Photo credit: Janet Donovan
Designer and cosmetic icon Marc Rosen has been ‘rubbing shoulders’ with the rich & famous, the infamous & the unique for decades – 4 decades to be exact. He was recently honored at a book party at The Fairmont Hotel in Washington, DC accompanied by his famous wife actress Arlene Dahl and other family members to celebrate “Rubbing Shoulders: My Life with Popes, Princes, Moguls, and Movie Stars.”
Arlene Dahl with family. Her granddaughter (second from right) is attending Georgetown University
“From one of the great bon vivants of our age comes this witty memoir of an extraordinary life lived among a glittering social set. Acclaimed designer and founder of Pret-a-Porter Marc Rosen shares in this delightful reminiscence the stories of his encounters with the great beauties, talents, and personalities of the last 50 years. Marc has rubbed shoulders with everyone – from Hollywood royalty (including Helen Hayes, Bette Davis, and his own wife, Arlene Dahl, the girl for whom Technicolor was invented) to actual royalty (Princess Grace of Monaco, the Romanovs) to the moguls of the beauty and fashion worlds (Charles Revson, Karl Lagerfeld) over the course of his brilliant career.” Glitterati Publisher
author Marc Rosen Photo courtesy of The Georgetown Dish
“There are also people in the book who are not celebrities, like the New York City taxi driver, a friend in Palm Beach,” he told Hollywood on the Potomac. “There’s a story about a dinner in Palm Beach with a pet pig.” The owner of the pig it turns out is not George Clooney, but rather someone who bought a place in Mizner tower that was the great architect’s former home. “They have a pet pig and they walk it like a dog on a leash.” Well okay then. As he said, it’s filled with fascinating and amusing personal anecdotes. The pig’s name is Mona Lisa BTW.
“There are stories also about some eccentric people I know that are not celebrities but maybe should be,” he added. “I’ve been in the cosmetic business for so many years working with people like Karl Lagerfeld and the Fendi sisters and Charles Revson who started Revlon. I have met so many celebrities through Arlene over the years including Carol Channing, Jane Powell and then having personally by happenstance meeting John Paul II. The book is kind of about happenstance – when you’re in the right place at the right time and recognize it. Also, be open to talking to people. That’s the conclusion, to be open to meeting people, on grocery lines or anywhere because you never know who you’re going to meet.”
Diana Bulger with Marc Rosen
“What happened was, I had written a book several years ago about my profession which is designing perfume bottles. The book is called “Glamour Icons,” a coffee table book. When it was done people kept saying, when are you going to write another book? I kept saying, ‘I’m not.’ That was it. Then at a dinner party I told this story about Helen Hayes and our seventh anniversary, being the seven year itch party, where I gave out Chinese back scratchers as favors. Years later, I got a phone call from Helen who was ninety-two. She said, as the first lady of the American theater, she said, ‘Marc do you have an extra back scratcher?’ I had totally forgotten about the party and the back scratchers. I said,’ What do you mean?’ She said, ‘You know the ones you gave out at your anniversary party.’ I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, but Helen why do you want one?’ She said, ‘Why dear, because I have an itch.’ So I found mine and gave it to her. Funny, silly stories like that are in the book. Then there’s a great poignant story about her funeral, which I won’t take the time to tell you.”
“Anyway, I had these stories and I tell them at a dinner party and one day I started thinking maybe, maybe I could put them together for a book. I was walking on Lexington Avenue and ran into Pamela Fiori, who was the editor of Town & Country for many years and a good friend. She said, ‘Marc when are you going to write another book?’ Because she had written several, I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m playing with this idea.’ She said, ‘Call it Rubbing Shoulders.’ Well, it was such a good name, I said, ‘I’ll do it if you write the forward’ and she did. Then I thought it sounded kind of pretentious to say, look at me I know all these famous people. I didn’t want to come off that way. I thought, what am I going to do? Then I remembered what my mother told me which was stand straight, you have broad shoulders. So I said in my introduction, my mother always told me to stand straight, you have broad shoulders and you’ve been rubbing shoulders with interesting people for the past forty years. Then I felt everyone could relate to this.”
Arelene Dahl with her grandchildren
“Elegance and femininity are fitting descriptions for Arlene Dahl. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses to have graced the screen during the postwar period. Audiences were captivated by her breathtaking beauty and the way she used to it to her advantage, progressing from claimer to character roles. Of Norwegian extraction, Miss Dahl was born in Minneapolis. Arriving in Hollywood in 1946, she signed a brief contract with Warner Brothers, but she is best remembered for her work at MGM. The Bride Goes Wild (1948) was her first work at Metro. It was an odd but rather humorous love story, which starred Van Johnson and June Allyson. Leaving films behind her in 1959, her typecasting would pay off financially as she became a beauty columnist and writer. She later established herself as a businesswoman, founding Arlene Dahl Enterprises which marketed lingerie and cosmetics. She is the mother of actor/action star Lorenzo Lamas, and actually made a guest appearance in his film Night of the Warrior (1991).” IMDb
When we sat down with Ms. Dahl, she immediately decided we would get along well because our astrology signs were compatible and even suggested that her granddaughter would read my tarot cards if I took her to Cafe Milano, a popular watering spot near by the University, because actor Bradley Cooper (who also went to GTown) always shows up there when in town. Dahl is a believer in astrology and also writes about it. She even chose the date and time of her wedding to Rosen by relying on his-and-her charts as well as a consultation with the late astrologer Carroll Righter to specifically marry at “high noon” July 30. They’re been married for 32 years.
