Hilton girls have readers cringing; welcome back, Auntie Mame; Gail Katz Bierenbaum’s sister lodges a complaint; addicted to Nick Tosches; readers won’t see Joe DiMaggio brought down; Rocky, the “wiener dog,” gets his reward

As a fourth-generation Hilton (Eva Hilton, Conrad’s sister, was my great-grandmother) I am ashamed that Paris and Nicky Hilton are related to me. While I have not had any connection with the Hilton family since my great-grandmother died, I now see why: in Nancy Jo Sales’s article “Hip-Hop Debs” [September], they are revealed to be immature, spoiled snobs.

I was particularly angered by the way Paris treats clerks at the Hilton hotels, demanding to have a room key and grabbing it from their hands as if she owned the place. My advice to the Hilton girls? Get something meaningful in your lives and treat the people who work at Hilton hotels with respect; they help pay for your designer clothes and sad lifestyles.

CELESTE HINES 

Los Angeles, California

IT IS REGRETTABLE that no official of the Dwight School was consulted as to the recollections of Paris Hilton’s mother on her daughter’s tenure at our school. I won’t violate our strict confidentiality policy with a point-by-point refutation. I can assert that Mrs. Kathy Hilton gave outright misinformation on Paris’s academic average and on her very short stay—only part of the 10th grade—at Dwight. Much more serious is Mrs. Hilton’s statement “We left that school because we had a stalker.” To my knowledge, no complaint about a stalker was ever lodged with the school by Mrs. Hilton.

For the record, Dwight implements every precaution recommended for schools by security professionals. We offer the International Baccalaureate program in grades K through 12 and are very sensitive to the security concerns of the many diplomats and foreign dignitaries who send children to Dwight. Our security, under the direction of a former detective with the New York City Police Department, is second to none. Our Parents Association conducts an active eyes-onthe-street program, which is a highly effective deterrent to any malefactor. No “stalker” could have escaped notice in the environs of the Dwight School. To say that this happened is a calumny.

Your writer makes plain why Paris Hilton deserves sympathy. But neither Paris nor any young person having a difficult time is well served when a reputable journal takes at face value the distorted account of a disaffected parent. In this case, a brief phone call to any school official would have established the truth.

CELIA REA
Director of development and communications The Dwight School New York, New York

SURE, I WAS AS DISGUSTED as anyone else by the photographs of the Hilton sisters making their trailer-trash debut, but after reading Nancy Jo Sales’s article I was struck by how completely normal the New York bourgeoisie is.

Aren’t there thousands of families nationwide with wild and shameless daughters who love to play seductresses? And how common is the mother who has faith in the purity and potential of her little angels, who are living out her own unrealized dreams? Or the preoccupied father who tries feebly to communicate with his grown-up children, but was better with them when they were babies? And let’s not forget the younger brothers, who mischievously try to orchestrate revenge on their bullying sister.

DAWN D’ARIES CHALLIS 

New York, New York

IT IS SWEET that Nancy Jo Sales refuses to pass judgment on this vulgar and vapid duo, simply reporting the facts in the tradition of objective journalism. The author’s slyly inserted sour details are rare, and so meek as to be almost missed. And poor David LaChapelle, who photographed the sisters. What an awful task.

LISA HILLMER 

Denver, Colorado

PERHAPS IF THE Hiltons paid better attention to their daughters’ activities, the girls would not have to contend with stalkers and the like.

KATHLEEN TOOLEY 

Seattle, Washington

AS GODMOTHER to the Schnabel sisters, and after having spent last summer in Borneo, Vietnam, and China with Stella, and spring in Rome with Lola, I’ve never heard any mention of the Hilton girls. The “ill competition” spoken of sounds (and looks!) like wishful thinking.

Having the great Jacqueline for their mother, Lola and Stella wouldn’t be caught dead wearing shoes like the ones the Hiltons are wearing, much less posing for those pictures. Incomprehensible behavior!

LAUREN HUTTON 

New York, New York

GREAT MAME

CONGRATULATIONS to Leslie Bennetts for writing a long-awaited piece on Patrick Dennis [“The Man Who Was Marne,” September]. Ever since discovering Little Me in the early 80s, I’ve longed to know his story. I’d always suspected that he was a flaming queen. How nice to have that confirmed, and in such a generous spirit.

RUPERT SMITH 

London, England

OH, WHAT A WONDERFUL article on Patrick Dennis. Auntie Marne! Wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to have a sexy, feminine, young movie Marne? Whatever theatrical reincarnations may occur in the future, the ideal thing would be to get Patrick Dennis back in print.

KEVIN DAWSON 

Sunland, California

THE “SEXUAL CONFUSION” Leslie Bennetts describes, referring to Edward Tanner (Patrick Dennis), is in her own head. If Tanner was anything, he was a transsexual, something quite apart from “gay.” Most gay men are conventionally masculine and naturally prefer other masculine men. This may not be apparent in the effete literary circles Bennetts moves in, but it’s the reality many women deny. They believe that gay men want to be women, but the opposite is true.

D. G. ELLIOT 

Washington, D.C.

SOME YEARS BACK when I was an editor at the Book-of-the-Month Club, I published the out-of-print Auntie Mame, along with Genius and The Joyous Season, two of Tanner/Dennis’s best books, I think. I sought out his wife, Louise Tanner, to write the introduction.

I don’t think she was so much in denial about his sexuality (well, maybe a little) as just in love with her husband. Thank you, Vanity Fair, for reminding your readers of a fascinating, remarkable, and talented humorist.

KAREN KELLY 

New York, New York

SISTER ACT

I AM GAIL KATZ BIERENBAUM’S sister. I have just finished reading (for the fourth time) Lisa DePaulo’s “Intimations of Murder” [September]. It is 1:30 A.M., and sleep still eludes me. This is to inform you that I am surprised, hurt, and offended by Ms. DePaulo’s point of view, her tone, her omissions, her gratuitous criticisms, her inaccuracies, and her unprincipled depiction of my sister and my deceased mother. Although my sister’s case has received intense media coverage, your article is the only one that has offended our family. To gain my cooperation, Ms. DePaulo’s initial correspondence promised that she would be “doggedly thorough, compassionate and fair.” My trust was violated, and her promise broken.

ALAYNE KATZ 

Irvington, New York

AFTER READING Lisa DePaulo’s fascinating yet appalling story “Intimations of Murder,” I’ve come to believe that our country is turning into a police state. When an American citizen is arrested and charged on circumstantial evidence, it’s time to question the policymakers.

Unless new evidence is presented by the prosecution, I say leave Dr. Bierenbaum to do his charity work.

REX BUTTERFIELD 

Leesburg, New Jersey

PERHAPS LISA DEPAULO should have spoken with one of your other writers, Dominick Dunne, before printing her misleading ideas about the nature of a domestic abuser. She proposes that if Bierenbaum wanted to get rid of his wife he had the perfect instrument: divorce. Abusers do not want to get rid of their wives or girlfriends; they want to control them—and the ultimate form of control is to take someone’s life.

C. M. WAYNE 

Los Angeles, California

WHILE READING “Intimations of Murder,” nothing truly shocked me. Until, that is, the final paragraph, when the missing woman’s own brother came up with the wonderfully original idea of turning his sister’s life and disappearance into book deals and made-for-TV movies. How about a video game!

MICHAEL R. HOWARD 

Monroe, Ohio

HIGH TIMES

NEVER HAS A PIECE made me relish every word, and every convoluted and beautiful sentence, as did Nick Tosches’s article “Confessions of an Opium-Seeker” [September]. His quest for Nirvana kept me glued to the pages.

I experienced opium many years ago (the gift of former students at a New York prep school), and Tosches’s prose brought back long-dormant memories.

PETER KERNS 

East Walpole, Massachusetts

NICK TOSCHES’S ARTICLE on his quest for opium was superb. Of course, the drug warriors will hate it, as Mr. Tosches illuminated the unequivocal senselessness and futility of the concept of an “illegal drug.” After all, he traveled around the world in relentless pursuit of the object of his illicit desire.

WILLIAM E. HALL 

Federal Correctional Institution Seagoville, Texas

I WAS SICKENED at the need of Mr. Tosches to work his way through brothels where children and vulnerable young females were offered for a price. By even visiting such places with acceptance, Mr. Tosches dlCOUrageS crimes against children and young women.

MARY M. McKEE 

Minnetonka, Minnesota

SOMEONE FINALLY SAID what I have been thinking about “wine connoisseurs” for years. “Just shut up and drink.” I laughed out loud.

NATHALIE WILLIAMS 

Sarasota, Florida

NICK TOSCHES begins his article with a portrait of pretentious wine “connoisseurs” and then goes on to become precisely the kind of character he has, rather viciously, described, albeit in a different context. It might be more interesting to read what the old-timers in these opium dens have to say about their visitor.

VICKI HAMMOND 

Sausalito, California

LONELY IDOL

IN BUZZ BISSINGER’S article “For Love of DiMaggio” [September], the assertion is made that Joe DiMaggio confided to his attorney, Morris Engelberg, that “he hated Frank Sinatra” for acting “as a pimp” in setting up Marilyn Monroe with the Kennedys “in exchange for political favors.”

This is absolutely ludicrous. Frank Sinatra was a close friend of Marilyn’s and also held Joe DiMaggio in high esteem. Mr. Engelberg makes this claim at a time when, conveniently, neither of these American heroes is here to comment.

HAL LIFSON 

Sherman Oaks, California

AS A BASEBALL NUT I couldn’t resist your recent story about Joe DiMaggio.

Joe’s legal adviser and confidant gives us an insider’s portrait of an American icon as a vain, hypersensitive, and cheap man who cruelly controlled and discarded his entourage of sycophants.

But astute DiMaggio-watchers find nothing new here, except for a few more details. We are hardly shocked to learn that he hated the Kennedys and forever grieved for his ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe.

JOSEPH H. GUSKY 

Buffalo, New York

TED WEEMS, the big-band leader, introduced me to Joe DiMaggio at the Chez Paree nightclub in Chicago in 1955. We were having dinner when someone spotted DiMaggio across the room. Ted managed to shake his hand and asked him to meet some friends. DiMaggio smirked all the way through the agonizing procedure of shaking our hands and left without saying good-bye. Until I read Buzz Bissinger’s article, I thought that the smirk was temporary.

BOB BRINDLEY 

Belleair Beach, Florida

THE REVELATION in your article that Joe DiMaggio detested Bill Clinton, Frank Sinatra, and the Kennedys will only add to his legendary stature as a man of infinite class.

ROGER R. PHILLIPS 

New Canaan, Connecticut

YOUR ARTICLE on Joe DiMaggio touched my spirit. Some may interpret the relationship between the Yankee Clipper and Morris Engelberg as “mercenary,” but I see the picture in a different light. I see the two men devoted to each other. While it is true that Mr. DiMaggio did gain financially from his association with Mr. Engelberg, I believe he acquired something much more valuable along the way—a trusted friend.

CORINNE KLIEGL 

Anthem, Arizona

MAN'S COOLEST FRIEND

WE ARE WRITING TO YOU on behalf of our beloved miniature dachshund, Rocky, who would like to thank your magazine for naming him the “It” dog, not once, but twice, in recent issues. This honor has helped to heal the years of enduring such epithets as “wiener dog,” “bratwurst,” and “salchicha” (he does live in L.A.).

LYNN HIRSHFIELD AND ELI PEARL 

Venice, California

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