Friday, April 26, 2024
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
PAUL MELLON's FUNERAL and DORCAS HARDIN OBITUARY
Page 402: Paul Mellon died on February 1, 1999, almost to the day his doctor had reportedly predicted. A week later, his gray and yellow American racing colors draped his coffin at Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville. (His horse racing colors... Upperville, Virginia.) .... The church was jammed, and the internment was thronged with family, friends from near and far, local farmers, and staff. Dignitaries and colleagues, all old friends from institutions Paul had generously supported, were also there.
EXCERPT: "Known for her sunny personality and her sense of style, Mrs. Hardin was described in a 1949 Washington Post article as the "best dressmaker designer" in the city. In 1954, when it was difficult to come by designer clothing in Washington stores, she decided to open an exclusive dress shop that would cater to the city's prominent women.
Her small, tony boutique, called Dorcas Hardin, opened on Dumbarton Avenue in 1954. She carried clothing by designers Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Ben Zuckerman, James Galanos and Pauline Trigere at a time when their creations were otherwise available only in New York."
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A note: Bunny outlived DorcasMonday, April 22, 2024
THE PRESS, SOCIETY, and KEEPING AN OPEN SECRET - DORCAS HARDIN and PAUL MELLON
Page 343 Like all of JFK's sexual affairs, Paul Mellon and Dorcas Hardin's arrangement was never covered by the press, although it seems that everyone in D.C. knew about it. "Dorcas was fun! Easy. IT was a very open relationship," recalled Janet Bruce, David and Evangeline Bruce's daughter-in-law, who had been one of a party of four women, including Dorcas and Polly Wisner Fritchcie, who went on a shopping tour together in New York. Jim, the Mellon's chauffeur, had driven them around.
Katherine Graham reportedly threatened her reporters to ensure a kind of official privacy for Paul's affair, saying, "If a single line appears in (the) paper about this, that reporter will be out of a job before the ink is dry on the page." Graham had publically acknowledged her friendship with Bunny only by noting its breach, calling her "mu then-friend Bunny Mellon" in print without saying what had happened. Graham protected Paul and Dorcas, which thus in a sidelong sense protected Bunny as well...
Who were Bunny's real friends in D.C.? Jackie Kennedy topped the list even before she became First Lady; after she moved to New York in 1964 she remained Bunny's closest confidante until her death thirty years later. Evangeline Bruce was an ally and a closemouthed one. Bunny did talk to her family and friends about Dorcas, but when she did so she cast the affair mostly as a tiresome joke...
***
A note that Katherine Graham was the owner of several publications but most noteworthy the Washington Post.
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Saturday, April 20, 2024
Friday, April 19, 2024
THE DEATH OF O.J. SIMPSON BRINGS RENEWED INTEREST IN MY NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON POSTS
2015 in my archives: November
Thursday, April 18, 2024
HOW DID BUNNY MELLON COPE WITH HER HUSBAND's LONG INVOLVEMENT WITH MISTRESS DORCAS HARDIN?
Page 127 Bunny wanted each "romance" to go further, be deeper. She wanted a flirtation, a frisson of sensuality, often heightened with the muskier tones of sexual flirtation.
***
Missy here : It's not known if Bunny ever had sex with anyone ever again after Paul exited the marriage for Dorcas. These relationships are explained bu author Mac Griswold as...
Page 308 While Bunny was shielding herself with her "families," and platonic but romantic partners, Paul found plenty of room in his life for Dorcas Hardin. The affair that had begun in 1959 or 1960 lasted until his death in 1999. Due to Dorcas's deafness, Paul had to shout on the phone to make himself heard. Like anyone else who knew Bunny, of course I had heard the gossip about those phone calls between lovers.
I had also heard some of those phone calls myself. The airy, open floor plan of the Antigua house meant that even though Paul had a separate bedroom and office suite, hearing his side of some of his conversations with Dorcas was unavoidable..
Page 316 Until I understood how hard it was for Bunny to continually face down the knowledge of Paul's affair with Dorcas Hardin, I didn't understand how much she needed a place unconnected with him. The residences on - and the differing atmospheres of - the farm, Antigua, Cape Cod, and New York were designed and executed not just for the pleasure of creating them to be just the way she wanted but also with Paul's collaboration to foster the "true, real, and simple happiness" of the life she wanted the two of them to share with guests and family. Bunny, the chatelaine of houses but and perfectly maintained with Paul's money, was constantly the impresario. Sometimes she wanted to get away from it all. She once said that Nantucket for her was a "Vacation from a vacation," meaning a place to escape from Cape Cod.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Saturday, April 13, 2024
DORCAS HARDING's AFFAIR WITH PAUL MELLON WAS KNOWN TO SOCIETY
Page 112 : ... "All the fancy people came in, and Dorcas was one of them. In the fifties she dressed them for all the charity balls, the embassy affairs in the beautiful French and British embassies, and for the art openings. So there she was at the start of the party that was the sixties.
***
Bunny's daughter Eliza was told that her father was having an affair. But Dorcas was not an affair, she was a mistress, one who had an outstanding business of her own.
***
Page 113 : That night at Eliza's party, all the Hardins were invited, and Dorcas was there, according to the society columns, although her name isn't checked off the main gate guest list. Society's delighted whispers about the affair and the reports of occasional sightings of the lovers together in public were Bunny's to deal with for more than thirty years.
A sense of society's complicity comes with just one story. At the shop Dorcas had a desk in an alcove off the main salesroom in the front. Behind were dressing rooms, storage, and lingerie. The back wall of the lingerie area was sheathed in mirrors; one concealed a nearly invisible door into a closet that held only a phone. Usually it was closed. "One day, when too many mammoth clothes boxes arrived from New York, we needed the space, so the door was open." one young summer employee remembers, "and all of a sudden, the closet phone rang. I went in to answer it, just as someone else pulled me away and called out urgently, "The phone is ringing - the phone is ringing!" Dorcas sprinted into the back closed, closed the door, and did not emerge for some time. No one said a word about it, and we continued chatting and unpacking as though nothing at all had happened. I was totally mystified. Some days later a fellow employee told me that phone was the one on which Paul Mellon called her. No one was to discuss it or the affair."
But this affair was a very public one. Paul and Dorcas were seen together in D.C. and New York hotels. He also had family dinners that included her; he introduced her to his bosom friend the English art historian John Baskett, who liked Dorcas very much. Bunny told me that 'even though everyone in Washington at the big dinners and receptions that I arranged said, "Oh you;ll win,' I felt very alone.
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024
PAUL MELLON HAD DORCAS HARDIN - BUNNY MELLON HAD A CAVALCADE OF GAY COMPANIONS
Page 98 ...
In Dorcas Hardin he (Paul Mellon) had rediscovered that laughter, sex, coziness, and empathy. Dorcas seems to have released in Paul the certain knowledge of who he wanted to be, the man he felt he truly was.
Page 99 ...
For Paul, being "Careful to allow each other to develop our own interests" meant Dorcas. For Bunny,, it meat a long cavalcade of interesting ad talented men - almost all gay, except, perhaps, for Jean Schlumberger, the jewelry designer who, by all reports, occasionally slept with women who, like most of the others, had a male life partner, Luc Bouchage.
***
It would seem that Bunny had a series of unrequited crushes.
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Monday, April 8, 2024
Saturday, April 6, 2024
HOW PAUL AND BUNNY MELLON DECIDED TO LIVE SEPARATE LIVES : BUNNY SAYS SHE "FOUND A GIRL FOR HIM" HIS LIFELONG MISTRESS DORCAS HARDIN
Paul Mellon and Rachael Lambert Lloyd, called Bunny, married when she was thirty-eight and he was forty-two. It was a second marriage for both of them and they each brought two children into the marriage. However the family never actually blended. It was the 1950's. by 1955, their marriage was severely strained. Page 93: The fifties were still a world where expensive wives, however diplomatically ad insincerely, almost always deferred to their well-heeled husbands. As for therapy the general run of marriage counselling in the fifties basically involved telling the wife it was all her fault ad treating her for depression, anxiety, and "frigidity" with one of the psychopharmaceuticals new to the market ...
Paul's Freudian therapist told him to stop having sex with Bunny. She asked him if he wanted a divorce and he said no. He wanted her to be his wife, care for the children, and she could have all the money she needed. As Queen Elizabeth had the year earlier when her husband, Prince Phillip, was up to high-jinx with women, Bunny decided to go forward with this agreement in 1957.
***
In this book Bunny Mellon told the author she "found a girl for him" meaning Dorcas Hardin. Page 92. Dorcas became Paul's lifelong mistress. "If Bunny's memory can be believed, she didn't have to look very far. Dorcas's brother-in-law, Taylor Scott Hardin, was a member of Virginia's horsey set. Diana, Dorcas's daughter, also went to Foxcroft (Bunny's school), graduating a year ahead of Eliza (Bunny's daughter by her first husband) and me in 1959." In other words Dorcas was a member of society and from a world similar to that of Bunny. "Dorcas owned a fashionable clothing boutique in Georgetown." Which is near Washington, D.C.
***
Missy here: I would love more details on how exactly Bunny found Dorcas. Did she herself go to Dorcas and ask her to be her husband Paul's mistress?
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
DORCAS HARDIN : MORE THAN THREE DECADES AS MISTRESS OF BILLIONAIRE ART COLLECTOR and HORSE BREEDER PAUL MELLON : REVISITING DORCAS
In May 2018 my topic here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT was DORCAS HARDIN : Mistress of Billionaire Art Collector and Horse Breeder Paul Mellon. It's time to revisit Dorcas Hardin as our Mistress of the Month since more information has come out!
DORCAS HARDIN
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LITTLE EDIE BOUVIER BEALE of Grey Gardens Fame. Her Affair With a Married Man May Have Done Her In.
Monday, April 1, 2024
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Friday, March 29, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
CLIFFORD AND EDITH DISCUSS THEIR POST JAIL MARRIAGE
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
NINA and FREDERIK - DANISH FOLK SINGERS and "SOCIETY KIDS DABBLING IN MUSIC" WHO BECAME "OVERNIGHT SENSATIONS"
Danish, and a series of records and albums that did well in Europe during the early 1960's especially, they were compared to the American folk singing trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, and despite first thought of as dabblers, became overnight sensations.
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Thursday, March 21, 2024
IS THERE A WAY TO AFFAIR PROOF YOUR MARRIAGE : QUESTIONS FOR MISSY
QUESTION FOR MISSY
Missy,
I take marriage seriously being a Catholic and I don't want to marry someone who will cheat on me. So, you seem to know a lot about cheaters. Is there a way to affair proof your marriage?
Bennie
Minnesota
ANSWER FROM MISSY
Do you mean to affair proof YOURSELF or the person you marry?
Actually, I don't think there is. Other than you spend every last minute with your partner.
However, there are some things that might help you avoid having an affair or being "cheated."
1) Marrying someone who is also of the same religion and serious about it. Generally this means having traditional attitudes about the roles of husband and wife and that marriage can include long term suffering and is forever. This sometimes translates into staying together despite affairs. Please note that to me an affair may or may not evolve into becoming or having a Mistress. An affair can be five minutes, a few weeks, or last many years, but may not evolve into a special relationship. Something we do here is work on defining Mistress. The overuse of the term in the media is that any woman who had an affair, even a brief one, with a celebrity is now called a Mistress. A weekend with a celebrity doesn't even make one a girlfriend.
2) Having work that does not require you to travel or attend conventions without your partner or taking your partner with you wherever you go. Being on the road doesn't just mean meeting new people. It can be lonely and stressful. Going home after work each day to your spouse means you usually know where the other person is.
Keeping track of your partner can also feel or be controlling or confining. It can imply a lack of trust. The spouse may just get to the point where they want to get away from you.
Work place affairs are common.
3) Being sure you both always wear your wedding bands. Interested people always look to see if someone is wearing rings.
4) Not using alcohol or drugs. Both lower your resistance to finding others attractive, giving in to your sexual nature or adventure, and not practicing Safer Sex.
5) Not taking each other for granted. Scheduling quality alone time and still going out on "dates." Leaving the children with a trustworthy caregiver and taking vacations together.
6) Keeping the conversation going. Discussing the things you want out of the partnership, perhaps having pre-marital counseling, so that you are in agreement about important things like having children. Checking in with each other often.
7) Knowing the difference between honesty and honesty till it hurts. Don't be mean or insensitive. Also, every person has and should have privacy.
8) Having enough money. Enough can be a changing amount.
9) Allowing each other personal time, private time, friendships that don't necessarily include each other.
Not expecting to be each other's everything.
10) Not being manipulative, abusive, or jealous.
11) Getting married later in life.
Basically I'm saying to avoid those things that are notorious for causing couples to fall out as well as temptation.
However, it seems to me affairs happen anyway. People who never thought they would sometimes do.
Missy
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Monday, March 18, 2024
NINA VAN PALLANDT : THE TWIST AND TURNS OF A MARRIAGE IN FREE FALL
Notes and Excerpts by Missy:
By January 1967, when Nina was thinking that the separations had been good and was having renewed hope about her marriage with Frederik, the children announced that they had spent time with Dorothy, who was Frederik's new woman... It became clear that both husband and wife were having their own lives.
Excerpt Page 181 :
After a dinner party.... "He suddenly sat on the bed and said, "Dorothy and I are expecting a baby. Our marriage is finished. It was only an extension of our childhood anyway, and only our work has held us together. We'll fulfill the contracts we have, and that's the end."
What could I say? I, too, had contemplated leaving but had come to a different conclusion. I had long known of his girl friends, but had come to terms with that. I knew what we had together was unique and giving life together was very much a part of it. Now, with this, part of that uniqueness had been sullied and it all seemed meaningless. I was numb.
I cried and raged...
Note: The Nina and Frederik singing duo continued to entertain.
Excerpt page 183 :
At home the children never saw any strife or disharmony, but I know they sensed the tension.... Frederik didn't want a divorce. I was his wife and would be the only one he'd have in this life. The soul relationship be had with Dorothy, he said, needed no marriage certificate.
He was torn between two worlds. When he was here he wanted to be elsewhere; when elsewhere he wanted to be here. Deep down I don't think he wanted to be anywhere. Then the phone rang. Dorothy had had a daughter. We both cried for each other, for ourselves, and for her, too...
Notes : Back on the tour, it became clear that for all this, Frederik planed to spent his time with Dorothy and his friends, sailing. Nina wrote that the only thing that kept her going was her love for children. But they discussed having his new family move in. If that had happened Nina and Dorothy would have more openly been sharing a man. Finally Nina accepted that the relationship she had with her husband was that of siblings. What came next was negotiating a friendship with Clifford's new wife.
Excerpt page 196:
Clifford and Edith came to one of the few parties I had that summer. (Edith had become writer Clifford Irving's his fourth wife in 1967.) I'd gone to see her the year before at their home because I wanted to tell her I felt the island was too small for old grudges. Could we not make peace between us? I didn't stay long, but it was a friendly meeting, and when she took me downstairs to the door, she asked me to dinner a few days later. I went, and it was a pleasant evening which was repeated not too long afterwards. A couple weeks later, Edith and Clifford came to my annual Full Moon party, it looked as though we'd managed to resolve our problems.
But now, a year later at my house, Clifford had too much to drink and, with pointed remarks and hints, undid all Edith and I had managed to establish. The evening came to an end without incident, but a day or so later, Edith appeared and asked if we could talk.
She told me she was sick of his running around, and I oud have him if I wanted him. I assured her we were not seeing each other and that, furthermore, I had no intention of seeing him, adding that I was rather enjoying my newfound freedom. I was not divorced, only separated, had children and a career, I told her, and had no intention of breaking up her marriage, or for the present, my own. She seemed so upset that I finally asked her why she didn't just leave him She answered that she could not walk out on him and the children unless she knew he would be happy with me.
Notes: It was 1969 and Nina did not see Clifford or the Irvings for the rest of the year. Having fulfilled the contracts, Nina launched a solo career by September 1970 beginning in London.
Excerpt page 196:
January 1971, Clifford called from Ibiza and said he'd be coming to London en route to New York and would like to say hello. He arrive in early February and spent the afternoon chatting in my kitchen. It was good to see him again. At dinner that evening, we brought each other up to date on our doings. I told him with excitement how well things were going for me. He told me about his marriage, which was still limping along, about his suspicion of Edith having found a German boyfriend and their having discussed divorce. He still wanted to marry me, but I looked him straight in the eye and laughingly asked if we hadn't both had enough of that.
The next day at lunch Clifford asked me if had a few days free to go to the Bahamas with him. I rarely did things in the spur of the moment, but I suddenly head myself say "Yes." .....
I joined Clifford in New York a few days later, and he asked me if I'd like to go to Mexico instead. He knew a small town south of Mexico city where he'd spent some time and wanted to show it to me, and I'd never been to Mexico, anyway, so ---- why not?
Notes: What's especially important about this passage is that Clifford Irving was busy fooling his publisher that he had the cooperation of the secretive recluse, millionaire Howard Hughes, of aircraft pioneer fame, to write his autobiography. This ruse, that involved Clifford's wife Edith cashing checks made out to Hughes in Switzerland. ended badly, when the publishing house finally was contacted by Hughes himself. It turned into a major legal problem for Clifford Irving. But he did write a book about the whole adventure.
Excerpt Continued:
We took off for Mexico the next day, changed lanes in New Orleans and arrived late Thursday afternoon in Mexico City... It was during the drive from the airport to our hotel that Clifford suddenly turned to me and said in a low voice that he was going to write the autobiography of Howard Hughes, that it was a great secret and he couldn't reveal more. He added that he might possibly have to meet Hughes while we were there but I was not to talk about this project. Nothing more was mentioned and we chatted happily about the sights gliding by outside.....
Notes: The couple took a small plane to Oaxaca at dawn, a small town and stayed in a bungalow...
Excerpt page 201:
Clifford said "I'm not really meeting Hughes, you know... but I am writing his autobiography.... he could have said biography "Oh I'm writing it as if he were telling the story."
Notes: That is the role of a co-author or ghost writer and is a tradition, though sometimes a person with a story manages to get the work published without a mention that another person was writing an "as told to." This in itself was not wrong or illegal, it was the fact that Irving had never met Hughes, never had his cooperation, and had been conducting an elaborate ruse.
Eventually Nina was called to testify in court.
***
Notes: Nina wrote that Clifford had told her on the island that he was writing the book and it was an open secret, he also showed her the completed manuscript. She began to get the feeling that he was up to something.... She said she did not want him to give her the details.
Nina thus claimed that she was not told outright that the book on Hughes was a hoax. Despite all the changes, her relationship with Clifford fizzed out, though they had friendly occasional friendly interactions over the years. Nina claimed that she began to learn that she was sought in connection with the legal case. It was their trip to Mexico that she was questioned about and so, she came to public notice in the United States as a result.
Some people speculated that her denials had everything to do with her career.
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Saturday, March 16, 2024
NINA BECOMES KNOWN IN THE UNITED STATES
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
THE CLIFFORD - EDITH - NINA TRIAD : NO ONE WAY TO LOVE
Notes and excerpts by Missy.
After her initial time with new lover, Clifford Irving, on Ibiza, when her husband Frederik showed up at least three weeks early and she confessed that she love him but was in love with Clifford, Nina tried on reality and believe that the love affair was over. She wrote in her memoir that her husband's hurt and anger gave her hope for their marriage.
Excerpt: page 167:
As the evening wore on, the cold, hard realities of the whole thing slipped into perspective. Was this not another Ibiza fantasy of no tomorrow (I'd heard of so many)? With two babies, a complex but surely very special relationship with Frederik, and our families who loved us all, could I really jeopardize all this because of this feeling for a man who was, after all, a stranger -- not so much anymore to me, of course, but to everything my life had been up to that point? I couldn't -- I was suddenly sure I couldn't.
Frederik's fury gradually subsided. Later, he told me that at the time he was not so angry at my confusion as with my choice. Clifford, to his thinking, was worth no more than a dalliance, if anything.
Three days later, Clifford and I met and we had very little to say to each other. It was over -- it had to be. That afternoon, Frederik agreed that I should go to Copenhagen for a week... When I returned to Ibiza eight days later, things were all right, as I had determined they would be. I saw Clifford several times again that summer of '64 at parties and around the island, but we hardly spoke to each other. It was as though we'd both turned off a switch...\
Notes:
Nina and Frederik return to London and then their touring schedule... their routines with their children... They returned to Ibiza where their rented farmhouse was undergoing some refurbishing. The place was falling apart, really, almost comedic, if not tragic, as one thing after another needed repair. Yet it was also there they had domesticity. Frederik was spending most of his time in town while she tended to the children, and Nina was not comfortable with the friends he was bringing to the house. To Nina her husband seemed strange and remote. In 1965 they traveled to New Zealand and Australia to work. When Frederik would return to the Island and home she felt there had been a communication breakdown. Her third pregnancy had left her feeling unwell and the delivery was a nightmare, unlike her first and second born. the emergency was such that Nina could have died... By 1966 when the duo were in London to sing at Albert Hall, Nina was depressed. As entertainers their careers were doing well but summers were spent separated.
Then Nina and Clifford had no contact for two years after their parting. She got a letter from him finally saying he'd heard she'd been ill. He had divorced Fay, the wife he had been living with when they met, and was living on and off with a German woman named Edith, whom he had known for some time. Edith would become Clifford's next wife.
Excerpts pages 177-178:
We ran into each other at the beach one day, and he asked me to come by his studio for a glass of wine. A day or so later, I did. I hadn't heard much from Frederik that summer. He was still off sailing with friends. Our relationship was disintegrating rapidly, and although we loved each other, it was as if we were constantly getting our wires crossed. I suppose I had my rigid ideas of what marriage should be, and I'd come to realize that basically Frederik didn't want to be married at all...
Clifford and I, trying to recapture a happier time, were soon woven into the spell of the island and began seeing each other again, just the two of us alone. During the afternoons we could steal, we swam off the rocks below his studio, drank wine on his terrace or in the clutter of his paper-strewn workroom, listened to music, talked or argued, and pretended that time didn't exist - no past -- no future, a very common phenomenon in Ibiza That summer, we were lovers.
Notes:
At the end of July Nina was back to work but Frederik told her that he had met a girl during the summer, and the husband and wife realized they were friends
More in a future post!
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Sunday, March 10, 2024
Friday, March 8, 2024
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
NINA and CLIFFORD - HOW IT BEGAN
IBIZA... the Spanish island... In her memoir, which I thought of as quite intelligent and descriptive, Nina Van Pallandt's descriptions of the island in the Mediterranean in the very early 1960's when she and her husband, Frederik Van Pallandt, bought property there, made me want to go back in time and move there. It's off the beaten path for two entertainers who have traveled for their singing careers, rather rural, and one imagines them settling into a safe and quiet place to raise their children, a respite when they aren't all traveling internationally. It was the end of 1963 when they moved there and the married couple had a toddler and an infant. Another baby would soon be on the way.
page 163 except:
A few weeks after I arrived I was invited on my first outing to explore some caves in the north of the island and later, on the beach, found myself sitting next to an attractive American who had earlier been introduced as a writer, Clifford Irving. My first impression was that, in size, her reminded me of the football players I'd known at the University of Southern California. And, I can't ever recall having see a bigger pair of feet! Clifford, I found, was separated from his third wife, Fay, and with his son in great need of a playmate, asked if I'd bring Nicolas over the next day. I agreed. the next afternoon we drove to his house near Santa Eulalia, but he wasn't there, so page 164 I left the two boys to get acquainted under the care of the housekeeper.
My return trip at dusk, however, produced Clifford, a short chat over a glass of wine on his terrace, and an invitation for dinner the next evening.
We met at Sandy's, one of the island's few bars. Its proprietor had an incredible memory for names and stories and is one of the most amusing, well read people I know.....
We had drinks, chatting with people we knew there, then Clifford suggested we go into Ibiza Town for dinner. In those days, there were few restaurants in Ibiza, and because the only sources of food were island produce and livestock, plus ea-food, of course, the menu offerings and combinations were fairy limited....
page 165 - 166 excerpt:
We are, drank wine and talked and talked and talked. Clifford was the first man in years who had paid me a compliment, not the show-business me but just to me and that certainly registered. Much later, we discussed and laughed over that first date. Nothing was really said - only polite, amusing conversation, but we were both very much aware of each other.
We later went for a stroll on the pier, and Clifford regaled me with stories of the Ibiza he had nown, having first arrived there in 1953. ...
We talked and talked a bit more, then parted. It had been a beautiful, timeless, suspended-in-space evening, one of the nicest I'd spent in years, but as I drove home, I found myself disturbed.
In the days that followed, we saw each other as often as possible: at the beach with our children, and sometimes on our own, at parties given by mutual friends, at dinner a few times and at his studio in Old Town. It was there over late night bottles of wine by candlelight that the conversation changed from the lighthearted and superficial to things philosophical and personal, and failures and dreams gone by. it was if all that had been damned up inside me for years and was suddenly gushing forth like a spring stream swollen by the melting snows. We were unknown entities to each other and, in slowly discovering each other, discovered, ourselves as well, Perhaps I should speak only for myself.
There was something in Clifford that I had never before found in the very few men who had become important in my life. I think it was a blend of the curiosity - American qualities of openness, warmth, and courtesy, of strength and basic optimisms about life which are, perhaps, particularly attractive and intriguing to European women. Clifford gave me an extraordinary feeling of being protected - ironic, I know in retrospect - and yet, that's what I felt.
It was all such a revelation I fell in love. Whether I'd fallen in love with love or was really in love, I didn't know and was greatly upset that things were getting totally beyond my control I felt no guilt, rather a confused sensation of "What am I doing? What's going on?"
With Clifford I discovered and experienced Ibiza in all it's magic 0 that was his fit to me. Our live remained on the airy-fairy level f a glance, a touch, an outstretched hand, a kiss... no more, for ear of breaking the spell. Somehow I'd transferred to him the dream of the island I'd had for Frederik and me.
Two weeks later it was us three - we were at the beach with the children. Glancing up, I spotted Frederik stalking down the sands searching for me. He wasn't due for at least three more weeks... He'd left the boat in Southhampton and taken a plane. In one flash, as on a giant panoramic screen, the present was frozen crystal clear and completely in focus... I couldn't take my sunglasses off as I greeted him... He knew something was wrong, and I told him. It was nothing I had wanted or willed. I loved him. I was in love with Clifford...
Frederik was enraged and at the same time hurt, and his violent reaction surprised me...
(to be continued)
Missy here! Stay with me as we continue to get to know the Nina and Clifford of the early 1960's!
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Saturday, March 2, 2024
NINA BARONESS VAN PALLANDT : ACTRESS and SINGER and MARRIED MISTRESS OF AUTHOR CLIFFORD MICHAEL IRVING, AUTHOR and PERPETRATOR OF THE HOAX
The ideas, inspiration, and information that leads me to find and elect someone into the Mistress Manifesto Pantheon come in various ways. This month's Mistress of the Month is someone I heard about through listening to a an audiobook, never thinking the author, Clifford Michael Irving (Aka Clifford Irving), would go on about his personal life that included a mistress in a book about he almost got away with hoaxing a "authorized biography" of the reclusive Howard Hughes, then one of the richest men in the Western world. As it turns out Nina van Pallandt, with whom he had a long affair that was often dependent on his and her ability to travel and meet up, is important to the story because Irving was busy writing the book during a time when they were having an on and off-again affair. He says he told her truthfully that he was pulling off a hoax and then she lied that she did not know after he got caught. She is accused of using the focus upon her once the hoax was exposed and the legal prosecution began to benefit her career...
Nina Moller was born into an aristocratic Danish family, that was well connected but endured privations during the World War II era, especially when the Germans occupied her country and one had to be frugal and practical. Her father had died suddenly when she was four, in 1936, leaving her mother as a widow with children to raise on her own. In response to his death, her mother moved the family to live in the hills above Monaco; they were people of the upper class who could be called International. Her mother remarried in 1946 to one of the many suitors who had pursued her, a man who further elevated the family in wealth and prestige. They lived on a beach-side estate with gardens. Young Nina lived a life of opportunity and advantage but at a time when women of her class were educated to be "well-rounded" before they married. Her stepfather spoiled her and her siblings. She was confirmed into the Lutheran faith at 14, but did not see that as spiritual attainment. At eighteen she was going to formal balls in the country, though she had only two gowns to wear to these dances as well as shoes two sizes too big. She had studied ballet for six years but by the age of twelve she was already five foot seven inches, a bit tall. She had been raised to be a lady, a society lady and the question hung in the air, what she might do. Though the war had threatened that lifestyle, she had expectations.
At 2, a small inheritance enabled her to move to Paris and attend classes at L'Alliance Francaise as well as Sorbonne. She was shocked to learn how much the Parisians hated Americans and that young women from Scandinavia were all thought to be easy and called "Baby Factories." There in Paris she fell in love with a man named Charles, who was half Polish, half French and Catholic. She was crazy about him and dated, going to formal dinners and balls that were favored by the jet set while she lived humbly in a hotel. Her love for Charles was unrequited as she realized when she saw that he was back in circulation without her.
It was on that island that Nina would meet Clifford Irving.
Almost on a whim, he decided the way to have a major literary success was to write an autobiography instead of a novel, and not just about anyone but about the reclusive eccentric genius Howard Hughes. He yearned for the recognition and the money. First he had to prove that he had a Hughes connection and was working on getting the man to agree to such a book. There was always the possibility to back out and claim that the cagey Hughes was not interested after all, but, once there were (fake) contracts written, Irving could only go forward. It was interesting and a challenge to see what it would take to pull of the hoax and the plot got to be convoluted and almost comical at times.
Hughes was at the time considered to be one of the richest men in the world. He is known for his endeavors in aerospace, for invention and being able to finance experimental planes, such as the plane that flew once and for a couple miles called The Spruce Goose. However, his more successful innovations did move that industry along, especially because he seemed to have unlimited funds to develop and build airplanes, some of which he himself was the test pilot for. Hughes became mentally ill; I know from past reading the theories were that he had suffered brain damage from crashing, in particular one crash in Beverly Hills that left him with some life-long physical debilities. A biopic staring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes that came out in 2004 had scenes that would suggest that Hughes had an obsessive compulsive disorder long before this terrible crash. Hughes had a great deal of stress to contend with and an excellent mind, as well as a great many germ phobias and other issues.
Hughes had also got into making films in Golden Era Hollywood and was known for his seduction of actresses.*** Though he had once been well known in Hollywood, Hughes had retreated into his illness in Las Vegas, Nevada where his seclusion might have been mental illness or might have been because being as rich as he was, he was legitimately afraid of being kidnapped. For many years no one saw him but perhaps a number of men who served his every wish, from bringing him Oreo TM cookies and milk, to following through on his orders when it came to business, as well as providing legal advice and protections.
It is because Hughes was such a character that author Clifford Irving thought he would make the most fascinating subject and why he thought that he could write an "Authorized Autobiography" without ever meeting the man. Clifford and another writer, a sort of assistant, went to unusual and sometimes extreme means in order to create this book, for which Hughes was to get a huge payment as well. (The payment to Hughes went into a Swiss bank account that Irving's then wife Edith managed to pull off, though in the end she served time in the U.S and in Switzerland.) Irving and his partner significantly counted on Hughes being so reclusive, perhaps too ill, to ever protest the book. They did a great deal of actual research but Irving also forged letters from Hughes. Edith Irving willingly went to put the money into Swiss Banks for their own eventual use; It was suggested she did this to prove to her husband that she was willing to do something Nina Van Pallandt would not..
Image of the Film box.
While listening to this book, which I then got a print copy of, Irving said that he and his mistress Nina had a lovely and exciting relationship for many years, one in which neither wanted "more." She was on a second marriage and had three children but from the time they met they simply could not resist each other. (Irving would marry 6 times by the time he died and was probably unable to limit himself to one woman. Clifford and Nina's meet ups occurred because they both traveled and because he too considered the island of Ibiza, home. So sometimes the meet ups were rather spontaneously planned and sometimes they were a matter of coincidence. But his book is admits far more than Nina's.
While Irving, his researcher and unofficial co-author, and Irving's wife got found out when Hughes surprisingly did do a audio conference denying he had never met and never talked to Irving, it was mail fraud and the money in the Swiss banking system that caused them all to be sentenced to jail time and ended Irving's association with any publishing house. Irving's wife, got the worst of it, and he felt guilty about that. Or said he did.
Meanwhile Nina is portrayed in the film as being a bit of a turncoat, all about her career at that point. She said that she knew he was working on a book about Hughes, and that one of their rendezvous was said to be about a meet up with Hughes that never happened. She did not say she knew that it was all a Hoax.
There were so many things that fell into place for Irving and his cohort, that it almost seemed miraculous and like the Hughes autobiography was meant to be! Sometimes, you root for the criminal and it was like that for me. I was incredulous, yet, there was so much cleverness. I do think Clifford Irving's book Hoax deserved all the praise that the critics gave it when it was published. However, Irving also must have been expert at coming up with lies that seemed to be truths, and lies that his publishing house wanted to believe him - in their greed - despite at times having doubts and putting him through tests, all of which he passed including a lie detector test and experts determining his forgeries were not.
This month I will excerpt from the book by Nina and the book by Clifford, which gives us the rare treat of hearing from both parties....
Nina and Fredrik parted ways in 1969 and divorced in 1976. She would remarry one more time, another brief marriage. Edith Sommer Irving served jail time and divorced Clifford too, though they had two sons. He would marry six times during his life.
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*** Howards Hughes featured here at Mistress Manifesto in May 2014 when I gave a month to Faith Domergue, Howard Hughes 15 year old Mistress. (He reportedly kept many women in his Hollywood film mogul days.)