The most conspicuous display is put on by Ganna Walska, who has a box on the north--the unfashionable--side. Wearing emeralds as large as limes, she is rococo in dress and demeanor and is usually attended by minor diplomats and her latest husband. She never made society, though she married one millionaire and two multi-multimillionaires. The first, which was her second, was an elderly New York physician to whom she went because she thought a growth in her throat interfered with her ambition to be a diva. He didn't cure her throat, but he married her, conveniently died and left her a home and her first million. This girl, who had sung in mid-European cabarets, was soon pursued by Harold McCormick (then married to the daughter of John D. Rockefeller); and Alexander Smith Cochran, even wealthier, the Yonkers carpet king. Ganna decided to take a trip to Europe and both her suitors made the boat. McCormick was still married, so she took Cochran, who spent a fortune on repeated efforts here and abroad to make her a prima donna. When he failed, she blew him for McCormick, who had gotten his divorce and taken time out for a monkey-gland operation. McCormick was the foremost subsidizer and patron of the Chicago Opera Company, one of the principal heirs to the McCormick harvester fortune. But he couldn't get her in that troupe and she soon waltzed out on him. (She was born with some unpronounceable Polish name and was nicknamed "Walska," meaning "waltzer," because she sang waltz songs to the accompaniment of a gypsy fiddler in Budapest.) When last heard from, she was being sued for alimony by her sixth husband, a yoga practitioner who told her that his mysterious powers would bring forth her voice. She said she had been persuaded to believe that while she stood on her head. First nights of old brought forth beautiful Mrs. George Gould, the former Edith Kingdon, and her friends. Now the lobbies are jammed with cigarette smokers overflowing to the sidewalks, and police reporters recognize more patrons than can the society reporters. A recent première saw raffish exhibitionism that would have shamed Whitechapel fishwives. Betty Henderson, a dowager past 70, in the opera bar, planted a leg on a table, showing more than plenty, and shouted, "What has Dietrich got that I haven't got?" She was probably plastered and she is a Newport top-drawer hostess, worth dozens of millions. Another elderly jewel-rack walked the balcony during intermission, puffing a big, black cigar. Maybe she was trying to smoke herself sober. One matron arrived with two bodyguards, who stalked and sat on either side of her, making even more conspicuous her cables of pearls and her movie-marquee display of diamonds. But the upper crust still exists.