These Charming People

Slender, kinky-haired Igor Loiewski-Cassini, who is a grandson of a Russian count, hit Manhattan last fall like a ton of marshmallows. He signed on as "Cholly Knickerbocker" of Hearst's New York Journal-American society page, and set his sights high. What he wanted, he said, was syndication--first national, then global. He put out a highly readable, often unbearable column full of cream-puff crises and chichi. Sometimes, to angle it down Hearst's alley, he sternly lectured his readers on why broiled squab and Valentina gowns were Worth Fighting For.

Last week Hearst's King Features Syndicate bought a Cassini society column, but it was not Igor's. The author: pretty, pouty Austine ("Bootsie") Cassini, Igor's 26-year-old wife. The title: Washington Whirl, to run thrice weekly in 100-odd papers, as a hodgepodge of capital chitchat, politics and favorite embassy recipes.

Brunette Bootsie started out as a leg-woman for her husband's old column, These Charming People, in Mrs. Eleanor Medill Patterson's Washington Times-Herald. When Igor was drafted in 1943, "Cissie" Patterson let Bootsie step in as his wartime substitute. Washingtonians liked the substitute better than the original : her stuff was not deep, but it avoided the catty approach that once got Igor tarred & feathered (TIME, July 3, 1939). As the daughter of an old and horsy Virginia family, in whose house Igor took refuge after being tarred, Bootsie had a better entry into Capital society than he did.

Cissie gave Bootsie a shrewd buildup, decorated the column each week with cuts of Bootsie in a different hat. As madly hatted as Hedda Hopper, Mrs. Cassini has a collection of 50, mostly John-Frederics jobs, sometimes makes her own from pieces of curtain or lace tablecloths.

"Most of my work," says Bootsie, "is done in bed." There she breakfasts, reads the papers (including the Journal-American, to see, as she says, what her husband has snitched from her column), pecks out her column. In midafternoon, she starts a round of cocktail parties (her drink: orange juice) and dinners. At these gatherings she caches her notebook in the ladies' room, makes frequent trips there to jot down the items she overhears. By 1 a.m. she is back in bed. Once a week she sees her husband, "Ghighi." They meet in New York because, says Bootsie, "He doesn't like Washington any more . . . he doesn't think the people dress well here."

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