Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman

Rating:
Summary: She had what she wanted
Review: I had known one women who said: "Its better you ask for what you want,then to except what others offering to you."

This can be related to biography of Pamela Harriman. SHe lived in extraordinary circumstances but what I find most compelling is the fact that she succeed to manage her life. Although, it was not always easy for her. She left and she was left. The biography is most interesting written and I read it very quickly.
She maybe was in some way courtisan, but I think she wanted to enjoy in life nad she was led by it. SHe knew what she want and she was persistant. However, I did not manage to figure out was she open hearted as she was presented in some moments or little bit cold caculated as in the part regarding children of her husband Hayworth. But, for sure she was woman in complete sense of that word.

Rating:
Summary: What a fun read!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Last Courtesan
Review: 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.