The Right Places

The Alpine Set: “You Can Live Forever Here”

There is a breed of wanderer that is forever seeking new and unspoiled paradises. In order to qualify as “unspoiled,” a paradise must be cheap. Even though such places are increasingly hard to find, this kind of traveler is relentless in his quest.

But there is another sort of voyager whose approach is perhaps more sophisticated, whose pocketbook is certainly fatter, who has relented. He has settled for a paradise that is thoroughly spoiled. Tamed. Civilized. He has gone to live in Switzerland. Tiny Switzerland (though if it were flattened out, it might be as big as Texas) probably contains more quietly rich expatriates per mountainous square foot than anywhere else on earth. It has also become a haven for the jaded, the overpublicized, the world-weary—people who have been everywhere, met everybody, had everything, and who now wish only to be pampered and cosseted and waited upon by a discreet manservant. “Life here,” says Sir Noel Coward, one of the Old Guard of what calls itself the Alpine Set, speaking from his pink-and-white villa high above the clouds, “really is terribly sweet.”

And sweet it is—not so much in the la dolce vita sense as in the candy-box sense of the word. Consider what Switzerland offers to those who have settled here among never-never-land mountaintops like so many beautiful birds after a long flight. It offers a kind of perfection. Everything works. The trains arrive and depart on time, letters are delivered in a twinkling, telephones never produce wrong numbers, Swiss plumbing never falters. In restaurants and hotels, when buttons are pushed, service appears—superb service.

To the overurbanized American, Switzerland offers a Walt Disney movie version of life, the kind with Fred MacMurray in the leading role, where all problems are happily resolved at the end. There is no crime rate because there is no crime. There are no race problems because there are no races; the Swiss are nearly all white and Protestant. There is no violence, no student unrest. An unescorted woman is quite safe in any park at any hour of night. There is no smog, no unemployment, no poverty, no garbage in the streets, no strikes. If you wish to cross the street, the traffic politely stops. If you take a taxi, the driver will not volunteer an opinion of Mayor Lindsay in New York or of Mayor Daley in Chicago, or of anyone else, unless it is specifically solicited. The Swiss police, who seem to have been hired for their good looks as much as anything, do no more than look mildly pained if you drive into a one-way street from the wrong direction. And this is hard to do because everything in Switzerland is carefully marked. Directions are clearly printed everywhere. It is impossible to get lost.

The Swiss are notably honest. “In all the years we’ve lived here, we’ve never gotten gypped,” exults Irwin Shaw, a Swiss convert from many years back. The climate is benign. Palm trees grow in winter along the northern shores of Lake Geneva, and for skiers there is skiing in the high glaciers all summer long. There are no health hazards and, if one should get sick, the country is full of excellent doctors. Even old age seems to have disappeared here, where restorative baths and spas and cures and sanitariums abound, all dedicated to rejuvenation and longevity. “There’s this wonderful little virility man …” murmurs James Mason. For the ailing psyche, Swiss psychiatrists are notably soothing. At Vevey, not far from Lausanne, is one of the most remarkable institutions devoted to the eternal youth of the human species. This is La Clinique Générale “La Prairie” of Dr. Paul Niehans, where such people as Somerset Maugham, Konrad Adenauer, Gloria Swanson, Bernard Baruch, and even Pope Pius XII have paid an average of $1,285 a week for treatments designed to restore the flagging vital organs and halt, or at least slow down, the normal aging process.

Dr. Niehans’s theory, very broadly stated, is that as our bodily organs age, cells within them deteriorate and die. Niehans replaces these less-than-perky cells by injecting the patient with live cells taken from the embryos of animals—from the testicles of unborn bulls, for example. These new cells, it is claimed, prosper within the human patient’s body and revive the ailing organ. The treatment at Vevey begins with a test that is designed to pinpoint the areas of the body most needful of the restorative new cells. In all, fourteen bodily organs are covered in the tests, and a separate injection may be required for each—at $150 and up per injection. (This, plus $300 a week for the clinic and $200 for the tests, makes up the cost of the treatment.) The commonest ailment at Vevey is cirrhosis of the liver, and it is perhaps significant that La Prairie insists that patients refrain from all alcoholic beverages for at least three months following their discharge.

The alumni of La Prairie speak ecstatically of their new youth and vigor, but medical opinion in the United States is much more guarded in its enthusiasm. “It’s like the heart transplants,” one doctor says. “It’s much too early to say whether what Niehans is doing really works.” “Nonsense,” replies a recent Niehans patient. “Dr. Niehans has proved that it’s no longer necessary to grow old!” Switzerland is Shangri-La.

Famously neutral and uncommitted, the Swiss are noncontroversial and apolitical. There is, of course, a Swiss government, but it is delightfully unobtrusive, even invisible. It sometimes seems possible that the country is run by elves and gnomes from a secret mountain workshop. “I know we have a government, but I couldn’t tell you who is in it,” says one Swiss gentleman with typically Swiss good cheer. Switzerland is a kind of Oz. Even its physical makeup seems contrived and artificial—lakes, mountains, hillsides covered with wild narcissus; a little bit of Germany, a little of Italy, and a bit of France. It is true that the waters of Lake Geneva may not be as pellucid as when Browning wrote of them. It is true that prices are high. But, as Irwin Shaw, who was born in Brooklyn, says, “The more civilized a country is, the higher the prices. Every time you go to a place that’s cheap, you know the people are suffering. I don’t like countries like that. Forget ’em.” Best of all, Swiss taxes are very, very low—among the lowest in the world. Few Swiss pay more than ten to twelve per cent income tax. And the Swiss have a charming way of deciding what sort of tax you ought to pay. You sit down with the tax collector and discuss it. Yes, life can be sweet indeed, and private.

Consider the Charles Chaplins. Chaplin was among the first to expatriate himself to the high mountains in the narcissus-scented air, and he is now considered the paterfamilias of the Alpine Set. His château above Vevey has beautiful gardens, and the house is always filled with fresh flowers. In his eighties, Chaplin is somewhat slowed down, but he still takes short walks and suns himself on his terraces, attended by his secretary and servants and pretty wife. And he always appears at the annual Christmas eve gala given by Madame de Chevreux d’Antraigne, an Englishwoman who has a big house in Montreux. Her house has a hall of mirrors, and her party is a major event to which everyone in the Set turns out—Noel Coward, the David Nivens, James Mason, the William Holdens. Charles Chaplin rarely says much any more at parties, but he nods and beams and looks contented. “He seems to have removed himself from life a bit,” says a friend. But isn’t this what Switzerland is for? To escape from reality?

Consider Noel Coward in his pink-and-white chalet above the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. “These little raspberries were flown in from Israel,” says Mr. Coward, spooning them from a chilled silver bowl. “You must absolutely submerge them in this thick fresh cream, and then cover them with sugar.” The road to the pink-and-white chalet is lined with tubs of pink-and-white petunias. Mr. Coward’s bright purple lounging jacket matches the covering on his bright purple sofa, and his green slippers match the green baize covering of the coffee table. Like Switzerland, Mr. Coward is very floral, very coordinated, the epitome of elegant suavity. “When Gertie Lawrence and I danced, it was said that we were the definition of glamour,” he says without a trace of modesty. A favorite footstool, in needlepoint, is designed with the opening bars of some of his songs—“Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart,” and so on—the labor of a friend. “Dorothy Hammerstein did a needlepoint pillow for me,” he says, “Joan Sutherland did another. So did Mary Martin. Merle Oberon did me a pair of needlepoint slippers.” He turns to his secretary: “Are the Lunts coming for drinks?” These are the sort of people who pass in and out of the Chalet Coward. Of all the things that his house contains, Mr. Coward is proudest of his blue-tile shower bath, which he designed himself, and which has jets of water that shoot out at the bather from all directions.

“The Swiss are terribly un-tiresome,” Noel Coward says. “They aren’t the least bit celebrity-conscious. They leave one at absolute peace. I’ve lived here since 1951, and the living is blissfully easy. The air here makes one sweetly lazy, which I adore. The most energetic thing I do is walk down to the village for a drink. Then I ring for the car to come and drive me back up. Joan Sutherland lives just above me, and the Nivens are just above her. Joanie’s going to put in a swimming pool. I don’t quite approve. It seems rather un-Swiss. And I suppose she’ll make me trudge up to it. But I’m terribly lucky here. And of course there are the lovely taxes. Look—here comes the sun.”

As if by command, the clouds in which his house has been drifting disappear, and the valley below is revealed, in Technicolor. The higher vineyards are a deep blue-green. Above, fat cows graze on pasturage so steep it seems miraculous that they don’t topple over and come rolling down. Walt Disney could have done no better. To the south, the big-rock-candy-mountain silhouette of Mont Blanc rises and frames itself perfectly in Sir Noel’s south-facing window. “Isn’t it sweet?” he asks. And, “Shall we have some more of my delicious Jewish raspberries?”

Of all the beautiful escapees, those—like Noel Coward—who are British subjects find the Swiss taxes the loveliest. This group includes the Nivens, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov, the Chaplins. If these people lived at home in England, they would be taxed at murderous rates by Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue. But, ever since an unfortunate experience in one of her colonies in 1776, Great Britain has refrained from taxing foreign-based Britons. By agreeing to remain outside of England for at least nine months a year, these British pay only the trifling Swiss tax. The rich from other countries have found similar shelter in Switzerland, which helps explain why the likes of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Sadruddin Aga Khan, Lilli Palmer, Sophia Loren, Gunther Sachs, Maximilian Schell, Ingemar Johansson, Georges Simenon, Vladimir Nabokov, and a long list of other names are Swiss-based for at least part of the year. The Swiss tax system—or non-system—used to be equally attractive to Americans. Alas, it is no longer, and this is why at least one American woman speaks of the late President John F. Kennedy as “a worse tyrant than Hitler.”

What happened was that, before World War II, Americans who lived permanently abroad were not required to pay tax on income from sources within the United States. Then, after the war, with Europe rebuilding and American businesses expanding into European cities, large numbers of Americans were going to Europe to work for short periods of time. For these people, the law was changed to apply not only to permanent nonresidents but to those who lived outside the country for as little as eighteen months’ time. Immediately the rich—and their accountants—saw what was possible. By living eighteen months in a country such as Switzerland, where taxes were a pittance, they could escape U.S. taxes altogether. Immediately a very well-dressed migration began. At the same time, film companies were discovering the fiscal advantages of working in Europe, and suddenly—for Gary Cooper, William Holden, Orson Welles, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Irwin Shaw, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer, Yul Brynner, and scores of others—Switzerland became the only place to live.

An example of what could be done was the technique employed by Elizabeth Taylor. With an income of roughly $1,000,000 a year, she established a Swiss residence and corporation into which all her money went. Of this she was required to pay a Swiss corporate tax, a minuscule two-tenths of one per cent, or about $2,000 a year. Her corporation then paid her a salary. If, by tightening her belt, she was able to get by on $10,000 a month—$120,000 a year—her Swiss income tax could not have come to much more than $15,000 annually. In other words, she was able to keep over $900,000 of her yearly million by living in Switzerland. At home in the United States, her tax bill might have run as high as $850,000. No wonder she could put enough money aside to buy an inch-and-a-half long diamond.

But in 1962 President Kennedy’s tax reforms put a stop to all this. Today, only the first $25,000 of a non-U.S. resident’s income is tax-free, and everything above that is fully taxable at U.S. rates. Obviously, to the super-rich, $25,000 tax-free is not an exciting figure. When the new laws went into effect, the allure of Switzerland rapidly evaporated for a number of Americans, including Miss Taylor, who gave up her Swiss residence, though not her Swiss bank accounts.

The 1962 law got to be known as the William Holden Law, and no one resents this more than Mr. Holden, who points out that he was a relative latecomer to Switzerland. “I didn’t come here until 1959,” he points out, “so I only got three years before they pulled up the ladder.” Furthermore, he has proved himself to be less fickle than Miss Taylor and has stayed on even though the tax advantage has gone. He owns a large villa on the lake outside Geneva which he calls “Beau Jardin,” and he has remodeled it extensively—adding rooms, combining others by tearing down partitions, installing huge glass window-walls which “the Swiss builders don’t understand—they want rooms like little caves.” And now his Swiss villa would look right at home on Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air.

“I’ve stayed on for a variety of reasons,” Holden says. “With my own lack of education, I wanted my sons to be bilingual, or perhaps trilingual.” The two boys were teenagers when the Holdens arrived, and have since spent ten years at Swiss schools. “Also, Geneva is sort of halfway between New York, where I go frequently, and Kenya, in Africa, where I have interests. I’m a wildlife nut, you know. But what I like best is the way the Swiss respect the individual. They might be curious, but they’re too civilized to invade your privacy. This is something we’re losing in the United States, probably because of our bureaucratic form of life. The press here respects your privacy always. The press here wouldn’t dream of asking a question about your private life. In the U.S., the press dwells on tragedy. If there’s an accident, they can’t wait to get to the poor victim to interview him on his experience. Americans seem to have become more watchers than doers. The Swiss believe in everybody attending to his own business. It gives life here this wonderful sense of peace and quiet.”

Peter Viertel, the sportsman-novelist and husband of Deborah Kerr, who was first attracted to Switzerland by the skiing, as his wife was by its offer of a shelter from British taxes, is somewhat less generous in his appraisal of Swiss life. Perhaps he is simply too active a man to settle happily into an atmosphere of perpetual relaxation and avoidance of care. Viertel says, “It’s an easy country to live in. It gives you a feeling of safety. But the stimulation of the conversation here is nil. You read the newspapers, you listen to the radio, and you talk to your friends, but you’re not a part of a going community where you discuss things with people who have views other than yours. You have to get out from time to time. Otherwise you get rock-happy—like living on a magic island. But there’s one good thing about living in an isolated cell like this. When you go to Paris or London or wherever, you’re like the new boy coming to town. You get a bigger thrill when you see your friends again, and they’re much happier to see you than if you’d been there all along.”

Life in a never-never land can become a tiny bit boring. But the Alpine Set is, after all, a notably mobile one. They do get out from time to time. The Viertels, for instance, also spend a certain amount of time sunning themselves at Marbella, on the coast of Spain. To the less well-heeled, it is a different story. Stuart Dalrymple, an American businessman who was stationed for ten years in Switzerland before returning to the United States, says, “Actually, we retreated. Our life in Geneva made Zelda and Scott’s existence look like a Cub Scout picnic. At the end of a decade, with two girls unable to articulate in English, a more than slightly jaded patina on our not-so-rosy cheeks, and no roots whatever, we opted to come home.” The Dalrymples now find the good life in Massachusetts.

Imagine a movie starring David Niven, James Mason, Noel Coward, with the porcelain beauties of Deborah Kerr and Audrey Hepburn (who still keeps a chalet in the pines above Rolle), all set in a landscape where the real estate goes for about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars an acre. William Holden will play the handsome American. You can see what sort of gilded and mannered story would have to ensue. In a way, it is as though the members of the Alpine Set had written their own script, and were acting out their lives in a setting of their own devising. You can see why Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t stay. Switzerland is just not suited to her broad style. Neither was it to Van and Evie Johnson’s, who hated it. “I suppose one can’t expect people like that to come and sit by a lake and give little dinners,” says Noel Coward, whose recent little dinner was for a visiting Sir Laurence Olivier.

Members of the Alpine Set see a lot of each other—English-speaking souls cluster together—and the titled and celebrated from all over the world are always passing through Switzerland (to visit their doctors or their banks), but life is not without controversy. The Old Guard—the Chaplins, Noel Coward, et al.—tend to think of William Holden’s Hollywood-type house as a bit too much. “You approach it by boat,” says Sir Noel with famous disdain, “through water that is absolutely awash with French letters. There’s a walkie-talkie from the pier to the house, but it doesn’t always work, and so the boatman has to announce you by shouting at the top of his lungs: ‘Four people coming up for tea!’”

Then there is the somewhat mysterious presence of a young American named Bernard Cornfeld. Starting with brains, chutzpah, and very little else, Bernie Cornfeld built up a mutual-fund empire, Investors Overseas Services, Ltd., that at one point was estimated to be worth over two billion dollars. The Cornfeld empire has, of course, collapsed, dragging down all sorts of other people with it. But Cornfeld himself remains very much on the scene in Geneva where, it is assumed, he emerged from the tatters of his company with a sizable personal fortune.

He is a smallish man with a pixie face who wears his blond hair in a long and flowing style, and whose taste in clothes runs to belted silk jump suits with flaring lapels. A bachelor, he still lives in the vast stone castle he bought when he was at the height of his powers, and his house is still filled with miniskirted bunnies, tourists, and itinerant hippies whom he leads, Pied Piper fashion, on water-skiing parties by day and boisterous pub-crawling by night. His social behavior is outrageous. He shows up at formal dinner parties three hours late, often barefoot, with his colorful retinue in tow, and insists on sitting on the floor to eat. In the old days, when he was considered a financial force (it was once said he could buy all of Switzerland if he wished), this sort of behavior was tolerated, and when Bernie and his friends swung into such spots as Griffin’s, a Geneva discotheque, the room would snap to attention. Now that he has fallen from financial grace, he is regarded as really nothing more than a semi-amusing curiosity.

Bernie Cornfeld doesn’t seem to belong in such a quietly rich right place as Switzerland. He would seem a little out of place in our movie. But perhaps not. After all, Walt Disney often tossed a good-natured buffoon, a kind of village idiot, into the plot to addle the waters of his fantasy, pretty-pretty world. A little comedy relief is welcome, even in Munchkinland. And Switzerland, true to form, is allowing Bernie Cornfeld to settle slowly into the elegantly turned woodwork and perhaps, in a year or so, the slight blemish his presence creates will have disappeared, by hocus-pocus, altogether.