Our Most Scandalous Story Ever

Truman Capote's "La Côte Basque" became famous for the scandals it brought. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( La Côte Basque, 1965 Côte Basque is on East Fifty-fifth Street, directly across from the St. Regis. It was the site of the original Le Pavilion, founded in 1940 by the honorable restaurateur Henri Soulé. M. Soulé abandoned the premises because of a feud with his landlord, the late president of Columbia Pictures, a sleazy Hollywood hood named Harry Cohn (who, upon learning that Sammy Davis Jr. was “dating” his blond star Kim Novak, ordered a hit man to call Davis and tell him: “Listen, Sambo, you’re already missing one eye. How’d you like to try for none?” The next day Davis married a Las Vegas chorus girl—colored). Like Côte Basque, the original Pavilion consisted of a small entrance area, a bar to the left of this, and in the rear, through an archway, a large red-plush dining room. The bar and main room formed an Outer Hebrides, an Elba to which Soulé exiled second-class patrons. Preferred clients, selected by the proprietor with unerring snobbisme, were placed in the banquette-lined entrance area—a practice pursued by every New York restaurant of established chic: Lafayette, The Colony, La Grenouille, La Caravelle. These tables, always nearest the door, are drafty, afford the least privacy, but nevertheless to be seated at one, or not, is a status-sensitive citizen’s moment of truth. Harry Cohn never made it at Pavilion. It didn’t matter that he was a hotshot Hollywood hottentot or even that he was Soulé’s landlord. Soulé saw him for the shoulder-padded counter-jumper Cohn was and accordingly ushered him to a table in the sub-zero regions of the rear room. Cohn cursed, he huffed, puffed, revenged himself by upping and upping the restaurant’s rent. So Soulé simply moved to more regal quarters in the Ritz Tower. However, while Soulé was still settling there, Harry Cohn cooled (Jerry Wald, when asked why he attended the funeral, replied: “Just to be sure the bastard was dead”), and Soulé, nostalgic for his old stamping ground, again leased the address from the new custodians and created, as a second enterprise, a sort of boutique variation on Le Pavilion: La Côte Basque. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( The 79 Best Grooming Products For Men If you're anything like us at Esquire, your grooming routine is constantly evolving. Taking care of your skin, styling your hair—hell, even brushing your teeth—all mean something different today than they did yesterday. (Are those laugh lines?) No matter where we are in our grooming evolution, though, we want to look good now, dammit. That’s why we buckled down and slathered, rubbed, spritzed, lathered, and tested every new product we could get our hands on—hundreds in total—to make sure you know the absolute best ways to upgrade your grooming game right now. [Read the Full Story]( Kid Cudi Is All Right Kid Cudi is standing in front of a jumbo screen at the home of the New York Mets, watching a stadium full of fanatics chant his name. He hasn’t toured in five years, and he forgot how much he needed this feeling. Not just the idolatry but the physical connection with fans that’s kept him alive all these years. Night after night this summer, he’ll feel it again when he embarks on a twenty-seven-city world tour, an ambitious, theatrical exhibition combining his love of singing and acting into a concert that’s romantic and “trippy as f***.” [Read the Full Story]( Jeanie Buss Is Still Here Where to start with Jeanie Buss, firmly in sports' echelon of needs-no-introduction? Buss is the controlling owner and president of a little team called the Los Angeles Lakers, a real-life Iron Throne you can only truly claim by being the smartest person in the room since the Bee Gees topped the charts. And she's had a hell of a couple years. Practically moments into 2020, Buss lost Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna. And at the end of that no-good, strange, horrible year, James won the Lakers a championship from fucking Disney World. Should we talk about the time, two years later, when Adam McKay made a show about her family, with the guy from Step Brothers playing her very famous dad? Probably not, because she'd rather you watch Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers, currently airing on Hulu, produced by Buss herself. So would Magic, Kareem, Shaq, and all the other guys you know by one name. [Read the Full Story]( Looking For Clarence Thomas He wasn’t the first Supreme Court justice to speak a native tongue other than English. Felix Frankfurter, appointed to the court by Franklin Roosevelt, was an Austrian Jew born into a long line of rabbis and spoke no English when, at age twelve, he Ellis Islanded into New York City with his family. There’s no mention in the historical record as to whether Frankfurter hated himself for growing up speaking German, or whether the experience had so scarred him in childhood that he spent the rest of his days training his tongue to erase his past and his people. But no other member of the high court grew up speaking a language at risk of being forgotten like Clarence Thomas did—the Gullah/Geechee man they once called Boy (the genesis of those Pin Point nicknames, and why his was Boy, is beyond anyone’s memory), who decades later would write what may be the most important thing there is to know about him: “You hate yourself for being part of a group that’s gotten the hell kicked out of them.” [Read the Full Story]( The National Archives Explains How Broken Trump's Understanding of Executive Privilege Is Back in the bad old days of the last Republican Worst President Ever, the FBI came calling on the public library in my town. They wanted to comb through the library’s records because of an alleged terror threat to a local university. However, the feds had neglected to bring along a warrant. The head librarian told them either to get a warrant or to get stuffed. So they cooled their heels until they could comply with the Constitution. The lesson to be learned was not to f*** around with librarians because you will find out. Let us therefore praise Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States who, on May 10, explained to lawyers in the employ of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago that they had reached the "…and find out" portion of the proceedings as regards the first batch of documents he had reluctantly surrendered to the National Archives. The lawyers wanted her to shield certain documents on the grounds of "executive privilege." [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019