Ira Gershwin and his wife and another couple were about to go out to dinner at a fashionable Manhattan restaurant. Gershwin offered to call for a table. He returned to say none was available. “Let me try,” said the other man. He returned to announce that they indeed had a table available. Everyone wanted to know how he was able to accomplish this. “Simple,” he said, “I told them I was Ira Gershwin.” (Lifted from Joseph Epstein's Snobbery)
