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By Richard L. Frcy "Ridiculous!" I would have answered the most revered of 1925's seers had he ventured to predict that my not-too-distant future would include sitting down to play bridge with Harold S. Vanderbilt. He had not yet skippered the three great yachts that successfully defended the America's Cup. I was not aware that he had just invented contract bridge. But even I knew that Vanderbilt was a multimillionaire, the bachelor catch of society's Four Hundred and a scion of the tough old Commodore who had got his start by plying his own private ferry to Staten Island and wound up owning the New York Central Railroad. I was 20, a social nobody, having a lot of fun and a modest financial success eking out an extra $5 a week or so playing auction bridge at home or at the homes of friends. I don't mean that I ever became Mike Vanderbilt's pal; we just played bridge together a few times and once he sat beside me for a couple of hours, acting the part of the most silent and attentive kibitzer I ever enjoyed. My contemporary, Sam Fry, Jr.—an early Life Master like me and with the same highly non-social background—was on much friendlier terms with Mr. V. In fact, Vanderbilt loved a good bridge game so much that he once sent his private plane clear across Florida to bring Sam to Palm Beach for a game. Knowing that Vanderbilt hated to lose, Junior has never been quite sure whether he should consider this a friendly gesture or a kind of Las Vegas free plane ride to welcome an expected sucker. Since neither of us owned a yacht, my point is that nothing but bridge could have brought either of us into the orbit of a Vanderbilt. I know I have made more friends, been to more places and earned more recognition because I became a good bridge player than ever I could have by becoming a great advertising man— my original line of work. Actually, I've made my living as a writer, but it never hurt that some of my editors also liked to play bridge. Not long ago, for example, I went on a nine-day Caribbean cruise as maitre de bridge aboard the plush steamship Nieuw Amsterdam. At the first luncheon, seating was catch-as- catch-can so my wife and I introduced ourselves to two other couples at our table. One of the husbands replied, "Our name is Jacoby—but we don't play bridge. And our friends here are Mr. and Mrs. Sulzberger." In my usual facetious fashion, I said, "Of The New York Times, I presume." Mrs. Sulzberger nodded, "Yes," and there I was with egg on my chin. But it was a pleasant luncheon and when my wife encountered Arthur Ochs Sulzberger at one of our island shopping stops a few days later, she asked, "How are you doing?" He smiled and said, "Running out of money." Her offer of a loan was genially refused. As did most everyone at the Cavendish Bridge Club in New York, I called Wall Street genius Jack Dreyfus "Baby-face." I might even have become one of that club's Polaroid "millionaires" except that I didn't happen to be around at the time that Jack was expressing his confidence in that then brand-new stock. I was one of the first to call Alfred M. Gruenther, "General," because that was how we all greeted the young lieutenant who moonlighted from his duties as math instructor at West Point in order to direct the most important eastern bridge tournaments. Later, of course, he did become a four-star general. I never got to play with Al's most famous bridge partner, Ike Eisenhower, but I met him when he dropped in at the National Championships in Washington and spent not less than two hours as a fascinated kibitzer. Name dropping? Of course I am. Nor could I have expected these things to happen to me if I hadn't happened to be a pretty good bridge player. But if you play any kind of bridge, you can find friends fast, no matter where you go in this world. A bridge deck is like 52 calling cards. There are really two games of contract bridge: the tournament game, where they know you are an amateur if you introduce yourself when you come to a new table, and the social game, where you can find a bridge game to your liking and people you like and who will like you in any city you may visit or move to. You don't have to go to the bridge club, or the country club or the athletic club. If you are married, you and your wife will meet dozens of other couples who enjoy an evening of home bridge. I am not going to pretend that husband-and-wife bridge battles are unknown. But, if Ely Culbertson's theory is psychologically sound, neither are such fights unwholesome. Ely used to say that since a certain number of marital quarrels are natural and inevitable, it is better to fight about bridge than about more important matters. Whether or not he was right, so far as I know there is only one confirmed case of homicide as the result of a bridge argument. That was way back in 1931 when John Bennett of Kansas City, after losing a hand with his wife as partner, learned too late that the locked door of his bathroom was neither rageproof nor bulletproof. Mrs. Bennett fired several shots through the door and, in the ensuing postmortem, the late Mr. Bennett was, for once, in no position to explain why he had bid and played the hand as he did. I do not maintain that husband-and-wife bridge spells inevitable bankruptcy for the professional marriage counselor. A doctor friend whose bridge skill had helped pay his way through med school played bridge with his wife only once. After a couple of deals, she asked, "How can you take bridge so seriously? After all, it's only a game." Wisely, and promptly, he gave up playing bridge with her as his partner, and eventually gave up the game completely. Then there was the time my wife and I played a friendly game against another expert and his still-almost-new spouse. We had lost a little — never
Object Description
Title |
Bridge to everwhere |
Author |
Frey, Richard |
Subject |
Contract bridge |
Abstract | Illustration not included in Web version; |
Citation |
H&S Reports, Vol. 08, (1971 spring), p. 12-15 |
Date-Issued | 1971 |
Source | Originally published by: Haskins & Sells |
Rights | Copyright and permission to republish held by: Deloitte |
Type | Text |
Format | PDF page image with corrected OCR scanned at 400 dpi |
Collection | Deloitte Digital Collection |
Digital Publisher | University of Mississippi Library. Accounting Collection |
Date-Digitally Created | 2010 |
Language | eng |
Identifier | HSReports_1971_Spring-p12-15e |