Almost a month after a group of well-educated New Yorkers first unrolled their sleeping bags in Zuccotti Park, The Observer took a taxicab to 64th Street and Fifth Avenue to attend a gathering at the home of John Gutfreund. It was a cocktail party to celebrate The Artist, an Oscar hopeful that had just had its premiere at the New York Film Festival. Mr. Gutfreund's wife, Susan, had been generous enough to invite the cast, crew, and producers to her and her husband's home for a thing after.

Most of those involved in the film spoke French, and Ms. Gutfreund is fluent.

"This was all my wife's idea," Mr. Gutfreund told The Observer.

The 1980s boom-time chief of Salomon Brothers was slim beneath his suit, but not frail, and his thin oval spectacles only enhanced his stature. We spoke about his friend Katherine’s son, who used to write about nightlife for this newspaper. George, we told Mr. Gutfreund, is doing well. Then arms took other arms and we lost each other, for the moment, somewhere between Hamish Bowles and Harvey Weinstien.

Never mind that stuff about the one percent. Both hosts were more than gracious. The Observer was especially impressed with the decorative accoutrements—that winding Grecian staircase that sprang up after the elevator, delicate Oriental tapestries and silks, the marble spilling everywhere like lava—because we had never been to a place like it before.

The cast of the film arrived, and as they circulated through conversational cliques—red-hot atoms of praise—we noticed that someone was missing.

"Oh, well, John," Mrs. Gutfreund told us. "He spends all day in there."

She was speaking of the library, a small place a few lefts from anywhere else, and when we found it a few men sat having cigarettes that ended up in silver trays. The house's patriarch took over the center chair.

Then we asked Mr. Gutfreund, the man Time magazine called "The King of Wall Street" when he led Salomon Brothers, what he thought of the protests.

"Occupy Wall Street, well, it's much like that generation—all action," he said. "But what is it for?"

We thought of an anecdote—this is the man who wanted the boys under his watch to come in ready to bite the ass off a bear.

Throughout Liar's Poker, he is depicted puffing cigars and tipping his ash everywhere. The traders, they knew he had been watching over their shoulders, silently, if they got up at 10:00 at night to leave, and what was there? A pile of soot.

Mr. Gutfreund got up to leave.

"Just what do they want, anyway?" he said.

A few days later, The Observer went to Cipriani, the palace on 42nd Street that was long home to the Bowery Savings Bank, for the Americans for the Arts Awards. After a drink, we went to talk to the artist Jeff Koons about Occupy Wall Street.

“You know, I haven’t really been following it,” he said, after entering the digits of a woman next to him into his iPhone. “I’ve been out of the country. But I’ve been asked about it a few times.”

“It’s a little bit Tea Party, a little bit Woodstock,” said the woman.

A bell rang for dinner, and after flinging around a champagne glass for the camera of Todd Eberle, we went to take a seat. The salad was arugula, the main course lamb-in-bone.

Talk turned to the next presidential election.

“There’s no Democratic candidate, there’s no Republican candidate,” said the woman sitting next to us.

A server refilled our glasses with wine.

“Could there be an Occupy Wall Street Candidate?” she offered.

As plates were cleared, the ceremony continued. “I couldn’t imagine a more worthy awardee than Wells Fargo bank,” the presenter said.

Dessert and coffee came, but croissants remained on the table, and the same woman sitting next to us went for a tray.

“Maybe I’ll take half of one,” she said. “That’s what I deserve.”

After Cipriani, The Observer headed downtown to the Boom Boom Room. It was the after party for the premiere of Margin Call, a film about a Lehman-like firm in the throes of financial disaster. It stars Kevin Spacey as a high-powered banker.

In case we were hungry there we’re lobster rolls, and in case we weren’t drunk there were drinks. We headed upstairs to the rooftop of the Standard Hotel, which looks over most of Manhattan, and New Jersey, maybe the whole country if you have the eyes for it.

Talk again drifted to Occupy Wall Street. “Yeah, I’m definitely going out there,” said a fellow balcony-dweller of the demonstration downtown. He had worked on the film.

“It’s something that’s around.” said his friend. “It’s something that everyone’s aware of. I’m definitely up on everything that’s going on but I’m not about to—”

“That one percent has had a loud voice for a very long time.”

Then we asked: is the one percent here tonight?

“Well,” the first guy said. “It wasn’t at a big enough theater...”

He stopped. Someone had pushed open the door.

“My man!”  said the first balcony-dweller.

“My man!” a bearded Kevin Spacey responded.

Then we asked: Mr. Spacey, are you planning on going down to Zuccotti?

“No, I’m on tour,” he said. “I’m literally here for two days.”

Back downstairs, we found no line at the open bar.

“Did you have to pay for that?” a friend asked, pointing to the empty glass of champagne.

We put our flute on the bar.

“Of course not,” we said.

And then the bartender filled the flutes just over the tops of their brims.

She had just returned to New York from her travels in London and Venice.  But, Ms. Gutfreund--a woman for whom a trim on a table cloth, or a well-mixed drink, is a reflection of not only her home-making abilities, but also her character, and quite possibly, her intelligence--was determined to carry out the mandatory hosting duties with her usual aplomb.

In the upstairs, baroque-decorated reception room of her stunning duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue, Ms. Gutfreund moved around in a pale green, lightweight pantsuit, making sure that Jill Fairchild and the designer Ralph Rucci were promptly served cocktails in low-ball glasses and supplied with delicate cloth coasters; that the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg and theater producer Jeffrey Seller took in views of the park framed by burnt orange drapes and olive green-papered walls; and that actors Matt Cavenaugh and Karen Olivo signed the guest book. (A gentleman in a bow tie was planted at the top of the stairs to ensure that each of the luncheon's 15 or so guests scribbled down something nice.)

“I was crying yesterday when I saw the show,” said the hostess, who, in her sixties, remains an attractive blond with discerning eyes. “The staging is beautiful. And I like that some of it is in Spanish reflecting the fact that, you know, most of America is now Spanish-speaking.”

Her husband, former Salomon Brothers chairman John Gutfreund, was there, too. But after one cocktail and a quick hello to producers Terry Allen Kramer and James Nederlander, Mr. Gutfreund signaled to his wife that it was time for him to scoot.

“Oh, bye, darling,” sung out Ms. Gutfreund, waving her husband off with her delicate fingers. “Thanks for coming. Do you really have to leave now?” He did, he said, and lifting up his own frail hand to wave back, allowed his wife to get back to her company.

In the '80s, when Ms. Gutfreund, a former beauty queen and Pan Am stewardess, married the prominent Wall Street financier—his days at the once powerful investment bank were infamously chronicled in Michael Lewis’ '89 book Liar's Poker—evenings at the Gutfreunds became regular affairs. That is to say frequent, but by no means ordinary.

Ms. Gutfreund liked to put on a show, gaining attention for such antics as hoisting a 22-foot Christmas tree by crane into their old residence at River House, delivering invitations to wanted dinner party guests Henry Kissinger and Baroness Liliane de Rothschild by chauffeur, installing a refrigerator in the bathroom to keep her perfumes chilled and insisting that her butler answer the phone with, “The madam is in le fumar!”

But, in 1991, when Mr. Gutfreund resigned from Salomon Brothers amid a bond-trading scandal, the couple retreated from society, spending more time abroad at their Paris triplex and at their country home in Pennsylvania. Seven years ago, Ms. Gutfreund resurfaced as an interior decorator, working on her friends' homes in New York and abroad including Gil Shiva’s dining room at the Dakota. Meanwhile, Mr. Gutfreund, who was banned from ever running a brokerage firm again, continues to work at his consulting firm, Gutfreund & Company.

“Aren’t you going to try one of my son’s famous margaritas?” Ms. Gutfreund asked a guest who was sipping a glass of sparkling water. (The couple’s son, John Peter Gutfreund, a banker, launched his own line of tequilas last year.)

“Both of us are keeping busy,” Ms. Gutfreund told the Daily Transom. “I really would not be happy sitting at home all day. But if we’re at the house, we put our feet up by the fire and watch old videos or read our books in the country.”

Then there are other nights, when they continue to host friends at their home of 24 years for evenings that are perhaps a bit smaller than they used to be.

“I’m not here that often, but I love to entertain in this apartment. I really much prefer it to going out,” said Ms. Gutfreund. “But it’s a different world. People aren’t around. With the internet, men can do their business from the ski slopes and Palm Beach so your dinner parties tend to be people who are in town at the last minute. The guest list is not set in stone the way it would have been in the ‘80s. And everything is on email so it’s become very informal. When people thank you for a meal, it’s on email!”

After a breezy cocktail, everyone descended the main stairway through the foyer where one of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies used to hang--“We didn’t have the room for it anymore,” explained Ms. Gutfreund—past the winter garden room with the chirping, caged parrot, into the airy dining room, where the blue and white tablecloths matched the blue and white porcelain china that matched the blue and white napkins. (The Daily Transom noticed what appeared to be a price tag of $879 stuck to the bottom of her porcelain water pitcher.) 

“I’d like to welcome everyone from the West Side Story to our East Side Apartment,” the hostess announced to begin the lunch. Guests were served a well-prepared risotto with spring peas, followed by salmon cakes with dill sauce and freshly baked corn bread.

In the time that Ms. Gutfreund has been absent from the circuit, she’s noticed that the younger socialites seem to have lost sight of these sorts of get-togethers, opting instead for living out their lives in public.

“I still hope the younger girls are interested in entertaining. I think there was a moment when they weren’t,” Ms. Gutfreund told the Daily Transom. “If they’re out at benefits every night and in newspapers every day, when are they ever at home?”

She continued: “I’m hoping this recession will make the younger girls aware of the beauty of their spaces, their families, their close friends and make them put some home cooked food on the table. And you can fake it! You can go to Whole Foods and buy a casserole and put it in beautiful porcelain. All people really want is a cold drink, a comfortable chair, a warm meal and they’re happy having some laughs.”

Last decade, the Gutfreunds--long believed to have inspired the Bavardages in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities--became symbols of Wall Street excess. Now, Ms. Gutfreund quietly, but compassionately, looks on as her friends and neighbors on the Upper East Side are scolded for their Hermes shopping trips and summer homes.

Might she offer some advice to the tormented Wall Street wives?

“Stay home and keep your head down,” she said. “I don’t think this is a moment for bankers’ wives. I think the public is very anti-Wall Street.”

Ms. Gutfreund still relishes the lessons she’s learned from her public ordeal, which she said could be made into a book.

“I learned that it’s very important to have close friends and edit your friends in this city,” said Ms. Gutfreund. “It’s difficult because there is so much exposure in the city and it’s very exciting and I’m a very curious person and I love people. But this town can be very tough, so you learn to edit.”

Ms. Scaglione is svelte, pretty and has that charming way about her that foreigners often have where she never seemed to understand what anyone was saying and seemed to always be saying things that came out funnier than she had intended them.

She was introduced to The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg, the designer Ralph Rucci, Harper's Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey and persistently peppered with questions.

Has she seen much of New York? She has not, as most of her time is spent either rehearsing, performing or sleeping.

Where is she staying? In the Theater District, but she's currently looking for a place in the West Village.

Has she seen God of Carnage, or Our Town, or Jane Fonda in that, um, whatever it's called?  No, no, and no.

"Well, have you seen Mary Stuart?" demanded Peggy Siegal, the publicist hosting the event.

"No, but I have seen Mary Poppins," the demure Ms. Scaglione replied across the table as everyone listened intently.

This is Ms. Scaglione's first time in New York. She was cast for the role of Maria by director Arthur Laurents and producers Kevin McCollum, James Nederlander, and Jeffrey Seller, through a video she made for YouTube. 

"I was performing Hairspray in Argentina at the time and I had recorded a video of a tango dance for YouTube," Ms. Scaglione told the Daily Transom. "It was circulating around and I guess when Arthur Laurents was looking for Maria his friends in Argentina told him, 'Well, look at this video and what do you think about this girl.' It was crazy!"

But, Ms. Scaglione said she didn't feel pressure performing the classic despite being one of the only actors, performing alongside Matt Cavenaugh and Karen Olivo, plucked from overseas.

"It's a challenge, but I don't feel pressure like something heavy. It's more like something amazing," she said.

Ms. Olivo was also a last-minute find for the producers. She was playing one of the lead roles in In the Heights—also produced by Mr. Sellers, Mr. Nederlander and Mr. McCollum—when the role of Anita remained vacant with rehearsals just a week away.

"I was one of the only women in New York that they hadn't seen. They said, 'We haven't found anyone. Can you just come in so that we can rule you out and say we've seen everyone?'" recalled Ms. Olivo. "In the back of their minds they told me they always thought I would be perfect, but they didn't want to take me from one of their shows to put me in another. But they had already gone overseas to find Josefina and they were afraid they would have to do that again. Then I came in and, for actors, you don't go into an audition room unless you're going to get it, so I went in there to get it."

Ms. Olivo said she was nervous at first about playing Anita.

"When I originally heard about the show, I didn't want to do it because no one would be Chita [Rivera] and no one can be Rita [Moreno]. They really achieved the role," said Ms. Olivo. "But when I met Arthur Laurents, he said he didn't want to do a version of West Side Story that anyone's ever seen before. If I actually tried to do an impersonation of one of these ladies, it would have been out of place."

Mr. Seller was nearby sipping a margarita. How did he think the musical was going so far?

"We didn't fuck it up!" he exclaimed. "That may have been the scariest thing for me is that we don't fuck it up. My history as a producer has really been doing new musicals. It's a hard task, but you're not having to live up to someone's expectation of what it used to be—their ideal. But everyone who comes to West Side Story has a preconceived idea of what it should be based upon their own romantic notion of their memory from the movie or seeing the show on Broadway as a child."

But it seems to be working out, according to Mr. Seller.

"The audiences are fantastic for musicals right now." he said. "In this world where Internet piracy has ruined the recording business and is taking huge chunks out of the movie business, there is one business that thrives as well as it ever has and that is the theater, where you still have to buy a ticket, show up, sit in a seat and watch the show."