Today I am here in no small measure because she was there.
Daughter-in-law to
Sir Winston Churchill and the most
famous courtesan of the 20th century. She
became the mistress of men while they
were married to other women. Many women
dream of marrying a millionaire and
wonder how Pamela Harriman did it not
just once but three times and along the
way left a long string of very powerful
and wealthy lovers. It is often said that
behind every great man there is a woman
and what is often overlooked is that the
woman behind Bill Clinton was Pamela Harriman.
Although born into an
aristocratic English family, the family's
fortunes had significantly diminished.
She saw that her chance of attaining
prominence lay in influencing prominent
men. Men as she recognized quickly
controlled everything in those days and
the only way for a woman to get ahead in
the world was through influencing those
men with real power. Men were willing to
jeopardize their relationships and
careers to be with her. She loved men and
men loved her and she knew how to please
a man. She was able to focus on a man and
make him feel that he was the most
important man in the room. She could
remember a favorite drink or make sure
he was seated comfortably. One conquest
said she wasn't coquettish, just very
sweet and charming and pretty. When
involved romantically with a man she
paid extremely close attention to his
desires, his preferences and went to any
lengths necessary to satisfy his needs
during the affair. Pamela obviously took
very good care of her men and when they
died she got every dime.
Randolph Churchill
She met Sir Winston Churchill's only Son Randolph on a blind
date and he proposed to her on the very
night they met. Pamela recognized the
value of having the Churchill name and
she and Randolph were married on October
fourth 1939 when she was 19 years old.
The Prime Minister often called upon
Pamela to be the official hostess at
political affairs. This gave her the
opportunity to meet a variety of noted
and notable persons. They produced a son
Winston a year later. Randolph was
already known as a hard-drinking gambler
abusive and a womanizer who gambled away
a fortune. In 1941 Randolph was sent to
Cairo for military service where he ran
up large gambling debts and continued as
a hard-drinking philanderer. But Pamela
was not without her dalliance s too.
During the war she often stayed with her
in-laws, meeting such prominent men as
Charles de Gaulle, Emerald Cunard and
Averell Harriman. The couple divorced in
1944 after five years of marriage.
He was a wonderful person. He was a very
enthusiastic, extremely intelligent. He
was great company but once a week was enough.
William S. Paley
He and Pamela engaged in a brief wartime liaison. He
was a wealthy businessman and
broadcaster who built the Columbia
Broadcast System, CBS, from a small radio
network into one of the foremost radio
and television operations in the US. He
regularly entertained Lucille Ball, Grace
Kelly and David O. Selznick.
Edward R. Murrow
An American journalist and
pioneer of television news broadcasting
He returned to London after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to do
live reports. It was then in 1943 that he
met had an affair with and fell in love
with Pamela who was still married to
Randolph Churchill at the time.
Pamela wanted to marry Edward R. Murrow
and he considered it. She followed him to
the United States but Murrow's wife at
that time gave birth to their only child.
And so he ended the affair and returned
to his wife and Pamela was alone again.
Aly Khan
He was a prince and Pakistan's
representative to the United Nations and
was elected a vice president of the UN
General Assembly. He served as chairman
of the UN's peace observation committee.
He was a billionaire and was movie star
Rita Hayworth's third husband.
Pamela learned from him the technique of
assuming a gaze of hypnotic interest
when listening to the opposite sex.
They became lovers in 1946 while he was still married.
Meanwhile Pam had already fallen
in love with Gianni Agnelli.
Gianni Agnelli
He and Pamela became lovers in 1948.
He was a very wealthy Italian
industrialist and principal shareholder
in the Fiat Motor Company. He installed
her in an apartment on the Avenue de New
York with a handsome allowance a Fiat, a
Bentley and a chauffeur. Pamela even took
to speaking English with an Italian
accent during their affair. She was
determined to marry him even embracing
Roman Catholicism. But Gianni made it
clear that marrying a divorced woman was
out of the question. The affair lasted five years.
Baron Elie de Rothschild
Conveniently just before leaving Gianni
Agnelli she began her next relationship
with Elie de Rothschild. He was a
famous ventnor, owner of Chateau
Lafite-Rothschild and a wealthy
aristocrat and he was a married man.
She met Eli in 1954 at a party in a Paris
restaurant organised by some American bankers.
She had hoped to marry him but
he never contemplated leaving his wife.
They became lovers and he provided her
with a lavish lifestyle to which she had
become accustomed.
She was schooled in art history and
winemaking during their affair but she
was spurned from official circles as a
woman without a husband or official
position. When the affair ended and she
moved out of her Paris apartment she
took everything with her including all
of his antique furniture.
Maurice Druon
He was a noted writer a French
novelist and a member of the Academie Francaise.
He was a staunch defender of
the purity of the French language.
She carried on her relationship with Maurice during her affair with Elie de Rothschild.
Stavros Niarchos
Also during this
time she began a relationship with
Stavros Niarchos a Greek shipping magnate.
In 1952 he built the first oil super tanker.
He was known as the Golden Greek.
His shipping rival and
brother-in-law was Aristotle Onassis.
In 1956 the Suez Canal crisis created a
demand for his ships and made him a billionaire.
In 1989 he purchased
Picasso's self-portrait yo Picasso for
$47, 850,000
He and Pamela became
lovers while he was married to his third wife.
John Hay (Jock) Whitney
The US Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1958
and was one of the wealthiest men in the world.
He inherited a 200 million dollar
trust fund when he was 22 when his
father died. He later inherited eight
hundred million dollars in today's dollars from his mother.
He was a backer
of the film Gone With The Wind. He was
prominent in New York's Cafe Society.
He was still married to his wife Mary
Elizabeth Altimas when met Pamela and
Pamela was still married to Randolph
Churchill when they had a wartime liaison.
Alfonso de Portago
His complete name was
Alfonso Antonio Vincente Eduardo Angel
Blas Francisco de Borja Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton
Marquis de Portago but was
best known as Alfonso de Portago.
He was the inheritor of the oldest title in Spain.
He grew up in Biarritz and was an
equestrian bobsled runner Olympic
competitor race car driver and spoke
four languages.
Leland Hayward
She began her affair with Leland Hayward in 1959.
She had given an ultimatum to Eli de Rothschild
and when it was rejected she
accepted Haywards offer to move with
him to New York. He was a married man and
famous Broadway stage producer when they met.
His accomplishments included South
Pacific, The Sound of Music, Mr. Roberts
the Old Man in the Sea and Gypsy.
On the same day after only hours of Hayward's
divorce from his wife was final, Pamela
became Mrs. Leland Hayward in a ceremony
taking place in Carson City, Nevada in 1960.
They maintained a lavish lifestyle
and traveled in hollywood circles.
Their marriage lasted until Hayward's death in 1971.
She was later accused by Haywards
children of grabbing all their father's money.
Averill Harriman
Pamela was having a
brief affair with Frank Sinatra when she
heard that her wartime lover Averell
Harriman's wife had died and she was
eager to reconnect to the man many
consider the love of her life. He was
fabulously wealthy, good-looking and an
international polo player. He was
President Roosevelt special envoy to
England and later Ambassador to Moscow.
In the 30 years since their wartime
affair Harriman had run twice for
President and elected Governor of New
York and served as a top adviser to
Presidents John Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson.
In 1909 Averell inherited a fortune from
his father who owned the Union Pacific
Railroad and Wells Fargo. He immersed
himself in American Democratic politics.
One day after Pamela's husband Leland Hayward died
she began her affair with Averell
and six months later they were married.
Averell was almost 80 at the time
and 28 years her senior. Pamela threw
herself into seeing to Averell's every
need maintaining beautiful homes in
Barbados, the Virginia hunt country and
in Georgetown.
They were married until his death in 1986 at which time Pamela
inherited a $115,000.
Her inheritance included a
Westwind private jet and properties
Willow Oaks, 414 acres of Arden real
estate including horse stables, Sands
Point acreage, Birch Grove, a
million-dollar sun valley cottage, five
homes, a fifty-million-dollar art
collection and ten million dollars in cash.
In less than ten years however she
had spent so much of it that Harriman's
heirs sued her. Significant legal problems
with Harriman's children would lead to
significant financial problems for
Pamela for the rest of her life.
She became a catalyst and focal point
for the Democratic Party hosting dinner
parties and attracting a who's who list
of prominent party members. She created
Pampac a political action committee
that raised money for Democratic candidates.
She had a knack for getting
people to give money and feel enobled
for doing so. She had reinvented herself
as a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party.
She spoke at the 1984 Democratic
convention supporting Michael Dukakis
and Al Gore's 1992 presidential campaign.
She then turned her attention to a young
governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton and
when he won the party's nomination she
raised 12 million dollars for the
upcoming election. Her reward for her
constant and significant support was the
ambassadorship to France.
President Clinton appointed her US ambassador to France in 1993.
She was one of the
easiest choices I made for any appointment
when I became president.
Pamela Harriman died of a stroke in Paris in February 1997.
President Clinton dispatched Air
Force One to bring her body home and he
spoke at her funeral in 1997 at the
National Cathedral in Washington DC.
We gather
in tribute to Pamela Harriman patriot
and public servant, American ambassador
and citizen of the world.
I will never forget how she was there for Hillary and for me in 1992.
The funeral was attended
by President Clinton, Al Gore and more
than 1,000 people including numerous
world leaders who mourned her passing.
Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman
20th century courtesan
A lot people who thought you were a gold
digger. I know but you know it never worried
me because when you're on your own
you're fair game or all those
sort of things if you're seen with with
a rich person and a lot of the people I
knew were very very rich.
We started talking and we started reminiscing and
it all seemed so natural.