Wendy Reves ; Model, Riviera society hostess who captivated Sir Winston Churchill
Hyfler/Rosner
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/03/2007 Telegraph
Wendy Reves, who has died aged 90, became a celebrated
society hostess on the Côte d'Azur after she and her
husband, Emery Reves, bought the magnificent Villa La Pausa
at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, above Menton; it became a
favourite retreat of the elderly Sir Winston Churchill and
home to a valuable art collection.
A fragile blonde beauty with a taste for pastel
colours and a fund of down-to-earth Texan wit, as Wendy
Russell she had become famous during the 1940s as a model in
New York and Paris, appearing frequently in Vogue and
Harpers Bazaar; she is credited with making modelling
respectable in New York.
In 1948 she met her Hungarian-born future husband
Emery Reves, a writer, publisher and art collector. Before
the war Reves had founded the anti-fascist Co-operation
Press Service, which syndicated articles written by leading
political figures in newspapers around the world; one of his
contributors was Winston Churchill.
In 1945 Reves wrote Anatomy of Peace, in which he
called for the establishment of a world government and a
global rule of law. The book was described by Albert
Einstein as "the political answer to the atomic bomb", and
it became a bestseller, selling 800,000 copies in 30
languages.
After the war Reves made a fortune from brokering the
memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, Montgomery and other
wartime leaders to newspapers and magazines around the
world, becoming, in the process, their close friend and
adviser. He helped Churchill to organise the publication of
his war memoirs and secured the publication rights outside
Britain. Later he did likewise with Churchill's History of
the English Speaking Peoples.
In 1954 he and Wendy bought La Pausa, a white marble
villa built in the 1920s by Bend Or, Duke of Westminster,
for his mistress Coco Chanel. Set among olive groves and
lavender fields high above the Mediterranean, it was an
idyllic place, and under the Reveses became a centre of
Riviera social life; guests included Greta Garbo, Somerset
Maugham, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, the
Duke of Windsor, Aristotle Onassis and Konrad Adenauer.
La Pausa boasted Impressionist and post-Impressionist
pictures, Renaissance jewellery and a number of fine
16th-century Spanish rugs. Visitors were required to have
the soles of their shoes rubbed down by a major-domo as they
entered the house.
During the 1950s Churchill became so besotted with
what he called "Pausaland" and its charms that he settled
into the house for weeks, sometimes months, at a time.
Usually accompanied by a couple of secretaries, a detective
and a butler, Churchill spent some 400 days at La Pausa
between 1956 and 1960. Indeed, he became such a local
fixture that the mayor of Roquebrune declared him an
honorary citizen. During Churchill's visits the Reveses
would engage a star chef and lay on lashings of brandy,
champagne and Churchill's favourite Havana cigars. "They
have devoted themselves to my comfort in every conceivable
way," Churchill wrote to his wife, Clementine.
However, the main attraction for Churchill was La
Pausa's charming chatelaine. In a diary entry for June 9
1956 Noel Coward noted: "Lunch at Roquebrune with Emery
Reves, Wendy Russell, the most fascinating lady, Winston
Churchill and Sarah [Churchill's daughter]." Churchill, he
noted, was "absolutely obsessed with Wendy Russell. He
followed her about the room with his brimming eyes and
wobbled after her across the terrace\u2026 I doubt if
Churchill has ever been physically unfaithful, but oh what
has gone inside that dynamic mind?" Churchill, apparently,
liked nothing better than to sit under an umbrella in the
garden painting, with Wendy chattering brightly by his side.
As Wendy Reves observed, Churchill "never had a Black Dog
day at La Pausa".
Clementine Churchill, however, did not approve of her
husband's crush on Wendy (whom she referred to as "Windy").
Insofar as she could, she kept away from La Pausa, and
refused invitations to go cruising with Aristotle Onassis
(whom she liked) if the Reveses were fellow guests.
Churchill did not seem to mind.
Among the Reveses' neighbours in France was Graham
Sutherland. In 1966 Sutherland painted a portrait of Emery,
and the subject was dismayed to see that he was not
represented in the bright colours he had worn for the
sittings. Wendy Reves remonstrated with the artist, who
replied: "I couldn't see those colours on him. There is a
big background of tristesse, of melancholy there. That's the
mood of Emery."
In 1978 Sutherland painted Wendy (for £14,500), and
this was more successful. She liked the picture, remarking:
"I had been expecting to look like an old bag; you have made
me young." At one stage there was a proposal that Sutherland
would design a tomb at Menton which would accommodate
Wendy's mother, who had recently died, with room enough for
the Reveses to join her later, but the artist lost interest
in the idea.
After her husband's death in 1981 Wendy Reves chose,
in her words, to honour her husband's memory through "major
philanthropy". She established the Wendy and Emery Reves
Center for International Studies at the College of William
and Mary at Williamsburg, Virginia, and, in 1985, donated to
the Dallas Museum of Art more than 1,400 Impressionist,
post-Impressionist and modern works of art and decorative
works including textiles, furniture and silver - as well as
a first edition of Churchill's History of the English
Speaking Peoples, pecked by his pet budgerigar Toby and
signed "To Wendy from Winston and Toby". The collection,
which includes works by Rodin, Cézanne, van Gogh, Monet and
Degas, is housed in a 15,000 sq ft re-creation of six rooms
at La Pausa.
Wendy Reves was born Wyn-Nelle Russell at Marshall,
Texas, on May 2 1916, adopting the name Wendy as an adult.
Moving to New York, she began her modelling career in 1939
and was described during the 1940s as "one of New York's
most-seen mannequins".
At the age of 17 she married Al Schroeder, a graduate
of West Point whom she had met when he was stationed in
Texas. They had a son, but the marriage did not last, and in
1940 she married Paul Baron, a pianist and conductor of a
well-known studio band of the day. That marriage, too, was
dissolved, and in 1948 she became the companion of Emery
Reves. There is some dispute as to when she and Reves
actually married: one account puts it in 1956, another in
1964.
Wendy Reves died at Menton on Tuesday. She is survived
by the son of her first marriage.