Illuminating Legends
The New York Social Diary recently did a feature on former adman great, Peter Rogers. While the profile focused on his luxurious home in Kent, Connecticut, the lure of the piece for me was his past, an unconventional and highly-charged reign, as a highly successful and controversial advertising executive (he avoided Madison Avenue’s incestuous inner circle like the plague noting “most people turn out anything to make a buck”).
A man after my own heart — straight out of the Don Draper school of advertising. Among his many notable campaigns, the one he will, undoubtedly, be most remembered for is one of the longest running in ad history, the Blackglama fur “What Becomes A Legend Most.”
As the writer for NYSD was led through a tour of Rogers’ secluded palatial estate, one of the owner’s most cherished memorabilia caught his eye in the master bedroom. It was a silver framed Blackglama Ad of Lillian Hellman posing with a cigarette and an inscription that read, “To Claudette – I owe it all to you.”
Naturally, there was a story. As it turns out, Rogers, who was personally on site to supervise and hand-hold the most legendary and iconic celebrities of the time, from Joan Crawford to Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood to Gloria Swanson, always had a story.
Following are three Diva tales from Lillian Hellman, a dramatic departure from the glamorous starlets who preceded her, to the sultry Marlene Dietrich, and the effervescent Judy Garland.
Peter’s memories are illuminating, detailed, and, befitting a gentleman, wisely, circumspect in letting their human seams show.
Lillian Hellman, one of my girlhood heroines, (I’ve read all of her memoirs, An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time only to learn after her death in 1984 that much had been fictionalized), appeared in the Blackglama ads in the seventies.
Originally, Ginger Rogers had been slated to pose in the fabulous $7,000 fur but on the day she was scheduled to appear, she staged a no show. (Suffering from star sulking, no doubt). With photographer Bill King and makeup master Way Bandy standing by, Peter’s calls to her agent proved futile. In a last ditch effort, he contacted a close friend and former Blackglama modeler, Claudette Colbert, and told her of the dilemma, asking if she might find a substitute…immediately.
The lovely and always resourceful Claudette told him she was about to go to lunch with Lillian Hellman. Would she do? Peter loved the idea. Less than an hour later the phone rang. It was Claudette. “There’s a legend here, and she’d like to speak with you.” Hellman got on the phone. “When?” she asked. “How about after lunch,” he answered. “I’ll be there.”
It proved an inspired choice. The picture rejuvenated the campaign. Like most women, Lillian Hellman, a far from comely “serious” writer/intellectual, had a vain streak and loved the idea of being immortalized as a “Legend.” Immortalized she was. Bill Buckley, one of Hellman’s arch-detractors adorned the cover of his famed magazine with the photograph, condemning the frivolity of it all. She loved it.
The response was immediate with letters from fans and foes pouring in. Most loved it. Others, not so much, as one well-intentioned writer observed: “How wonderful you did Bert Lahr.”
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One can only imagine how you corral the sensational and obsessively reclusive Marlene Dietrich for an ad campaign. This was, after all, the woman who agreed to participate in a documentary of her life, and then refused to be filmed. Curiously, it was made and met with an Academy Award nomination for best documentary of 1984 by actor/director Maximillian Schell who creatively used a montage of photo stills and recorded that magic smokey, world-weary voice of hers that Ernest Hemingway once remarked, “if she had nothing more than her voice, she could break your heart with it.”
After the first twenty-five Blackglama coats and capes I’d sent to Miss Dietrich’s apartment were promptly rejected, I decided to present the next three in person. Surely I could sell her on posing in one of them!
I arrived and rang the bell and the door opened about an inch. “I’ll show these to Madame, “ a heavily accented voice informed me. A woman yanked the coats from my hands and proceeded to slam the door in my face. I waited in the hallway, feeling as though Speedy Messenger Service had just informed me I was through.
Moments later, all three coats were handed back along with their carrying boxes. I packed them up and left, feeling certain this photo session was never meant to be. Somehow, the great Richard Avedon intervened convincing the fabled star that this campaign wasn’t about the coat, but the legend. Amazingly, she agreed to pose.
Three cancellations later (called on account of rain despite the fact this was an indoor shoot), she arrived at the studio in her own limousine, already made up and ready to go.
“Dahlink, bwing me a miwwoh.“
An enormous mirror was produced instantly. Standing, peeping into it, she personally arranged every hair on that coat until the image was just right.
“Now,” she commanded. Avedon clicked.
“Bwing me a stool.” It was done. Seated, the regal actress rearranged the fur, crossed her legs and pulled the coat back to reveal those famous limbs.
Her agent gasped. I gasped. I think even Avedon was surprised. Later the agent told me she’d been offered $150 to pose for a hosiery ad just three days earlier and had refused. When the session was over, I thanked her and told her how exciting the shooting had been for us, especially since we’d manage to capture those beautiful legs.
“Dahlink,” she told me “the legs are not so beautiful. I just know what to do with them.” Spoken like a true star!
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Peter’s account of Judy Garland’s photo session with Richard Avedon in 1968 has all the elements of what we’ve come to expect of the lives of the rich and famous, usually lived on the edge.
“Managing” Judy Garland turned out to be a challenge. She had stayed up most of the previous night, joining Tony Bennett at his performance at the Waldorf and visiting with him afterward. When I called for her the next morning to take her to Avedon’s studio, the hotel room was a disaster, littered with empty vodka bottles and feathers from a pillow fight.
He goes on to recount that this was probably routine for Miss Garland since her reaction was not that of a weepy, apologetic, broken down actress with a horrendous hangover, but that of a prized champ preparing to go into the ring. Marshaling the grit and determination that seemed to define her, she pulled herself together in one fell swoop, patiently sitting through the tedium of hair and makeup, bounding out of the chair and in front of the camera, looking absolutely “terrific.”
So sporting was she, in fact, that she sang along with one of her records during the photo session
entertaining one and all. Ultimately, however, it was decided that a non-performing shot “somehow” suited her, Rogers remembered, adding, “it seemed to capture the Garland image more poignantly.”
Miss Colbert and Ms Hellman lunching?
how fabulous of each of them.
Thank you for the joy I had reading your post.
I, too, love those stories of former icons we tend to know individually. To learn of friendships
and, ultimately, situations that arose from them (Hellman appearing in the ads) is truly the
stuff of lore.