LOUISE "TEDDY" DUDLEY LYNCH - SOCIETY CHANTEUSE and J. PAUL GETTY MISTRESS and ABSENTEE WIFE

After J. Paul Getty was through with marriage #4, he is said to have become a world class womanizer, possibly also hiring prostitutes, and his personal reputation was being trashed. So perhaps when he met LOUISE DUDLEY LYNCH, called Teddy, he was considering that he needed a high society woman as cover.  The man uncharacteristically rented a luxurious penthouse in New York that was already furnished by its socialite owner with antiques, after so often running home to live with mom after romantic disasters.  Along for a visit with an old friend came Teddy.  In the 1930's she was a "society Chanteuse," (Use the Google Search embedded on this blog to read about Little Edie!) and sang at upper crust dinner clubs like The Stork.  Teddy was 22 and legal.  Paul wooed her with regular attendance at her engagements, kind of like one of those wealthy "stage door Johnnys" who awaited a Ziegfeld Follies girl back stage.  He sent her flowers, bottles of champagne, and one might have thought - for a moment - that he'd back burnered business.  But he was just working hard and playing hard.

In the chapter called "Teddy Phoned, Miss Her So Much," in the book "The House of Getty," we learn that on August 16, 1936, Miss Lynch's New York Times engagement announcement mentioned her exclusive education and professional singing.  Paul was 42 and continued in his unconventional and adventurous personal and business life. This would be his fifth and last marriage. Also his longest.  And here with Teddy is where the J. Paul Getty story moves into the story of the beginnings of his museum in Malibu, the property which he called the ranch, for his is where Teddy would live out her life, after Rome, London, and New York City, while he lived in England.

Teddy's ambition at 22 as a Getty Mistress was to be an opera singer and Getty financed lessons in Rome calling money he never expected to be paid back a loan. Teddy leaned into her dream by having herself photographed dramatically.  As he had when married but seeing Ann Rork around town, though not yet divorced Getty was seen escorting Teddy.  Instead of the posh Hollywood nightclubs it was the Metropolitan Opera House and restaurants.  Still running his empire as Emperor, Getty used the telephone for hours every day and delegated, but was very mobile in his travels.

I found this interesting because I tend to think like this as well; "If you can trust a man, a written contract is a waste of time and if you can't trust him, a written contract is still a waste of paper," is how Getty thought.  (But he would this time insist on something futuristic for 1936, a PRENUP!  While he suited up every day for a day at his hotel room office, he liked to keep things simple - except in his personal life. 

In the spring of 1938 Teddy left New York for England to train her voice with a respected London teacher.  Paul kissed her goodbye.  By now he was considered a serious collector of antiques and antiquities (and loved a bargain) and spent much of his time touring Europe by car and visiting estates, museums, art galleries, and dealers.  He met other women along the way.  That June he met up with Teddy in London and they went out on the town, then off to Paris. But they both seemed content with their separate lives.  He saw little of his four sons and was to have yet another with Teddy, a sickly boy named Timmy who would not live into adulthood.-book page 54 of this chapter, "...Paul wanted Teddy to return to the United States with him after the marriage, whereas Teddy was determined to stay in Rome to continue her operatic studies..."  (World War II was soon to begin, already there were signs.)

As Hitler invaded Poland, they met up in Switzerland but during a visit to Berlin, Paul is said to have kept breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates with three different women friends.

Teddy went back to New York City because of the World War on European soil.
In 1940 the couple met up in Los Angeles and Getty used the trip to visit with ex-wives and sons. Once Teddy was back in New York, Paul began an affair with an actress, age 23, Joan Barry and would soon become embroiled in the scandal that involved her pregnancy, blamed on Charlie Chaplin!

Oh, Paul hated to testify, but the truth was he'd seen Joan frequently in 1941 and in November of 1942 and he gave her "loans," but since (primitive compared to what's available now) blood tests proved Chaplin was the father, why mention that Joan's son might be Paul's?!

When J. Paul Getty died, Teddy was the only one of his wives in his will.  She wrote a memoir entitled "Alone Together."


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