The Tribune

Pamela Harriman died in post as American Ambassador to France, respected and honoured for her diplomatic skills. But her determined journey from English socialite to acceptance in the US was never dull, as Sir Christopher explains, in the second part of his look at her life.

By Christopher Ondaatje

Always alert for changes in direction and opportunity - and realising that France did not hold much for a 40-year old divorcee - Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman switched her attention to the United States in 1959. She was on the lookout for a rich and powerful man and still in touch with her former war-time American lovers, Bill Paley and “Jock” Whitney.

While she had also remained on good terms with their wives the families were wary of her. One evening, Babe Paley (Bill’s wife) telephoned Slim Hayward, the wife of theatrical producer Leland Hayward, and asked permission to “borrow” her husband to accompany the visiting Pamela Churchill to the theatre. Observers have often said that Babe Paley knew what she was doing in getting the English predator safely away from her husband.

The meeting led to the newly-introduced pair leaving before the end of the performance. The affair was immediate. The glamorous Slim Hayward was away in Europe with her friend, Lauren Bacall, mingling with “the Hemingway Crowd” and away from a restless and difficult marriage. Leland explained this to Pamela, who knew exactly how to turn the situation to her own advantage. Later that week, back in Paris, she invited Slim Hayward and “Betty” Bacall to dinner. Leland flew in from America and joined the party.

Pamela seemed the ever gracious and generous host. The next day, Hayward flew to Munich, where he bargained for the rights to The Sound of Music from Baroness von Trapp. The drawn-out negotiations during early 1959 gave Hayward the excuse to visit Pamela in Paris. She had no intention of letting the emotional and vulnerable impressario out of her clutches. On May 27, he proposed and said he would ask his wife for an immediate divorce.

It was the opportunity she had been waiting for and she headed for New York, leaving her luxurious Paris apartment and former lovers Gianni Agnelli and Baron Elie de Rothschild behind. They gave her everything: the antique furniture as well as the apartment which had been a gift from Agnelli and which she sold immediately for $500,000. She kept the maisonette in Hyde Park Gardens in London (a present from Rothschild). It was to remain her legal English base – vital to keep custody of her son, Winston, by her marriage to Randolph Churchill. Everything else was moved to the Drake Hotel in New York City, thus embarking her on the last and important stage of her colourful career.

In 1959, Leland Hayward was about to become incredibly rich with revenues from several sources, including the hit musical The Sound of Music. Hayward had been married five times to four different women and clients read like a Who’s Who in American theatre: he had had serious liaisons with Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo and Margaret Sullavan, whom he eventually married.

The unsteady marriage to Slim Hayward had lasted a tempestuous ten years. Pamela was the woman he wanted: she was the ultimate trophy wife and she was going to do her damnedest to be that woman. When she moved from the Drake Hotel into the Carlyle, Hayward moved into the adjoining apartment. She loved America and its way of life. The same 1960 day the Haywards were divorced Pamela became the new Mrs Hayward. They bought 1020 5th Avenue into which she moved all her Louis XVI furniture and some newly acquired American antiques. She had perfect if expensive taste: she was also the perfect hostess for the restless, flamboyant producer.

Pamela followed her husband across America and learned as much about back-stage theatre as box office grosses. Leland survived on pills and alcohol: the late nights and heavy work schedule did not slow him and she thrived on it. She also convinced him to buy a Westchester country property on 57 wooded acres and a three-seat helicopter so that they could commute to New York in a quarter of an hour. They called their Westchester retreat “Haywire” – eventually the best selling title of a book by Hayward’s daughter Brooke by his first wife, Margaret Sullavan. The biography included a scathing criticism of her new stepmother.

Hayward’s magical career reached its apogee in the early 1960s after he met and married Pamela. But seven years later exhausted, sick, chronically addicted to barbiturates and alcohol, and an insomniac, his career turned sharply downwards. He fell apart. The money dried up and they were reduced to living off capital. Hayward never stopped working but in 1971 suffered a stroke and was hospitalised. An operation for a blocked neck artery failed and Pamela took him home to “Haywire”, where he died on March 18.

Hayward’s will left half of his property to his three children and half to his wife. But there were no liquid assets and she was not left in a good financial position. Terrified, Pamela did not want to be 51 and unmarried. She invited herself to stay with Frank Sinatra in Palm Springs. He was wealthy, famous and always interested in attractive women of questionable virtue – particularly one with the famous Churchill name. But she was not the kind of permanent woman Sinatra wanted.

Frantic, she toyed with the idea of selling “Haywire” and accepted a handout from Agnelli, who continued to be a generous friend. She accepted an invitation to cruise the Mediterranean with Gloria Guinness, who casually reminded her that her old flame, Averell Harriman, had been widowed for over a year. Cutting her cruise short she headed straight to New York and telephoned Katherine Graham, proprietor of The Washington Post, and got herself invited to a large dinner she was having in Washington. Harriman would be there and Pamela arranged for them to be seated adjacent. This was only a month after Leland Hayward’s death. Pamela and the ageing Harriman talked through dinner to the exclusion of everyone. They were inseparable and married on September 27, 1971. They moved into his Georgetown house in Washington and she began taking over his life.

Harriman had a reputation for being mean with his money but Pamela changed that. She began spending huge amounts and, as he aged, her control increased. She sold not only Averell’s Manhattan house but also the family house in Hobe Sound. She bought “Mango Bay” in Barbados and “Willow Oaks” in Virginia. And then Averell began introducing her to his diplomatic and political world.

He took her to Moscow, where she met Leonid Brezhnev and his successor Yuri Andropov, the Secretary of the Communist Party. Two and a half years after they married she became a US citizen. She also began taking a keen interest in his political affairs and, using his money, added clout and charisma to ceremonial delegations. The Democratic Party in 1972 was having a rough time: Richard Nixon won a landslide victory for the Republicans that year and although Harriman lost a lesser campaign running to be Edmund Muskie’s Democratic candidate in New York State, Pamela found that she thrived on the exhausting political schedule the campaign demanded. She also found that she herself was drawing crowds.

Four years later, when Jimmy Carter led the Democratic return to power, Harriman and his wife were sent to several ceremonial delegations around the world including Panama and Zimbabwe, and to the funerals of the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, as well as those of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and President Tito in 1980. Harriman always kept in touch with the power base in the Democratic Party and found that Pamela added zest and glamour to otherwise mundane events.

After Carter’s defeat in the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan the Democrats found themselves again in the political wilderness. It was a party that desperately needed leadership. She had the name, money and connections and was an attractive sponsor and crowd pleaser. She was also organised and unwavering.

She was not interested in running for political office but knew she had the vigour to contribute something unusual to the flagging party. Eventually she was asked to form her own “political action committee”, which became a regulated channel of financial support for the party, and Harriman, now almost 90, stepped aside and offered his wife his considerable moral and financial support. Just as she had indulged, manipulated and pleased her men in her earlier life, she now used her considerable charm and financial power to raise funds for the Democratic Party.

Her Georgetown dinners became the hub of elite fund-raising, and supporters flooded to contribute to the cause. Insiders, outsiders, bankers, politicians and union leaders all mixed and created the wave that raised millions of dollars to put the Democratic Party back on the map. She made it fashionable. But while the Democrats made startling gains in both houses and governorships Reagan again trounced the Democrat Walter Mondale in the 1984 election. She kept steadily increasing her power base – not just with the Party but also with her husband. Averell Harriman, now 94 and in appalling health, completed his 50-page will in 1984 and left everything – except for the 23 paintings he had given to the National Gallery in memory of his wife, Marie – to Pamela. The remaining art, valued at almost $100m, was given to Pamela with the express undertaking that they be given to the National Gallery on her death. These included two Van Goghs - White Roses and Irises. Pamela was also to get all of their homes, and to be executrix of his estate – probably valued at about $150m.

Averell Harriman died on July 26, 1986. His funeral, attended by a host of political dignitaries, saw his remains buried next to his wife in Arden. However, Pamela had other plans: she arranged for his body to be returned to the funeral home in secret, refrigerated for two months and then finally buried four miles from the family plot in an isolated place in the Arden estate, where she could some day be buried with him away from the Harriman family who did not always welcome her.

Pamela now became the person she had always wanted to be – rich, powerful, and respected politically and socially. She had, for the first time in her life, complete control of her own destiny. She had also become a tireless and vital cog in the successful Democratic Party battle in 1986 for control of the US Senate. She also moved quickly to assume some of her late husband’s diplomatic responsibilities. She lost weight, had a succesful face-lift, changed the colour of her hair and began to look every bit a diplomat as she visited China and Istanbul. She also hosted visits by foreign dignitaries including Raisa Gorbachev – to the chagrin of Nancy Reagan, the president’s wife.

She now turned her attention to the 1992 presidential election. With the Independent candidate Ross Perot siphoning off Republican votes, Pamela Harriman was one of the first to realise that George Bush was vulnerable in his re-election campaign. Of several candidates vying for the Democratic nomination one stood out for her – the young former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. She had met him several times and although he had a questionable reputation as a womaniser, he was intelligent, charming, confident and, most of all, had stamina. He also had an organised mind and a clear understanding of Democratic policy. She liked him. With his vice-presidential running mate Al Gore, the presidential ticket looked promising.

All her political work seemed somehow to have fallen into place. She felt she had a winner and added to her diplomatic credentials with visits to Moscow, Uzbekistan and Kiev. She also wrote articles for the Washington Post. Their fund-raising never wavered and the nearly $70m raised for the Democratic Party in 1992 far exceeded that of the favoured Republicans.

On November 3, 1992, the Bill Clinton/Al Gore ticket won the election. Everyone knew that she had been the main muscle behind the victory. On November 20, in Washington, Pamela Harriman hosted a victorious reception party for the Clintons and nearly 100 of her closest political friends and allies. Everyone knew that the President-elect owed her something extraordinary: she had introduced Clinton to the Washington power elite and spearheaded the funding to revitalise the entire Democratic Party system.

President Clinton’s inauguration was held on January 20, 1993, but the restless Pamela, harbouring doubts about any reward, had to wait two months before the announcement that she was to be US Ambassador to France. The appointment was all she had ever craved, and despite her former chequered history she had - since marrying Averell Harriman - developed a political and foreign diplomatic dexterity almost unrivalled in professional circles. It was the apex of her social and political career.

Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman died in France on February 5, 1997, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage while swimming at the Paris Ritz hotel a day earlier. The morning after her death, French President Jacques Chirac placed the Grand Cross of the L�gion d’honneur on her flag-draped coffin - the first female foreign diplomat to receive this honour. President Clinton despatched Air Force One to return her body to the United States and spoke movingly at her funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, where more than 1,000 people - including many world leaders - paid tribute to the dissident courtesan who had earned her eventual respect as a peerless diplomat.

• Sir Christopher Ondaatje is an adventurer and writer resident in the Bahamas. A Sri Lankan-born Canadian-Englishman he is the author of several books, including Journey to the Source of the Nile.