The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark (23 page)

The original Bellosguardo, an Italianate country villa, was replaced with a twenty-three-thousand-square-foot eighteenth-century French-style formal gray reinforced concrete mansion. Unlike the over-the-top excess of Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach mansion built a few years earlier by heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, Bellosguardo has an austere elegance. The airy house, with six large bedrooms plus servants’ quarters, features parquet floors, richly colored marble fireplaces (gold, green, rose), antique chandeliers sporting crystal and amethyst glass, as well as fanciful gold-plated bathroom fixtures in the shapes of dolphins’ and swans’ heads. The building is U shaped,
with a reflecting pool and orange trees tucked into the outdoor middle space between the two wings. The formal driveway features a mosaic made of black and white stones.

Upon entering the building at the center of the U, a small reception area leads to a long central hallway. Down the hallway to the left is the magnificent dining room with antique Sherwood Forest woodwork from the senator’s Fifth Avenue mansion, 167 distinctive panels, each carved with images including dragons, peacocks, oak leaves, fish, and horns of plenty. At the other end of the grand hallway—past the powder room and an Oriental-style carved-wood-paneled reception room with Chinese-themed paintings on the ceiling—is the right wing of the house and the large corner music room, with two Steinway pianos and Anna’s harp. An avid bridge player, Anna chose chairs and a table that could be used for a game, as well as plush couches and armchairs to accommodate guests listening to musicales. Portraits by Tadé Styka of a girlish Huguette in a pink dress and pearls, and a thoughtful-looking Andrée, grace the walls, as does a charcoal sketch by Italian artist Edmondo Pizzella of the serene Anna in an evening gown.

Next to the music room is the library, featuring ornate wood paneling from the senator’s home and stocked with leather-bound volumes by Voltaire, Molière, and Goethe. Anna commissioned what she called the “bureau room” next door, another wood-paneled room with Fragonard-style cherubs painted on the ceiling. She used this study to conduct correspondence and handle the estate’s business.

Huguette had the equivalent of a private duplex wing situated at the very end of that hall, the right-hand top of the U, with a small ground-floor kitchenette, a bathroom with a silver leaf ceiling, and a large closet to store her easels and canvases. Her large painting studio featured sixteen-foot-high ceilings and views of the ocean and the gardens. The room was austere compared to the rest of the house, without elaborate molding and with an oak-pegged floor rather than parquet. A staircase tucked into the studio led to the second floor and her bedroom, directly above the studio.

Her single bed, with an upholstered wood frame, was angled so that her first sight in the morning was the lawn and the rose garden, although if she looked out the window to the right she could see the
Pacific. Huguette ordered a dozen half-size Empire-style chairs to display her antique doll collection; she could line the chairs up against the walls of her bedroom, or put them in her adjoining dressing area. She rotated her selection; when the dolls were not in use they were stored in numbered boxes. Her bathroom included a gold-colored marble tub and a scale built into the floor, with the dial at eye level on the wall.

Anna had spared no expense for her own second-floor master bedroom, an enormous sea-green room with unusual curved molding, furnished with a bed with a carved wooden headboard, a velvet daybed, an antique desk and bureau, and a large standing mirror. A large balcony overlooked the ocean. Her bathroom included a marble bathtub large enough for two people. The suite included a dressing area as well as a second music room. In the built-in bookcases tucked into two closets, Anna stored her bridge books and medical literature, including volumes on surgery and eye diseases.

In the family quarters, one large bedroom was dedicated for the use of a family retainer (likely Anna’s social secretary Adele Marié). The three ample-sized guest rooms included a gold-painted luxurious haven with a spectacular chandelier made of porcelain flowers, as well as a masculine wood-paneled suite. Anna decorated the upstairs hallway with riotously colorful Hawaiian paintings with an Impressionist-style flair by Anna Woodward, a Pittsburgh painter who studied in Paris in the 1860s and then made her home in Hawaii.

The property boasted a tennis court, a thatched-roof play cottage named after Andrée, and a plant nursery. An Italian fountain with a marble nymph was installed, and Anna hired landscapers to create the largest rose garden in Santa Barbara, featuring every possible shade of pink. Concerned about privacy, Anna decided to sacrifice part of the view, planting one thousand trees directly in front of the house to block beachgoers below from peering up. A private beach below included wooden cabanas.

Huguette admired her mother’s vision. More than fifty years later, she would reminisce about the construction of the new Bellosguardo in a June 10, 1988, handwritten letter to Santa Barbara mayor Sheila
Lodge. “My dear Mother put so much of herself into its charm and had the satisfaction of knowing that during the great depression she was a bit helpful in giving much needed employment.” Once the rebuilt Bellosguardo was complete, the Clarks employed a large year-round staff: twenty-five gardeners, two full-time painters, a plumber, an English butler, a chauffeur, and a complement of housekeepers, maids, and chefs.

Anna began a practice that her daughter would emulate: loyal employees were taken care of for life. Most of the Clark staff continued to receive salaries after they retired, and even after they died, checks kept going to their spouses and children. Huguette was so grateful to a childhood nanny that she supported the woman’s daughter, Ninta Sandre, for decades, buying her a New York apartment, paying for nursing home bills and, finally, burial expenses. Although Anna was a long way from her impoverished adolescence in Butte, she still remembered what it was like to worry about money. Treating employees like extended family, she and her daughter were strong believers in rewarding devotion.

When Huguette returned to New York and her painting lessons in 1933, Tadé Styka began work on a haunting portrait that shows her seated in front of the easel, intent on her artwork. He was painting her to amuse himself; this was not a commission. Wearing lace-up leather shoes, a skirt well below the knee, and a blouse and jacket, she is totally focused on her work, with her brush on the canvas as she tries to capture an image. The back of the canvas faces the viewer so that one cannot see what she is painting. But off to the right is a well-proportioned, naked male model, posing with his back to Huguette.

Explaining his efforts to psychoanalyze his subjects, Tadé once told a journalist, “I do not paint the mask, I paint the character beneath.” This painting is simultaneously serious and humorous as Tadé reveals Huguette’s earnest schoolgirl determination to appear blase against the backdrop of the glorious sexuality of the male model. Tadé understood Huguette’s quirky mixture of shyness and adventurousness in a way that no one else ever had or would.

The artist was a quick study, giving his undivided attention to his subjects. As
Apollo
later wrote in its obituary, “It was a memorable experience to watch Tadé Styka at work during these short seances that left him exhausted, as after a fencing match, so rapid and violent were his lunges and strokes—while the sitter was hardly aware that the tediousness of posing was over almost before it had begun…”

Those hours at Tadé’s studio on Central Park South were what Huguette lived for—the fulfillment of her own creativity plus the chance to bask in the teasing and supportive friendship of her teacher. They had an ongoing game: making silly bets for a dime. Tadé saved a drawerful of Huguette’s dimes as an amusing symbol of how often he won. Tadé was still resolutely single, and Huguette fantasized that one day the relationship could turn to requited love. For her, it already was love.

One day in 1933, a visitor arrived at Tadé’s studio during Huguette’s lesson, a young woman who had heard about the famous Polish artist and wanted to see his work. A twenty-one-year-old model with high cheekbones, porcelain skin, and long wavy brunette hair, Doris Ford had posed for magazine fashion spreads and illustrations. A New Jersey native, her father was a naval architect and her mother was a pianist and painter. An art student herself, Doris had called Tadé in advance to ask permission to visit, and he invited her to come by at 1 p.m. Huguette took morning lessons and was usually gone by then, but today she was caught up in her work and her art teacher and lingered on.

When the elevator door opened and Doris walked into the room, she and Tadé took one look at each other—and it was a
coup de foudre
. Huguette saw the way they reacted to each other, and she knew at that moment that the spinning globe of her life had just tilted off its axis. She put down her brush, politely excused herself, and left for the day. Tadé then invited Doris to show her painting technique by taking a brush to his current work-in-progress, his portrait of Huguette at her easel. Doris was nervous but began to touch up his version of the heiress. It was a symbolic moment that Doris never forgot. “She was so astounded that he would do that,” says Wanda Styka, the couple’s daughter, who heard the courtship tale from her parents. “She
was so beautiful and he enjoyed it.” When Huguette decided to buy the completed painting several years later, Doris was dismayed to lose the artwork that held so much meaning for her, too. She propped it on a chair and snapped a final photograph, right before Huguette took possession.

Now Huguette had a rival for the painter’s affections. She and Doris would circle around each other in the coming years, the blonde heiress and the younger brunette fashion model, waiting for this sophisticated older European artist to make up his mind.

T
he screwball comedies of the 1930s buoyed the spirits of Americans during the Depression by featuring the foibles of the fortunate and the harebrained schemes of heirs and heiresses. A social butterfly escapes from a gold digger (
It Happened One Night
) only to fall for an out-of-work reporter, or a wealthy Boston Brahmin moonlights as a butler (
My Man Godfrey
). This escapist fare was a tonic against breadlines and the daily struggle of surviving.

The Clark family’s riches and romances continued to provide newspapers with similar grist for entertaining the masses. Everyone wanted William Andrews Clark’s money, accumulated over sixty years, and some were willing to go to court to pry away a piece of the copper fortune. The public had the fun of watching the financial hijinks play out as modern-day morality plays.

The pattern began before the stock market crash, when William Andrews Clark’s eldest daughter, Mary Clark Culver Kling de Brabant, was sued in January 1929 by her social secretary for $123,000 allegedly owed for “personal care in public and in private.” Mrs. Vernon Howe Bailey, Mary’s assistant and the wife of an artist, promised to deliver racy evidence and even call a psychic. But she suddenly dropped the lawsuit, and her lawyer issued an apologetic statement saying that “her fancied grievances were due to unfortunate misstatements and gossip by acquaintances.” The
Los Angeles Times
noted with disappointment,
SOCIETY TONGUES CEASE WAGGING AS SUIT FIZZLES
.

But nothing roused the newsroom symphony of chattering typewriters like the death of music lover William Andrews Clark Jr. On June 14, 1934, he had a heart attack at age fifty-seven, a day after arriving at his fishing camp at Salmon Lake, Montana. By the time the closest doctor, forty-five minutes away, arrived, it was too late. Clark Jr.’s last will and testament contained a startling bequest: the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and rare book collector left a large share of his $9 million estate to a seventeen-year-old boy, George John Pale, the son of his housekeeper. News stories implied that Clark’s affection for the teen had sexual overtones. The
Los Angeles Times
stated that George Pale had been Clark’s ward and “has been reared and educated by him”—an unfortunate word choice—with the expectation of a legal adoption. The Associated Press said that Pale had been Clark’s “constant companion” and had been with him when he died.

George Pale submitted personal letters from his benefactor to the probate court. Most were tame but in one memorable note, William Andrews Clark Jr. wrote: “My Dear Baby, You promised to write me… Do not forget. Anyway, I have a whip here and your fanny will be well spanked and you will have to eat off the mantel piece… I love you and I kiss you with all my heart, Sincerely yours, Daddy.” George Pale received $1.135 million. William Andrews Clark Jr. also left $125,000 and a Santa Monica home to the “Oscar Wilde type”—Harrison Post—who had been a source of concern to his older brother, Charles Clark.

In 1936, the family name was back in the headlines when Thelma Clark, the widow of William Andrews Clark III (aka Tertius) was sued for $150,000 for committing “love theft.” The lawsuit claimed that Thelma had seduced ship’s purser Michael Fitzpatrick on a boat traveling from Los Angeles to the Panama Canal and convinced him to abandon his marriage. Hot-and-heavy telegrams and a private detective’s report were produced during the trial. Thelma Clark lost and was ordered to hand over $30,000 to the aggrieved wife, Christine Fitzgerald, for a “love balm.”

Every tidbit about the Clarks and their money was treated as good copy. Huguette’s finances remained a semi-open book: newspapers
reported that she received $500,000 from her trust fund in 1935. The devoted daughter gave half of the money to her mother. This was an unimaginably large sum in the year that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the WPA to boost national employment, hiring workers for $41.57 per month for construction jobs fixing roads and bridges.

Although Anna and Huguette were maintaining a low profile in Manhattan, they adopted a decidedly more public one in Santa Barbara. Anna took a box at the polo matches, subscribed to concerts, and opened her home to out-of-town guests during Fiesta Week. Mother and daughter were listed in the California society pages as a matched pair, Mmes. William Clark.

In the summer of 1934, while Huguette luxuriated at Bellosguardo, her painting teacher headed for Europe, sailing into an art world controversy. Tadé Styka’s sensual portrait of actress Marion Davies had mysteriously turned up in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennial Exhibit, although it had not been one of the artworks officially selected for the show. Whitney Museum director Juliana Force angrily demanded that the painting be removed, arguing that since Styka was Polish, not American, his work should not be displayed. The mastermind who concocted this stunt was unmasked as William Randolph Hearst. The newspaper publisher was so eager for the painting of his mistress, Davies, to receive acclaim that he had secretly cut a deal with Count Volpi di Misurata, the biennial’s director, to sneak the Styka painting into the exhibit.

For Tadé Styka, the publicity only burnished his reputation. He was already flourishing; his portrait of President Roosevelt’s mother, Sara, had received glowing reviews. He and his younger brother Adam, an artist, were planning a joint American exhibit. The
New York Daily Mirror
’s society column ran a flattering item: “Teas given by Tadé Styka, the noted Polish artist, are among the most interesting in New York. The walls of his studio are hung with the portraits of beautiful women. His Japanese bartender makes excellent cocktails which vanish speedily down fashionable throats. One meets only worthwhile people beneath his roof.”

Perennial bachelor Tadé sent his new muse Doris Ford a telegram
inviting her to join him in Italy, with the reassuring promise that his sister and family members would be there to chaperone. “The person who delivered the telegram said, ‘It requires a response,’ ” says Wanda Styka, repeating oft-told family history. Her mother replied, “Yes, I would be delighted.” A newspaper item noted that Tadé Styka had taken Doris Ford to Rome to pose for murals that he was creating for the Vatican.

An ocean and a continent away, Huguette wrote to Tadé that July. In lyrical language, she described a vacation with her mother in Colorado, scribbling on the back of three postcards about her love of nature and rigorous traveling. Huguette had visited the home of Ganna Walska, an oft-married Polish opera star believed to have been the model for the screeching and untalented singer in
Citizen Kane
.

Although the artist had taken Doris with him to Europe, once he was back in New York in the winter of 1935, he began to squire Huguette around town at night, in addition to giving her painting lessons four times a week. His appointment calendar is dotted with their frequent
outings: taking Huguette to the theatre and a Fifth Avenue fashion show; a dinner at Brooklyn’s ornate 1909 Hotel Bossert on Montague Street with its romantic roof terrace and sweeping views of Manhattan; a movie date followed by dinner and music at the new popular French nightclub Versailles on East Fiftieth Street. “The management of the Versailles Restaurant continues to shoot at the moon,” the
New York Times
reported earlier that week, “… and on Monday, the trophy room will celebrate the addition of Libby Holman, the singer of sad, sad songs… a proper adornment for the luxurious spot.” Tadé also joined Huguette and her mother for dinner and a bridge game at 907 Fifth Avenue. He jotted down notes in his appointment calendar about her artwork, noting that on April 15 she had started work on a painting of a Japanese courtesan. Tadé hired Japanese female models so that Huguette could work from real inspiration. (He could not resist noting in his calendar that one had “beautiful breasts.”)

For Huguette, this was the life that she had dreamed of, painting the town with the man she had adored for years. Yet as fond as Tadé was of the heiress, his feelings were platonic. She had an appealing innocence compared to the sophisticated society ladies he was commissioned to paint. The lines between his work and his friendships blurred: he was often included in the dinner parties and social lives of his clients, the perfect continental extra man. He was the frequent escort of Mrs. Amanda Storrs, the widow of
Playbill
founder and theatre owner Frank Vance Storrs, and one of Anna Clark’s closest friends. He did not intend to lead Huguette on, but his flirtatious nature could not help but continue to give her hope.

Anna Clark was not a shut-in, either; she showed no inclination to remarry, but the wealthy widow had a new admirer: the radio personality Major Bowes. The pioneering entertainer’s
Original Amateur Hour
show on NBC had recently become a national sensation. Each week, more than ten thousand people applied to perform on his show in the hope of being discovered. Recently widowed and a Catholic like Anna, Bowes came from an impoverished background. This grammar school dropout had reinvented himself as a theatre owner and an on-air performer. (His name was Edward Bowes, but he assumed “Major” as a showbiz moniker.) Bowes was known for using a gong
to cut off performers, and his on-air catchphrase was: “The wheel of fortune goes ’round and ’round, where she stops, nobody knows.” An aspiring young Frank Sinatra appeared on the show with the quartet the Hoboken Four.

An art collector with paintings by Renoir, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt, Bowes became so fond of Anna Clark that he gave her a large, square canary diamond that she had mounted as a ring. He was four years her senior, much more of a contemporary than her husband had been. Bowes also presented her with the requisite autographed photo, which she displayed prominently in her music room along with signed photographs of celebrities she had known, such as the opera star Enrico Caruso. Anna also cherished a photo of Bowes in a more relaxed setting: playing cards while clad in an elegant smoking jacket and slacks.

Mother and daughter entertained together: on April 28, Tadé Styka went to the Clarks’ Fifth Avenue apartment to listen to a Major Bowes broadcast and then have dinner afterward with the radio host. The artist spent Thanksgiving with Huguette and Anna at the home of Anna’s sister, Amelia. The evening ended abruptly when Tadé made an emergency trip to the hospital for appendicitis. Anna sent her chauffeur to the hospital to bring him home several days later. On Christmas Day 1935, Anna and Huguette celebrated the holiday by hosting an intimate dinner for Major Bowes, Tadé Styka, and Amelia and her husband, Bryce Turner.

Huguette’s dance à deux with Tadé continued into 1936, with regular outings in addition to her lessons. On January 25, the couple went to see the opera
Carmen
; on February 15, he took Huguette to the Ziegfeld Follies to see Josephine Baker sing and dance and the Nicholas Brothers tap dance on stage. “Miss Baker cannot sing but sure can wear clothes. And roll those eyes,” pronounced
Variety
in a review of the show that appeared that very morning. “She looks best in an exotic scene called ‘5 a.m.’ in which she sings and dances with four shadowy black-masked men. It is a Balanchine ballet.” After seeing the Follies, the painter and Huguette dined at Maisonette Russe at the St. Regis Hotel.

Three days later, Tadé accompanied Huguette, her mother, and
her aunt to an art exhibit. On February 22, he took Huguette dancing at the St. Regis; on Sunday, March 22, he and Huguette went to hear a violin concert. On April 27, they dined at the Hotel Sherry-Netherland with her aunt; on May 6, he took Huguette to the French Casino to see the extravaganza
Folies de Femmes
show of dancing girls. (This risqué performance had become a must-see after a magistrate acquitted the theatre owners in late February—
CABARET MEN CLEARED
, announced the
New York Times
—of charges of “conducting indecent shows.”) When his brother Adam and his sister-in-law Wanda visited from Poland, the artist took them out to dinner with Huguette.

Throughout the 1930s, Huguette continued her summer pilgrimages to Bellosguardo. When she was leaving New York by train for Santa Barbara, the gentlemanly Tadé escorted her to Pennsylvania Station and gave her a corsage. She sent him a playful telegram en route: “Cher Maitre. Infinite thanks for your magnificent corsage which still keeps all of its freshness. I am tending to it in order to wear it while disembarking the train in Los Angeles. It was a hit in Chicago. Again, I wish you a good vacation. Regards, Huguette.”