NEW YORK: 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...