Former Mudd Mistress Paints Glowing Picture : Law: Testimony in the $5-million palimony trial focuses on whether her relationship with the late multimillionaire was more than sexual.

Eleanor (Lorraine) Oliver testified in Superior Court on Tuesday that Henry T. Mudd--the late multimillionaire whom she shared with six other mistresses--graciously served as a substitute grandfather to her two children.

Oliver, 41, spoke glowingly of her relationship with the co-founder of Harvey Mudd College, 37 years her senior, during the second day of testimony in the $5-million palimony suit she has filed against executors of Mudd’s estate.

“Henry treated me better than any man had ever treated me before,” Oliver said of the man who paid her $100,000 a year and bought the $600,000 house where she lived in Studio City.

But attorneys for the executors chipped away at the pleasant picture in an effort to support their contention that the couple’s 13-year relationship was based primarily on paying for sex.

Under cross-examination, Oliver, speaking at times barely above a whisper, confirmed that she posed “scantily clad” for photographs taken by Mudd, that she and Mudd were often accompanied on exotic trips by other mistresses and that she had affairs with two men she met while vacationing with Mudd.

The testimony was the latest aspect of a scandalous saga involving Oliver’s claims that she had a contract with Mudd to make herself available 24 hours a day for companionship. In return, Oliver says, Mudd agreed to set up trusts giving her lifetime support and allowing her to live rent-free in the four-bedroom Studio City house.

She claims Mudd reneged on the contract after he got married in 1990 and revoked the trusts. After Mudd’s death several months later at age 77, executors of his estate filed a lawsuit and successfully forced Oliver from the house.

The executors--Mudd’s widow, Vanessa; his accountant, Seymour Bond, and First Interstate Bank--deny a contract existed.

If it did, they contend, it would be unenforceable because Mudd was paying Oliver primarily for sex.

The executors also allege that Oliver gave up any rights to the estate by breaking up with Mudd before his death. One of the factors in the breakup, they say, was the palimony suit she filed against him, which is now pending against his estate.

Jamie Broder, attorney for the estate, attempted Tuesday to introduce information about two previous mistresses who sued Mudd. He subsequently revoked their trusts, Broder said.

Broder told Judge Florence T. Pickard that Oliver must have known about those cases and that filing the suit would jeopardize her relationship with Mudd.

“There were two shining examples as a clear indication that the one way to betray or stab Henry in the back is to do what the other two women did,” Broder said.

Oliver’s attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, argued against allowing the testimony, saying it would “inflame the jury.” Pickard refused to allow the line of questioning.

Broder began her questioning of Oliver by asking her to confirm that she first met Mudd when she worked as a stripper in a Hollywood nightclub called the Pink Pussycat.

“I did remove some of my clothes,” Oliver reluctantly testified.

Oliver testified that when she began her sexual relationship with Mudd, she was married and that her husband approved of the liaison. Indeed, Oliver testified, he once traveled with her, Mudd and others to Hawaii.

Mudd always gave her money for luxury items. But, after separating from her husband, Oliver testified, he paid her $8,000 a month for her daughter’s school tuition, a housekeeper and board for a horse he had given her.

Oliver admitted that she never lived with Mudd in his Beverly Hills house, and Broder read from a deposition given by Oliver that she did not always wear the diamond band Mudd gave her and which she refers to as a wedding ring.

The testimony elicited by Mitchelson was dramatically different, emphasizing that the couple’s relationship went far beyond sex.

She and Mudd did not have sexual relations during a period when she was trying to repair her dissolving marriage or around the times she was pregnant with her two children, Oliver said.

She spoke of extravagant trips to Ireland, England, Italy, China, Singapore, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. But their relationship went beyond the material, she said. The two often enjoyed time discussing philosophy or politics. She said that Mudd even took her daughter to a Grandparents Day at school.

As for the other women, she said, she was able to bear it.

“I accepted the other women much the way a wife accepts she doesn’t have exclusive attention of her husband,” she said.