FEATURE REVIEW:
The Fortune Hunters: Dazzling Women and the Fortunes They Wed, by Charlotte Hays (St. Martin's)
In How to Marry a Millionaire, Marilyn Monroe, engaged to the son of a multi-millionaire, is confronted by Rich Daddy (Charles Coburn): “Look me in the eye and tell me if you are marrying my son for his money!” The gorgeous gold-digger flatly replies, “No sir, I am marrying him for yours.”
The beauty's straight reply sets the tone for former journalist and gossip columnist Charlotte Hays's scintillating and scrupulously researched anthology of a select group of wives who married the egregiously rich. The Fortune Hunters is the best recent history of those women—some humble, some well-born, some almost notorious—who shared the spotlight as consorts of seriously well-heeled spouses.
The Duchess of Windsor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mary Lou Whitney, Pamela Harriman, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy are the stars, but the book deals with some of the lesser-known mountaineers—adding a Gatsby-esque touch to the social soliloquy. Take Carroll Petrie, the girl from middle-class, Deep South beginnings whose beauty triumphed when she traveled to Paris and married up—way up! After “a raft of romances,” Carroll married dashing younger nobleman the Spanish Marquis Antonio de Portaya. As a husband, “Fon” Portago was almost too bad to believe (as his out-of-wedlock progeny proved), but after he died young in a car crash, the Southern survivor hit the jackpot when she snared one of the richest aging eligibles on the New York horizon, Milton Petrie. Following his death, Carroll cracked the tough club code and acquired the longawaited membership in those pinnacles of privilege.
In the chapter “Fortune Hunting for Fun, Profi t, and Quite Often, Love,” Hays hails the triumphs of Georgette Mosbacher, Gayfryd Steinberg, Susan Gutfreund, Arianna Huffi ngton (dubbed the Sir Edmund Hillary of social climbing), of course the Trump wives three (business mergers or marriage contracts?), and designer Tory Burch (affectionately called “Tory, the Fortune Finder,” and now said to no longer be deliriously happy with her present tres riche acquisition, Chuck).
This cautionary tale advises: “Whether you are a natural beauty or a woman who has made herself beautiful, the choice, if you are willing to sacrifi ce to be dazzlingly rich, is yours.” Well said, dear Charlotte!
QUICK PICKS:
Diana Style, by Colin McDowell, foreword by Manolo Blahnik (St. Martin's)
Following Tina Brown's explosive The Diana Chronicles, McDowell offers an illustrated study of the princess's evolving sense of style, from her youth as a “Sloane Ranger”—Peter York's label for the corduroy-and cashmere-clad country estate offspring— to her later years as an international fashion icon. McDowell's prose is focused, referring to the soap opera of the royal family only when it illuminates the princess's developing consciousness.
Diana Style is both a sartorial celebration and a psychological study. For McDowell, the selection of fabrics, colors, and designers reveals the state of mind and the soul of his subject. But his anecdotal style offers plenty of insider perspective on Diana's favorite photographer, her early fashion missteps, her anger with Valentino over a premature press release, and her joy at the success of the perfect black Christian Stambolian dress that knocked Prince Charles's confession of adultery off the front page in 1994—a moment that crowned her ambassador for the fashionable across the globe.
Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flipping, Selling, and Rebuilding—and What I Learned (The Hard Way!), by Alison Rogers (Kaplan)
This hot new read by Inman News real estate columnist and author Alison Rogers—the fi rst editor of the New York Post's real estate section—assays a step-by-step syllabus in property sales and investment. (Next to sex, what else do the rich and rapacious talk about in the Big Apple?) In the world of New York real estate, Rogers offers tips for making sales that transform dilettantes into dealmakers and rookies into real estate honchos, while mixing in a heavy dose of memoir.
“I love the tabloid punch of the Post, but the paper was notoriously cheap,” Rogers writes of her stint as the daily's real estate editor. She stuck it out for two years, scoring an estimated $5 mil for the paper (between revenue and circulation increases) with a fl ock of features, before locking horns with editor-in-chief Col Allan. The book opens: “To Rupert Murdock, whose refusal to pay me a decent wage launched me on the adventure of a lifetime.” A cooler computer hand should have prevailed! The man whose media empire recently laid siege to the Wall Street Journal may not appreciate her tongue in cheek.
The Wolf of Wall Street, by Jordan Belfort (Bantam) In a world of the newly rich, where hedge fund billionaires and tech-savvy entrepreneurs scale the ladders of wealth and privilege, Jordan Belfort was king for a day—er, a decade. In his new book, Belfort takes the reader inside his 1990s reign of the Wall Street chop-houses, narrating a tale of American power and hubris that would make Tony Soprano proud. In a comic and cocky voice unmistakably his own, Belfort tells how brilliance, ambition and a precarious relationship with the truth brought about his meteoric rise and his Luciferian downfall. In this tale of late twentieth century American greed, Belfort demonstrates that whether the market be bear or bull, it's the wolves that make it interesting.
COMING SOON:
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, by Alan Greenspan (Penguin): Only J. K. Rowling's mania-inducing novels have been more tightly embargoed than Greenspan's, himself a different kind of wizard…. Marilyn Monroe: A Life in Pictures, by David Thomson and Anne Verlhac (Chronicle Books): For an America that can never stop staring at the tragic beauty…. Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, by Michael Erard (Pantheon): From Bushisms to Freudian slips, Erard reveals what linguistic imperfections tell us about ourselves and our world.
