Happy Times

From Front Jacket: "'Happy Times' is a social history unlike any other, compiled by Brendan Gill from an extraordinary private archive of 50,000 photographs by Jerome Zerbe. For over 40 years, Zerbe has crisscrossed the world in pursuit for festive occasions; here are 500 of his best pictures - racy, impudent, amused - which amount to a novel composed by a camera and having for plot the playful hours of the young, the rich, the beautiful, and the celebrated. Caught in intimate, unpremeditated moments are Garbo enjoying a Russian Easter luncheon at Valentina's; Cary Grant helping Hedda Hopper move, hat by hat, into a new house; the Duke of Windsor playing traps in Meyer Davis's band at the Homestead; Steve Reeves taking a shower in his many-colored briefs; Moss Hart climbing a coconut palm on Guam; Henry Luce clowning with Ina Claire at the Waldorf; Howard Hughes lunching with Janet Gaynor at '21'; Gloria Swanson at a shipboard party giving her uncanny impersonation of Charlie Chaplin; Chaplin himself pretending to knock out the heavyweight boxer Max Baer; and Mrs. John Schiff doing the Big Apple. Here as well, unforgettable, are Mona Williams, Salvador Dali, Dorothy Parker, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Philip Johnson, Admiral Nimitz, Gene Tunney, Thomas Wolfe, Orson Welles, Robert Benchley, Jean Harlow, Gary Cooper, the John Hays Whitneys, among scores of gifted and famous figures. Zerbe is the country's first..society photographer. For many years he was the official photographer for El Morocco and was instrumental in making it the most famous and successful nightclub on earth."