Jan Tuckwood<\/span> Every kid who grew up in Palm Beach County in the 1960s and \u201870s remembers Tony Glenn \u2014 the weatherman on WPTV-Ch. 5 who doubled as local TV\u2019s most debonair host.<\/p>\n Glenn was 6-foot-2 and handsome, with a booming voice and hair styled in a pompadour.<\/p>\n \u201cHis hair was so shiny and black, we used to joke, \u2018Hey, Tony, is that Atlantic 40-weight oil on your hair?\u201d the late Buck Kinnaird, Channel 5\u2019s first sports anchor, once told me.<\/p>\n Channel 5 went on the air in 1954 and became WPTV the year I was born, 1956. It was the county\u2019s first TV station.<\/p>\n Television technology was so primitive at the time, Glenn\u2019s weather map was made out of the plastic lining of inner tubes, and icons for clouds, rain and low-pressure systems were stuck on the map with magnets. If there was a front moving from west to east, Glenn had to pick up the clouds and move them to another part of the map.<\/p>\n He did all this while dressed in the blue uniform of an Atlantic gas station attendant, because his weather report was sponsored by Atlantic Gas.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, Tony was \u2018Your Atlantic Weatherman,\u2019\u201d Kinnaird recalled. \u201cHe had to wear that uniform, with a little bow tie, and he didn\u2019t like it very much, but there wasn\u2019t a wrinkle in it. He was very professional. He wore Max Factor No. 7 pancake makeup, and he didn\u2019t take the makeup off after the broadcast when we\u2019d all go out to eat. People lined up for his autograph.\u201d<\/p>\n Tony Glenn had the name and the look of a movie star. We didn\u2019t realize until he passed away on Feb. 18, 2001, that his real name was Julian Bronstein.<\/p>\n For children of the \u201870s, Glenn seemed to be everywhere. He was the host of local programs \u201cWhiz Kids\u201d and \u201cLet\u2019s Dance\u201d \u2014 Channel 5 had air-time to fill \u2014 and also of my favorite local show, \u201cOpening Night at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n I lived in Lake Worth, on the other side of the Intracoastal and a galaxy away from Palm Beach. When new plays opened at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse \u2014 every Monday night in season \u2014 I was glued to our 15-inch TV console to see a tux-clad Tony interview the richy-rich swells and celebrities walking into the playhouse on the red carpet.<\/p>\n This was such a big deal for locals, onlookers would dress to the nines and crowd around, hoping for their chance to see, say, Ted Kennedy or his mother, Rose. They might even get on TV.<\/p>\n Glenn fancied this job more than doing the weather, Kinnaird told me. \u201cHe was in seventh heaven on that red carpet.\u201d<\/p>\n Society photographer Bob Davidoff was stationed along the red carpet, too. \u201cThere was a show outside as well as inside,\u201d Davidoff said in a 1982 press report.<\/p>\n The 13-year-old me was mesmerized. \u201cOpening Night at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse\u201d was my introduction to the power of paparazzi: glamorous people captured by the TV cameras and by still photographers with their big Graflex Speed Graphic cameras and giant flash bulbs.<\/p>\n Their photographs opened my eyes to a world beyond Lake Worth. For kids like me, just going to downtown West Palm Beach to shop at Burdine\u2019s was a huge deal. The Royal Poinciana Plaza, with the playhouse fronting the Intracoastal, might as well have been on the moon.<\/p>\n And yet \u2026 here was Tony Glenn, the weatherman, shmoozing with Mary Sanford, then considered the \u201cqueen of Palm Beach.\u201d Sanford often showed up at the Royal Poinciana with her best friend Rose Kennedy.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know who she was at the time \u2014 just that she was a big shot.<\/p>\n Born in 1894 in Richmond, Mary Duncan went to Cornell University for a year, then dropped out to become a Hollywood star. She made a movie, \u201cFive and Ten,\u201d in 1931, with Marion Davies, and Davies introduced her to polo player and carpet magnate Stephen Sanford.<\/p>\n They married and came to Palm Beach in 1933, where they entertained at their mansion, Los Incas, near the Kennedys\u2019 winter home.<\/p>\n Mary Sanford reigned over Palm Beach society for almost 50 years and died at 98 in 1993.<\/p>\n Sanford was hardly the only showgirl to seek a stage in Palm Beach.<\/p>\n Mary Howes, a beautiful blond heiress from Boston, got her first part on Broadway thanks to a family friend: Humphrey Bogart, who had performed with her in summer stock. She came to Palm Beach in 1949 and thought: \u201clet\u2019s build a theater.\u201d<\/p>\n Her playhouse, the Palm Beach Playhouse, opened soon after in the Slat House \u2014 a strange building with an octagonal cupola that is the only surviving remnant of Henry Flagler\u2019s Royal Poinciana Hotel, which was torn down in the mid-1930s.<\/p>\n Its first production was \u201cThe Animal Kingdom,\u201d starring Veronica Lake.<\/p>\n In a curious twist: Channel 5 would open its first studio in the Slat House in 1954.<\/p>\n Mary brought big stars like Helen Hayes and Charlton Heston to Palm Beach. The Palm Beach Playhouse closed when the John-Volk-designed Royal Poinciana Playhouse opened in 1958.<\/p>\n Mary\u2019s influence continued. She was one of the impresarios behind the quest for a major arts center, and her dream eventually resulted in the Kravis Center, which opened in 1992. Mary died in 2000 at 92.<\/p>\n Tony Glenn often chatted on the red carpet with Frank Hale, the vivacious president and general manager of the Royal Poinciana Playhouse. Hale was \u201ca former vaudeville hoofer and president of the National Yeast Company,\u201d writer Michael Gross noted in 2023.<\/p>\n Next to Hale\u2019s Playhouse was the Celebrity Room, a glass-walled dining room overlooking the Intracoastal. The Celebrity Room was billed as \u201cThe Most Fabulous Place Under the Sun\u201d and advertised \u201ccontinuous dancing.\u201d Season ticket holders and their guests were allowed in \u2014 but only if they were dressed in black tie.<\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t get a season ticket unless somebody died,\u201d Davidoff said.<\/p>\n Errol Flynn showed up. Marjorie Merriweather Post brought her son-in-law, actor Cliff Robertson. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were regulars. Joan Fontaine, Dinah Shore, Zsa Zsa Gabor \u2026 they all came.<\/p>\n Frank Sinatra tried to get in, but he wasn\u2019t wearing black tie and Hale threw him out, Davidoff recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking down on it all over a trompe l\u2019oeil Venetian-style balcony was a 45-foot-long mural on the domed ceiling with portraits of 125 social, sports and show business celebrities, including Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and local luminaries like Lilly Pulitzer and the Massachusetts Senator and winter resident John F. Kennedy, whose father Joseph had bought Rodman Wanamaker\u2019s house in 1933,\u201d wrote Michael Gross in his 2023 story for Palmer Palm Beach.<\/p>\n Fast forward to 2026: The paparazzi is back, the mural is restored, and Palm Beach has a fresh new performance hall where the Royal Poinciana Playhouse once stood, Glazer Hall.<\/p>\n For celebrity spotters like me, it\u2019s appropriate that Glazer Hall will be the site of a celebration of America\u2019s most famous on-the-street and on-the-scene photographer, Bill Cunningham. Perhaps nobody snapped more stylish people than Cunningham, who died at 87 in 2016, after chronicling fashionable New Yorkers in the pages of The New York Times for years.<\/p>\n On March 13, filmmaker and author Mark Bozek premieres his director\u2019s cut of his film, \u201cThe Times of Bill Cunningham,\u201d with a conversation with Simon Doonan \u2014 former creative director of Barney\u2019s and overall fabulous style maker \u2014 to follow, plus a birthday celebration for Bill, who was born March 13, 1929.<\/p>\n Of course, Cunningham has his own connection to the Kennedys.<\/p>\n In the late 1940s, Cunningham met and worked with the two women he considered the finest arbiters of French couture, Nona McAdoo Park and Sophie Meldrim Shonnard. \u201cThe girls,\u201d as Cunningham called them, owned Chez Ninon, the most exclusive salon in Manhattan.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the Social Registry of fashion,\u201d Cunningham said.<\/p>\n Celebrities, such as Taylor Swift, at Palm Beach County restaurants<\/p>\n Discover which celebrities were spotted at Palm Beach County restaurants, from Guy Fieri to Taylor Swift and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Chez Ninon was famous for making authorized copies of couture designs \u2014 including the raspberry-pink suit that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy wore on Nov. 22, 1963. The pink suit was a Chez Ninon copy of a Chanel.<\/p>\n Cunningham said he was asked to dye a red suit that Mrs. Kennedy had purchased from Chez Ninon black, in case she needed it to wear to her husband\u2019s funeral. He dyed it in his own bathtub, he told Bozek. Mrs. Kennedy chose to wear a Givenchy suit with distinctive tassel buttons, which she also had worn to Eleanor Roosevelt\u2019s funeral in 1962.<\/p>\n While Bob Davidoff got the personal photos of Jackie and her children going into St. Edward\u2019s Church or Hamburger Heaven in Palm Beach, it was Bill Cunningham who often captured her chic city styles in New York.<\/p>\n He photographed her for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n And what a coincidence that Cunningham\u2019s uniform was a blue French worker\u2019s jacket \u2026 in the very same hue as Tony Glenn\u2019s \u201cYour Atlantic Weatherman\u201d outfit.<\/p>\n If you go<\/strong><\/p>\n What:<\/strong> \u201cThe Times of Bill Cunningham,\u201d the world premiere of the director\u2019s cut, directed by Mark Bozek and narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker, will be shown, with a discussion following moderated by Simon Doonan, famed Barney\u2019s creative director.<\/p>\n
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Special to the Palm Beach Post<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nRubbing elbows with the swells who attended opening night<\/h2>\n
Schmoozing with the who’s who of Palm Beach<\/h2>\n
Re-creating the glory days with new movers and shakers<\/h2>\n
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