She Made Friends and Kept Them: An Anecdotal Memoir
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
She Made Friends and Kept Them: An Anecdotal Memoir Details
From Publishers Weekly Cowles can boast of having known Everyone Who Was Anyone for the past 50 years, and she does. She lists in the index in this memoir more than 1000 of them, but only a few receive more than an obligatory paragraph no more exciting than a listing in Who's Who. And those who get fuller treatment are seen through a prism of banality and self-congratulation: she and the Queen Mother exchange hospitalities; Marilyn Monroe is a guest; Clare Booth Luce selects her to be "ambassador" at the coronation of Elizabeth II; she is in Africa on the very day and near the spot where Hemingway's plane was downed. Present at the signing of the Korean War armistice, she is cold though warmly dressed, and the landscape reminds her of a Braque painting. The trivia of her anecdotes are at odds with her once-flamboyant image when, as the former wife of Gardner Cowles, whose media empire included Look magazine, she parlayed his wealth and influence and her own ambition and talent into a career as editor, writer and painter, which provided entree into the social, artistic and political circles of the time. With his backing, she produced a spectacular magazine called Flair, which had a year's run in 1951 then folded. Now remarried, she has been living in England, where she paints, renovates old mansions, jets around the world and socializes with important people, as well as some "plain but interesting" ones. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Library Journal Cowles is a painter, writer, and sometimes diplomat (she was President Eisenhower's special ambassador to the coronation of Elizabeth II), involved in political and charitable causes. She was also editor of Look and Flair magazines in the Fifties, the latter featured in a lavish "best of" volume being published simultaneously with this book (which includes a chapter devoted to the history of Flair). Her memoir is a breathless recitation of gossipy anecdotes concerning her personal relationships with well over 100 famous figures. Alas, while this autobiography is certainly wide in breadth, it is equally shallow, at times being little more than name dropping. The book is divided into sections such as "Saints and Sinners" (e.g., Mother Teresa, Joseph McCarthy) and "Show Biz" (Marilyn Monroe, Peter O'Toole). Appropriate for large public libraries, but not an essential purchase.?Janice E. Braun, Mills Coll., Oakland, Cal.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Kirkus Reviews Cameos from the lives of almost 200 of the rich and famous are the excuse for another shameless display of self-absorption (after Friends and Memories, 1977) by a woman astonishingly oblivious to how (or even that) the other half lives. Cowles inhabits the kind of world where she can refer without embarrassment to her castle in Spain (one of three residences she shares with husband, Tom Montague Meyer, to whom she is volubly devoted here) and her personal maid (who saved the day when King Paul and Queen Frederika decided impulsively to stay for dinner on the cook's night off). Every gesture she reports with a straight face comes across the cultural divide as showing off, such as the party for the duke of Windsor she gave on the top floor of her New York City townhouse (``in the area normally used as our movie theatre''); even her considerable philanthropy sounds less like promoting good causes and more like promoting herself. She repeatedly refers to her appointment as Eisenhower's ambassador to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, at which Cowles, then editor of Look Magazine (and then-wife of its publisher) didn't miss a thing: ``I now never lose an opportunity to put fuchsia and orange flowers together.'' In a pageant of retrospectives that range in length from a scant paragraph to several pages, the inconsequential consistently wins out over the useful or even interesting: We learn, for instance, that Gloria Swanson hated salt, that Isak Dinesen loved Marilyn Monroe, and that Pat Nixon's high school ambition was to own a boarding house. Special affection is bestowed on Cary Grant, the queen mother, and President and Mrs. Johnson (whose ranch is memorably described as ``redolent of family life''). Eva Per¢n is the only recipient of serious vitriol. Trivial notes on the powerful and the famous. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Read more From the Publisher Few women -- or men -- have led such varied lives as Fleur Cowles. A highly distinguished journalist and editor of Flair, one of America's top magazines during the 1950s, Fleur Cowles is best known today for the magic realism of her paintings -- paintings peopled by jungle beasts, huge flowers and overgrown birds -- and for her many famous friends. It is these who fill the pages of her marvelous book. She recalls picnicking with Cary Grant in Spain, the weekend Marilyn Monroe spent hiding in her Connecticut home, her many trips as personal emissary for Eisenhower, the time she spent in Argentina and her relationship with Eva Peron. She writes about her experiences on the Korean war front. She includes many glimpses of her close friendship with Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother. Others who appear in her book include Margot Fonteyn, Isak Dinesen, Grace Kelly, the Dalai Lama, Harold Wilson, Haile Selassie, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Imelda Marcos, Harold Macmillan, Luciano Pavarotti, Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway and many more. Tough but never malicious, self-respecting but never self-serving, Fleur Cowles' book shares with us the unknown stories of the men and women who have shaped twentieth-century history. Read more
Reviews
Five stars-- this book entertains as well as educates even if the education is mostly on a superflous level.While on bed rest with one of my pregnancies, one of my girlfriends loaned me this. Like Kirkus Reviews indicates, it is full of triavialities and stupid tidbits. But what fun they are to read! No, I couldn't call up my girlfriends and gossip about these things-- not many 25 year olds know a lot about Gloria Swanson or have heard about the movers and shakers of two generations ago. It was fascinating to read of someone's life while in the midst of the people who were defining her era (including Fleur Cowles, herself.) Her contemporaries were true stars, people whose influence is still looked to by the flash-in-a-pan celebrities of today. She dined with Royalty when they were still powerful and knew people who had affairs that would make Bubba blush, but had enough class to be discreet about them.From someone who lives on "the other side" I cannot help but wish I had some of this woman's problems and scrapes, not to mention her panache at dealing with my own! Martha Stewart, on gracious living, doesn't hold a candle up to Fleur Cowles and for that matter-- I don't think that anyone does or ever will!