When my co-author, Wendy Holden, and I sat down to plan the book about my mother and lay out the bare bones and milestones of her life, we were faced with some gargantuan decisions. My mother was a deeply private person. This is the reason she never made Hollywood her base. Instead, she opted for the bucolic environment of the Swiss countryside. Mainly because Switzerland is a neutral country, a must for a woman who was forged by the fires of the Second World War. But also because she could live a normal life there, out of reach of the tabloids and devoid of the vacuous accoutrements that Hollywood stars have long had to submit themselves to on a daily basis.
Most of these milestones were easy to agree upon. While they made for a somewhat darker journey than you might expect from a figure so representative of joy and elegance, they revealed the pain and hardships that gave birth to the phoenix we all recognize today. But then came the difficult subject of the failed relationships with the men in her life. My mother was someone easy to get along with. Generous, and overall a happy soul, she treasured her friendships and nurtured them throughout her days. But when it came to men, the vacuum that her father’s disappearance had left caused a lifelong blind spot in her instinctive choice of partners. Ever an optimist, she truly believed that if a couple did what was best for each other, nothing would be impossible.
