By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 20, 2006
At first it was a bit jarring for Renee Zlotnick Kraft, Washington fur heiress and stalwart of the charity circuit, to be approached by strangers at traffic stops as she idled in her maroon Rolls-Royce.
Some wiseguy would turn and ask, in upper-crust deadpan, "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"
The line had became a national catchphrase during a mustard advertising campaign, and Kraft adapted herself to the inevitable. When next accosted, she was ready.
"Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"
"But of course!" she said, flashing the condiment jar she kept in the car before motoring off to the next party.
Kraft, who died Aug. 9 of Parkinson's disease at 91, had a profound sense of whimsy that brought her a core of admirers. She was a diminutive but dramatic woman who once confessed to a fleeting early interest in stage acting. Instead, she became a fervent contributor to Washington arts organizations, particularly the Washington Opera.
She was influential in bringing the most haute couture to the opera's fund-raising events.
Jamie Craft, who ran the solicitations committee for the opera's auctions, said of Kraft: "She'd talk Saks Fifth Avenue out of an Adolfo, which was not an easy thing to do. She was a good customer, so she had the standing to do it."
Renee Kraft spoke the merchant's language. Though not born in minks and sables, she very soon was modeling them for her father, Samuel, a Washington business fixture known as Zlotnick the Furrier.
While at finishing school in Tarrytown, N.Y., she held many student offices, among them president of the dress committee. She was uncharacteristically bad at stole patrol.
"It was my job to inspect the girls' clothing as they came into breakfast," she told the Washington Times in 1990. "But I had to resign because I could never pull anyone out of line. Those girls were my friends."
Her name did not appear in social columns until the 1980s, but she was out and about long before that.
As a young woman, she dated ballplayer Bobo Newsom, then of the Washington Senators, and cultivated a life-long enthusiasm for bawdy humor. In 1940, she married Alvin A. Kraft, who started a personal finance company and was by all accounts the center of her life.
The Krafts held parties at their three-story, 19th-century mansion on Embassy Row, sometimes renting a champagne fountain. They once took a cruise and dined with actor Clark Gable, an event they memorialized in a short family film. They spent winters together at a rented condominium in South Florida and befriended a neighbor, Henny Youngman, the relentless master of the one-liner.
The Krafts had twin Rolls-Royces. At parties long ago, they were dubbed "the duke and duchess." They also had three children -- Bayla, Yvette and Bruce -- largely looked after by nannies.
"Dad was 6 feet tall, big blue eyes and dark hair," Bayla Kraft said. "She was petite and loved his height. She dressed him."
When her husband died in 1976, Renee Kraft was 61 and largely inconsolable. She once said her brother, Sidney, a real estate developer who frequented diplomatic dinners, helped her emerge from her solitude. She also credited her chauffeur, Fayyaz Mirza, with giving her a much-needed push; he said if she kept turning down invitations, someday they would dry up entirely.
She emerged as one of the more elegantly gowned women in Washington -- in Chanel, Dior or Halston and in sables, chinchilla or lynx. Informal gatherings might call for a red velvet turban and red jersey dress from Paris. In more formal embassy settings, she carried a pearl-studded, poodle-shaped evening bag, another Parisian purchase.
"I guess you might say I'm putting on the dog," Kraft told a society reporter.
The purse "got more attention than most guests," said a friend, Evelyn Di Bona, who formerly hosted and produced the Channel 56 television program "Inside Embassy Row."
Kraft appeared at charity auctions and balls for organizations such as CARE, the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Museum of Natural History.
Her Parkinson's disease was diagnosed not long after her husband's death, but she told few people. She tried to maintain an impish sense of humor, once arriving at a full-dress party with a walker to which a grandson had attached a loud horn. It was clown-nose red, and she liked to honk it to announce her entrance.
Increasingly infirm, she withdrew again. She told friends not to visit but always embraced them when they disregarded her wishes and showed up.
She and Bayla grew closer in recent years. During a hospital visit to her mother days before her death, Bayla Kraft said she was impressed with the grace with which her mother handled the distinctly ungracious ventilator and breathing tubes.
"One day, I had on a necklace made of sterling silver circles interlinked," Bayla Kraft said. "I had on a black T-shirt, and the necklace stood out. She was not a silver person; she was a real gold person. But her eyes went directly to the necklace. She stared. She said, 'I'm hanging in there. I love you. And where did you get your necklace? I really think it's pretty.' "