National Affairs: At the Ritz

Little different from conventional debuts whose object is to introduce young girls to polite society and eventually to the career of marriage was the debut held last week at the White House (see above). But very different in principle from such debuts are other debuts—a handful of which now take place every year—which provide a glittering preview of young women who are launching on a career somewhat like that of a cinema star, the career of Glamor Girl. Outstanding debut of last week in Manhattan was a party that had all the earmarks of a champagne christening of such a career.

In the Main Ball Room suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, 1,500 guests enjoyed some $50,000 worth of entertainment in honor of the coming out of Brenda Diana Duff Frazier. The social spectrum ranged from Cafe Society's fat impresario, Elsa Maxwell, to Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. The proceedings which lasted till 7 a. m. were news not only in Manhattan but in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, St. Louis, Atlanta, Seattle, Los Angeles. Two days later an official seal was set on Brenda Frazier's glamor by a court accounting showing that this "infant over 14" has several trust funds with assets of $4,051,000.

Brenda Frazier at 17 is shapely, wide-eyed, with a striking shoulder length of blue black hair. Her grandfathers were a Chicago grain broker named Frank Pierce Frazier and Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor, a Canadian capitalist who used to manage the Bank of Montreal and whose Lady is social matriarch of Nassau. At eleven, she struck the Sunday supplements as the centre of a scandalous financial row between her divorced parents, each of whom sought to prove the other unfit to be her custodian. Fight and notoriety continued until her father died in 1933.

By that time glamorous Brenda Frazier had made a good start on her career. When she was 14, her mother computed her clothing allowance at $5,400. Smartly groomed and ubiquitous, Brenda was a photographer's cynosure all through 1938. In her unglamorous moments, she wears shell-rimmed spectacles and calls her mother, now Mrs. Frederic N. Watriss, "Mummie." In more typical moments, she led a night club's hay ride through Manhattan's streets, served as debutante chairman of charity's Velvet Ball, posed for Woodbury's Soap ads. Last month, publicly expressing displeasure with her daughter's constant publicity, Mrs. Watriss packed her off to Nassau and her maternal grandparents.

For Glamor Girl Frazier, her actual debut was suitably anticlimactic. She had the snuffles. In deference to her economizing executor (Chase National Bank), non-vintage champagne was served. For the occasion Mrs. Watriss hired two photographers—one to take official photographs, the other to stand at the door and keep out newscameramen who might try to crash the party. At 4:30 a. m. Brenda ended her rhumba dancing and sat down to chat with a tablecloth around her shoulders.