REVIEW OF STREISAND'S 'BACK TO BROOKLYN' CONCERT

Matt Howe, the site runner of Barbra-archives.com, wrote this review of the concert, which will air Friday night at 9 Eastern time on PBS's "Great Performances."


I was a very lucky person in 2012 (and March this year) to see this Streisand show six times! From the Dress Rehearsal in Philadelphia to her second show in Amsterdam, I was able to see the show grow, edit, and expand past the Brooklyn theme that is chronicled on Barbra's latest CD and DVD.

Back on October 11th and 13th, 2012, the excitement was palatable at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York where Barbra sang her heart out for an enrapt audience of fans.

Barbra's repertoire in Back to Brooklyn is less quirky than the 2006 show. Here, Streisand sings several classic tunes at the top of the show that illustrate why she is the best. The three songs right after her opening set are just perfect, and, frankly, illustrative of her status as a legendary performer: “The Way He Makes Me Feel” is Michel Legrand sensuousness; “Bewitched” shows why Streisand is a master interpreter of musical theater songs and standards (“He was cold; so what of it?”); and “Didn't We” gives us “the actress who sings” performing this soaring and bitter-sweet ballad.

The only thing Streisand can do to top this trilogy of butterness is to introduce us to Il Volo—three tenors who join her on “Smile.” The CD omits “Smile” but Il Volo do appear in the DVD and PBS special. (Although their solo set from the tour is cut from this Columbia Records release.) Chris Botti and Jason Gould also duet with Streisand. Gould's solo song from the tour, “This Masquerade,” is a bonus on the DVD.

Barbra's tribute to Marvin Hamlisch never fails to elicit tears and it works on all versions of Back To Brooklyn. (It's very special that they include the video footage of Annie Leibovitz photographing Marvin and Barbra in the back of the truck with the set furniture from 1994's The Concert!)

The CD departs from the format of the TV special because it utilizes audio of Barbra's Brooklyn neighbors from the1980s documentary I Remember Barbra to introduce the show and make the bridge from the first to second act. The CD — which is 72 minutes in length—also edits down Streisand's patter. (The entire I Remember Barbra is included as a bonus feature on the DVD.)

The second act of the show features Barbra in her beautiful coral-colored Donna Karan gown. “Here's To Life” made me cry every time I saw Streisand sing it last year, and it does here, too.

Back to the CD: listening to this show in audio-only mode, the Bill Ross orchestrations really stand out. The orchestra sounds truly gorgeous, and you can hear a certain piano line or instrument in the stereo mix. The CD is sonically strong and pleasing to the ears.

It's curious that this is only one CD. Past Streisand concert recordings have been 2-CD sets (The Concert, Timeless, Live 2006). Fans aren't missing too much here, however. The only Streisand singing cut from the CD are the Q&A snippets, “Smile,” and “Happy Days.” These are all on the DVD, of course, so it's hard to complain about their omission from the CD. (One wonders why there's no Blu-ray of the concert, though.)

The PBS special differs slightly from the DVD sold in stores. PBS takes a blackout after the Hamlisch segment; the DVD includes some patter with the audience about Barbra and “buttah.” Mostly, the PBS special edits for time—and will include segments not on this DVD of co-director Richard Jay-Alexander speaking about the show when PBS takes pledge breaks. (Watch Back to Brooklyn on PBS Nov. 29th. Check local listings.)

DVD director Scott Lochmus rejects some of the previous Gary Smith techniques for editing Barbra Streisand concerts, so this show has its own unique feel. Gone are fan interviews—and most of the overture! (I miss those rare photos shown during the overture. Seeing that huge kabuki curtain drop right before the Funny Girl overture began was pretty cool, too, but not included in the DVD.) But Lochmus captures some great audience shots, all bathed in colored light.

For this diehard fan, I found Miss Streisand to be in excellent voice on this tour—better than the 2006 tour, in my opinion. She sounds lovely on this package. I even hear that beautiful vibrato that was present in her high register when she was just starting out almost 50 years ago. Several press reviews have characterized Streisand's voice—particularly the high notes—as diminished. I don't concentrate on that, so it's not a bother to me. Simply put: It is one of the joys of my life to see and hear Barbra Streisand in concert. First and foremost to me are her talents as an entertainer and song stylist and actress. That being said, Barbra is still in excellent voice. If the critics are saying that Barbra doesn't sound like she's 31-years-old any more .... well, what other artist is still singing this well and touring at Barbra's current age?

She has no precedent.

The Back to Brooklyn CD and DVD and PBS special are historic—in that show business/musical theater/Tin Pan Alley genre that Streisand occupies. This is Barbra Streisand's seventh live album, and like she says, “It's not over till the fat lady sings, and I ain't that fat!” Back to Brooklyn —her latest live show—is top notch and was captured here beautifully.

CHANEL NO. 5'S DREADFUL MARILYN MONROE AD

For Marilyn Monroe to be the face of Chanel No. 5, as was recently announced, seems inevitable. There are two lovely photographs of her with a bottle of the perfume, and she famously replied "Chanel No. 5" when asked what she wore to bed. An ad using Marilyn's voice and image recently debuted. I don't know who created this advertisement, but Chanel should fire the ad agency and whoever approved it.
       Dior's spot featuring Marilyn (and Charlize Theron as Dietrich and Grace Kelly) is glamorous and exciting, shot in the Palace of Versailles' Hall of Mirrors and bathed in gold light. The CGI-created Marilyn wears the glittery gold dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blonds and looks gorgeous.
       That's how an ad featuring one of history's most glamorous women should look. But what do we get from Chanel? The ad opens with her name in small, blocky white letters on a deep black background. It looks like a death notice. Then we hear a scratchy recording of Peter Lawford saying her name as he introduced her before she sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK. This is followed by a tape recording of her explaining why she gave the reply she did about Chanel No. 5 ("I didn't want to say 'nude'.") This is the best part of the ad; the audio is something I've never heard before.
     But the rest of it! Just a series of brief, scratchy (again) B&W newsreel shots of her and some amateur color film shot by a fan on the streets of Manhattan in the early '50s. The images whiz by so quickly that the overall impression is a big blur. The lovely image of her dabbing some of the perfume on her bosom is used, but too briefly. The other image with the perfume bottle, in which she's lying languidly amid satin sheets, isn't used.
       Chanel ought to admit the ad's a mistake and put together a new one, colorful and glamorous, perhaps with Marilyn singing. "I Wanna Be Loved By You" from Some Like It Hot would work nicely--because isn't that why we wear perfume, after all?

Barbra Streisand Recalls The Day JFK Died.

Barbra's recollection of the day President Kennedy died

NOVEMBER 19, 2013, 8:48 pm

"I had just gone to pick up the first serious piece of antique jewelry I ever bought-- a beautiful Edwardian choker. It was a lot of money for me to spend ($750,) but I was doing 'Funny Girl' on Broadway, so I could afford it. In the shop, we heard that the President was gone. I was so stunned and devastated that I got in a cab to go home. Driving through Central Park, I suddenly passed Elliott Gould.. my husband at the time.. sitting on a bench. How did he get there? It was like out of a dream. I stopped the cab, and we just held each other. I never could wear that necklace."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRACE!

Grace Kelly was born on this day in Philadelphia in 1929. She would have been 84!

SHE'LL BE DOING BAR MITZVAHS NEXT!

Barbra Streisand plays Lincoln Center one night only for a $2.3M private concert

BY MARIANNE GARVEY, BRIAN NIEMIETZ AND LACHLAN CARTWRIGHT   

Tuesday, November 12, 2013, 2:00 AM

 

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AMIR COHEN/REUTERS

Barbra Streisand performed 10 songs at a pricey private Lincoln Center show. Above, Streisand during her summer concert in Tel Aviv.

 

• Barbra Streisand proved she means business by collecting a check for a cool $2.3 million for singing at a banking conference at Lincoln Center on Friday, Confidenti@l has learned.

The “Memory” singer was listed as the “surprise entertainment” at 2:45 p.m. on the schedule of investment firm Baron Funds’ 22nd Annual Baron Investment Conference at the Metropolitan Opera House.
She arrived under a cloak of secrecy in a black SUV with tinted windows that parked at the loading dock. And Babs got paid the whopping figure for what amounted to a miniconcert, one attendee says. She belted out 10 tunes, including “Memory,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and “People,” in just under an hour for the buttoned-up crowd. After her performance, she left just as stealthily as she arrived.
The audience was packed with more than 4,000 Baron shareholders, who arrived early in the morning for the all-day affair. Babs was the highlight of the event, which included presentations from business leaders and speeches by Baron Capital Group president Linda Martinson and CEO Ron Baron.
We hope none of them filmed Babs doing what she does best — she once threatened to sue former “Real Housewife of New York” Jill Zarin for taping her at a Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces fund-raising gala and posting the 30-second clip on YouTube.
Zarin was happy to take it down, tweeting, “Someone from Barbra Streisand’s company just called my store to tell me to take down my YouTube video or they will sue me. Is that nuts? Sorry guys. I took it down!”
Although Barbra was the queen bee at the conference, guests also heard numbers by the Counting Crows, Melissa Etheridge and Katharine McPhee.
While in New York, Barbra saw “Pippin” on Broadway and posed with Tovah Feldshuh and the rest of the cast after the show. Last night she picked up the 2013 Woman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award from Glamour Magazine at Carnegie Hall.
Babs’ rep wouldn’t talk about the hefty paycheck.
“I have no idea, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you,” he said.
Baron Funds declined to comment.

PRINCESS GRACE BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Grace Kelly Covers Tatler In Iconic 1955 Edith Head Dress (PHOTO)

      

She may have passed away in 1982, but Princess Grace is having a moment. The princess of Monaco is the latest cover star of Tatler, with one of her most iconic photos peering back at readers of the December 2013 issue.
The icy green dress on the cover is by Edith Head, the most influential costume designer who outfitted Kelly in movies like "To Catch A Thief." Grace Kelly wore the green frock to the 1955 Oscars and was later photographed in it by Life magazine.
Now it's landing on newsstands once again, as Princess Grace enjoys an uptick of popularity. The Philadelphia-born noble and actress is the subject of a new exhibit, "From Philadelphia to Monaco: Grace Kelly Beyond The Icon," at the Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. And just this week, Princess Charlene of Monaco, who's married to Princess Grace's son Albert, honored her mother-in-law's memory at the Princess Grace Awards Gala in New York City.
Charlene even wore green. Check out Princess Grace on the gorgeous, nostalgia-inducing Tatler cover below and see more at tatler.co.uk.

A timeless beauty:

ANOTHER HONOR FOR BARBRA!

Barbra is Glamour Lifetime Achievement Winner

(from www.barbra-archives.com) With a new (gorgeous!) photo by Russell James, Barbra Streisand appears in the December 2013 edition of Glamour magazine (out Nov. 5—or download the issue now in the Glamour iPad app here). Barbra wears Donna Karan in the photo; boots by Chanel.
In the article, Barbra offers five tips for young women: “One, find your passion. Find what you love to do. Two, trust your instincts. Three, stay true to yourself—people respond to authenticity, and they can smell a phony. Four, don't fear your self-doubt. Doubt can motivate you, so don't be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.”
And five? “Take risks. Don't stand on the sidelines. Get involved. It's your life. It's your country. It's your world.”
Fellow 2013 Woman of the Year, Lady Gaga, said this about Streisand: “She's such a pivotal figure in music. As a performer, she's always been so different from everybody else around.”
Gaga was also asked about Barbra in her December Glamour interview: “Yes, I've always admired her, and I always found her to be extremely confident in herself. I think it's the thing that I found the most amazing about her—her confidence.”
The 23rd annual Women of the Year Awards will be held at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Nov. 11.
You can read Barbra's Glamour interview online here.

HEAR MARY J. BLIGE-BARBRA STREISAND DUET!

http://www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=598398

"THE WAY WE WERE" BLU-RAY EDITION ON SALE NOW EXCLUSIVELY

I love "The Way We Were." I love the period ambience, the way Barbra looks in the hairdos and outfits of the forties, the wonderful love story, and the great acting of Streisand ands Redford. A Blu- Ray edition of the film is available now, but only at one web site:

http://www1.screenarchives.com/display_results.cfm

If you're interested, I'd act quickly, because it's a limited edition!

MARILYN STAYS HOT, HOT, HOT!

Marilyn Monroe is the new face of Chanel No. 5

Six decades after the late actress claimed she wore nothing to bed but Chanel No. 5, Monroe will become the face of the brand. Her photos will appear in upcoming TV and print ad campaigns for the iconic fragrance.

                                                                                    

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Marilyn Monroe dabs Chanel perfume on before the premiere of Tennessee Williams' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' in 1955.

Chanel has announced that images of the iconic American actress will be used in TV and print campaigns for its legendary fragrance starting November 17.
Although she did not appear in ads for Chanel No. 5 during her lifetime, Marilyn Monroe may have been the perfume's best ambassador. In 1952, when asked by Life magazine what she usually wore to bed, she famously responded that she wore nothing but the fragrance. The declaration went down in Hollywood history as an example of the famous sex symbol's witty charm, contributing in the process to the mystique surrounding Chanel No. 5.

Six decades later, Chanel plans to place the late actress in the spotlight in No. 5 campaigns.
At the end of 2012, just after bringing on Brad Pitt as an ambassador for No. 5, Chanel released "Marilyn and No. 5," a web video in its "Inside CHANEL" series. The clip expresses Monroe's affinity for the fragrance through archival images and a previously unreleased audio recording of Monroe discussing her famous quote.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/marilyn-monroe-new-face-chanel-5-article-1.1488509#ixzz2iBqiwYJI

PETER LAWFORD MARATHON ON TCM!

Well, they didn't do it for his birthday last month, but TCM is running a Peter Lawford mini-marathon today. They're showing It Happened in Brooklyn, with Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante, Just This Once with Janet Leigh, Dead Ringer with Bette Davis, and It Should Happen to You with Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. Check them out if you can!

Barbra Streisand on Mary J. Blige Holiday CD

Barbra has recorded a duet of the Disney classic “When You Wish Upon A Star” with Mary J. Blige for Blige's holiday CD, A Mary Christmas. Trumpeter Chris Botti is featured on the song, too. The track was produced by David Foster.
The CD will be released October 15th.
You can pre-order the CD from Amazon here.

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF PRINCESS GRACE'S DEATH

On September 14, 1982, a mysterious automobile accident took the life of beloved movie star and princess of Monaco Grace Kelly. Here is the chapter from my book Grace Kelly: The Secret Lives of a Princess, which is available in eBook format at Amazon, B&N, Kobo and Authoropolis.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  On the brilliantly sunny Monday morning of September 13, 1982, Grace prepared to leave Roc Agel, where she, Albert, Rainier, and Stephanie had been staying, for an appointment with her couturier in Monaco. She needed to have several dresses altered before leaving that evening for Paris with Stephanie. She loaded her brown Rover 3500 with luggage and laid out the dresses needing alteration along the back seat to prevent them from wrinkling. Grace, who did not enjoy driving, usually was driven by her chauffeur, Christian Silvestri. But when he started to enter the car, Grace—aware that there wasn’t room for three people in the Rover—told him, "That won’t be necessary." When Silvestri reminded Grace of her fear of the tortuously winding road between Roc Agel and Monaco, she told him jokingly, "You can run behind us."
At around nine-thirty, the Rover, with Grace at the wheel and Stephanie beside her in the passenger seat, left the Grimaldi property and ventured out onto County Highway 53. The twisting road has over fifty sharp turns, many of them hairpin, and Grace negotiated them at a snail’s pace. During the last five miles, truck driver Yves Raimondo was directly behind the Rover. He watched it make one turn, then another, without incident. But, about two hundred yards before the final and sharpest curve, Raimondo saw the car in front of him zigzag so badly that it almost sideswiped the mountain rocks on the opposite side of the road. Assuming "a lack of attention," Raimondo sounded his horn and, as he expected, the Rover righted itself as it continued down the roadway. Then, to his growing horror, he realized that the car was not slowing down in anticipation of the dangerous turn ahead. "The corner came up," he later said. "I did not see it slow down . . . the brake lights didn’t come on . . . she did not even try to turn and I had the impression that she was going faster and faster . . . [the car] disappeared over the edge."
      All of the curves on the Moyenne Corniche have crash barriers, but this one, unlike the others, extends only halfway, because at that point a narrow dirt road runs off the main roadway at right angles. Grace’s car barreled straight ahead, brushed against the edge of the barrier, passed over the entrance to the roadway, and careened off the hillside. It flew a few feet in the air, then crashed through thick underbrush and somersaulted several times before landing on its roof at the edge of a vegetable garden. The police photographs taken immediately after the accident reveal that the car’s right side had been crushed flat in the fall down the hillside; the left-hand, driver’s side of the car wasn’t as badly damaged, and the door had popped open. Steam poured out of the car’s radiator. It was 10:05 A.M.
Stephanie, injured but conscious and able to move, crawled out of the left-hand side of the car just as several residents of the area arrived. Her first words were, "Help my mother . . . My mother is in there—get her out!" Grace was lying on her back amid the car’s jumbled seats, her feet toward the front windshield and her head resting against the back window. There was little blood, but she was only half-conscious and did not respond to shouts.
       Stephanie wandered to the steps of the nearby farmhouse, sobbing to the occupants that they must call her father. They didn’t recognize her and asked who her father was. "He’s the Prince. I’m his daughter, Stephanie, and maman is in the car." Calls were made to the gendarmerie and to the palace, and within five minutes two ambulances arrived. The attendants saw that there was no way to extract Grace from the car except to smash the rear window and pull her out through it; they did so. She was obviously very badly injured. Her open eyes were glazed over, a gash ran across her forehead and her right leg lay at an odd angle. She did not respond when spoken to.
      Grace and Stephanie, each in a separate ambulance, were rushed to Princess Grace Hospital. Rainier and Albert arrived shortly afterward but were not allowed to see them. Stephanie, the doctors discovered, was suffering from shock, a concussion, and a vertebra fracture that had come perilously close to paralyzing her. Grace’s reactions to light and other stimuli were tested and were negligible, indicating severe brain damage. She was placed on a life-support system, and Dr. Charles Chatelin, head of surgery at the hospital, began four hours of surgery to treat her external wounds—a broken collarbone, broken femur, fractured ribs, severe gash in the forehead, and numerous cuts and bruises. Internally, Grace had sustained damage to her thorax and had a collapsed lung. Chatelin opened both her thorax (to remove blood and to bring air to her lung) and her stomach (to treat internal bleeding).
       Her condition continued to deteriorate, however, and her electroencephalogram indicated she was falling into a coma. Dr. Chatelin and Dr. Duplay, head of neurosurgery at Nice Hospital, who had joined his colleague at Grace’s side, realized that a CAT scan of her brain would be necessary. Princess Grace Hospital did not have the machine to do this; the only one in the area was owned by Dr. Michel Mourou in Monaco. Nearly thirteen hours after the accident, Grace was taken to Dr. Mourou’s office on a stretcher. The elevator to his suite wasn’t big enough to accommodate the stretcher, so Grace had to be carried up two flights of stairs. The scan was administered and revealed an area of massive bleeding deep in her brain that had caused extensive damage, and a smaller area of bleeding in the temporal lobe that, the doctors hypothesized, had occurred just before the accident. Grace, they concluded, had suffered a stroke, which may have precipitated the accident, and had sustained such severe brain damage that she was unlikely to live. If she did, she would never again have use of her faculties. Grace was returned to the hospital named for her and was put back on life-support systems as her husband and children stood vigil and prayed for a miracle.
       No one but those closest to the family knew the seriousness of the situation. Within hours of the accident, members of the world media descended on Monaco, eager for any detail. Nadia LaCoste, whose seasoned handling of the press had kept many another situation under control, was on vacation, and in her absence the job fell to an inexperienced member of the Grimaldi household. This, it turned out, made a bad situation worse. Pressed for some official word on Grace’s and Stephanie’s conditions and the reason for this seemingly unfathomable accident, the palace aide was unable to get the information he needed, either from Grace’s doctors or from Prince Rainier. Wanting to protect his Prince, and his own job, the aide recalled Rainier’s complaint about press sensationalism: "You have a bump with your car. Five minutes later it has become a bad accident. Next it is really dramatic: the car is wrecked and you are injured. It ends with you being thrown out into the road and killed."
       Unwilling to give the press anything "really dramatic," the aide released an unofficial "official statement" that was inaccurate and misleading. Grace, it said, had suffered only some broken bones but "strict observation is necessary to diagnose any secondary complications," and Stephanie had suffered just some bruising. As to the matter of what caused the accident, the Monaco communique was a total fabrication. Perhaps assuming the only logical reason for such an accident must be mechanical failure, Rainier’s aide wrote in his release that Princess Grace had "ascertained a brake failure."
       The communique, in the light of subsequent events, gave rise to suspicions among newspeople that there had been a cover-up of the real facts surrounding the accident. Within the next few days, rumors became rampant: Stephanie, under the legal driving age, had actually been driving the car (this rumor was given credence by reports from the first people who arrived at the crash site that Stephanie had crawled out of the driver’s side of the car); Grace had been driving but she and Stephanie had had a violent argument that led her to lose control; Grace had left the palace in a rage after a fight with Prince Rainier and was in no condition to drive; the Rover had been tampered with by the Nice Mafia because Grace had fought to keep them out of Monte Carlo; the car had been whisked away by the palace before the authorities could examine it in order to conceal evidence; Prince Rainier had refused to allow the police to inspect the vehicle.
       There is no way—short of a full explanation from Stephanie, which has not been forthcoming—to know what actually took place within the Rover on that tragic Monday. The official version is that Grace suffered a stroke and lost control of the car. What Prince Rainier has said Stephanie told him, however—"Mommy panicked. She didn’t know what to do. She lost control"—would seem to work against such an explanation. Had Grace suffered a stroke, she would likely have blacked out and been unable, as Raimondo testified, to right the car after hearing a horn blast. Stephanie could have done so, but if she had, why didn’t she also either press down on the brakes or attempt to maneuver the curve ahead?
       There is so little plausible explanation for the fact that the Rover’s brakes were never used and the car’s trajectory was straight off the cliff that even the argument scenario doesn’t convince; no matter how violently she and Stephanie may have been fighting, Grace surely would have realized that the curve was ahead and been cautious, especially after the near-miss of the zigzagging. The mystery, which may never be solved, is so compelling that more and more fantastic explanations keep popping up. In fact, a Paris stringer for one of the American tabloids, Patrick Wilkins, says, "The consensus among everyone I’ve talked to here in Paris is that Grace was so beside herself with all her problems, and so furious with Stephanie, that she just didn’t care what happened to them anymore. A lot of people are convinced that Grace’s death was a suicide."
       That is the one theory that can never be proven, and we may never know the truth of any of them. But other rumors can be laid to rest. Capt. Roger Bencze, who conducted the official investigation into Grace’s accident as a member of the Mentone police force (the town in which the accident occurred) and is now a member of France’s national gendarmerie, has spoken out for the first time for this book. With the confidential investigation file’s depositions and photographs in front of him, Captain Bencze stated firmly that he believes the official version of the accident to be essentially correct, although he adds that "it was wrong for the palace to downplay the injuries."
       Bencze stressed that "there was never any attempt to interfere with my investigation. I examined the car at four-thirty on September 13, in the company of the district attorney of Nice and the chief of police of Monaco. My inspection had been approved by the palace and no one tried to influence it. I found that the car had absolutely no mechanical problems. There was no evidence that there had been a fire, as was later suggested, and it was clear that the only possible way for Stephanie to exit was through the driver’s side of the car. The fact that she crawled out of that side would in no way indicate that she was driving—it was the only way she could have gotten out." Examination of the photographs confirmed Bencze’s statements.
Bencze believes that the evidence available could support the explanation that Grace suffered a stroke. "She might have lost awareness momentarily, as if she was falling asleep, and the sound of Raimondo’s horn could have roused her. Then, as the effects of the stroke grew worse, she could have blacked out just before going over the cliff.
       "There is no way of knowing for sure, of course, but in my official capacity—and just as a human being—I’m satisfied that there isn’t all that much mystery involved in Princess Grace’s death."
       The original communique from Monaco—that Grace had been injured but was doing well—appears to have been not so much subterfuge as uninformed wishful thinking, because it wasn’t only the press who were given this optimistic news, but Grace’s intimates as well, including Nadia LaCoste—who was told that the situation wasn’t bad enough to warrant her immediate return—and the Kellys. Later, reports appeared that Grace’s family in Philadelphia was "furious" with Prince Rainier for "keeping from us" the extent of Grace’s injuries. Lizanne denies this. "When the palace called me right after the accident," she says, "they didn’t know how serious it was. They thought she just had a broken leg, that it was very superficial. They didn’t know how serious the head injury was. When I spoke to Rainier the day she died, he told me it was very serious. But I don’t think even then that he knew just how serious it was. He never kept anything from us."


Grace lingered, falling slowly into an ever deeper coma, throughout the night and morning of September 13-14. Her family —including Caroline, who returned from a trip to England at noon on Tuesday—kept a vigil at her bedside, anxiously conferring with the doctors, embracing one another, trying to hold on to a vestige of hope. At 6 A.M. the oscilloscope monitoring Grace’s brain activity indicated that she was, in all but the most technical sense, dead. Her children kissed her, then left their father to be alone with his wife. At noon Prince Rainier gave the doctors permission to cease artificial life support. At 10:35 that evening, Grace died.

TODAY IS PETER LAWFORD'S BIRTHDAY!

He would have been 91. In honor of the day, I have culled an excerpt from my book Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept The Secrets that describes the circumstances surrounding his birth (hint: there was a breath of scandal). I hope you enjoy!

Friday morning, September 7, 1923, dawned blustery in London, the first chill of autumn sweeping through after a warm late-summer rainstorm. Inside the gracious row house at 17 Artillery Mansions in Victoria Street, May Aylen, the wife of Ernest Vaughan Aylen, a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, lay in her oak-paneled third-floor bedroom and waited to become a mother. When she felt the first of a series of sharp labor pains, she summoned Miss Hemming, the squat, earnest Royal Red Cross nurse she had retained to help her with the delivery.

 

The labor, excruciatingly painful, lasted for hours, complicated by May’s slim hips and the fact that this was the nearly forty-year-old woman’s first pregnancy. She bore the pain as long as she could, but when Miss Hemming left the room to summon the doctor, May reached under her pillow, pulled out her husband’s service revolver, and put the cold steel barrel into her mouth. Just as she was about to press the trigger, Miss Hemming raced back into the room and snatched the gun away from her.

 

“Such agony!” May later said of the labor, but it was nothing compared to her suffering during the delivery itself, which didn’t come until the late afternoon. The baby was large — nine and a half pounds — and in the breech position inside May’s womb. For nearly twenty minutes the doctor struggled to pull the infant — a boy — through May’s cervix, trying not to injure him, tugging at his feet as carefully as possible. When the child’s head was finally freed the doctor saw that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and had almost choked him. The baby was listless, his left arm apparently paralyzed, his color poor. Out of earshot of Mrs. Aylen, the doctor told Miss Hemming, “He’ll be dead before midnight.”

 

“I wasn’t going to let that baby die,” Miss Hemming said years later. While his exhausted mother slept, the nurse labored over him most of the night, massaged his limp arm, rubbed and patted him, splashed him with brandy to get his circulation going. As dawn broke the next morning, the child revived, and he cried lustily as Miss Hemming handed him, bundled in a blue blanket, to his mother.

 

May Aylen was not overjoyed at the birth of her son. “I can’t stand babies!” she

said years later. “They run at both ends; they smell of sour milk and urine.” For the sixteen

years of her marriage, she had refused Major Aylen’s pleas that she give him a child. 

When May finally did allow herself to conceive early in December 1922, it was not because she longed for the rewards of motherhood; nor was it so that she could make her husband’s fondest wish come true. No, this baby had been planned with an altogether less altruistic goal in mind.

Ernest Aylen was not present when his wife gave birth, because he knew the baby was not his child. The boy’s father was Aylen’s fifty-seven-year-old commanding officer, Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Lawford. As May had hoped, the birth of her baby — she named him Peter — would eventually result in her marriage to Sir Sydney. At that point, May, an inveterate social climber, would realize a lifelong dream, a goal so important to her that she had allowed herself to become pregnant despite the dangers for a woman her age and her abhorrence of children. As Sydney Lawford’s wife, she would be immediately elevated from merely Mrs. Ernest Aylen to Lady Lawford. And she would revel in what she called “this handle” for the rest of her life.