Sheila

by Robert Wainwright

  But his daughter’s new life had changed that and now he was in London, conceding that the “old country” was not as bad as he’d thought. Sheila loved showing him off to her friends at the Embassy Club, hosting a party attended by “the princes” and organising a visit to Paris where he was feted by members of the French Jockey Club. But it was over too soon and Sheila waved him goodbye before the end of summer not realising that it would be the last time she would ever see her father.

  13

  PALM BEACH NIGHTS

  The club was humming and May Meyrick, owner and manageress, checked her watch. 1 a.m., as she would recount some years later in a first-person account published in an American newspaper, the Milwaukee Sentinel, still a few hours before she would consider closing for the night. Outside, the temperature had plunged to near freezing as November became December and autumn turned to winter, but here, in the warmth of a room draped with gold curtains and giant gargoyle-like masks staring from the walls, the city’s elite celebrated the end of 1925 with carefree gusto.

  There was no need to close while they were still spending money, she decided. May and her mother, Kate, had long flouted the licensing laws to keep their nightclubs open for business well into the morning hours. The rich and powerful, including the lawmakers and peers, were among their clients, so they feared little other than the occasional crackdown. This club, called Jade’s, tucked away at the back of Golden Square behind Piccadilly Circus, had been quietly acquired the year before from a wealthy peer who had fallen out with his business partners. It was a simple operation compared to the Meyricks’ notorious Soho premises, the 43 Club, which focussed on gambling rather than dancing.

  The sound of chat and laughter rose and fell as the band played, the lighting dulled by the haze of cigarettes while waiters scurried back and forth to refill champagne buckets. Downstairs the “breakfast room” was also filled with guests crowding onto wooden benches, after helping themselves to warming plates piled with kippers, eggs and bacon, which soaked up some of the alcohol they’d previously consumed. Then they returned to the dance floor to resume their excess.

  May looked on, scanning the room for any potential problems, but there were none, save the nightly adulterous pantomime played out among the women competing for male attention. There appeared to be a truce tonight but May didn’t expect it to last long.

  As she pondered how and where the skirmishes might begin, May was called to the front door by the porter. A taxi had pulled up outside and there were four guests who wanted to come inside. May personally screened all the guests. Exclusivity was essential for business. Dress code of evening gown and dinner suit was expected, of course, but wealth, beyond being able to pay the bar tab, was not an actual prerequisite. To gain entry, you had to be known.

  She walked up the short passageway, lifted the flap that covered the spy hole in the front door, and assessed the man outside. Undoubtedly a foreigner, she thought, and probably Italian or Spanish, judging by his handsome swarthy features. The sombrero felt hat was also a giveaway. He was probably a waiter from a nearby restaurant, still in his dinner jacket and trying to bluff his way inside. The spy hole swung shut. “No,” she said firmly to the porter and began walking back toward her desk, which served as a partition between the hall and the main room. She wanted to see how the expected catfight was developing.

  Behind her, someone was knocking again at the door, apparently unhappy at their rejection. The porter peered out again. “Lady Loughborough is one of the party,” he called out to her. May stopped. She hadn’t seen past the foreigner. Lady Loughborough was a regular and welcome guest—one of the most prominent of London’s society women, with connections to the palace. May walked back to open the door herself, hoping to immediately mend the error.

  Sheila Loughborough was with Poppy Baring, daughter of the millionaire banker and long-time MP Godfrey Baring, and one of London’s so-called “Bright Young Things”. There were two men with them, standing behind the women. May didn’t recognise either of them.

  Lady Loughborough was clearly irritated by the initial refusal, not just as a personal slight but because it would have looked bad in front of her guests. “I want to sign some friends in,” she said, an expectation rather than a request as she swept past May in a swirl of gold, her lavish evening coat seemingly made of tissue.

  She went straight to the book on May’s desk, signed for each of her party, paid the entry fee and was shown to the best unoccupied table in the room. May glanced at the book to see who her male companions were. She read only the first name—Rudolph Valentino.

  Valentino had arrived in London a week earlier for the release of his new film, The Eagle. The movie, which opened at Marble Arch on November 22, may have received mixed reviews from the critics, but Valentino caused a sensation wherever he went and tonight the most famous movie star in the world was in May’s club. She scurried through to inform the staff, but there was no need. She could hear his name being whispered at almost every table already.

  “Rudy” was in the house and every woman was staring, their own conquest plans forgotten in a collective moment of adoration. The band too was abandoned—the dance floor was cleared in seconds as the women returned to their seats to stare. Valentino seemed not to notice the whispered commotion around him, probably used to the reaction and determined not to respond in case it encouraged the horde. Neither did Lady Loughborough seem to notice; she was ordering champagne and omelettes, coolly aware of her coup.

  May chuckled to herself—the immediate threat of an unseemly, glittered catfight had evaporated. All the other men, until a few minutes ago the centre of attention, were now ignored. In fact, if they had all quietly left, none of the women would have noticed. As their female companions gawked, the men glowered, resentful of Valentino’s presence. May could hear the same resentful comment being muttered everywhere around the room: “I don’t see what you see in him.”

  May knew the peaceful standoff could not last, of course. It was only a matter of time before one of the huntresses made a move. It was a question of who had the most audacity and what might follow. Valentino knew it too, clearly apprehensive behind the impassive mask.

  As the champagne arrived at his table, it happened. May, who had moved closer to ensure the service was perfect, was almost knocked over by one of the older women in the room, clutching a small memorandum book in her bejewelled, liver-spotted hand. Her request was pitiful: “Oh please, Mr Valentino. I’ve been so longing to have your autograph.”

  Rudy looked up, one eyebrow raised. The woman repeated her request and announced who she was, as if it mattered. He might have said no and asked to be left alone, but movie stars could not afford such solitude. Instead he sighed and reached into his jacket, pulled out a small gold fountain pen and signed the notebook with a flourish. It was like a starting gun, the green light for the stampede as a dozen or more women—duchesses and ladies, actresses and MPs’ wives—grabbed menu cards and wine lists and rushed forward, etiquette and dignity forgotten as they jostled for attention.

  Valentino, his smooth countenance now creased, gave in and began signing the cards shoved at him for a few minutes before putting his hands up. He’d had enough: “No, I won’t sign any more.”

  May Meyrick was forced to step in and save her famous guest: “Please now ladies, I’m sure Mr Valentino wishes to be left in peace to dance.” The women moved away, grumbling at missing out where their rivals had not, and went back to their disgruntled men. Valentino smiled in gratitude at her. The room quietened and then the band struck up. Couples began returning to the floor as Valentino turned his attention to Sheila. The omelettes now arrived and his table forgot the rest of the room while they tucked in.

  May still watched, not swooning like the others but studying his face to try to discern signs of the sex appeal that had captivated the legion of his female admirers, but he remained impassive. In contrast to his on-screen presence, he was reserved, even wooden. As though he w
as wearing a mask.

  It was only when he finally got up to dance that May saw the sensuous Rudy appear. He danced sublimely. Sheila Loughborough was acknowledged as one of the most beautiful women in London and, as the beautiful pair moved gracefully together across the floor, the room seemed to stand still for a second time. May could hear the gasped exclamations: “How divinely he dances. Isn’t it wonderful!” The floor all but cleared as women pulled their partners from the floor, so they could sit and watch. The men who tried to invite their women companions to dance were met with an indignant, “No, no. I want to watch Rudolph. Sit down!”

  Later Valentino sought May out and asked her to dance. “I’m very much obliged to you for having stopped that stampede,” he said quietly as they moved across the floor. His voice was a surprise—“educated but not cultured,” as she would later recall. His manners, like his dancing, were exquisite: “Thank you very much for the pleasure,” he said at the end of the song, bowing deeply from the waist, as if on the screen.

  Her curiosity satisfied, May’s natural business instincts took over. She went upstairs and telephoned a friend who she knew would be at a nearby rival club: “I thought you might be interested to know that we have Rudolph Valentino here,” she said when her friend came to the phone. “Feel free to come along, but do so now.”

  The first cab pulled up outside fifteen minutes later, followed by several more. The porter was flustered: “There are about a dozen taxis drawn up outside. What am I to do? Are they all coming in?”

  “Let them all in,” May nodded. The woman she had phoned was first through the door. Another thirty followed, filling the club within minutes. Word had spread quickly; women were eager to see their screen idol: “Where is he? Has he gone yet? Let’s hurry.”

  Another autograph stampede threatened, but was quietly quelled. Instead, the latecomers joined the throng watching from afar as Valentino and Sheila lingered until 3 a.m. Within ten minutes of their departure, the club had all but cleared. The night was over, but the gossip was only just beginning.

  Rudolph Valentino was in Europe not only to publicise his movies. His private life was as tumultuous as his looks were silken; his first marriage, to co-star Jean Acker, had failed and his second, to actress Natacha Rambova, was now on the rocks. He had decided to spend Christmas in London with his brother, Alberto, and sister, Maria, while he waited for his divorce to come through from the French courts.

  His friendship with Sheila Loughborough would only complicate matters further, particularly when his girlfriend, Pola Negri, became aware of rumours that he was courting the glamorous socialite. Not only had Sheila and he been the centre of attention at Jade’s, but she also hosted a private dinner party for him the following week, at which some of the cream of London society was present.

  However innocent her actions may have been and however turbulent her private life undoubtedly was, the fact remained that Sheila was still a married, if estranged, woman who was entertaining Hollywood’s most famous screen heart-throb. Tongues wagged furiously as Sheila hired one of the West End’s most popular music duos to entertain him at the dinner party.

  The combination of Sheila and Rudy provided great fodder for the gossip columns, which meant it was only a matter of time before news drifted across the Atlantic to Pola Negri. Incensed, she cabled him from the United States to call off their relationship, but then she relented when he responded immediately, denying there was anything untoward and pleading with her to reconsider. He was still in London on January 19 when Ms Rambova, whose real name was Winifred Hudnut, was granted a divorce, citing abandonment by Valentino as the cause. Satisfied, he sailed for New York two days later.

  One week later Sheila also sailed for the United States, with her close friend Poppy Baring in tow. It was sheer coincidence, she would claim. A friend named Ali MacIntosh had cabled earlier that month saying: “Why sit in a London fog when you could be in Florida sunshine? The Cosdens and Rod Wanamaker want you to come and stay with them at Palm Beach. Do. Ali”

  Sheila had met Ali, the son of a Scottish wine merchant, at a weekend party in 1917 and his relationship with her would be enduring, not as a suitor but a social connection that spanned two countries. The decision to accept Ali’s invitation in the winter of 1926 would change her life.

  Ali was about to be married to silent-screen star Constance Talmadge although it would not last. Neither would his second marriage to Lela Emery, heiress to a leather fortune. Instead, Ali would become a fixture on the Palm Beach circuit as the city grew from a small resort town into the winter escape for America’s social royalty.

  Ali owned the Alibi Bar and was a debonair social host frequently photographed with beautiful women arriving at a fashionable restaurant, shopping trips, golf courses and nightclubs. He was described in a Life magazine feature, in which he was pictured with thirteen different women, as “spinning through the Palm Beach social season like a whirling top”.

  “I find it quite difficult to describe Ali,” Sheila wrote. “He was witty, kind and generous to a fault. His power of exaggeration was fantastic. He always made me laugh even more than Loughie, which is saying a good deal.”

  The “Cosdens” were oil magnate Joshua Cosden and his wife Nell who made a fortune in oil, lost it in wheat futures and regained it in the Texas oil boom. He owned reputedly the largest private home ever built in Palm Beach. Rod Wanamaker was a businessman and philanthropist who sponsored golf tournaments, cross-Atlantic flights and even explorations to chronicle the life of Native American Indians through photographs.

  Sheila accepted the invitation, excited by the chance to go to America and by a new endowment sent by her father with a note—“you seem to have a champagne appetite, my darling”. Freda Dudley Ward would watch over Tony and Peter while she and Poppy were away.

  Like Sheila and Freda, Poppy Baring would capture the roving eyes of the House of Windsor’s princes; she was as exotic as Sheila but a petite version: “She was tiny and very slim with enormous dark eyes and a wide red mouth,” Sheila would describe her. In his desperate search for a wife after being forced to dump Sheila, Bertie had proposed marriage to Poppy. A few years later Bertie’s younger brother, Prince George, also asked for her hand. Both proposals were rejected—not by Poppy, but by their mother, Queen Mary, who considered her not good enough for her sons.

  Sheila would never explain the shift in companions from one best friend to another, from Freda to Poppy, but it coincided with her return to London and subsequent shift away from the two princes. The younger woman was also more willing to explore new adventures overseas.

  The log of the SS Olympic which left Southampton on January 26 would show that Sheila fudged her birth date by two years, perhaps unwilling to admit to having turned thirty years old the previous September. She gave her intended address in New York as the Carlton Club, but wrote that she also had plans to stay with a friend, Mrs Cosden of Palm Beach, Florida.

  The crossing was horrendous, described by the captain as he finally sailed past the Statue of Liberty a week later as one of the worst crossings by the White Star Line, with snow storms and ice fields, fierce winds, and 14-metre-high waves smashing over the crow’s nest and destroying deck railing. But Sheila’s memoir does not reflect the danger, rather the excitement. One night, unable to sleep, she and Poppy sat in their shared cabin playing ukuleles, “singing a rather blasphemous song about the Titanic”.

  When their ship finally berthed on February 3, Serge Obolensky was among those waiting on the docks. He was now living in New York with his wife and young child, and recalled the arrival in his biography, describing it as “much talked-about, ever-impending”.

  “There was a whole host of gallant New York gentlemen anxiously awaiting their arrival,” he wrote, naming Carroll Carstairs, adventurer Charles Suydam Cutting, and realtor and socialite Lytle Hull, among others who wanted to meet her. Carstairs had organised a welcome party—dinner and the theatre—for the pair on the day they arriv
ed and Cutting was sent off to meet the women, steer them through Customs and get them safely to the dinner party. He came back with Sheila and Poppy, shaking his head. “Too damn many beaux,” he grumbled, revealing that there had been another group of men at the docks to meet the pair, who then insisted that two of them be invited to the party.

  The arrival of Sheila and Poppy coincided with two blizzards within a week of one another, which swept across the east coast accompanied by 100-kilometre-per-hour winds, plunging temperatures in New York to below zero, halting transport systems and killing more than two dozen people. They sheltered in their hotel until the worst had passed and eventually travelled south to Florida, where they were soon in the midst of the social whirl, among a group of society women who joined the chorus line of Florenz Ziegfeld’s production Palm Beach Nights at the Club de Montmartre theatre-restaurant, which he had created for his shows.

  That night’s “billion dollar audience”, as it was described, included names like Randolph Hearst, Gloria Vanderbilt, Rod Wanamaker and Joseph Pulitzer, who cheered as Sheila and others popped balloons as they performed with Ziegfeld Follies star Polly Walker. It was a charity event in aid of a local hospital and a glamorous introduction for Sheila to the elite of US society, launching her as a new star on the other side of the Atlantic. Palm Beach Nights would reopen as a Ziegfeld Follies production on Broadway the following year.

  Later, at a private supper party, Sheila was introduced to Vincent Astor, one of America’s richest men and brother of Serge Obolensky’s wife Alice. Vincent, sternly handsome, was something of an enigma. When his father JJ Astor, by all accounts an arrogant and disliked man who largely ignored his son, died aboard the Titanic in 1912 the then 21 year old inherited a business empire worth an extraordinary $US87 million, made up mostly of great swathes of Manhattan property stretching at one stage several kilometres from Broadway to 150th Street.