So culture jamming, by extension, is artistic terrorism directed against the information society in which we live. So they were creating. Wait for it. Fake news.

[40:45] Meg: Oh, God.

[40:45] Jessica: And they were doing it satirically to bring it to people's attention.

[40:51] That blindly believing whatever a newspaper tells you was probably a pretty bad thing.

[40:58] There's another artist group called Negative Land,

[41:03] and they were putting up all around the city grotesque caricatures of Oliver North,

[41:10] Edwin Mees,

[41:12] any other of the dark figures just like is happening right now. Today, I went to an art gallery opening on Little West 12th to find JD Vance,

[41:22] and Musk and Trump parodied in exactly the same way. Mr. Skaggs back to Jojo the Non Gypsy.

[41:32] His art was designed to dramatize the inherent dangers of a media that uses photo ops and buzzwords. Sounds like memes,

[41:42] doesn't it?

[41:42] Meg: And hashtags.

[41:43] Jessica: And hashtags. Two weeks prior to his Jojo the Gypsy boy his stunt,

[41:50] he had another hoax called Coma Cocoon.

[41:54] Coma Cocoon was a cybernetic vacation service with a promotional letter that said it would give you complete relaxation while your imagination is guided to the destination of your choice.

[42:06] Not unlike what Tom Cruise's character opts for in Vanilla Sky.

[42:12] Meg: What does it do?

[42:12] Jessica: So the idea is you're put into a coma and into Your brain is fed the fantasy of your choice.

[42:20] Meg: Oh, okay.

[42:20] Jessica: That's your vacation.

[42:22] Meg: All right. That's what he was saying he could do.

[42:24] Jessica: No, he can't do any of these things.

[42:27] Meg: But he's claiming to be able to do.

[42:29] Jessica: Yes. And people responded. They wanted to go into the coma cocoon,

[42:34] not unlike the people who wanted hair today.

[42:39] That was his other scam.

[42:41] It offered, quote, a ghoulish remedy for baldness, which basically provided you with a new scalp.

[42:47] Which, by the way, if you think about it, coma cocoon is virtual reality. And the scalping is exactly what happens today with transplants. So Joey Skaggs was a little ahead of his time,

[42:59] but so were his compatriots.

[43:03] Negative land.

[43:04] In 1988, the year that Tipper Gore went bananas,

[43:08] they found an article about a 16 year old boy who had murdered his family.

[43:13] And purportedly over his musical tastes, they issued a press release implying that the multiple axe murders were precipitated by,

[43:21] quote, christianity is Stupid,

[43:24] a negative land song that marries the fire spitting sermon of a Pentecostal preacher to crunch rock of unbelievable ponderousness.

[43:34] Meg: So they did a mix of a song.

[43:36] Jessica: Yes.

[43:37] Meg: Using an actual evangelical preacher's sermon, and then they put a beat over it.

[43:43] Jessica: Correct. And they even had a background vocal that said, this is a monstrous joke.

[43:48] No one picked up on it.

[43:51] So back to Joe Skaggs. One of his other great hoaxes was that he claimed that hormones extracted from mutant cockroaches would cure arthritis, acne, and radiation poisoning. Hmm.

[44:05] Meg: It worked.

[44:06] Jessica: She says, quote, when I did the roach vitamin pill hoax and sick people called, willing to spend any amount of money, it broke my heart.

[44:13] I said, listen, I'm doing this to illustrate the people who say they have for certain diseases are charlatans.

[44:21] My favorite of his hoaxes was the Walk Right campaign in which he appears as a combat boot. This'll be close to your heart. A combat booted, black clad guardian angel type meets Emily Post trying to improve sidewalk etiquette.

[44:40] Meg: What? Get to the right. Get to the right.

[44:42] Jessica: Exactly. And when he appeared as King of the gypsies and was picketing, he was wearing an enormous, enormous pair of gypsy moth wings. And I have a photo of this for you.

[44:54] Meg: Very fun.

[44:55] Jessica: So how does the press take all of this?

[44:58] Stephen Isaacs, associate dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, says,

[45:03] I find it fairly amusing,

[45:05] and I don't think it presents a problem.

[45:07] You simply print a correction in your column. If you say anything about the hoax, it makes us all human.

[45:15] Another one. Thomas Collin, the Managing editor of the Washington Journalism Review said, from Piltdown man to fake lottery winners, the media needs to be reminded of its own hubris.

[45:27] Meg: Also, do a little research if you're a journalist.

[45:31] Jessica: Seriously. Now, let's go back for one last second to the New York Times. And who was responsible for this particular coverage of JoJo the Gypsy Boy?

[45:43] Meg: Well, let me ask. Did they recognize JoJo the gypsy boy as a performance artist or. No. They didn't get it.

[45:51] Jessica: They did. No. Well, they eventually provided a retraction.

[45:55] Meg: Okay. But the original article took it seriously.

[45:58] Jessica: The original article took it seriously. Clyde Haberman fell victim to the piece after speaking with JoJo on the phone.

[46:06] Unfortunately for Haberman,

[46:08] this was not the first time he had been taken in by a hoax.

[46:11] Meg: Oh, no.

[46:12] Jessica: A good story. And had it publicly revealed.

[46:15] As a young reporter, Haberman was a stringer for the New York Times.

[46:19] He covered the Columbia School of Journalism graduation ceremonies and is said to have embellished his story with fictitious graduate awards that had sexual innuendos.

[46:29] He was fired and went to work for the Post.

[46:33] It's like you were sent down to hell.

[46:35] Meg: Do you think he's related to Maggie Haberman?

[46:38] Jessica: Could be. He was eventually brought back to the Times and promptly fell for JoJo's gasp.

[46:45] Meg: Oh, no.

[46:46] Jessica: Clyde.

[46:46] Meg: Is his name Clyde? Yes. Oh, Clyde.

[46:49] Jessica: So I loved this story more than I could possibly tell you because it linked this long history. I mean, there's a book, I don't know if you're aware of this,

[46:57] that is called the Witches of New York. And you can get it on Kindle, you know, Amazon,

[47:03] ebooks, whatever. But it is a guide to every witch in New York who you can visit. It's from the 19th century.

[47:10] Meg: Like a Yellow Pages, but with reviews.

[47:13] Jessica: So, like, remember how Q used to be?

[47:16] It's exactly that. So it takes us all the way back into now,

[47:22] then to what's his name? Joe. Joe Skaggs.

[47:25] But I think I told the story before, and I will just repeat it, that one of my favorite personal New York stories is my friend John from Kenyon dragging me to a West Village psychic who told me that I was very cursed and for $900, she would remove the black cloud from over my head.

[47:45] Meg: I had a similar experience on Columbus Avenue. I think I was with Amanda. Yeah, we just. We stopped, we had our palms read, whatever. But somehow I managed to.

[47:56] You know, I gave her my phone number. Big mistake. Oh, no. And she started calling.

[48:03] Jessica: You're joking me.

[48:05] Meg: And I didn't know what to do. I should have just told my parents immediately what I'd done, that she wanted all kinds of money. And it was.

[48:14] Jessica: I.

[48:14] Meg: It was a mess.

[48:15] Jessica: It was sort of like if Dionne Warwick's Psychic Network called you, Right? Very, very.

[48:23] Meg: Yeah. And I remember it. I remember it being a little threatening. Like,

[48:27] you said that I should light a candle for you, and I did.

[48:31] And so you owe me money for that. It was like that.

[48:35] I'm like, oh, my God,

[48:37] go mine.

[48:37] Jessica: I'm 15. I don't know what to do with you. Funny enough, I went to a place.

[48:43] Meg: I should just have gotten an angry parent about it.

[48:45] Jessica: That's. It just would have been over with. Exactly. Your father's indignation would have been sublime, quite frankly. When I was in London, most recently, I went to a very famous occult bookstore called Treadwell's and had my tarot done.

[48:59] And I will share that with you because I recorded it and it was really fascinating.

[49:03] Meg: Did you take a picture of the card?

[49:04] Jessica: I did,

[49:05] I did. And she started off by using a deck from 1849 that was not a normal tarot deck. And if I can find a photo of it, I will. I'll show you that, too.

[49:13] But it was great and good fun and not in any way promoted as fortune telling. It was merely.

[49:24] Read your tarot.

[49:26] No other explanation.

[49:28] Meg: Read.

[49:29] Jessica: Read the tarot.

[49:30] Meg: I'm interested by the word read, though I have to say, like read, because read is. It can be used in so many different ways. You can imply so many things from read.

[49:41] I'm reading you right now.

[49:43] Jessica: Yes,

[49:45] well, because as you well know.

[49:47] Well, that's like you need to do like three snaps down when I'm reading you. But her whole shtick, and I know that you are very familiar with this,

[49:54] is that the cards don't tell the future. It's up to the person who is doing the tarot reading, which is what it's called to interpret. And the interpretation is the reading of the signs.

[50:22] Meg: So what is our tie in today? Gossip columns, performance artists, bad fortune.

[50:30] Jessica: That's all that I've got is poor Iris had some bad, bad fortune.

[50:35] Meg: That's great. Yeah. Done for a tie in. I'm interested in doing a little bit of research on gypsy moths. I haven't heard about them for a while. Did they actually get renamed?

[50:46] Let's find out.

[50:47] Jessica: That's a really good question.

[50:48] Meg: Did New York figure out how to get rid of them?

[50:50] Jessica: I don't think that they were the problem. Like, they weren't like the lantern flies in New York City.

[50:56] Not the equivalent gypsy moths are like outside of the city.

[51:01] They didn't terrorize the city. I think he was just latching onto,

[51:06] you know, it's Romany. We're not gonna discriminate. And you know, very deftly saying, you know, these are the buzzwords, these are the topics that are very easy to get people riled up about and get people behind it.

[51:20] But what I love about the Haberman piece is that even the actual gypsies had no idea what. And they're like, fuck that, I don't care. Are you paying me?

[51:32] So it was just so delightful. Exactly,

[51:36] exactly,

[51:37] exactly. And I. And of course Haberman's trying to make fun of them, when in fact, guess what, dude, you know, watch. Watch out who you're poking fun at. I don't know.

[51:49] We can look up what happened to the gypsy moths. Although I did find an article that talked about the renaming of gypsy moths in the same paragraph. They were talking about renaming the Atlanta Braves and the.

[52:02] Who are the Chiefs?

[52:03] Meg: You're asking the wrong person, but I know what you're talking about.

[52:06] Jessica: Yeah, all of the sports games, teams.

[52:08] Meg: Yeah.

[52:08] Jessica: Where you know, they're like, hi, racist this.

[52:12] Meg: We could also have a tie in about trust. Yes. Don't trust.

[52:17] Jessica: Don't trust the media. And don't trust the.

[52:18] Meg: Don't trust the media. Or if you're the media,

[52:22] don't trust your subjects. And if you're married to someone or having an affair with somebody, don't trust them. I hate to say it.

[52:30] Jessica: I know that you hate to say it, and I'm so glad that you came over to my way of thinking. There can't be any sex or any money involved in a relationship where trust is on the line,

[52:40] in my opinion.

[52:41] Meg: And if you've got both, I mean.

[52:42] Jessica: When I say trust, I don't mean trust. I mean blind trust. I really like. Let me make that very clear. If you try to go through life trusting no one, you're screwed.

[52:51] You can't.

[52:52] Meg: You're miserable.

[52:52] Jessica: You can't do that. But it's just about like,

[52:56] look after yourself. Make sure that you aren't open for someone who wants to do you harm.

[53:03] You know, like that's really all that it is. So is it about trust? I think it's more about self care,

[53:10] really.

[53:11] Meg: Even Clive?

[53:12] Jessica: Well, I think that Clyde. I think it's Clyde. I think that, you know, not double checking your sources as a reporter might be a little dumb.

[53:25] Meg: If it's too good to be true.

[53:27] Jessica: Double check. Yeah. Guess what.

[53:33] Meg: Sam?