In early 1965, the death of Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, married to three of the most brilliant men of early 20th-century Europe and the lover of several others, inspired Tom Lehrer to compose a spoof paean to her wondrous assets. “Alma, Tell us, All modern women are jealous,” he sang with a knowing chuckle.
The song tickled upper-crust New Yorkers; they had an English version of Alma living among them in the form of The Hon Pamela Churchill-Hayward. Pamela was then on marriage number two, her first being a wartime mistake to Randolph Churchill. She exited it with a child, Winston, whom she neglected, and a famous last name that she protected fiercely. Her American do-over was Leland Hayward, the Broadway producer of such hits as South Pacific and The Sound of Music.
Her husbands were overshadowed, though, by the fabulously moneyed and titled lovers she acquired in between: Aly Khan, son of the Aga Kahn, the Fiat heir Gianni Agnelli, Baron Elie de Rothschild, and William S Paley, owner of CBS, among them. She was one of Truman Capote’s “swans” – rich society women he befriended – and he waspishly joked that the collected tales of Pamela Hayward’s exploits would last not A Thousand and One Nights, but A Thousand and Twelve. Widowhood in 1971 lasted an unhappy six months until Averell Harriman became husband number three. The business magnate turned diplomat, statesman and eminence grise of the Democratic party was also, not so incidentally, a former lover and recent widower.
She was a youthful 51, he a somewhat spry 79; time was short. Pamela’s assault on Washington was still ongoing when Averell died in 1986. The city capitulated to her in the end, just as London, Paris and New York had done. With her face and reputation burnished in ways that only serious money can achieve, Pamela triumphantly returned to Europe in 1993 as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to France. She died in the job four years later, neither the best nor the worst political appointee who ever went to Paris.
Pamela’s fascinating life earned her the scholarly attentions of the late Christopher Ogden, Sally Bedell Smith and now Sonia Purnell. Few attract one excellent biographer, let alone three. She hated the first two books, which exhumed every skeleton and buffed it up for display. Ogden’s was remarkably fair considering she reneged on their agreement and tried to stiff him of his author’s fee. However, she would have found this latest portrait just right.
Purnell makes the case for Pamela as a woman of substance. First, because her wartime lovers – Harriman, sent to London by Roosevelt as his special envoy, Edward R Murrow, the CBS news correspondent, and Frederick Anderson, head of Eighth Bomber Command – made her a useful conduit between the British and Americans. Second, because she helped transform political fundraising in the 1980s.
Admittedly, the time Pamela exchanged views with this or that person, or convened a meeting of top-level politicos, is a lot less fun to read than the time she caught Gianni Agnelli in flagrante – he crashed into a tree while escaping her wrath, leaving him with a permanent limp.
Nevertheless, Kingmaker is on to something important. Successful women are judged differently than men. A monster like Picasso gets a free pass, but woe betide the unlikable woman. What does it matter, asks Purnell, if Harriman was a ruthless social climber and an unsatisfactory friend, mother and stepmother? She was a brilliant operator and strategist, raising millions for the Democrats during the Reagan years.
Harriman’s political effectiveness ought to be separated from her personal faults, but she is still in the dock, in my opinion. Throughout history, backdoor influencers like her were among patriarchy’s biggest cheerleaders and beneficiaries. In 1981, the year Pamela and Averell established her fundraising political action committee, or PAC, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female US supreme court justice and Jeanne Kirkpatrick the first female US ambassador to the UN. Meanwhile, the Harriman dinners were still feeding men’s egos with port and cigars and forcing the women to take their coffee and bonbons in the drawing room.
• Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Seduction, Intrigue and Power by Sonia Purnell is published by Virago (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
