Still Looking for a Model Marriage
“You just have to be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a tart in the bedroom. As long as the house is clean and organized and they are fed and they have plenty of sex, they’ll never run away.” --Jerry Hall in a 1985 magazine interview
W ell, almost never . . .
While Jerry Hall was scrubbing the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove and feeding her man’s libido, Mick Jagger was apparently off trying to get some satisfaction.
And even a spotless house can’t change that, as the world learned last week of a possible Jagger-Hall split.
But is anybody really surprised?
It’s a good bet other members of the willowy-blond-and-beautiful club, including models Kelly Emberg, Marla Maples and ex-model Ivana Trump, aren’t shocked either.
Even mahogany-maned mannequin Cindy Crawford, 26, is savvy about the shelf life of models. As she told People magazine after her marriage earlier this year to actor Richard Gere, 42:
“Models are like baseball players. We make a lot of money quickly, but all of a sudden we’re 30 years old, we don’t have a college education, we’re qualified for nothing and we’re used to a very nice lifestyle.”
So what’s a gorgeous girl to do? “The best thing,” says Crawford, “is to marry a movie star.”
While plenty of fashion models looking for security in their early to middle age do precisely that, just as many of them hook up with rock stars, who may or may not be nice to them. This happens often enough to cause some of the great social chroniclers of our time (notably Robin Leach) to ponder.
“Models,” concludes the Rich-and-Famousmeister, “are the most beautiful women on Earth. They’re only going to meet people that hang around in their elite circle. They’re not going to date CPAs or truck drivers.”
Indeed, according to an executive of one top modeling agency, rock stars often call and leave their names with the agency, asking that the agency have the model they saw in a magazine or on television call them.
And the women, says once-top model Emberg, are flattered and thrilled by the attention. As she recently told USA Today, “Rock stars want models because they are beautiful, successful, incredibly naive and malleable.” But what they really like about them, adds Emberg, is that young models “believe everything the guy tells them.”
The blond and beautiful Emberg spent seven years with singer Rod Stewart, 47. Before her, Stewart was married to the blond and beautiful Alana Hamilton. And before that, he was with the blond and beautiful Britt Ekland.
As we suspected, this is no coincidence. As Stewart’s manager, Arnold Stiefel, explained to Time magazine last year, “If you’re free to go out with anybody, wouldn’t your first choice be some gorgeous 21-year-old blonde, before it would be that sweet secretary down the hall with the thick (behind)?”
There’s nothing thick about Kelly Emberg, but that didn’t keep her from becoming the latest Rod Stewart ex.
But don’t worry, she’s now dating a man described as “a totally normal and very conservative guy in computer sales.”
And Stewart--surprise--is now married to blond and beautiful Rachel Hunter, a 21-year-old model from New Zealand. (Hunter, miffed over her predecessor’s $25-million palimony suit against Stewart, calls the 31-year-old Emberg “the sort of person who gives blondes a bad name.”)
So, is there a CPA in Jerry Hall’s future? Who knows. But there seems little question that there is a younger model in Mick Jagger’s future.
According to reports in several London newspapers, Jagger, 49, and Hall, 34, are splitting after 15 years, three children and 18 months of marriage.
Famous for such tunes as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Under My Thumb,” Jagger has been linked with 23-year-old Italian model Carla Bruni, who, before Jagger, had been linked to Eric Clapton and Donald Trump.
Bruni and Jagger reportedly started dating around the time Hall and Jagger tied the knot after more than 13 years together. And the day after Hall delivered her third baby in January, the naughty Jagger was rumored to be on a plane to Thailand for a romantic rendezvous with Bruni. Talk about postpartum depression.
But rock stars don’t have a monopoly on beautiful young models. Ask actor Robert De Niro. Lately he has been juggling his career better than he has his not-so-friendly girlfriends Toukie (sister of late designer Willi) Smith, 38, and Naomi Campbell, 21.
Campbell is a nonstop self-promoter who coos “peace and love” on her telephone answering machine, wears blond wigs, spike heels and fake eyelashes, and tells interviewers things like, “I love hot chocolate in front of a fireplace.” Smith is more, well, mature, and as a result is not favored to win out over Campbell, who’s also been linked to Mike Tyson, who was linked to Robin Givens, who was linked to . . .
Jerry Hall, like Campbell and many of the other super-models, began modeling as a young teen-ager. She dropped out of school in Texas to begin her career at 16.
But as their youth faded--and with it, their commercial allure--Hall and others looked for other ways to keep and get the men they loved.
Hall’s recipe of a clean house, good cooking and plenty of sex--as handed down from her mother--may be revised before she hands it down to her own daughters.
Times research librarian Joyce Pinney contributed to this story.
