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Charlotte Hays - The Fortune Hunters: Dazzling Women and the Men They Married

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The Fortune Hunters: Dazzling Women and the Men They Married: summary, description and annotation

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From Madame de Pompadour, the famed mistress of Louis XV, to Pamela Harriman, who married into the English aristocracy and the American plutocracy, there is a rich history of women who have found glamour and wealth in the arms of a billionaire. But contrary to what you may think, fortune hunting is no idle pursuit. Like diving for treasure, its a real job. Some women strive to be CEOs; others prefer to wed them. Youll meet todays dazzling successes in this book.
What kind of woman does it take to make the Midas marriage? Exploring the lives of the great fortune hunters of our day, reporter and former gossip columnist Charlotte Hays answers this tantalizing question. Youll learn about the South Carolina woman who took a trip around the world with a shadowy shipping magnate, only to meet and marry a philandering marquis. Youll see what methods these women use to lure their powerful men, including one playful fortune seeker who, at a very high-society soire, hurled a piece of bread at her intended beau, starting a food fight. Youll meet the New York socialite who remarried so quickly after a divorce, her ex claimed she was a bigamist.
What are their recipes for riches? Can a genuinely nice woman pursue this career? What does love have to do with it? With original interviews and photos, Hays casts a light on the determination, skill, and-yes, sometimes-ruthlessness that have shaped some of the most successful-and lucrative-unions of our time.

Charlotte Hays: author's other books


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THE FORTUNE HUNTERS Copyright 2007 by Charlotte Hays All rights reserved - photo 1

THE FORTUNE HUNTERS. Copyright 2007 by Charlotte Hays. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hays, Charlotte.

The fortune hunters : dazzling women and the men they married / Charlotte Hays. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-24646-4

ISBN-10: 0-312-24646-3

1. Wo menPsychology. 2. Marriage. 3. Rich people. I. Title.

HQ1206.H383 2007

306.872308621091821dc22

2007019665

First Edition: August 2007

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Also by Charlotte Hays

Being Dead Is No Excuse:

The Southern Ladies Guide

to Hosting the Perfect Funeral

(with Gayden Metcalfe)

Somebody Is Going to Die If

Lilly Beth Doesnt Catch That Bouquet:

The Official Southern Ladies Guide

to Hosting the Perfect Wedding

(with Gayden Metcalfe)

For

Julia Morgan Hall Hays

Julia Lipscomb Goodrich

Gayden Metcalfe

Josie Pattison Winn

Authors note

Great fortune hunters embody a set of characteristics visible to the observant eye. No woman in this book embodies all these qualities. Nor do I purport to get into the minds of these inscrutable souls. Their motives and inner beings are known only to themselves.

Acknowledgments

The nicest acknowledgment I can give many who helped me with this book is a silent acknowledgment. I thank you heartily for helping me find people and phone numbers and for your insights and tips.

Exceptions to the rule of silence are Deborah Grosvenor, who conceived of the project; Reagan Arthur, who originally bought the book; and Charles Spicer of St. Martins, an editor with a wonderful touch, who lived with me through its long parturition. My gratitude overflows.

The risk of naming names is that one will leave out somebody who deserves thanks. But I shall take that risk to thank those who have been friends and supporters while I labored on this book: my old friend and wonderfully forbearing colleague Gayden Metcalfe, Harley Metcalfe, Ireys and Charles Nelson, Gretchen and Houston Winbiggler, Ginny Hardy, Bruce Eggler, James Glassman, Michelle Bernard, Grace and Phillip Terzian, Anita Blair, Karlyn and James Bowman, Christine and Jeff Rosen, Gwyn Guess, Luci Goldberg, Jayne Ikard, Joan Mower, Charlotte McGee, Hebe Smyth, Hugh and Mary Dayle McCormick, Yaniv Soha, Tom and Donna Bethell, Lisa De Paulo, Eugene Ham, Bland Currie, Mary Glassman, Ed Goodrich, Judy Bachrach, Sandra McElwaine, Clinton Bagley, Heath Thompson, the entire Robertshaw family, Jon Newlin, Mayree Smyth, Amelie Cagle, and Emily and Harry Griffith. I have an awful, awful feeling that I am leaving out people who are dear to me, but Ive been the beneficiary of so many kindnesses along the way that this is almost certain to happen.

Preface

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

S omehow early on, in those halcyon days when I toiled for an alternative newspaper in New Orleans, it became clear that I was destined to chronicle the lives of society ladiesit happened during Carnival season. I wrote a piece about the ins and outs of being one of the citys debutantes who were presented at Mardi Gras balls. Next came my expose of the Junior League of New Orleans and then my revelations about the local art ladies. The die was cast.

Although this book is the logical consequence of the kind of reporting I started doing all those years ago in New Orleans, it does have roots closer to the surface. I had been living in New York and working as a gossip columnist, first for the New York Observer and then for the New York Daily News, but was, as they say, betwixt and between when I received a call from a well-known author and man about town. Would I be interested, he wondered, in working with Carroll Petrie, a South Carolina model who had been close to the Duchess of Windsor, on her autobiography? I knew almost nothing about her other than that she was the recent widow of Milton Petrie, a noted philanthropist.

When I first went to see Mrs. Petrie, who received me in her Fifth Avenue apartment, it was clear she was ambivalent about wanting to tell her storywhich included being married to a titled playboy, a marriage that literally went up in flames when he died in a racing accident, and three subsequent marriagesbut it was just as plain that she did not want to tell it. I suppose it might have been a mistake on my part to harp on the theme of candor in our first meeting. Even after it became obvious to me that she had no intention of doing an autobiography, I couldnt stop thinking about it. For somebody whod written society pieces most of her adult life, this saga, from South Carolina to Paris to Fifth Avenue, with a friendship with Eva Pern thrown in for good measure, was catnip, the pice de rsistance, but unfortunately Mrs. Petrie was resisting.

About the same time as I visited Mrs. Petrie, I wrote an article on forces of nature for the New York Observerit featured such forces as Arianna Huffington, whose career I had followed avidly since she emerged as the girlfriend of a highbrow London journalist who set her on her march to fame and fortune; Lynn Wyatt, the Texas socialite; and Pat Buckley, then the doyenne of New York society. I followed the forces-of-nature article with Ladies in Waiting, also published by the Observer, which dealt with baby Pats, or the rising generation of social dominatrixes who would run New Yorks black-tie circuit in the twenty-first century. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was one of them.

Ladies, ladies, ladies: Youd think Id had enough, but women who aspire toand obtainpower and money through marriage or other sorts of liaisons with men are endlessly fascinating, from Madame de Pompadour, Louis XVs mistress, to the modern fortune hunter. For much of history, marriage or being a powerful mans mistress was how women made it, so to speak. I was intrigued by these women, and I had to figure out why some succeed brilliantly while others, perhaps even more beautiful, fall by the wayside. In retrospect, it was inevitable that the literary agent Deborah Grosvenor and I would hit upon the idea of a book on women who married super rich. Of course, it might also seem odd that an unmarried, penny-pinching journalist would undertake such a book, and Ill admit itseveral times I was at my wits end trying to get to the bottom of what makes these women, a breed unto themselves, tick.

In writing the book, I trod in the sacred footsteps of Sheilah Graham, another gossip columnist, who did not marry money but wrote about how to do it. Graham is best remembered today for having been F. Scott Fitzgeralds mistress in his down-and-out days in Hollywood, but she was also a prominent Hollywood columnist who in 1974 wrote How to Marry Super Rich: or Love, Money, and the Morning After. Even now, How to Marry Super Rich is a delicious read, but I felt the time had come to reexamine the subject. If nothing else, the cast of characters has changed, though it must be noted with some degree of awe that the redoubtable Marylou Whitney, nearing or past eighty (depending upon the speaker) and married to a gallant four decades her junior, has the distinction of having made it into both books.

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