George Hamilton's mom NLSTP
Jetg53
By SHANNON DONNELLY, Cox News Service
Thursday, June 10, 2004
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Longtime Palm Beach resident Anne Stevens Hamilton, mother
of actor George Hamilton, died in Palm Beach May 21, 2004. She was 93 years
old.
Mrs. Hamilton was born Aug. 27, 1910, in Hopkinsville, Ky. She was the daughter
of Carlos Crawford Stevens, a physician, and Mildred Hubbard Stevens.
Her mother, a Christian Scientist, was descended from one of the "FFVs" —
"First Families of Virginia." The Hubbards had married into the Randolph,
Pendleton, Perkins and Gaines families. She grew up in Blytheville, Ark., where
she attended a Christian Science school. From there, she attended Mrs. T.
Darrington Semple's School for Girls in New York.
"They taught me how to make tea," she once said of her time at the finishing
school. "But they should've taught me how to make a cocktail. That would've
served me better."
She also attended Principia in St. Louis.
The slender, raven-haired beauty eschewed the debutante season, the traditional
introduction to society.
"I didn't need to debut," she said in a later interview. "I already knew
everybody.''
Mrs. Hamilton, once described by a friend as "a cross between Auntie Mame and
Scarlett O'Hara," took few things seriously, least of all herself. Once
jokingly introduced as "Lady Hamilton," a New Yorker asked what her full title
might be. "Why, the Countess D'Arkansas," she answered.
She was married four times. Her first marriage, at 18, was to William Potter, a
Princeton alumnae who worked on Wall Street. Her second marriage, to Dartmouth
alumnae and society bandleader George "Spike" Hamilton, lasted seven years. Her
third husband was Carelton Hunt, a Bostonian who went to Harvard, and her
fourth husband was Jesse Spalding of Palm Beach, sportsman and Yale graduate.
"I married the Ivy League," she often said. "Bill was Princeton, George was
Dartmouth, Carleton was Harvard and Jesse was Yale."
All four marriages ended in divorce.
Between mariages, she spent some time in Hollywood, where her suitors included
actors Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan.
"So, I kissed the president. Big deal," she told an interviewer. "What do I
have to show for it?"
Always self-deprecating, Mrs. Hamilton professed to have few skills and
numbered her talents as "a love of life, fashion, entertaining, and marriage."
Although she refused alimony from all four husbands, she engaged in paid
employment only twice, working as a clerk at the Gabor family's New York dress
shop in the 1930s, and, in her later years, as a society interviewer for a
local television station.
She did charity work while married to Mr. Hunt. When she learned that letters
to Santa ended up in Boston's dead letter office, she enlisted the help of her
Beacon Hill neighbors and together they answered needy children's requests for
toys. The local newspaper recognized her efforts by nicknaming her "Mrs. Santa
Claus " — incurring the disapproval of her husband, whose Yankee
sensibilities were shocked by publicity of any kind.
After moving to Palm Beach, she said she tried to live up to the young society
matron image. "PTA wasn't my thing," she once said. "I went to a meeting once,
but I was totally overdressed."
Nor was the garden club on her agenda, as she noted, "I couldn't raise a flower
with a pair of tweezers."
Instead, she became known for her wit, glamour and personal charm.
"Everywhere my mother goes, it's a party," George Hamilton once told late-night
host Jay Leno. "She gets into a fender-bender, and next thing you know there's
a piñata and margaritas."
Mrs. Hamilton is survived by her sons George Hamilton of Los Angeles and David
Hamilton of Palm Beach; and her grandchildren Anne Marie Hamilton of Redondo
Beach, Calif., Douglas M. Hamilton of Rutherford, N.J., Ashley Hamilton of
London, and George Thomas Hamilton of Los Angeles.
Her eldest son, William Potter, died in 1985.
Graveside services will take place in Blytheville, Ark., on Monday. She will be
buried next to her parents and her son.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a charity of the giver's choice.
Quattlebaum Funeral Home is in charge of local arrangements.
Jetg53
By Thom Smith, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 11, 2004
In the procession of characters to thread through Palm Beach, few have been as
stylish, as outrageous and as refreshing as Anne Hamilton.
She was born of modest means, but her death in Palm Beach on May 21, after a
long bout with Alzheimer's disease, left a 93-year legacy of life over the top.
She was, as one friend described her, the personification of glamour. And
always good for a line.
A stunning brunette in her salad days, she admitted in 1990 that she was tired
of leaving the beauty parlor one day and seeing "a highway down the middle" the
next. So she opted for her natural gray.
"It shocks me," she said of her new look. "When I first looked into the mirror,
I didn't have a clue who she was. I've lost my old self, and I don't know
whether I like it or not, but my friends tell me I look 20 years younger, so I
guess that's pretty good."
A few weeks later, she bristled when The Star tabloid reported that her actor
son, George, had ordered her to have liposuction. "What upset me was saying I
was 83," Hamilton protested.
As for the liposuction: "George didn't have anything to do with it. I did that
on my own. And I had some little chipmunk pouches back here," she said,
pointing below her ears, "and I had (the plastic surgeon) move them up."
Three months later she celebrated her 80th birthday and soon after broke her
hip, of which she complained, "This isn't supposed to happen to middle-aged
women."
She described the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor to construction worker Larry
Fortensky as a "tacky" affair, because Liz was marrying too low.
Anne Hamilton never did. She was born in Hopkinsville, Ky., and grew up in
Blytheville, Ark. Her father was a physician. Her mother, from Virginia
aristocracy, sent her to exclusive private schools. At Mrs. Semple's Finishing
School in New York, Anne learned to make tea, "but they should've taught me how
to make a cocktail. That would've served me better."
Anne married four times, gave birth to three sons and quipped that she could
live without money but not without a "butler and a cook."
She never took alimony; she parlayed a small inheritance, some shrewd
real-estate deals and lots of ingenuity into a lifestyle many would envy. She
worked only twice -- as a clerk at the Gabor family's New York dress shop in
the '30s, and as an interviewer of Palm Beach theatergoers for WPTV-Channel 5.
She was a master at spinning straw into gold.
At age 18, she married Wall Streeter William Potter. She had a son, Bill, and
divorced during the Depression. She married touring bandleader Spike Hamilton,
had two more sons, George and David, and divorced after the war. She hooked up
with Bostonian Carlton Hunt for about a year, and later hitched and split from
Palm Beacher Jesse Spalding.
"I married the Ivy League," she said. "Bill was Princeton, George was
Dartmouth, Carlton was Harvard and Jesse was Yale."
After the third divorce and the deaths of her parents in 1947, Anne packed the
kids into a used Lincoln Continental and headed west.
"Mom said, 'We're going to go across country, and I'm going to visit every man
I've ever dated and see if I still love him,' " George Hamilton once told The
Palm Beach Post. "She planned to find her next husband this way because she
figured it's how she'd keep us all together."
Financing the trip with her inheritance and lots of bravado, the quartet
finally reached Hollywood, where she worked her way into movieland's most inner
circles, partying with the likes of Clark Gable ("We didn't go to bed, but I
was weak and willing"), Gloria Swanson ("She was divine, but what an absolute
health nut"), Ronald Reagan ("I dated a president, and I don't have a thing to
show") and Phyllis Diller ("Some people say she had a dirty mouth, but I
enjoyed it").
In the mid-'50s, she turned eastward again, heading to Palm Beach and Spalding,
of the sporting-goods family, whom she had met earlier in California. Some say
they each married for the money and both were disappointed. She would collect
George and David at school in son Bill's black Rolls-Royce.
"They were married a couple of years," son David said. "She told me she was
divinely happy for the first six months. For her that was the Good Housekeeping
seal of approval.
"But he was a nice man. He taught me how to fish."
With the boys grown up, Anne shuttled between Palm Beach and New York. In 1979,
during George's promotional tour for Love at First Bite, Anne met and became
fast friends with Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos. When her son Bill died,
it was Marcos who helped Hamilton through the bad times.
A story for the movies, and in 1990 Merv Griffin proposed making it. He had a
screenplay; George signed on to co-produce. All they needed was the right woman
to play Anne, no easy order. It hasn't been made.
No big deal. Until her health prevented it, Anne was often on the town,
attending theater, dining with her sons, regaling friends with her grand
stories. To gallery owner Skira Watson, Anne was "one of the most glamorous
women in the world."
On The Tonight Show, George told Jay Leno: "Everywhere my mother goes, it's a
party. She gets into a fender-bender, and next thing you know, there's a pinata
and margaritas."
"Palm Beach had so many of those rowdy types when I first came here," David
said. "But that group has disappeared. I still love it here, but they don't
make 'em like that anymore."
Anne may have been a party girl on the outside, but inside she was all about
family. "Long after she left Arkansas, she was still very supportive of
everybody," David said.
Many of them will join him and George and the grandchildren at the family plot
in Blytheville on Monday morning. Anne will be buried next to her parents and
her son.