A Birthday Party
In February 1985 I attended Alger Hiss’s 80th birthday party in New York.
Below Alger Hiss in 1945 mixing with Molotov et al before the Yalta Conference (him on the right):
Joe Machlis, a very discreet homosexual and a Julliard music teacher, invited me to this former Soviet influencer’s Manhattan birthday bash. Joe was so discrete, old school, that I didn’t catch it despite hanging out with him at an Upper East Side dinner affair a few days prior, where I met him. It was only when at the birthday he began introducing me around by clasping two of my fingers, the pointer and the middle one, and hauling in tow that I got a clue.
Alger Hiss celebrated his 80th birthday the other day, at an annual party given for him by Joseph Machlis, novelist and author of music books.
Mr. Hiss's real birthday is Nov. 11, but the party is always in February ''so people won't feel they have to bring presents, and to avoid the Christmas rush,'' Mr. Machlis explained.
''Like the King's birthday.''
Among the 80 guests in Mr. Machlis's art-filled East Side apartment was Harold Taylor, former president of Sarah Lawrence College, who made a brief birthday toast.
Mr. Hiss responded: ''I'm going to use this occasion to quote from the Chinese - as the years grow long, the speeches should grow short.''
Then, he blew out 80 candles in one puff. And, he confessed, he had made up the quote.
Mr. Machlis called me a week later and planted “you’re my protege, ha ha” in the middle of the convo, and that was the last he heard from me. I looked good and from time to time I would get into this sort of cringe. This from Wikipedia, 2004, twenty years later, so you can imagine. New York, New York.
