Full of juicy details, this book chronicles the life and loves of Pamela Churchill Harriman, a woman who made it to the top the old-fashioned way--through her men. From Number 10 Downing Street and the White House to some of the most famous bedrooms in the world, this book tells it all. 16 pages of photos.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this captivating, gossipy, withering biography, Time writer Ogden portrays Harriman--a major Democratic fund-raiser, backer of Clinton and currently U.S. ambassador to France--as a coolly calculating opportunist who parlayed her ambition into vast wealth and political clout by targeting rich and famous men. An English baron's daughter, Pamela Digby in 1939, at age 19, wed hedonistic, alcoholic Randolph Churchill and moved into Downing Street, where she helped her father-in-law, Sir Winston, by acting as an intelligence broker during WW II. Her second marriage to ebullient, barbiturate-addicted Broadway producer Leland Hayward put her in the vortex of the golden age of the American musical. She used the wealth of her third husband, the late statesman Averell Harriman, to resuscitate the Democratic Party's fortunes. Ogden catalogues Harriman's numerous liaisons (Edward R. Murrow, Elie de Rothschild, Aly Khan, Fiat auto magnate Gianni Agnelli, etc.) in this unauthorized tell-all based on months of interviews with her for a proposed autobiography that was abandoned. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
The introduction of this book immediately sets the tone. The scene is a Georgetown dinner party, where the guest of honor is president-elect Bill Clinton, come to pay homage to a woman who, among others, has supported his presidential bid. Clinton toasts her as the "First Lady of the Democratic Party." Smiles all around because life is so good in the upper class--and so begins a biography that is essentially a parade of political names from World War II to the present. It can be interesting to know who was sleeping with whom and when, of course. And who asked our heroine for timely advice at yet another important moment in history. But what is probably just as engaging is trying to determine if the rich and powerful really are this shallow. Brian McCombie
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a fun read!,
By
This review is from: Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman (Mass Market Paperback)
One can tell just from the photograph chosen for the cover of LIFE OF THE PARTY that author Christopher Ogden has constructed a fun read. Though his research is thorough and scholarly, LIFE OF THE PARTY flies by easily. (The title itself is a pun, alluding both to its literal meaning and to the fact that Harriman's generous donations gave new life to America's Democratic Party.)In crafting the biography of America's late Ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, Ogden also provides a social history of the international "Jet Set" of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. Pamela's journey through the decades was complete with English aristocracy, French nobility, Italian racing car drivers, South American polo players, Arab sheiks, Greek shipping magnates and members of America's monied elite. The link among them is that Pamela Harriman slept with members of each of these groups! In her own, less liberated day, born to obscure English nobility c. 1920, there is no question but that then-Pamela Digby would have been considered a--ahem--loose woman (to use a mild phrase) by those who knew her. Not only did she sleep around, apparently with blatant calculation of how her liasons would benefit her financially and socially, but she also conspicuously went after married men. With the exception of her first husband, the single thread connecting the men she chose was that they were not merely rich, they were filthy rich. And her first husband was the son of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England at the time of their marriage. Thus, that match was socially advantageous to Pamela, and she would use the connection as her entry into highest levels of the world's interconnected rich. Nonetheless, despite her apparent rapacity, it is obvious that her men found her... appealing, to say the least. Some of the affairs that Ogden documents were with the fabulously wealthy Frenchman, Elie de Rothschild, with the fabulously wealthy oil sheik, Aly Khan, with the fabulously wealthy Italian auto manufacturer, Gianni Agnelli, with a fabulously wealthy American, Averell Harriman and another fabulously wealthy American, William Paley. Yet she married the merely wealthy theatrical producer, American Leland Hayward, whose daughter openly despises Pamela to this day. (It seems clear that Pamela settled on Leland due to an urgent need to wed quickly as a matter of financial salvation.) Of course, Pamela was a serial bride. Decades after she first began her affair with him, Averell Harriman finally tied the knot with Pamela. He had been middle-aged when they first had met, and she had been a very young woman. By the time she captured him, she was middle-aged and he was old. Conveniently, he died soon after their marriage and, even more conveniently, he left her his huge fortune. She immediately put that fortune to use in inserting herself as a valuable player in the United States Democratic Party and as an early and generous supporter of then-candidate Bill Clinton. After he became President, Clinton rewarded Pamela by making her his Ambassador to France. Truly, if this book were a romance novel, it would be dismissed out-of-hand as being too implausible. As it stands, it is an examination of an exploitative and greedy woman, yet a woman whose lifestory makes for entertaining reading. For the major events of the mid-20th century, when Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman was not present, she probably was waiting in the bedroom.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Last Courtesan,
This review is from: Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman (Mass Market Paperback)
What an interesting woman. Okay so she may have slept her way to the top and made a few bad personal decisions. A saint she was not. For all that she was determined to enjoy life and make the best out of what talents she had. She used her friends as we all do to better her causes and even berated her children when she disagreed withj them. As if she was the first mother to do that. She gave her total devotion to the men she married, apart from Winston, and expected the same.The irony is that had Pamela harriman been a man all her negative aspects would have been overlooked and she would have been remembered more for her her political and social acumen rather than the men she had slept with. A very interesting read about one of the more interesting characters of the 20th century. It will be a while before her like is seen again. She will be missed.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The Catalyst on a Hot Tin Roof",
By
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This review is from: Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman (Hardcover)
"Pam," as she was known by her friends, trading on her beauty, inquisitiveness and instincts, more than on her morals: again and again parlayed her feminine wiles into higher and higher orbits of class, wealth, international intrigue and a seat at the very table where high stakes policy was being shaped and made. Even one of her many lives would have been enough for an ordinary person to kill for, but being able to do it over and over again points to her very own special gift: being perfectly situated to marry older men of influence and then making them like it, as she "traded up " the ladder to better and better situations.
Just her wartime activities alone, is worth the price of the book. Here, behind the scenes where the post-WWII world order was being shaped and fashioned, she played an important if unsung role as one of the king pin (or is it queen pin?) deal makers, that helped solidify the ties between the U.S. and UK, ties that eventually were responsible for bringing the U.S. into the war. She did this all the while being married to the notorious "bad boy" and son of Sir Winston Churchill, Randolph, and while "bedding down" one of her "husbands-to be," Averill Harriman. And she did this, all the while, if not with the full knowledge, certainly with the tacit knowledge of her father in law, the British Prime Minister. Just this part of the book alone is worth its price, but there is much more: all with the ring of truth, not with the ring of mere salacious gossip, which I admit, is all that I was really looking for. In the book "Nemesis," it had been reported as fact that Joseph P. Kennedy had raped Pam while she was an overnight guest of her friend the then Ambassador to the UK's daughter, Kathleen. I was unable to confirm this fact in this "unauthorized" version of her life. This omission, however, certainly does not mean that it did not happen, just that it could not be confirmed in this version of her life story. And even though I did not find what I was looking for, this is still easily five stars.
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