Lady Jeanne Campbell -- her controversial OBITUARY
Hyfler/Rosner
and Nexis. But no one looked in newsgroups.)
Lady Jeanne Campbell (1928-2007)
Like, where is her New York Times obituary already?
By Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, at 7:23 PM ET
Those who lust for a New York Times obituary must satisfy at
least two prerequisites: They must be dead-very dead-and
they must have made news in the course of their lives. Bonus
points accumulate if the deceased lived in New York City,
died in New York City, was related to famous or wealthy
people, worked as a journalist, married somebody famous,
held a title of lady, lord, or viscount, or courted
notoriety.
Lady Jeanne Campbell (1928-2007), who died at the age of 78
on June 9, according to an obituary in the New York Social
Diary, qualifies for a Times obit on all counts. Although
the British press belatedly noted her death, Lady Campbell
has earned no U.S. press outside of the Social Diary.
Consider these bonus points: Campbell's grandfather was
press mogul Lord Beaverbrook. Her father, the 11th Duke of
Argyll, was a playboy. In 1956, as a favor to Lord
Beaverbrook, Time gave Campbell a minor photo department
job. The magazine's founder, Henry Luce, "became so openly
smitten with this cheerful redhead, 31 years his junior,
that rumors of the affair appeared in gossip columns," a
1991 Time piece reports. Campbell married her first husband,
Norman Mailer, in 1962 and had a daughter with him. They
divorced in 1963.
And these: Campbell reported for her grandfather's Evening
Standard, although former presidential speechwriter James C.
Humes didn't think much of her work. "Lady Jean [sic] never
would win awards for her journalism, but her libido, looks,
and love life with the famous might have earned her an entry
into Guinness's Book of World Records," he wrote in his 1997
memoir, Confessions of a White House Ghost Writer: Five
Presidents and Other Political Adventures.
The British press plundered Campbell's life and legend for
hot copy. Leading the pack was the Telegraph, whose lengthy
and salacious Sept. 22 obituary could be retrieved from the
newspaper's Web site and from Nexis as recently as
yesterday. But the story has apparently been purged from
both locations. The Telegraph obit exists in the Google
cache (Page 1 and Page 2 of the obit) and as a Sydney
Morning Herald reprint.
"Can there ever have been a courtesan to rival Lady Jeanne
Campbell," asked an item in the Observer on Sept. 23. "She
conquered Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro-in one year. Oh,
and as if to dispel accusations of left-wing bias, she also
availed herself of Oswald Mosley. Even Claus von Bulow, no
prude, found her a tad 'fresh.' "
How much of Campbell's hose-beast legend is true? In
England, journalistic standards are low, and anything
previously published is usually sufficiently true for the
purposes of republication. The Telegraph, Daily Mail, and
the Herald of Glasgow all source Campbell's fantastic
head-of-state (heh, heh) triple play to speechwriter Humes'
book. But how far can he be trusted? He appears to have met
her in 1960 on his way to the Republican National Convention
in San Francisco, which she was covering, and to have spent
limited time with her. Hume writes:
She reportedly slept with three heads of state within a
year, an alliterative trio-Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro
(JFK at her place in Georgetown in October 1963, Khrushchev
in his Russian dacha in April, and Castro in Havana in May).
The key word here, of course, is reportedly, which is
journalistic shorthand for "don't blame me if it's not
true." The British coverage alleges that her conquests also
included Douglas Fairbanks Jr., former Defense Minister
Duncan Sandys, and Randolph Churchill.
The New York Social Diary reports that Campbell was living
"modestly" in a Greenwich Village "small walk-up apartment"
at the end of her days. Talk about perfect obituary
material. What is the Times waiting for? The Vanity Fair
version? The Gawker take?
******
Do you suppose that the Times is hoarding the Campbell story
for its annual wrap-up of important dead people in the
Sunday magazine? Send your Jeanne Campbell rumors,
innuendoes, and lies to slate.p...@gmail.com. (E-mail
may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum,
in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer
stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned
by the Washington Post Co.)
Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
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