35. Notorious | Meet Me at Mortimer’s: Glenn Bernbaum
Done & Dunne
Hemlock Creatives
4.7 • 629 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we are going back to the East Coast, New York City in fact – to the toniest hot spot of all the swells in the Upper East Side – – a little place called Mortimer’s. What a scene – it was the scene for all the high society set for about a decade – from 1976 to 1998.
Exploring the life and times of Mortimer’s proprietor – Glenn Bernbaum, and the swells that circulated throughout the Upper East Side hot spot for its 22 year run.
Sources:
Fatal Charms and The Mansions of Limbo, by Dominick Dunne (amazon.com)
The Mortimer’s Bunch | Vanity Fair (vanityfair.com)
Glenn Bernbaum, a Solomon of Bistro Seating, Dies at 76 – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Lights, Camera, Action! | New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com)
Weekend Explorer: Upper East Side – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
No More Mr. Nice Guy – Nymag (nymag.com)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.co. |
| 0:05.5 | That's audible.co.uk slash wondery. |
| 0:11.5 | Welcome to Dun & Dunn. I'm Alicia, your hostess on this podcast journey, All Things Dominic Dunn. |
| 0:18.4 | This week, we're taking a little trip back to the East Coast, New York City, |
| 0:22.6 | in fact, to the toniest hotspot of all the swells in the Upper East Side. It's a little place |
| 0:28.9 | called Mortimer's. What a scene. It's the scene for all the high society set from 1967 to 1998. Before we begin our episode today, I see a few of you in our |
| 0:43.9 | spy glass. I want to give enormous thanks to Debbie S and Kate M for their support over at |
| 0:49.8 | Patreon. Thank you for joining the community over there. So grateful for your support there. So grateful for you for coming back to listen today. Not enough thanks in the world to give all of you investigators you are simply the best. Let's go ahead and dig into our episode. Talk about mortimers established and run by a man named Glenn Burnbaum, |
| 1:13.3 | who is legendary for so many reasons, and we're going to talk about a few of them today. |
| 1:19.3 | You may already have heard of Mortimer's. If you've read Bonfire the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, |
| 1:25.2 | Mortimer's is the clubby Upper East Side Restaurant depicted in that work. |
| 1:31.5 | If you have read Dominic Dunn's people like us, you will also know Mortimer's. It is all in that book. |
| 1:39.7 | Chick, one of the characters in the book, is modeled after Glenn Burnbaum. |
| 1:45.5 | Dominic Dunn will pin an article for Vanity Fair released in June of 1985 called The Mortimer's Bunch. |
| 1:53.1 | This article is also included in his Fatal Charms and Mansions of Limbo collection. |
| 1:58.9 | In 1985, this is still in Dominic Dunn's early days of writing. And we all know |
| 2:04.2 | that Nick is going to write what he knows about. And friends, in the mid-80s, it's Mortimer's. |
| 2:10.8 | This is his scene. These are his people in the Upper East Side. All the socialites, all the |
| 2:16.7 | historic families who flirt with power |
| 2:19.1 | and scandal and crime. The Upper East Side is Nick's playground for all the gossip. We are |
| 2:26.2 | introducing quite a number of characters in this episode that we are going to see coming up |
| 2:32.8 | over our next weeks, literally littered with people. |
... |
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