“Get out of my picture, Bob.” It was Paulette. In Monte Carlo. Standing at the top of the long marble staircase that descends into the marble lobby of the belle époque Hôtel de Paris. Swathed in a white fox stole, over a white Lurex gown, with blinding blue-white diamonds at all the vital points—ears, throat, heart, wrists, fingers. At the bottom of the staircase were a hundred paparazzi, lured from the Cannes Film Festival by Franco Rossellini’s cast of thousands, including Onassis, Niarchos, Ursula, and Liz sans Dick. They had just bombarded Elsa Martinelli as she arrived through the front door on the arm of her husband, furniture designer–fashion photographer Willy Rizzo. Paulette was waiting for them to turn around and focus their cameras on her.
Far from having a cat fight with São Schlumberger over me, Paulette was annoyed that Andy wasn’t there instead of me. He had gone to a pre-première reception given by Rainier and Grace at the palace, with Liz and Franco. Paulette wasn’t asked because she had turned down a request to appear on Monaco TV the day before, saying, “I never do TV.” When it was explained that Princess Grace was going to be on the same program, Paulette cracked, “Well, she has to; it’s her country.” So I was Paulette’s date and Fred was sent to fetch São. We had introduced them over tea that afternoon and they had hit it off. São had admired Paulette’s “everyday” pink diamond ring, and mentioned an English duke she had almost married for his fabulous collection of pink diamonds. “Isn’t that something,” Paulette had gasped. “I almost married his father for the same reason. But I decided that no amount of pink diamonds was worth it.” “I decided the same thing about the son,” São had said.
The premiere was a paparazzi dream, or nightmare. Franco even let them into the theater, and as the lights went down and the credits went up, they were still snapping away in the dark at the stellar first row: Stavros Niarchos with his son Philip, Princess Ira von Furstenberg, Countess Marina Cicogna, Hélène Rochas and her beau Kim d’Estainville, Rosemarie Marcie-Rivière and her fifth husband, Elsa and Willy, Ursula, Sylvia Vartan … Prince Rainier and Princess Grace sat in a box above it all, with Elizabeth and Franco, who seemed to be getting along just fine for the cameras. Andy was complaining in my ear that Grace had been “cool” to him, which he blamed on Paulette’s snubbing her TV show. “I mean, I can’t go on TV because I’m saving myself for my own TV show, but who does Paulette think she is?”
He whined even more when he appeared on the screen, “I look terrible. I told you to tell them to put more makeup on.” He had to laugh, though, when he opened his mouth and out came “The King is dead,” in Italian. Paulette loved the movie and she loved Andy in it, or so she said. “You were born for the screen,” she told him. “Didn’t she say the same thing about Joe Dallesandro in Dracula, Bob?” whispered Andy. “Who is she trying to kid?” We went on to the dinner at Regine’s club, New Jimmy’z, which wasn’t seated except for the royal table, which we weren’t seated at. Andy blamed that on Paulette too. He wanted to leave the minute we got there, and did after a half hour, with Paulette, São, and their jewels. I ended up at the Tip Top pizzeria at three in the morning, with Kim d’Estainville, Hélène Rochas, Bettina Graziani, and Marina Cicogna. As we munched our slices, in waltzed Their Serene Highnesses, Grace and Rainier, who sat down at the next table and ordered spaghetti.
The next morning, Andy was waiting for me with a tape recorder. “This is work, Bob,” he said. “You’re not on vacation. Even though you act like you are, staying up all night kicking up your heels.” I said I had been trying to get Marina’s portrait, and Bettina’s portrait. “And what were you and Fred doing the night before, when you stayed out all night at Jimmy’z?” Trying to get Onassis’s portrait. It was the standard line for the standard lecture. “I hope Fred got a receipt.” Onassis paid, I replied.
Jimmy’z had been deserted that first night, except for Ari Onassis and his court: Franco Rossellini, Elsa Martinelli, Willy Rizzo, Roberto Shorto, and, intriguingly, Philip Niarchos, son of Stavros. Onassis’s marriage to Jackie was close to an end, the jet set said, and I was shocked by his appearance: so old and weary, with his eyelids held open by bits of Scotch tape, because of a rare disease of the eye muscles. There was only one couple on the dance floor, both tall, blond, slim, obviously Scandinavian, obviously entranced with each other, wearing identical red polo shirts and slacks. Roberto Shorto, a Brazilian whose sister was married to the art-collecting Baron Heini von Thyssen, bet Onassis a bottle of Dom Perignon which was the boy and which was the girl. Then he got up and pinched the boy’s tit, saying, “We were wondering if you were a girl.” The Scandinavian socked him one, propelling him across the dance floor and into my lap.
The trip’s main purpose was to tape record Paulette morning, noon, and night, to get the book done, “fast and easy and cheap.” Well, it wasn’t that cheap—the Hôtel de Paris cost about $300 a night for a room. And it wasn’t easy either. The first thing Paulette eliminated was mornings. She said she had to have her bath, her walk, her time to change for lunch. Andy suggested taping her doing all those things, but she wasn’t having any of that. So we spent mornings in Andy’s room, taping each other for the Philosophy book. After a few days, Paulette eliminated nights too. She said she had to get her beauty rest, and we went out to dinner too late. “But everybody goes to dinner late in Europe,” said Andy. “But I’m not everybody,” said Paulette. So we spent the rest of our nights hanging out at Jimmy’z with Fred’s latest flirt, an aristocratic young French woman named Ariel de Ravenel. Next to go were afternoons. Paulette said she had to have her walk, her nap, her time to dress for dinner. “But you’re not going to dinner,” said Andy. “Not with you I’m not,” said Paulette. So we spent our afternoons wondering what Paulette was doing at night without us. Andy liked to imagine that she was having a secret lesbian affair with a woman we’d met at Ariel de Ravenel’s mother’s house.
That left lunches. Those weren’t easy, or cheap either. But they were fast. No matter what we asked, Paulette seemed to find it “too psychological” or “too banal,” and good reason to skip dessert and dash off to her afternoon constitutional, leaving Andy, me, and Sony with a few lines about whether Beluga was really better than Sevruga, or whether Harry Winston was really better than Van Cleef and Arpels. When Andy wanted to be positive, he would say, “Well, that’s what the book should be about, two celebrities going around talking about caviar and jewels and furs. Shouldn’t it, Bob?” When he wanted to be negative, he would say, “I hate her, Bob. This is all your fault for inviting her to that party in Rome.”
It was all the more frustrating because we knew there was a great book in the Paulette Goddard story. She wasn’t just a retired movie star, she was a real femme fatale, a woman whose personal life was at least as interesting as anything she had done on the screen, though Modern Times, The Great Dictator, The Women, Reap the Wild Wind, Kitty, The Diary of a Chambermaid, and twenty-five other (mostly) hit films were nothing to sneeze at. As far as we could tell, from hints she dropped and tales we heard from people who knew her, she had been involved with some of the major figures of the century, including George Gershwin, Henry Wallace, General George Patton, Diego Rivera, and Willy Brandt, then the chancellor of West Germany. “Oh, I must get back to my room,” she said one day as she rushed off from lunch, “Willy’s calling to tell me how the mark’s doing.” “The mark?” asked Andy. “The Deutschmark, Andy. I’ve got to know whether I should turn them into Swiss francs in the morning.” “Now we know what she does with her time,” said Andy.
“If only she would tell us something,” Andy kept sighing, longing for stories like those Jerry Zipkin had told us about Paulette before we left for Monte Carlo—Jerry and Paulette had been on the same Beverly Hills–New York–South of France circuit for a long time. “Oh, Paulette was a crackerjack,” Jerry said. “She was famous in those days for never going on a date for less than a pair of ruby clips.” His best story was about Paulette and Dietrich, who had also been in love with Erich Maria Remarque. In fact, he said, Erich was having a hard time choosing between them until Paulette called him in Switzerland, where he was with Dietrich, and issued an ultimatum: her or me. Erich sent Dietrich packing and Paulette joined him in Switzerland to prepare their wedding. But Dietrich had left a hat in the guest-room closet, just to be sure that Paulette knew she had been there first. The punchline was that Paulette saved the hat, and wore it to a party a year or two later at which she knew Dietrich would be. It sounded like the Paulette we knew.
At one lunch, Andy came up with the idea for us to make a list of “all the big Hollywood stars you knew and then we’ll read them off and you say one thing about each one.” Paulette approved. We made the list and went to lunch again. We started off gently. Lucille Ball? “One of the funniest women on the screen.” Well, we knew she didn’t really know Lucille Ball. Myrna Loy? “Now, she was funny too, but not many people knew that.” A little better, we thought. Marion Davies? “Well, Marion was one of the most beautiful women on the screen.” But could she act? asked Andy. Or was she just there because of William Randolph Hearst? “Oh, Andy, let’s not make this book banal. You’re an artist.” He dropped a big one: Greta Garbo? “Well, Greta was one of the most beautiful women on the screen.” Now he had it: Marlene Dietrich? “I saw a lot of Marlene. She was one of the most beautiful women on the screen too. They all were. That’s what was so marvelous about Hollywood then.”
Andy was desperate. Fred and I almost enjoyed watching him being tortured for a change, which made Andy even more desperate. He came up with another ploy: “Maybe if I buy Paulette an expensive present, she’ll talk.” We went to the Cartier branch around the corner from the Hôtel de Paris. The most inexpensive “expensive” thing we could find was a gold swizzle stick for Paulette’s champagne, at a little over a thousand dollars. “Does it come in silver?” asked Andy. “We don’t sell silver in this store,” said the salesman. “Let’s get out of here, Bob,” said Andy.
We went to Yves Saint Laurent’s boutique instead, which was run by his father, who gave us a big greeting. Andy had been asked by a journalist at the premiere who was the most exciting person he had met in Monte Carlo and he had answered, “Yves Saint Laurent’s dad.” We picked out six of YSL’s silk blouses, which cost about two hundred dollars each. That was the year they had bows that tied at the collar. When Andy presented them to Paulette at our next lunch, she gushed like a little girl. “A present for me? Oh, Andy, how sweet. I adore presents. How did you know?” Then she announced that the bows would have to be cut off. Did we think Yves’s dad could have it done? “But, but, Paulette,” said Andy, “that’s the whole point of these blouses. I mean, that’s the style.” “I know it is, Andy,” said Paulette. “But where will I wear my jewelry? Under the bow? Or over the bow? It won’t look right either way.”
“Oh, I hate her,” Andy kept saying as we waited for room service that afternoon. “She’s the worst.”
Meanwhile, Fred was working on the Smiths. Hans and Kardi Smith, the Danish fertilizer king and his wife, a dynamo from Hamburg. The Smiths had recently acquired the grandiose estate of the former King of Montenegro, just next door to Kim d’Estainville’s old family house in Cap Martin, a few miles outside Monaco. They had also recently acquired an art gallery in Monte Carlo’s only strip shopping center, where they were giving Andy a show of his new Hand-Colored Flower Prints, which were based on Japanese flower arrangements, and look like nothing Andy had ever done before, or since: soft and dainty. Andy called it “My Palm Beach show,” and was sure it would be very commercial among the people who never bought Warhols, which it was.
Fred was trying to persuade the Smiths to have their portraits done. The Smiths were trying to persuade Fred to invite all his swell friends to the big ball they were giving after Andy’s opening. They particularly wanted their next-door neighbor, Count Kim d’Estainville, who was the biggest snob on the Côte d’Azur, and his steady house guest, Hélène Rochas, who was the second-biggest snob on the Côte d’Azur. Kim and Hélène wouldn’t come, but Fred persuaded Kim’s sister, Countess Giordano, to come instead, and the Smiths agreed to let Andy take Polaroids of them a few hours before the ball.
We brought Paulette to the ball too, which delighted Kardi Smith. “So she’s good for something,” said Andy, who had had it with her. In fact, Kardi was so delighted that she loaned us one of her two Rolls-Royces, the white one, to bring Paulette in—“like a big movie star, ja?” said Kardi. And Andy softened; after all, it was a dream come true, arriving at a ball in a white Rolls with a glamorous movie star in diamonds. “Gee, you look great,” said Andy. “Now which necklace is that?”
The Smith house was situated high above the Mediterranean, with marble terraces and staircases zigzagging down from the house to the sea. Dinner was served on the uppermost terrace, and the entire setup was strung with tiny white lights. Paulette was seated next to Andy and as far as I could tell they were having a good time. Then a slightly tipsy older man tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Pardon me, Paulette Goddard?” in a thick French accent. “Yes,” said Paulette, “do I know you?” “Not really, but you saved my life,” the old Frenchman answered. “Well, how did I do that?” Andy edged Sony closer. “Well, it was in World War II and I was a soldier at the front and it was terrible, the bombs, the fighting, the war. I was ready to give up on life and throw myself at the Germans’ guns. And then another soldier told me the famous story of you and Anatole Litvak at the Brown Derby and how you … ”
“Oh, he did, did he? I think it’s time to go, Andy.”
“No, no, no,” the Frenchman went on. “It was a beautiful story and you should be proud of it, because it inspired me and so many other soldiers to fight, to live … ”
“I’m glad it did. And now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to go, Andy.”
Andy wasn’t moving, and the Frenchman wouldn’t stop. “But it’s a wonderful story, the way you went under the table and … ”
Paulette screamed, “Get me out of here!” Then she jumped up and started running down the zigzagging staircase toward the sea. Andy grabbed Sony and ran after her, and I ran after him, and the Frenchman ran after us all, pleading, “I didn’t mean to insult you. You saved my life! When I heard this story of a big movie star giving a blowjob under the table at the Brown Derby, I thought there was a reason to live.” Paulette was running with her hands over her ears now, and I was right behind her. Andy had fallen back a bit, to tape record what the old Frenchman was saying.
When we all got to the bottom, Paulette turned around and started running up the zigzagging staircase, and I chased after her, while Andy comforted the old Frenchman by the sea. He was in tears. He had finally met the woman who saved his life and she had run away from him. Paulette wasn’t in tears, just fit to be tied. “Get me out of here!” she screamed at me again. Kardi Smith produced the other Rolls-Royce, the black one, and Paulette and I rode back to the Hôtel de Paris in silence. At last, she said, “So now you know the International Rumor, the one Elizabeth Taylor likes to spread about me. And it isn’t true, not one bit of it. It’s so silly, really.”
Andy called me when he got back to the hotel. “Paulette was really mean to that guy,” he said. “He was just a crazy fan. That’s not such a terrible story. I think I heard it years ago. But it was with another movie star and another movie producer and the guy went under the table, not the girl. Did you tell Paulette that all the kids used to do that at Max’s?” I told him that Paulette had said that was the International Rumor, but he didn’t believe it. He said it wasn’t bad enough. “Maybe she was going out with Dietrich, not Erich. Did you ever think of that, Bob?”
On top of all this, the Grand Prix trials started, at five-thirty every morning, right under our windows at the Hôtel de Paris. Fred said that Kim and Hélène had invited Andy and Paulette to watch the actual race from their front-row table on the Hôtel de Paris terrace, which was not only the best place but also the best table. Andy said we could stay a couple of more days. Unfortunately, the Hôtel de Paris said we couldn’t, though they extended Paulette’s reservation, and found a room for Mick and Bianca Jagger, who checked in the same day we checked out. “Mick’s somebody,” Andy said, “and I’m nobody.” He sounded like he meant it.
Andy and I went to a new high-rise condominium where the Smiths kept an extra apartment, and they loaned Fred another apartment they had in another new building. Staying in the same hotel as Andy was one thing, but staying in the same apartment with him was another. There was no escape. Andy was always there, from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to sleep, nagging me to work harder. And as the race cars roared by our windows there at 5:30 A.M. too, there was more time to work—to think up trick questions for Paulette and to tape record Philosophy riffs about “champagne chins and beer bellies.”
Andy approached writing the same way he approached painting or making movies: quantitatively. It was never “Write the Sex chapter.” It was “Let’s do a ninety-minute tape for the Sex chapter.” No, Andy. “Okay, let’s do forty-five minutes. Just one side.” Okay, Andy. So Andy said, “Sex is nothing,” and I talked for forty-five minutes about the sex lives of my friends and myself, and then, realizing what I had done, spent another forty-five minutes begging Andy not to drop some choice tidbit at the Grand Prix lunch.
That was another comic disaster. No sooner had we accepted the invitation from Kim and Hélène than Paulette announced that she had accepted an invitation from Massimo Gargia, a playboy whom everyone called Count Mozzarella for some reason, to lunch at his table, with ex-Empress Soraya of Iran, and that she expected Andy to sit with her. He did, and I sat with Kim and Hélène, who made a point of noting that it must be difficult for Andy to see the race from a table so far back.
After the first course, I went over to Andy and told him that I thought it would make a world of difference if he came over to say hello to Hélène, not immediately, but in five or ten minutes, and give her one of his bet stubs. “Say you bought it for her, and you hope she wins,” I said. “Gee, thanks, Bob,” said Andy, “that’s a really good idea. I wish you were at this table with me. I can’t go to these things without you or Fred. I do everything wrong. I called Soraya’s lady-in-waiting Soraya’s mother, and everybody laughed at me. Then I asked if a lady-in-waiting was like a maid, and they all laughed again.”
As instructed, Andy came over in a few minutes, with a bet stub signed, “To Hélène, Love Andy.” When he returned, Kim said, “Say what you will, but Andy Warhol is a real gentleman. I’m sure it was Paulette Goddard, who’s just a typical Hollywood type, who was impressed by Soraya, not Andy.”