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room for a baby. There was just about room to squeeze Phyllis in there. We began looking for an apartment. Neysa McMein said, “Why don't you buy a house?" This had never occurred to us.

Who is Neysa McMein?

Neysa McMein? She's a famous artist. Didn't you ever hear of Neysa McMein? She used to do magazine covers of beautiful girls.

Three girls were born within a block of each other in Piqua, Ohio...Neysa McMein, and Ruth Gardner, who became Mrs. Fleischmann and who owned a majority of the stock in the New Yorker when she died, and Mary Astor, who you may have heard of and who came into my life.

Yes. I knew that. I didn't know whether we wanted to bring that up. Well, let's not do it now but sometime.

Yes. The Mary Astor story's very funny.

At any rate, when Chris came and when Neysa suggested “Buy a house,” I suddenly saw the one we're in right now: 132 East 62nd Street. This was in 1940 when houses were being given away.

I liked it. But I hadn't realized--I'm so unobservant about things like this--that I had been in this house three or four times at parties. It had been owned by Col. McCormick