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Would you like to go into a little bit about Donald Friede and his relationship with Liveright?

O.K.! My Friede story is rather funny. I'd met Donald and his dreadful mother somewhere or other. His father was a rather remarkable man who was dead before I met Donald. He was one of the chief engineers for the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Friedes were still rich when I met Donald. He was quite a playboy. When I first met him he was going to Princeton. He was spending so much money that his mother, indulgent though she was, finally slashed his allowance. But there was one place that she thought it was nice for him to go to, and that was the Plaza Grill. She allowed him to keep his charge account there.

Now, in those days, the Grill Room of the Plaza Hotel was the meeting place for the Scott Fitzgerald flapper set. The orchestra was led by a man by the name of Joseph C. Smith. And they would play Kern and Gershwin music. Every afternoon there was a paid The dansante there, and the price was right for college people. You could take a girl there and have coffee and cinnamon toast and one drink, as I remember, for $2 a person. So for $4 you could take a girl to the Plaza Grill in style! It was like a private dance. The boys would line up around the room and cut in, because it was all college kids. It was very, very nice. Donald Friede had a crush on a girl named Marilyn Miller. Does the name Marilyn Miller mean anything to you? You're much too young to remember this.