The Riviera Set

by Mary S. Lovell

  *** 8th Earl Fitzwilliam (1910-48). His family seat Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, is possibly the most palatial stately home in England at twice the size of Buckingham Palace.

  ††† Son and daughter-in-law of Lord Beaverbrook.

  ‡‡‡ The aircraft G-AJOU was chartered from Skyways at Croydon and had a pilot and a navigator. However, Peter Fitzwilliam was himself a pilot and Debo Devonshire believed he might have been at the controls when the crash occurred. All occupants were killed.

  13

  Rita Hayworth

  Elsa Maxwell had met Aly Khan for the first time a year earlier, in New York, and was especially interested in him now because she knew that he had recently purchased the Château de l’Horizon and was living there. Maxwell had spent the war years in the United States, but as soon as she could get a passage across the Atlantic she returned to France and her house on the Riviera. She owned a pretty three-bedroom Provençal farmhouse at Auribeau, midway between Cannes and Grasse, which she and her companion Dorothy ‘Dickie’ Fellowes-Gordon had purchased in 1933 and renovated. They had employed a gardener to grow all their produce and it was here that Elsa repaid her entertaining obligations. The house was ten kilometres from Cannes and tiny, set in a hollow and surrounded by tall trees which made it dark inside, but many famous visitors were happy to drive from the coast to an invitation given by the supreme party-thrower of the age. She found the house had been looted during the war, but this was a mere irritation to the indefatigable Elsa, who was content that it had survived and soon had it repaired and repainted. She noted a sense of demoralisation of the local people added to shame over the Vichy collaboration, but she refused to allow this to affect her plans to carry on partying.

  Within days of her arrival Elsa received an invitation from the Windsors to dine and stay at La Croë, following which she was a frequent guest there. It seems an unlikely friendship, but the Duke and Elsa both enjoyed playing and singing for fellow diners after dinner – popular songs such as numbers from musicals and jazz numbers – and they were good performers, despite neither having a good singing voice. Elsa had the edge in piano-playing ability, but the Duke undeniably won the day – after all, how often was one serenaded by a former king?

  At home, whenever possible Elsa entertained on the terrace of her garden, where a huge millstone served as the table and the waterfall, for which the house was named, provided a soothing background. One surviving photograph of a typical al fresco lunch includes guests Tyrone Power, Daryl Zanuck, Jack Warner, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Clark Gable, some looking distinctly awkward about where to put their knees, which would not fit under the millstone table.

  Not for nothing was she known as Elsa ‘Let’s-Have-a-Party’ Maxwell in the press, and although luxuries were still scarce there was no shortage of commissions for Elsa to organise large, flamboyant events. In one of her many autobiographical books she explained how on 3 July 1948 she was involved in the preparations for an Independence Day party for Admiral Sherman at the glamorous art deco Palm Beach Casino in Cannes. She had been given carte blanche for the guest list, and as she believed that this was half the success of any party she set about gathering a rich mixture of Riviera names.

  In a memoir she recalled that she contacted Aly Khan to add some sparkle to the guest list, and knowing the Prince’s penchant for beautiful women she set her sights on another potential guest to partner him. Rita Hayworth was at that time regarded as one of the most beautiful and famous women in the world, mentioned in the same context as Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, and she happened to be in Antibes while waiting for her divorce from Orson Welles to be made final. It was not Rita’s first visit to the Riviera: she had been at the first post-war Cannes Film Festival in 1946 and had loved the atmosphere and climate. This time she was convalescing from minor surgery following a botched abortion in Paris, and was staying on the Riviera to recover her health, accompanied by her secretary/companion Shifra Haran.*

  Known the world over as the Love Goddess since Life Magazine in November 1947 featured her as its cover girl and described her repeatedly in those terms following her award-winning depiction of a smouldering fatale in the smash-hit movie Gilda, Rita was distinctly unenthusiastic at the invitation delivered in person by Elsa. Film posters never was a woman like Gilda ... ’) served to emphasise a racy reputation – but in fact Rita was nothing like the characters she played. Crowds frightened her; she preferred a quiet life. She was depressed because she had not wanted the divorce from Orson, and was still in love with him, but he had grown away from her. She was miserably sure it was because she was not intelligent enough for him, saying self-deprecatingly, ‘Men go to bed with Gilda and wake up with ... me!’ They had been known as ‘beauty and the brain’ in Hollywood, but when Orson had an affair with Marilyn Monroe and Rita retaliated with a romance with the recently widowed David Niven their marriage was over.

  Elsa recalled that when she visited the Hôtel du Cap on that morning of 3 July 1948, she found the star in the doldrums and tried to chivvy her along. Rita initially declined the invitation to the party at the Casino, protesting that she had come away in a hurry and had nothing appropriate to wear for such a function, but she was no match for Elsa, who gave her the address of a good dress shop in Cannes and ‘talked her into it’ (bullied might be more accurate), suggesting that Rita buy something really spectacular, preferably white. ‘Arrive late and really make an entrance,’ she instructed. ‘It’II be good for your morale.’

  Elsa recalled that she was speaking to Aly when Rita obediently arrived at the party half an hour after everyone else. Wearing an exquisite off-one-shoulder white dress, she caused a sensation and looked, Elsa wrote, ‘more beautiful than the law should allow’.1 She also noted how Aly stiffened like a pointer suddenly scenting a quarry as he exclaimed, ‘My God, who is that?’

  According to his chauffeur, Aly Khan was already addicted to Rita Hayworth movies. In Cairo in 1941 he had notably sat through three back-to-back performances of Blood and Sand. More recently he had seen a private screening of Gilda. In London he had been to see Cover Girl and You Were Never Lovelier (in which she partnered Fred Astaire and demonstrated that she was as good a dancer as any of his regular partners). So if he really asked ‘Who is that?’ it was probably a reflex action, for by then Rita was one of the most recognisable women in the world. Elsa told Aly that Rita had been invited as his dining partner, and with that she felt her work was done.

  Aly turned the full beam of his charm on Rita. The couple left Elsa’s party at midnight and he drove her to the California nightclub in the hills above Cannes, where spectacular sweeping sea views stretch from Antibes in the east to the Esterel mountains in the west. At night, the view is especially romantic when the lights along the coast appear like jewelled necklaces, and the balmy temperatures, the perfumed air of Provence and the throbbing of crickets combine to create an atmosphere resembling a backdrop from one of Rita’s movies. The prince and the movie star drank champagne and danced on the small paved dance floor under the trees. Aly could hardly have chosen a more apt setting to woo Rita: he often remarked that this was one of the best views in the world.

  In her autobiography Elsa believed that Aly had taken Rita home from the party early since he had told her he intended to be in Ireland for a big race next day and that he had ordered his plane to be standing by ready to leave in the early hours. Emrys Williams told a different story.

  When Aly arrived back in the early hours he burst into Emrys’s room and told him about ‘the most marvellous evening’, saying, ‘I’ve never been so excited in my life. I feel like I’m walking on air,’ and Emrys sensed that this was something different from the dozens of girls the Prince normally entertained. He was asked to collect Rita from her hotel† the next day and bring her to Château de l’Horizon for tea. When Emrys rose next morning he found Aly was up unusually early and was fussing about ordering flowers and fancy iced cakes. ‘I shal
l dance with her all afternoon,’ he told Emrys, requesting him to get hold of all the latest records. ‘Have we got a gramophone? ... I want everything to be absolutely perfect.’ Rita was expecting to be collected at one o’clock, he said.2

  When Elsa telephoned Rita that same morning and asked her what she thought of Aly, she received the careless answer that he was ‘a nice little fellow’. And it seems Rita was not particularly impressed by the Prince, for she kept Emrys Williams waiting in the foyer of the Hôtel du Cap for three hours while she lunched with an Argentinian millionaire, Alberto Dodero. In the previous week she was reported as dining with Aristotle Onassis, lunching with the Shah of Persia, who was also staying at the Hôtel du Cap, and meeting her estranged husband, who had checked in. The couple dined together and when Orson leant across the table and kissed her the other patrons burst into spontaneous applause. But Rita’s reawakened hope that they might get back together was doomed when Orson left suddenly the following afternoon to return to his mistress in Italy. He had only come to check on the arrangements concerning their three-year-old daughter Rebecca, who at that point was in California.

  Emrys Williams was still standing at the reception desk as four o’clock approached. He was unsure whether to wait any longer, but then Rita finally appeared. As he saw her coming down the stairs he was surprised that she had made no attempt to look good for the Prince:

  My first impressions were not very favourable. She was well turned out, wearing those informal summer clothes that one expects to see in the South of France on a hot day. Primrose coloured shorts, and a white blouse – a smart enough outfit. It was her looks that disappointed me. She had no makeup on her face. He skin was a sallowy yellow shade and her hair had been dyed black for a film. I could hardly credit this was the glamorous Rita Hayworth I had watched on the screen. I’d seen many girls on the beach who were much more attractive. But as she came up to me she switched on a gorgeous smile. I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was real or false.3

  Emrys discovered the reason for Rita’s insouciance in the car. Since the previous evening she had been told that Aly was ‘just a playboy’ who collected women as trophies. This was substantially correct, but Emrys loyally spent the journey to Golfe Juan explaining to her exactly who Aly was, about his religious and business interests and generally talking up his employer. ‘He’s rich and good looking,’ Emrys concluded. ‘Newspapers only write up the sensational side of his life but that’s what happens to notabilities [sic], isn’t it Miss Hayworth?’ He wrote that Rita was the only woman in the world who ever kept Aly Khan waiting for three hours and got away with it.4

  The Prince was irritated when they arrived. He smiled warmly at Rita, but as he led her away into the salon he turned to look at Emrys over his shoulder and bared his teeth at him. Most of the villa’s house-guests were either out or having the traditional afternoon siesta, so Emrys sat alone on the terrace under the pines and listened as music from the gramophone drifted out of the open French windows of the salon, and looking up from his book occasionally he caught sight of Aly and Rita dancing cheek to cheek. He suspected that he was going to be seeing a lot of Rita from then on.

  It was three weeks before Elsa saw either of them again. Aly invited Elsa to lunch on the well-remembered pool terrace of Château de l’Horizon and she noted that Rita was among the milling guests but did not think this signified much because she knew the villa was generally crowded with all comers, just as it had been in Maxine’s day. She also knew that those who arrived following Aly’s casually offered invitation to call in any time but found him away were generally entertained in his absence by Pamela Churchill. Aly did not appear to be especially attentive to Rita, as he normally was when infatuated with a new woman, and he told her he was leaving for America in two days, to attend the top yearling sales at Saratoga. Elsa had also heard that Rita was moving from Antibes to Villefranche, and so she concluded that her attempt at matchmaking had been unsuccessful.

  She could hardly have been more wrong. There was no trip to Saratoga. Aly had courted Rita assiduously after their first meetings, sending her huge boxes of red roses every day, to the extent that her hotel room was crowded with vases of blooms. He bombarded her with invitations to lunches, drives to beauty spots, romantic moonlit dinners in the mountains, an evening at the Casino in Monte Carlo. At the International Sporting Club Gala Ball, three weeks after fellow diners had applauded Rita and Orson kissing across the table, Rita and Aly were welded together for the entire evening.

  Before this, feeling panicky about Aly’s attentions and also those of the press who followed her everywhere, Rita had fled to the Hôtel La Reserve, a small luxurious hotel at Beaulieu-sur-Mer, to distance herself. The extra hour’s drive between l’Horizon and Villefranche proved no barrier to Aly. He eventually did what she said she was worried about: he wore her down. A ‘Gypsy fortune-teller’ who had called on Rita some days earlier and foretold that she was about to embark upon the most important relationship of her life and that she must give in to it utterly, was almost certainly sent by Aly. But Rita was very superstitious and believed the woman, and when Aly invited her to bring Miss Haran and stay at l’Horizon – where, he persuaded her, she would be less available to the journalists who frequently bothered her – she accepted.

  Having agreed a date, Aly wanted everything to be perfect. He set in train some changes to prepare the villa for the arrival of the two women, and left with Emrys for Paris to hunt down master chef, René, who had once worked for his father. René was duly traced, recruited to work at l’Horizon and instructed to go to the various family houses in Normandy to collect whatever he needed in the way of kitchen equipment, plate, crystal and china, and get them down to Cannes as quickly as possible. Aly then went on a colossal buying spree in Paris and London. Most shops still had little to offer for sale but he somehow managed to buy some good china and pieces of furniture. When they arrived back at l’Horizon a few days later, Emrys Williams recalled, ‘it was like a lunatic asylum’. René was already there unpacking his crates, helped by Pamela Churchill and Elizabeth, Lady Sudeley.‡ Pieces of furniture brought from other houses were lying about waiting to be placed. Elsa Maxwell had dropped in to offer advice and Aly rushed around giving orders and supervising the alterations he had set in motion before his departure.

  At last all was ready and Rita and her companion were duly collected. Aly had organised a large party for that day, and Rita was somewhat shaken to find that among the women were several whom she knew to be former consorts of Aly’s – including Pamela and Elizabeth, who were still there in semi-permanent residence and, what is more, still seemed to have the ordering of Aly’s staff. Shifra Haran told Rita’s biographer that it wasn’t jealousy of Pamela and Elizabeth that bothered Rita, but the fact that they were sophisticated European women whom she felt were constantly watching her to see what she wore and how she behaved. Aly somehow convinced her to accept this unusual state of affairs – they were simply old friends, he insisted – and Rita had to agree that it was more private at the lovely villa than at the hotel, where she was constantly hounded by journalists and watched by other guests.

  Technically, neither Aly nor Rita were free agents. Rita’s divorce from Orson Welles would not be final until December that year, and although Aly had been parted from Joan since the early years of the war they had never bothered to divorce. That arrangement had suited Aly. His life consisted of travel, beautiful women, spontaneous decisions about where to go, instant parties that lasted until dawn, and a complaisant wife in the background who made him ‘safer’ from gold-diggers. Now besotted with Rita, his marriage was a problem. Rita was an insecure person who needed to feel loved and cherished; Aly’s reputation as a great lover was not enough; her other needs – a stable home, security and family life – were more important to her. He realised that without a major compromise by one of them the relationship was doomed.

  At first, though, the strange ménage seemed to work. Rita’s da
ughter and her English nanny came from California to live with them, and for a while life was a series of golden days. The staff and most of the visitors loved Rebecca and were happy to play with the child while Rita and Aly, by now very much in love, went off into the hills dressed in casual old clothes to have lunch and explore. They were seldom recognised and this gave Rita an impression of security. When she asked if they could have a holiday in Spain to visit her relatives (she had Spanish grandparents, uncles and aunts) the footloose Aly was only too happy to oblige her. He ordered a new Cadillac for the trip and Emrys Williams went to Paris to collect it. He was instructed to drive the car to Biarritz and meet the couple off the Avenger – that would be enough, Aly felt, for them to get into Spain incognito.

  The trip began as planned, but became a nightmare. They crossed the border and were not recognised by a sleepy customs officer who did not bother to look at Mr Khan and Mrs Welles sitting in the back of a limousine wearing sunglasses. The problems began when Aly took the wheel of his new car. He habitually drove at high speeds and it wasn’t long before he rounded a corner into a village too fast and ran into the back of a horse and cart. There was no serious damage done, but while the Prince was compensating the owner, a crowd gathered. By the time they reached the Ritz in Madrid a hundred journalists and fifty photographers were waiting outside the hotel. Aly managed to avoid the front entrance and slide round the block so that he and Rita could enter through a side entrance.

  Thwarted, the press settled down to wait and the couple found themselves besieged – imprisoned in the Ritz in two adjoining suites. They did not use the restaurant and Emrys was placed on duty outside the rooms; all meals were brought to him first so that he could vet the waiters and check for hidden cameras. Aly arranged by telephone for them to be smuggled out in a Daimler from the back entrance and go to a friend’s private residence. They managed to get away from the hotel, but soon saw through the rear window that they were being pursued by nine taxis, each full of journalists and photographers.5 The local chauffeur who knew Madrid well did his best to shake them off, but it was hopeless and rather than lead them to his friend’s house Aly ordered the man to return to the Ritz.