To anyone who reads and follows the NYT tribute obituaries this is not a surprise. The day this would happen was always coming. Robert McFadden is 87 years old, but is still with the paper, having started there in 1961. He is the dean of the reporters on the obituary staff, winning a Pulitzer in 1996 for Spot Reporting. He has written so many obituaries that his pre-written ones are aging in the obituary wine cellar called the morgue, waiting for the subjects to pass away and having the vintage opened.
The subjects in many of these pre-written obits have aged into being octogenarians, nonagenarians, and even centenarians. When some notable passes away at these advanced ages, it's almost a 1/5 cinch that the byline will be McFadden's.
I have no idea how close we are to depleting all the McFadden obits, but we might be getting close when the obit for 101-year-old Juli Lynne Charlot was uncorked from the cellar and poured onto Wednesday's front page, below the fold.
Margalit Fox is no longer with the paper, having left a few years ago to write books, one of which I read—the one about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle solving a crime like his creation Sherlock Holmes.
I know when there is a lull in writing pieces on deadline for deceased notables, the obituary desk writers are assigned to update, or start pre-written obits for notables who are still with us, saving time for when that subject does finally leave us. I know Margalit got these assignments.
On Monday we were treated to a McFadden obit on 102-year-old Iris Apfel, a fashion icon unto herself. And now a day later, we have the life of 101-year-old Juli Lynne Charlot, creator of the poodle skirt, celebrated in an obit written by Margalit Fox delivered to the front page table—below the fold—from the obit wine cellar.
Both writers have their distinctive styles, McFadden shoehorning in so many facts of the person's life into the lede you almost don't have to read any further, but you always do, because the stream is taking you over the rapids.
Margalit is a little more playful, and when she can will have a lede that doesn't start with the usual subject's name, comma beginning. She's as close to being like the now long deceased Robert McG. Thomas Jr .who didn't live long enough to leave a body of pre-written obits behind, but did rather leave a book full of ones written on deadline for some of the great characters and ordinary notables that ever walked the earth.
Ms. Fox, being Jewish herself, can get away with a lede for Juli Lynne Charlot that goes: "What's a nice Jewish girl viscountess to do when she has a title but no money, a party invitation but no clothes and a pair of scissors but no sewing skills?
"Invent the poodle skirt, of course."
Everything we see and use was created by someone. We just don't usually know who, and most often don't care. Thus, all Bobby Soxers on American Bandstand in the 50s twirling around in their poodle skirts and Penny Marshall as Laverne DeFazio in Laverne and Shirley who proudly flounced around in her poodle skirt with the large scripted L on the front, owe homage to Ms. Charlot, who in December 1947 cut a huge piece of white felt into a circle with an opening at the top to step through, sewed some appliqués of Christmas tress on the skirt to fit the theme for the Christmas party, and attached it to her waist. And just like that she was a hit and created a fashion industry.
Ms. Fox sneaks in an alternate meaning of "paid" when she tells us; "by the height of the Swinging Sixties the miniskirt had put paid to the poodle." Huh?
I am not often sent to the OED for a definition, but this one stumped me. But there is was, the third definition of the noun "pay," labelled "fig" for figuratively, with the definitions, "retaliation, penalty, retribution, punishment..."
Ms. Fox's kicker at the end is almost ruined by a photo and a caption, but she mentions a quote by Erma Bombeck who wrote in a 1984 column, "when I was a teenager, every girl in the Western world wore a poodle skirt."
In 1951 a 25-year-old woman went to a hoedown celebration in Ottawa at the home of Canada's governor general wearing "a steel blue circle skirt by Ms Charlot that was appliquéd with hearts, flowering branches and stylized figures of Romeo and Juliet."
The woman was Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor who would be known the next year as Queen Elizabeth II.
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