Who is that woman???
Allegra640
Just have a question that I hope someone here can answer for me. Approximately
four months ago there was a woman, a Kansas housewife I believe, who had been
posing as some sort of sex-kitten and making telephone calls to celebs such as
Billy Joel and Bob Dylan.
Can anyone tell me this woman's name? I recall reading tidbits about the
scandal but cannot for the life of me remember much else.
I'd be most grateful if someone can help....
Best wishes,
Tracy J.
alleg...@aol.com
Shiphour
>From: alleg...@aol.com (Allegra640)
>Date: 04/10/2001 1:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20010410013350...@ng-me1.aol.com>
>
>Hey all,
>
>Just have a question that I hope someone here can answer for me.
>Approximately
>four months ago there was a woman, a Kansas housewife I believe, who had been
>posing as some sort of sex-kitten and making telephone calls to celebs such
>as
>Billy Joel and Bob Dylan.
>
>Can anyone tell me this woman's name? I recall reading tidbits about the
>scandal but cannot for the life of me remember much else.
The Scotsman
November 12, 1999, Friday
Julian Brouwer
MYSTERY WOMAN WHO HAD THE STARS HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE
Fabulously wealthy socialite Miranda Grosvenor counted Billy Joel, Bob Dylan
and English director Michael Apted among her close friends. In fact at times
Joel regarded her as his "only friend" and wondered why the young blonde model
would never meet him and insisted on confining their relationship to the
telephone.
Little did Joel or the hundreds of other celebrities she came across know, but
"Miranda" was not rich, successful or a model as she claimed; instead she was a
bored fan who made a full-time hobby of calling stars and hoodwinking them into
chatting with her for hours.
Some of her victims - they included actors, musicians and movie moguls - fell
head over heels in love with the trickster and geared their whole evening
around speaking to the mysterious stranger who everyone seemed to know but no
-one had actually met. Then, in 1996 Miranda, who also went by the names Ariana
and Whitney, disappeared as mysteriously as she had entered their lives. But
not before she had left a trail of confusion and broken hearts in her wake.
No-one knows why Miranda and her alter egos retired, but one of her phone
friends heard a whisper that she may have "disappeared" in the wake of threats
from lawyers of the late tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis -such are the Great
Gatsby-style rumours surrounding the shadowy sociopath. Now one man believes he
has finally put the pieces together, and if he is right the truth seems to be
as strange as the fiction.
Vanity Fair journalist Bryan Burrough spent the best part of this year tracking
down the myth of Miranda and was astonished at the number of celebrities who
were taken in by her.
Writing in the December issue of the magazine he says: "The story of Miranda
Grosvenor, the riddle of who she really was and why she disappeared from the
phone lines, has grown into a kind of urban legend in certain circles in Los
Angeles and New York."
He reels off a list of the rich and powerful including Joel, Apted, Dylan, Ted
Kennedy, Yannick Noah, Guillermo Villas, Bob Dylan and Art Garfunkel. Those who
got to know her voice believed she was a gorgeous young blonde and she did
little to dispel the illusion, sending them pictures of a gorgeous model she
had photocopied.
Burrough says: "The men who talked to her, a number of whom now deny they did
so, came from all walks of the high life; they were actors and directors, rock
stars and record producers, athletes and politicians, even a journalist or
two."
One of those willing to speak is Billy Joel, who says he began his friendship
"just before I started dating Christie Brinkley and while I was dating Elle
Macpherson".
"A lot of nights she was my only friend. At first it was a pain in the ass
(when she called). But she seemed to know a lot of people in the business like
Steve Winwood, Sting and Eric Clapton so I assumed she was on the level.
Musicians get calls from all kinds of wacko people but this was different - she
was awfully good company."
Joel, who knew Miranda by the name Whitney Walton, recalls that she would
become oddly possessive.
"She would get jealous. I sent her a tape of a song called And So it Goes.
It was written about someone else and I sent it to kind of say I was seeing
other people."
After pushing to see her and arranging several meetings which she never
attended, Joel finally got a knock at the door one day. "Someone showed up at
my house with a gift," he says. "I don't know what it was, a toy or something.
It was a friend of hers, whose car was out front. There was a person sitting in
the back of the car and though I couldn't see who it was I assumed it was her.
I was thinking about making a musical about this, because every time I tell
people this story they never believe it." Burrough insists that the name
Miranda gave Joel - Whitney Walton - is her real name, and this is borne out by
some of her more inquisitive victims who spent time and money trying to track
her down.
The man she hurt the most was apparently Richard Perry, a successful record
producer who helped make the careers of Carly Simon and the Pointer Sisters.
Perry knew her by the name Ariana, though he eventually learned it was Whitney
from showbusiness friends who had been similarly tricked, and freely admits he
fell head over heels in love with her soon after she first called him in 1982.
One of the only celebrities to ever meet her, Perry - who flew her over to New
York and put her up in a hotel - remembers his shock and disappointment. She
was no model.
Instead he was looking at a short, frumpy woman with a large mole on her cheek.
"I was devastated," he says. "I felt I had been conned."
When Burrough tracked down Whitney Walton, who lives in a modest home in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, she refused to discuss the matter, though her appearance
exactly matched the description Perry gave.
A social worker aged in her fifties, weighing around 18 stone with a large mole
on her cheek and the remains of a blonde dye job, she bears little resemblance
to the sexy phone friend who captivated some of the world's most famous stars.
Though Walton refused to talk to Burrough, her former colleagues at a nearby
woman's shelter, Barbara Davidson and Genny Abel, were rather more forthcoming,
revealing how she would speak endlessly about her many famous friends.
Referring to Billy Joel, Abel says: "She let us listen to their calls. He was
always calling to see how she was. It wasn't sexual; it was intimate, like he
was courting her. He wanted to send her stuff. He did send her a Rolex with
diamonds and he asked did she get it. He talked about buying her a grand piano
and an emerald ring."
"She was proud that she knew famous people," says Davidson. "It was her social
life."
"No, it was her life," says Abel.
Rolling Thunder
<< Just have a question that I hope someone here can answer for me.
Approximately
four months ago there was a woman, a Kansas housewife I believe, who had been
posing as some sort of sex-kitten and making telephone calls to celebs such as
Billy Joel and Bob Dylan >>
It's a wild story. It you want to read a really good account, try and find the
Vanity Fair article. It was in the past year. It shouldn't be hard if you do a
search on "Vanity Fair" and "Miranda [whatever]".
Mrs. Del Toro
"It's weird, man. I never wanted to be famous. I just want to do good work."
~~Benicio Del Toro~~
http://www.beniciodeltoro.com/pix/2001/juice1.htm
[sweeeeet!]