Diane Arbus Read Free Page B

first black-ermine afternoon coat, the first full-length badger coat, shawls of mink and fox. He was the first to try to bleach mink.
    He understood that both the shape of the fur and the shape of the woman must be carefully considered when cutting a fur coat, otherwise both would look ridiculous. And he was famous on Seventh Avenue for his long discussions with dress manufacturers on the pros and cons of a particular fabric such as silk jersey. Occasionally he wore a scarlet jacket in the office to prove that men didn’t have to wear brown or gray or blue.
    According to Lichtenstein, David Nemerov had only one glaring fault: “With money he was hopeless.” Figures bored him. He had no idea how much money Russeks was making or losing—or if he himself had any money. “I don’t think he ever stepped into a bank or wrote out a check,” Lichtenstein says. “He had Russeks’ accountant pay all the household bills for Gertrude, and he’d often borrow little sums of money from me. If he wanted cash right away, he’d just scrawl ‘$50’ on a piece of paper and hand it to the Russeks cashier.”
    Max Weinstein—a man utterly at home with figures (he not only ran Russeks, he was now chairman of the First National Country Bank, which he had built, complete with marble floors and gold tellers’ boxes, at 38th Street and Seventh Avenue, on the very site where he’d sold candy as a penniless immigrant boy)—was bothered by Nemerov’s casual attitude toward money. “My father and David Nemerov did not get along,” Max’s son Walter recalls. “They disagreed about practically everything, but never openly. My father was always very polite with David, and David was always very polite with him.” Meanwhile the Russek brothers and the Weinsteins continued to be close friends. The two families often vacationed together at Colorado Springs, and Frank Russek particularly enjoyed it when Max’s wife, Bertha Arbus, played the piano.

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    O N M ARCH 14, 1923, the Nemerovs’ second child and first daughter was born. Later Diane would be told that she had been named after the sublimely romantic heroine in the movie Seventh Heaven. Actually, her mother, Gertrude, had seen the Broadway show from which the film was made while she was pregnant, and, sitting in the warm, dark theater, she’d been so impressed by the character of the “virgin woman Diane, so vulnerable and strong at the same time,” she vowed that if she had a daughter she would call her “Dee-ann” (“They pronounced it that way in the play,” Gertrude Nemerov would explain). *
    According to Gertrude, Diane was a large (nine pounds), beautiful baby with thick golden hair, translucent skin, and huge green eyes that held curious powers of observation. “Even as a baby she didn’t just look at you—she considered you.” At first a fierce, unspoken tenderness and mutuality existed between mother and daughter. On her nanny’s day off, Diane seemed to find pleasure and reassurance from literally clinging to Gertrude. “She’d never let go my hand.”
    Diane’s description of early childhood is slightly different. In an autobiography she wrote at Fieldston School when she was sixteen she recalled that she was “cranky—always crying, yelling, screaming. I can always remember the feeling I had. I always felt warm and tired and there was warm sun on me and I didn’t want to wake up…”
    During this time (except for trips to Palm Beach) Diane lived with her parents and brother at 115 West 73rd Street. When she was around four, the family moved to an apartment at Park Avenue and 90th Street. Thick drapes hung across the windows. “It was almost always dark,” Howard recalls.
    There were two maids, a chauffeur named Scott, a cook named Eva, as well as Helvis, the German nanny for Howard, and a French nanny whotook care of Diane for the first seven years of her life. “Mamselle,” as she was called, was a cool, undemonstrative young woman who wore her hair