Angry celebrities, ‘unlimited' expenses – life at Vanity Fair in the 1990s

Telegraph

25-03-2025

Anna Wintour swooping about in dark glasses; Tina Brown a ringer for the then-Princess of Wales. Editors of glossy magazines seem to lead rarified lives. It must be because they're treated like royal babies, and gain a sense of entitlement. Graydon Carter, skipper of Vanity Fair from 1992 until his retirement in 2017, of this breed, except he's more likeable, perhaps because he's Canadian.
As he relates in his new memoir, When the Going was Good, his ancestors had moved from London to Saskatchewan to trap beavers. Carter was born in 1949; during his childhood, there was nothing to do in the snowy wastes save play hockey and admire his father, a pilot, who could fart the entire 'Colonel Bogey March'. Carter watched a lot of The Phil Silvers Show on television. 'Everything I learned about running an office,' he quips, 'I learned from Sergeant Bilko' – who was an amiable and conspiratorial shyster, beloved by his platoon for his guile and chicanery.
By these and no doubt other means, and after stints with student journalism, Carter was by 1978 in New York, embarking on a career that would encompass Time, Life, Spy, the New York Observer, Vanity Fair and, latterly, Air Mail. Apart from the latter, what a vanished world it already is: no sign of digital editions, tweets, cell phones, email or laptops. Carter recalls the telex room, pots of pencils, typewriters and carbon paper. Hard copies were laid out by hand with marker pens and glue; the finished item then had to be printed and shipped.
What comes over strongly in When the Going Was Good is Carter's love of Manhattan, 'always a magazine city for me', full of Ivy Leaguers and Rhodes Scholars who knew their Wodehouse and Perelman. Outside in the sunshine, Cary Grant was spotted walking up Sixth Avenue. The spry fellow in the tan raincoat was Fred Astaire. Carter readily admits he's an addict for 'showbusiness shmaltz'.
During Carter's prime, an apartment in Greenwich Village cost only $220 a month. To this day, he has never needed to use his kitchen, as meals are placed on expense accounts – La Côte Basque, La Grenouille, the Four Seasons. Banquets are always thrown around events and receptions, and if Carter has any advice to offer the reader, it's this: 'The moment dessert arrives, you make a run for it… Never say goodbye.' This sounds rude and ungrateful by Canadian standards, but then Carter normally must attend three cocktail parties a night.
It has been one big life of luxury. Long-distance telephone calls are made for free. 'Cars took you home every Friday after the issue closed.' Medical concerns and dry cleaning are taken care of. 'When travelling on business, I stayed at the Connaught in London, the Ritz in Paris, the Hotel du Cap in the South of France.' Los Angeles meant suites at the Chateau Marmont and the Beverly Hills Hotel. (To put this in perspective, last week I was at the Bay Guest House in Margate.) Flights were made on Concorde. 'My passport picture was taken by Annie Leibovitz,' says Carter, unabashedly.
The latter, a Vanity Fair regular, was paid millions for her snaps, and had 30 assistants and a catered running buffet in her studio. At Condé Nast, where in 1992 Carter's starting salary was $600,000, 'the budget had no ceiling'. That same year, for example, Norman Mailer was paid $50,000 for an article on the Democratic National Convention, which was spiked. He was paid another $50,000 not to write an article on the Republican National Convention. Flowers were sent to contributors 'at an astounding rate'. There were interest-free loans for staff – including two dozen fact-checkers – to buy their houses and apartments. 'Even moving costs were covered by the company.' Carter himself moved into the Dakota, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where he was visited by Princess Margaret. He still lives in the city, and has other properties in Connecticut and the South of France.
As regards the actual contents of his titles – owned by Si Newhouse, 'the greatest billionaire magazine proprietor of all time' – Carter had a nose or eye for feuds, scoops and scandals, or what he calls 'literate sensationalism'. His pages identified 'Deep Throat', of the Watergate saga. He exposed Michael Jackson's serial sexual abuse, and Mohamed al-Fayed's predatory behaviour at Harrods. He published an account of the Hatton Garden jewel heist, and gave space to Dominick Dunne, who was paid half a million dollars a year for his courtroom reports, 'plus generous expenses and months of free and continuous accommodation'. Carter revered Christopher Hitchens, who 'smoked even when in the shower' and consequently died of cancer at 62.
Investigative journalism is all very well, but what readers want from the glossies is froth, and Condé Nast was peerless at sophisticated shallowness. For instance: one piece explained how 'in New York there is an inverse relationship between a woman's dress size and the size of her apartment. A size two gets a fourteen-room apartment. A size 14 gets a two-room apartment.' That kind of philosophy would today be blamed for precipitating body dysmorphia. Carter was expected to attend fashion shows in the days of fur. 'Do you know how many animals had to die for you to wear that coat?' yelled a protester outside one such event. 'Do you know how many animals I had to f--k to get this coat?' retorted a model. I agree with Carter that that was pretty good.
Nothing pushed up sales more than celebrities. Carter's job came mostly to entail organising the Vanity Fair Oscars party, which required 'more movie stars per square inch than any party in the world'. Yet what a lot of avaricious blockheads they were, pickpocketing the toiletries, glassware and ashtrays. Adrien Brody, Carter says, was intercepted stealing an electrical candle lamp, and is still apologising, in his 'charming' way, now.
But Carter is funny about the true luminaries he has encountered. Gore Vidal fails to see the irony over suing because he's been called 'litigious'; Kurt Vonnegut tells Carter 'if you don't already have cancer, I hope you get it'; and when Richard Gere looks like he's about to punch someone, Carter observes that this is 'a strange way for a Buddhist to handle a situation'. Carter himself enjoys needling Donald Trump, calling him a 'short-fingered vulgarian' who had a cashmere sweater cut up the back with scissors because he refused to pull it over his head and disturb his 'elaborately assembled confection of hair'.
Like Jane Austen's Emma, Carter, 75, has had very little to distress or vex him. When the Going Was Good is very breezy, almost complacent. For balance, readers might seek out Toby Young's brilliant How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, which covers the same period and the same ground – white vinegar to Carter's white sugar. In the film adaptation of Young's memoir, Carter is played by Jeff Bridges, who in the clips I saw seems to be giving an unkind impersonation of Jan Morris. Carter, splendidly in on the joke about his bouffant hair-do, has said the person he actually resembles is Barbara Bush.