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Could Your Life Use a Dash of Glamour? Try This Book.
A small-town girl recalls working at Tiffany when movie stars came by
Marjorie Hart doesn’t wear a black sheath and a tiara, or carry a foot-long cigarette holder. But like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, she understands the magic of the world’s most famous jewelry store and, in this lovely memoir, offers a dash of the glamour that a lot of Americans have missed in a pandemic year.
Hart grew up in a Midwestern town so small she “had no idea what street I’d lived on until years after I had finished college.”
Then, in summer of 1945, she and a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sister at the University of Iowa set out for New York City, determined to find work as salesgirls. Turned down by Lord & Taylor, they talked their way into jobs as the first female pages at Tiffany & Co., which couldn’t hire enough men because of World War II.
That alone might have made for a good story, but there was more to it. Hart started work at the jewelry store at a shimmering moment. New York was still reeling from the euphoria brought on by the end of the war in Europe and would soon erupt again when the Japanese surrendered. The air was full of Chanel №5, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and Walter Winchell’s radio broadcasts.
