Ronald Kessler - The Season: The Secret Life of Palm Beach and Americas Richest Society

F OR P AM , G REG, AND R ACHEL K ESSLER

During World War II, Frank Lahainer, an Italian count and real-estate tycoon from Trieste, saved the lives of sixty Jews by hiding them from the Nazis in apartments he rented. In 1957 Lahainer married his voluptuous, redheaded seventeen-year-old secretary, Gianna. In 1980 they moved to New York, where they bought an entire floor of the Trump Tower. They held on to their twenty-room estate in Trieste, complete with discotheque and swimming pool, and their one-hundred-foot yacht, along with the Italian chef.

Gianna (pronounced JAN-na) loved fine things, and Frank indulged her every whim. He bought her a twenty-five-carat engagement ring from Harry Winston, a white Rolls-Royce Corniche, a thirty-two-carat sapphire, and a twenty-six-carat emerald.

In 1982 they bought a three-thousand-square-foot apartment in the opulent Biltmore in Palm Beach. The apartment overlooks both the Atlantic Ocean and the inland waterway surrounding the 3.75-square-mile islanda sliver of land known throughout the world as the most wealthy glamorous, opulent, decadent, extravagant, self-indulgent, sinful spot on earth.

Frank and Gianna traveled around the world five times, buying for their homes museum-quality eighteenth-century furniture with price tags of as much as $300,000. For their New York apartment, they bought a $1 million Picasso.

In time, Frank contracted leukemia, and he died in Palm Beach on March 9, 1995, at the age of ninety. His fortune was estimated at $300 million. Frank left everything to Gianna, who was then fifty-seven.

It was poor timing. Frank died in the middle of the social season. Gianna decided to postpone the funeral so she wouldnt miss any of the glittering parties, balls, and receptions that give Palm Beach residents their reason to exist. Instead of having him buried, she had her husband embalmed and stored at the Quattlebaum-Holleman Burse Funeral Home for forty days, until the season was over.

Part of the delay was necessary because Gianna wanted to bury her husband in Trieste, just east of Venice across the Gulf of Venice, and the paperwork would take up to two weeks. During that time, she had some dental work finished and attended to her income tax return. The rest of the delay was so that she could enjoy the season. After all, Gianna explained, she had already bought tickets for the top social events.

I wanted to go to the parties, Gianna said. He was ninety. I am sixty. So why should I wait? I did everything for my husband. I did his injections. I was faithful. She said, I went to a party at the Breakers, I went to a party on a yacht with Ivana Trump, I went to a party at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trumps 140-room club in Palm Beach, built by cereal heir Marjorie Merriweather Post and her second husband, E. F. Hutton. In fact, three days after Franks death, Gianna threw a party at the Biltmore, complete with beluga caviar and Dom Prignon champagne.

My new life was going on, she said. Why should I wait? I would miss the season.

In early June, just as Barton Gubelmann, the grand first lady of Palm Beachs Old Guard, was explaining how Palm Beach society works, the phone rang.

Oh, shit. Let the maid take it, the eighty-year-old scion said in a gravelly voice. Behind her, beyond the lily ponds and the burgeoning sea-grape trees, the Atlantic glistened.

An invitation to one of Gubelmanns gala dinner parties is coveted more than acceptance by the Everglades Club or the Bath & Tennis Club, the two WASP clubs that dominate Palm Beach social life and conversation. For her last party of the season, on May 9, Gubelmann dressed as a milkmaid. The invitation billed the party Operation Deep Freeze and explained: Barton Is Cleaning Out the Freezer and Wants the Cupboard Bare. Dress called for Flip Flops and Aprons.

The seventy-eight guests, who dined on pheasant pie, ham, and cold beef tenderloin, included Palm Beach mayor Paul R. Ilyinsky and his wife, Angelica; Lesly Smith, the town council president whose late husband, Earl, was ambassador to Cuba; Durie Appleton, a girlfriend of John F. Kennedy who was erroneously said to have been married to him; Prince Michel de Yougoslavie, ousted Yugoslav royalty; Chris Kellogg, an heir to the Wanamaker department-store fortune; Angela Koch (pronounced coke), wife of near-billionaire William Koch; Princess Maria Pia of Italy; Jane Smith, from Standard Oil Company of New Jersey money; and Cynthia Rupp, an heir to the Chrysler fortune.

Unlike many other Palm Beach socialites, Gubelmann has no publicity agent and no bio to hand out. Why should she? She is Palm Beach society. After social queens Mary Sanford and Sue Whitmore both died in 1993 (Whitmore having succeeded Sanford as queen), the Palm Beach Daily News handicapped Gubelmann eight to one to rule over Palm Beach society. She said she didnt want the job.

Self-deprecating, irreverent, and publicity-shy, Gubelmann is a contrast to Palm Beachs plastic shivers. She is the widow of Walter Gubelmann, an Americas Cup financier whose father, William, invented handy gadgets like the bicycle coaster brake and the basic mechanisms used in adding machines, typewriters, and early calculators. If she wasnt already rich, Gubelmann would make a good CEO. Shrewd and smart, she exercises her authority deftly and like a good boss rarely reveals her true powers.

Like other Palm Beach socialites, she shuttles back and forth among her homes. During the season, she lives in Palm Beach, where she has what she calls her very small house on South Ocean Boulevard, just two houses north of the home John Lennon and Yoko Ono owned. Assessed at $2.9 million, Bartons house is a gray-shingled contemporary with a pagodalike roof. At the entrance is a lily pond with a fountain, and in back is the requisite pool, rarely used. Inside, on an upholstered chair, sits a green pillow embroidered with the words IT AINT EASY BEING QUEEN. Outside, the vanity plate on her Mercedes reads GLAMMA.

Now, in off-season, Gubelmann was preparing to make her annual pilgrimage to her palatial home in Newport, Rhode Island. Gubelmann would fly there with one of her maids, her dog, and her cat, having bought tickets for each of the animals. Her assistant, Arthur Skip Kelter, a graying man with a perpetually bemused expression, would drive up in her Mercedes. A Chevy van with another driver would haul a twelve-foot trailer containing her clothes and Skips computer.

J. Paul Getty said, If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man. Asked how much she is worth, Gubelmann responded in kind: I dont know, she said. I dont sit home and count it. I have no idea. Someone must have it on some piece of paper. We have lawyers and accountants and bookkeepers. But Gubelmann is said to be worth close to $100 million. When asked about that, she said, Is that what it is? Im glad to know it. Ill spend some money today.