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Mrs. Four Seasons' memoir. Plus, Di Caprio Has Another Run-in With An Iceberg
Rosalie Wise Sharp -- a.k.a. Mrs. Four Seasons -- is honest enough in her upcoming memoir to admit that she didn't always have faith in her husband's high-falutin' ambitions. In a refreshing disclosure, the Toronto luminary sidesteps the standard Nancy Reagan wife act and tells the reader this: "Throughout the years, I've watched in disbelief as Issy's aspirations have come to fruition. Early on, he made some very audacious statements that seemed like pipe dreams.
"He told me once," she continues, "that his aim was to make the name Four Seasons a worldwide brand, synonymous with luxury, like Rolls- Royce. 'Sure,' I thought, 'with only 10 hotels --hardly likely,' but I didn't let on. My most valuable contribution to his success has been my silence."
How's that for a maxim they ought to be teaching in business school? Self- deprecating, and just a little bit saucy. That's Rosalie, and that's Rosalie's book Rifke: An Improbable Life (ECW Press). One that gives equal time to the bitter and sweet. One that is a Map Quest into her Jewish roots, a candid retelling about the son she lost to cancer and then a jeep ride through fabulously acquired wealth.
How did it happen? She pauses to pose precisely this, after she and husband have already started finding big dollar bills between those famous Four Seasons bedsheets. "How did it happen that two schleppers like us are now flying in a private jet when we were both raised in households where one bathroom sometimes served 12, and our parents came from a Polish shtetl with no indoor plumbing?"
Characters who pop up in this story include Malcolm Forbes, Luciano Pavarotti and, of course, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed, a major investor in Four Seasons. (He's the one that this Jew defends, calling him both "good-hearted" and "forward-thinking.)
The most intriguing character, though? Her own mensch of a husband Isadore, on whom she sheds unique light. (There is, for instance, Rosalie's own characterization of him as a premarital Casanova, and the matter of the $300 he lost in a gamble during their honeymoon in Havana!) Did you know, too, that at one point as a young girl the future Mrs. Four Seasons decided to become a gentile, joining not only a Bible class but a Christmas choir? (The conversion didn't last.)Or that she has what I think is the most sensible and non-whiny take on all the crazy travel demands that the Sharps routinely endure? A life where Issy might "do a breakfast meeting in Budapest, a luncheon in Lisbon and a dinner in Dublin"? Here, Sharp says -- almost, I think, as a metaphor for life-- this: "As for jet lag, I simply don't bother with it."
A book, of course, necessitates a book launch, and this one is happening in mid-April at -- surprise, surprise -- the Four Seasons in T.O. "Your host," reads the invite is "Isadore Sharp." And on the menu? "Kensington Market buffet," is what the invite also says.
THIS, THAT
- Much More Minx Traci Melchor enjoyed a dinner for two recently with INXS's J.D. Fortune over at Senses in the Soho Met. (A Nick Lachey-VanessaMinnillo thing in the makin'?) ?
- Joe and Kim Mimran wrapped up a busy week in the world of fashion -- she unveiled her latest Pink Tartan collection, he presented his latest Joe Fresh goodies -- by doing dinner at Lee last Friday ?
- Ultimate soil sister Marjorie Harris launched her latest, How to Make a Garden, over tea at the Gardiner Museum last Sunday.
AND, HEY, DID Y'KNOW?
Two of Conrad Black's worst nightmares, Michael Bateof Frank magazine and Tom Bower, author of a certain hatchet-job biography, were spotted lunching together in Chicago the other day, against the backdrop of the trial to end all trials. The Brit had the pastrami on rye; Michael, a veggie burger.
AND ALSO ?
Two Saturdays from now, reports the blog www.tasteto.com, "the very cool and mysterious-sounding Confrerie des chevaliers du Taste Fromage de France" will be handing out honours to several of the city's finest. Mark McEwan of North 44/Bymark fame! Linda Haynes of Ace Bakery riches! Toronto Life gulper James Chatto! Restaurateur Michael Bonacini! That Iron Chef-fighting Lynn Crawford! Afrim Pristine of the no-holes-barred Cheese Boutique! Brian Langley of buggy- ville Longo's! John Louie Coppa of, likewise, Highland Farms! And some guy named Jacob Richler! These are the lucky honourees. At the investiture one can safely expect even more cheese there than you'd find in a Meg Ryan DVD box-set!
AND ALSO?
When the stage version of Edward Scissorhands hits the Hummingbird next month, it will arrive with the approval of Mr. Scissors himself. Staged by It- choreographer Matthew Bourne, the fantastical production has gotten two spears up -- from Johnny Depp! Catching it in L.A., Depp personally wrote to the Bad Boy of Ballet, telling him that he was on the verge of tears the whole time. "He hasn't seen the film since he made it," Bourne told the New York Daily News, and "it brough back a lot of memories." Bourne, who's been called in some quarters the "Damien Hirst of Dance", ha already staged Scissorhands in various places, including New York and London. His previous hits include an all-dudes production of Swan Lake, as well as an ingenious and (some say) gauche take on The Nutcracker.
OH, AND ??
Art-adoring ex-GG Adrienne Clarkson -- honoured recently by Ottawa's National Gallery of Canada with a personalized audioguide -- makes a vital point about beaks in her narration. "Noses," she notes, "might be more difficult to paint than eyes."
AND FINALLY?
Man-about-many-towns Tu Ly, m Canadian taste-making and Olympian- dressing friend, bumped into Leonardo Di Caprio recently. In Reykjavik! Tu was in Iceland art-directing a Ports ad campaign. And Leo? There shooting the cover of Vanity Fair's upcoming "Green Issue" --one our spy from Toronto got the specific goods on. Di Caprio, he tells moi, gave it his best shot for Graydon Carter at the magnificent Glacier lagoon, "floating on an iceberg." Very An Inconvenient Truth meets Titanic, n'est-ce pas?
A NOTE FROM MY PAST
Shinan Govani has been to Four Seasons at the four corners of The Globe, As This Dispatch From last September reminds us:
I've been to Milan and I've been to fashion shows, but I've never been to a Milan fashion show, which is why I arrived here with the same blend of awe and jitters that might just accompany the upstart golddigger arriving for her first "ski" vacation in Gstaad. This Italian metropolis -- Ziploc-ed, as it is, with the kind of buzz that some towns only get when their Olympic or Expo bids come through -- is round-the-clock hipster haunted.
And, this, before I've even eyespied an actual catwalk! The runway is life itself here -- and life a cliched runway -- and the parade is perhaps nowhere more rote than in the lobby of the perfectly pitched Four Seasons Hotel that I'm booked into. Fashion Week gets off to a Rocky start, for instance, when some days ago, I find my back to Sylvester Stallone in the lobby of the hotel -- which is probably among the smallest Four Seasons I've ever seen, and as light as a profiterole! Tucked in between the famous streets of Via Monte Napoleone and Via della Spiga (where Gucci, Pucci and other fancy shops line up like ambassadors at a meeting of the United Nations general assembly) there's a constant hushed sense of expectancy about the hotel, i.e., you never know who might show up and with whom!
"Finally, a star!" I announced to my travel companion, as we watched Stallone ham it up with his wife, Jennifer Flavin, and a gang of others. It's true! Sly might be the kind of star who might come with his own box of Tide or ABC, but there's no denying he's a star. Not one of those Jakes, Heaths or Tobeys, but an actualized, iconic star. At the end of it all, when Mr. Macho was readying to leave, every eye was feasting.
THE BOLDFACE INDEX
If you didn't read Shinan in Arts & Life this week, shame on you! Here's what you missed:
Chicago's ritzy Ritz Carlton, where Conrad Black tries to get some post-trial shut-eye, is the same building in which Oprah Winfrey owns a top-floor pad; Conrad's son, Jonathan, on the other hand, chose to skip Chicago all together and hang out at hot spot Amber; Boys Don't Cry star Hilary Swank will be promoting girl power at Toronto's Power Within conference in May; director of recently completed Eastern Promises David Cronenberg was told an amusing story about Woody Allen's hotel habits by his seat companion, art patron Mary Symons, at a gallery dinner hosted by Jane Corkin, who sat next to our man and explained that the absence of flowers on tables by saying that "with all the art here ... we don't need them"; Burlington-born supermodel Andrew Stetson packed heat at L'Oreal Fashion Week; Jacqueline Hennessy was mistaken for her TV star-sister Jill Hennessy more than a few times and, alas, not for the last, at the Joeffer Caoc fashion show last week; Star magazine said Hollywood couple Hayden Christensen and formerly-of-The-O.C. Rachel Bilson, who found love on the streets of our city, have broken up; Despite dying on 24, Shaun Majumder's recently bought a house in Los Angeles; Peter Gabriel not only ditched the Genesis reunion but also waited in the car while his buddy Richard Branson clocked in an appearance at an official Virgin bash at Level nightclub in the Club District.
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