A Life Defined by Famous Men

Many of us who have clawed our way to the middle are fascinated by women who have slept and bought their way to the top. I like reading about the great mistresses of the past: pretty, witty Nell Gwyn in 17th-Century England; influential Madame de Pompadour in 18th-Century France; Alma Mahler, “the most beautiful woman in Vienna,” at the beginning of our century. Mistreses are a vanishing breed, yet one of the last of this endangered species--Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman--is vibrantly alive.

Pamela (her surnames are even yet subject to change) can most quickly be epitomized with a song Tom Lehrer wrote about Alma Mahler:

Her lovers were many and varied

From the day she began her . . . beguine.

There were three famous ones whom she married

And God knows how many between.

Pamela was always attractive to and attracted by older, powerful, rich men. At the start of World War II, when she was 19, the young Englishwoman wed the only son of Winston Churchill. But “Life of the Party,” Christopher Ogden’s recent biography of Pamela, cites affairs with Averell Harriman (30 years her senior), CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and various British and U.S. generals during her explosive alliance with the alcoholic Randolph Churchill.

After the war, Pamela divorced Randolph (but clung to the famous name) and high-tailed it to France, where she rushed after pleasures and possessions by forming liaisons with a series of European playboys including Prince Aly Khan, Italian auto magnate Gianni Agnelli and French banker Elie de Rothschild.

Pamela was now approaching 40 and unmarried. She decided to take another husband, so she crossed the Atlantic and swiped Slim Hayward’s, Broadway producer Leland Hayward. When he died after a dozen years, Pamela reportedly had several dalliances, including one with Frank Sinatra. She then rekindled her old wartime flame, Averell Harriman, statesman and one-time presidential candidate. Through this marriage, Pamela moved from the playboy mansions of the world to the halls of power.

Biographers are supposed to be objective, but those who record the careers of courtesans extraordinaire need to be a little in love with their subjects. In Ogden’s hands, Pamela comes across as cold, calculating and greedy. True enough perhaps, but these qualities could not have intoxicated such wealthy and talented men.

What is Pamela’s secret power? Her biographer offers a few explanations. She’s a superb listener who focuses all her attention on the man she’s with. But most women know how to do this if we choose and yet we’re not covered with pearls and given apartments in Paris. Nor is Pamela’s secret that she was a great beauty. In many photos, she looks dumpy. She has neither a flashing wit nor an original mind. Sizzling sex? Bedmates are readily obtainable by the sort of men Pamela went after. Yet somehow she managed to intuit what each lover needed and supply it. Maybe more than anything else, Pamela’s gift is her chameleon-like capacity to assume different personalities and become the female mirror-image of the huge egos she fed and feasted on.

Some celebrated courtesans end up dying young of a dread disease or, like Madame du Barry, being guillotined. But Pamela is the phoenix. Many times she feathered her nest, only to see it scorched. But in her 70s, she has risen from the ashes. When Averell Harriman died, she inherited $100 million, and, like a widow in an Oscar Wilde comedy, her hair turned gold from grief. Ogden says that she used some of her fortune to have her face lifted and some to lift the prospects of the Democratic Party. She was successful at both. Last year, President Clinton named her ambassador to France, the perfect appointment for someone who has spent decades practicing artfulness in the conduct of affairs.

Is Pamela a role model for young women today? I think not. She has led many lives and donned many masks, but the one thing she has never achieved is an identity she can call her own.