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| The Little Extras - The Society Divas | |
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| The Little Extras - The Society Divas | |
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Born
to a good family, Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill
Hayward Harriman started out with a great name and devoted her
life to improving upon that. She arrived March 20, 1920 to Edward and Pansy in
Kent, Farnborough. Pamela’s
father was from an old and distinguished family.
Her mother was the daughter of Baron Aberdare,
a peer in the House of Lords. Pamela and her three younger sisters
grew up at Magna Minterne, their
large ancestral home. Grand, but not quite as grand as the houses she would
later find herself in. There
are many reports of her escapades
with various rich and powerful men – but to call her a courtesan or a
chameleon is a cheap and easy answer. Pamela always exhibited a firm, but
stylish, hand with everything she did – even when she married another woman’s husband. Good manners
always prevailed and the invitations to lunch and dinner kept coming. Perhaps
women of these changing eras were a little afraid of someone who desired self-improvement
– even if that meant improving her taste for life’s treasures. It is hard
to fault someone for wanting a better life and if people suffered for it along
the way, well, look at the Roman emperors of yore; at least no blood was shed
with Pamela Digby around. Her accomplishments in the end – helping to bring
the Democrats back
into office during the 1980s Republican majority – can
justify itself as an end game. Pamela Digby saw the available brass ring and
Pamela Harriman knew how hard one must work to grab it. Having styled her
life on that of her ancestor Jane Digby,
herself a wildly “popular” woman,
Pamela had a role model to mold herself from as she eventually came into her
own. Perhaps
typical during the early 20th Century is the oppressiveness
in an aristocratic English household. Young girls were raised to be young
ladies and made marriageable through a minimum of education and
travel and Pamela was not the exception. She was raised by a governess,
attended girls school and then sent off to Europe to complete her
adolescence, as was the custom at the time. One of Pamela’s greatest
assets was her timing. She was sent
to Germany for her finishing around 1938 and claims to have met Hitler,
but that is widely believed to be false. Mostly she couldn't bear to be
left out of anything, even meeting the most atrocious individual of the 20th
Century. Back in England, Pamela is presented at Court to the new King
George VI and his royal consort, Queen
Elizabeth, which marks her entrée
into society. With not much direction Pamela finds herself another daughter of an aristocrat amongst many in pre-war London and figures out how to break free. With her gorgeous red hair, curvy body and milky white skin, Pamela was easy on the eyes. Running around London, going to this nightspot with that man, she was soon led to Lady Olive Bailie, a very wealthy American who owned Leeds Castle, one of the largest in England. Beautifully restored at enormous expense, Leeds Castle was open round the clock for international partying. Lady Bailie took the young Pamela by the hand and instructed her on the subtle differences in fine furniture, art and antiques. Pamela learned to tell the difference between a Manet and a Monet and that was important. She was also introduced to all who crossed Lady Bailie’s moat. Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks, Max Beaverbrook, the biggest London press baron, were just a few of the many powerful men she encountered. Beaverbrook especially was exactly the sort of man Pamela Digby learned to thrive on: rich, powerful and emotionally needy. Beaverbrook took Pamela under his wing and guided her through her early crises of young adulthood. She in turn provided the usual caregiving she would become known for. Pamela had discovered the role she was meant to play. As Europe and England
began living under the black cloud of World War II,
Pamela met and married Randolph Churchill,
son of the soon-to-be Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
As England entered in the war against Hitler, young Pamela became pregnant
with the Churchill heir in addition to being brought into the inner circle of world
politics. This was easy enough as Winston Churchill took an
immediate liking to his new daughter-in law. They got along famously. Once, having
to share a bunker with her in-laws during an air raid she thought to herself, “One
Churchill above me, the other inside.” Her husband, however,
was another matter. Randolph, living under the shadow of his great father,
grew into an argumentative, belligerent alcoholic.
Even his parents had trouble with his temper and sympathized wholly with
Pamela who was carrying their grandchild. During the war he was sent off
to Cairo where he could drink and carouse while far away from the realities of
his sham marriage. Some called it a wartime hitch, others called their
marriage a stroke of good luck on Pamela’s part; either way, she had gone to
the next level. World War II was also a time of loosening morals. With so many being sent off to die, men and women for the first time came together to experience the pleasure of one another all while their cities were being bombed around them. A heady experience for everyone, it was under these circumstances that Pamela Churchill was first introduced to Averell Harriman, heir to the Union Pacific railroad fortune and a budding diplomat. He was in London to help develop the Lend-Lease program that sent supplies and weapons to Britain and the Soviet Union during the war. He would eventually become an ambassador to both countries. In Pamela, Averell saw a very pretty, if slightly chubby, redhead with a voluptuous body and she found a man who was far away from his wife and in need of some attention. It was a perfect wartime match and the two fell for each other instantly, carrying on a generous affair for the entire duration of the war. Pamela also met and had affairs with Jock Whitney, another extremely rich American and Bill Paley, the maximum leader of CBS. Coincidentally, after the war both men married two of the famous three Cushing sisters, Babe and Betsey, with whom Pamela socialized even after having affairs with their husbands. After Averell returned to the United States to begin his run for elective offices, Pamela met Edward R. Murrow, a leader in reporting whose vivid broadcasts of the war ensured American sympathy for the British. Their affair became quite serious, even though Murrow was married with a wife and child in the States. At one point Pamela had hoped to wed Murrow, but in the end, as it was with all the men she involved herself with, their careers were far too important to be disrupted. The wives of these successful men had all been with them from the beginning and understood these dalliances while they remained in the background. After
the war when her lovers resumed life with their families, Pamela found herself
floating around Europe, still
married to the alcoholic Randolph, their young son, Winston,
already shipped off to boarding school. It was during this period that
Pamela began to cast her net. Europe was on the mend and she was free to
travel the Continent. She proceeded to have an affair with bachelor Gianni
Agnelli, the heir to the Fiat
automobile fortune. They carried on for several years, floating around the
Mediterranean on his yacht, partying at all the chic European nightspots.
Pamela even converted to Catholicism
in the hopes Gianni would marry her too. For years after this move really hurt her in London with
the senior Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of a government whose monarch was
Head of the Church of England. However, Agnelli didn’t marry her;
instead, he chose the already Catholic, Italian and pregnant, Princess
Marella Caracciolo. Bruised
from her affair with Agnelli, Pamela next floated into a relationship with Baron
Elie de Rothschild. If she thought Agnelli was rich and
powerful, she certainly entered the gilded realm with Rothschild. He
was from one of the most powerful and distinguished families in France. Their
vineyards produced the superior Lafitte-Rothschild
wines. They were leaders in the French
Jewish community and also ran the prestigious Rothschild
banks. Although married, Baron Elie kept Pamela in high
style for several years, her good taste more finely tuned than ever. His wife
Liliane looked the other way, as do all wives unwilling to relinquish their
positions to the Other Woman. Along
the line she had affairs with Stavros Niachros,
the Greek shipping magnate and Prince Aly Kahn,
son of the Aga Kahn, the world’s Moslem spiritual leader. While she
enjoyed basking in
the adoration of these powerful men, Pamela eventually emerged closer to
forty and divorced from Randolph. If there was any emptiness in her
heart she more than made up for it by keeping her chic
Paris apartment filled with valuable art and antiques, gifts
from the many rich men who passed through her door. She was quite
notorious on the scene, seen here, there and everywhere, often with her
friend, Wallis,
the Duchess of Windsor - no doubt learning lessons from
Master Diva Number One. Ready
for her next move, Pamela moved to New York
around 1955. Taking a suite at the Carlyle,
the wives of high society pricked up their ears when they heard the un-married
Pam Churchill had blown into town. One of the first people to launch her on
the circuit was Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney,
sister of Babe Paley
and wife of Jock Whitney, Pam’s old flame. Immediately following her
arrival Pamela suffered a serious medical condition and it was discovered that
she needed a complete hysterectomy.
After the operation Betsey Whitney offered to let Pamela convalesce at Greentree,
the Whitney estate in Manhasset on Long Island’s North Shore. What appeared
to be an act of kindness on Betsey’s part, she was most likely keeping a
close eye on the roving Mrs. Churchill. After Pamela’s recovery, the Whitney’s had an evening out in the city. They went to see a play by Manhasset neighbor and famed Broadway impresario, Leland Hayward. Sensing an opportunity or maybe pure navieté on her part, Betsey had Leland escort Pamela to the play that night. Hayward’s’ wife, Slim, was out of town, traveling in Spain with her pal Ernest Hemmingway and returned several weeks later to discover that Pamela had moved in on her man. The
Hayward marriage was practically in tatters by that point, but Slim
Hayward had no intention of divorcing, or at least making
it easier on Pam and Leland. She made them move to Reno,
Nevada for the required six weeks to initiate divorce
proceedings in an effort to thwart their plans which continued unabated anyway. Leland Hayward started his career as an agent, with a
client roster of the biggest names in Hollywood
and Broadway. He made the move to
buying the rights of and producing Broadway plays and had some of the biggest
hits on the Great White Way, including “Gypsy,”
“Mister Roberts” and “South
Pacific.” By the time of their marriage in 1960, Leland
Hayward was as big a name as the stars of his shows. With Pamela as the new Mrs. Hayward, the couple moved to "Haywire," a large estate in Croton-on-Hudson, north of Manhattan. Pamela chose Westchester over Long Island as the prestigious North Shore was home ground for Slim, Babe and Betsey. Ironically, Slim soon moved to England where she married Kenneth Keith, a wealthy British banker who became a Knight of the Realm and Slim Hayward would be known as Lady Keith. The
1960’s saw the end of the hits for Leland Hayward. In 1964 he did produce “The
Sound of Music,” which became enormous, but after that opus
he never had a smash again. Parallel to this success his hard living caught up
with him. Leland’s health rapidly deteriorated and Pamela Hayward was
in her element, always the caregiver.
She nursed him through the worst of times and was with him to the last. Leland had two daughters and a son from his first marriage to actress Maggie Sullivan, all three with varying degrees of emotional problems. While stepmother Slim was good to the children, Brooke, Brigid and Billy, Pamela cut them off little by little and when Leland eventually died around 1971, the Hayward children were fully estranged from their father. There wasn’t much money left either, in fact it was alluded that Pamela had to dig into her own capital to support their rich lifestyle. Now Pamela was a widow with supposedly empty pockets. It was time to make her next, and she hoped, her last move. 1971
was the same year Averell Harriman’s
wife, Marie died. By this time, Harriman was looking back on a stunning
career: Chairman of the Union Pacific, Ambassador to
both Great Britain and Russia, Secretary of Commerce under FDR, creating the Marshall Plan under Truman, National Security Advisor during the
Korean War, Governor of New York State in 1954, negotiating the Vietnam peace
talks under Johnson. He had done it all and it was during a party at
Washington Post publisher Kay Grahams’ house following Marie’s death that
he became reacquainted with Pamela. The
story goes that Pamela got herself invited to the same party and during
cocktails snuck into the dining room to switch the place cards. Averell and
Pamela were originally sitting side-by-side, but Pamela switched the cards so
the couple would have their backs to each other. The ploy worked. Averell
heard Pamela’s voice and the two kept up a playful back-to-back conversation
throughout the dinner. Wasting no time they became a rather hot item. People didn’t know what to talk about first:
the
new couples' difference in age, he
was twenty years her senior, or the Widow Hayward's
new look. Pamela started out as a provocative redhead
then became a matronly brunette during her
Hayward years and was now a blonde
who had gotten what people say was “the best face-lift
in the world.” In
1974 during their engagement party,
Pamela and Averell shocked the party by announcing that they were already married
in another part of the house ten minutes earlier. Harriman’s daughter,
Kathleen, with whom Pamela had a
close friendship during the war, was stunned to realize how stealthily Pamela
moved. The newlyweds divided their time between the newly
purchased Willow Oaks, set in the
heart of Virginia’s horse country and their Georgetown townhouse on Embassy
Row. The
1980’s brought tumultuous change in Washington. The Republicans
took charge of the White House as well as the House and Senate and the
Harriman’s were not pleased with this change in leadership. Never one to be
left out of anything, Pamela Harriman understood Averell’s need to keep
involved and devised a way to reorganize the
Democratic Party that was dear to his beliefs. They
introduced a Political Action Committee (PAC).
This new breath of the Democrats had a forum in which they could collect money,
re-group and retain the advice of the 20th Century’s finest
statesmen. Averell encouraged Pamela to speak publicly and “Democrats
for the 80’s” now had a face. Pamela soon thereafter
became an American citizen,
pleasing Averell enormously, the clever girl. Soon
the press would call these committees PamPACs
and it was at their "N" Street
townhouse that Democrats retrenched and prepared to take on
the Republicans. With Pam leading the charge Averell was content to remain
behind the scenes as his age advanced and his health declined. Speaking
at the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco, Pamela made a speech which
added to the renewed vigor of the once-ailing party: “I
am an American by choice and a Democrat by conviction.” she
said and for the first time the limelight was squarely on her. Slowly,
the tides changed in Washington and the Harriman’s were in the thick of it.
Unfortunately, by 1986 Averell Harriman was in failing health. His daughter
Kathleen was kept at arms length during this period and so was his godson, Peter
Duchin. Averell and Marie raised Peter since he was a baby.
Peter’s mother, a great friend of Marie Harriman, was a Social
Register debutante who died soon after giving birth to the boy
and his father was Eddy Duchin, the
famed bandleader. With his father on the road all the time, the Harriman’s
became Peter’s surrogate parents and he kept a close relationship with them.
Once Pamela Harriman came into the
picture, all contact between Duchin and old Averell was shut down. Another bit
of irony is that years later, Peter Duchin married Brooke
Hayward, Leland's daughter. After
battling a long illness, Averell Harriman joined the majority and caregiver
Pamela took care of all the details, ensuring he was given a
send-off befitting a president. In fact, four Presidents
attended his funeral. Although it looked as if he was being laid to rest in
the family plot, he was actually being sent to a plot in Bermuda so he
would be buried with Pamela. The family was furious when they found out but
Pamela didn’t care. She inherited Averell’s
entire $110 million-dollar fortune. She now had what is
called by the very rich, “fuck you money.” Family
situations notwithstanding, Pamela doggedly continued with her efforts to
ensure a Democrat was elected to the White House and he finally arrived in the
package of William Jefferson Clinton,
the governor of Arkansas, her PamPAC raising almost $12 million dollars for
his campaign. The two got along famously as his history and hers
don’t seem all that different in its most basic element. The time seemed
ripe for a Democrat president and 1992 was their year. Bill Clinton won the
election over George Bush. For
all her efforts in helping the Democratic Party, Pamela Harriman was soon
nominated as Ambassador to France,
the most prestigious of all political appointments. She tried to take it in stride
but couldn’t rest until after the confirmation hearings where she had the most conservative Senators eating out the palm of her lovely
hand. Pamela’s time in France was marked by her excellent skills in improving American-French relations and earned the respect of many leaders for her efforts. Everything was great going until the end came in February 1997. While swimming in the pool at the Ritz Hotel as a part of her regular exercise, she had a stroke and drowned. Her funeral was attended by President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, with whom she was close as well as a phalanx of diplomats and those who knew her in her last, great incarnation. Pamela carried on with great style and in the thick of everything; the English rose had come into full flower. With the money, status and respect the Diva requires, she had lived her life under the maxim: Do as you please and please look good doing it. (Written by Blair Schulman)
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