Gertrude Sanford Legendre; Inspiration for ‘Holiday’

Gertrude Sanford Legendre, 97, a socialite, big game hunter, prisoner of war and inspiration for the play and motion picture “Holiday.” Born to a wealthy South Carolina family, Legendre was the sister of Stephen “Laddie” Sanford, an internationally recognized polo player, and of socialite Sara Jane Sanford. The family was considered the model for Philip Barry’s 1929 play “Holiday.” Director George Cukor turned the play in a critically well-received film in 1937 starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The colorful Legendre shot her first elk in Wyoming when she was a teenager, and for many years pursued big game in Africa, India, Iran and Indochina, often providing specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and other museums. During World War II, she became a secretary with the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, in Washington, D.C., and by 1944 was in Paris in a WAC uniform as a second lieutenant. She was the first American woman captured by Germans in France, and was held as a prisoner of war for six months before she escaped. Widowed in 1948, Legendre became known in Charlestown, S.C., as a conservationist as well as a society grande dame because of her 6,800-acre plantation, called Medway. She had established conservation easements for the property and its 1704 mansion, including an environmental trust to manage the land and teach conservation. For half a century, Legendre hosted a legendary New Year’s Eve costume party, once proposing a typical toast: “I look ahead. I always have. I don’t contemplate life. I live it.” She described her long life in two autobiographies 40 years apart, “The Sands Ceased to Run” in 1947 and “The Time of My Life” in 1987. On Wednesday at Medway.