The Barbizon by Paulina Bren (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

his reputation for sleeping with his models was all hot air. Certainly Lorraine never had a problem, and she was thrilled to be paid each week by Hartford; her salary did not depend on whether the clients had already paid Hartford because he had deep pockets full of A&P money. Even so, Eileen Ford’s promise of getting paid on the spot beat out getting paid at the end of the week, and soon Lorraine also switched over to the Ford modeling agency.

Eileen Ford was already married back when she spent the night on a cot at the Barbizon because it was too late to take the train home to Long Island. Now her husband, Jerry, joined the company too, and the familial, nurturing aspect of the agency was amplified. It was a family business now. When Life magazine featured Jerry and Eileen in a five-page photo essay, it was hard not to contrast the low-level sleaziness of the modeling world, epitomized by A&P playboy Huntington Hartford, former actor and disc jockey Harry Conover, and former model John Powers, with the homespun charm of the Fords, their first baby crawling across the floor of the agency office. The agency also caught the eye of Sherman Billingsley, former speakeasy proprietor and now owner of the famous and glamorous Stork Club, who invited the Fords to bring their young charges to eat and drink for free as they hobnobbed with the rich and famous who were always ready to dine with a pretty face or two, or three.

But the Fords’ fussing over their young models was not just a publicity stunt. When new girls arrived, particularly from abroad—and with Natálie’s look as their guiding light, the Fords dipped heavily into the Scandinavian gene pool—Eileen would first have them live with the family, and then move them over to the Barbizon, often at her own expense. It was safe, it was respectable, it was exactly what she needed to keep them in check and keep their reputations intact. After Nena von Schlebrügge, actress Uma Thurman’s future mother, was discovered by Eileen Ford in Sweden at the age of seventeen, she made her way to New York. She arrived by ocean liner in March 1958 to a snowstorm and, as she remembered, to the sorry sight of American women hobbling their way through piles of snow in impractical high heels and beige stockings. She too first stayed with Eileen, Jerry, and their children at their new home on Seventy-Eighth Street before transferring to the Barbizon. The Fords supplied their models with “diets, dermatologists, hairdressers and housing”—as Phyllis Lee Schwalbe, former College Board editor at Mademoiselle, would write for the New York Times in 1958. It was not unusual for the models to spend their days hanging around the office on Second Avenue. Lorraine Davies, the Tangerine Queen, was therefore sitting in the office in the dingy brownstone, on the red sofa, when a tall blonde walked in.

The blonde said her name was Janet Wagner. Lorraine, five foot five and a half inches, always wore heels, and on Eileen’s advice told clients she was five six. Janet, over five foot nine inches, would be told by Eileen to never admit being over five nine, and to keep her footwear low-heeled. Janet had never modeled before, and in fact her path to Eileen Ford’s red door was entirely unique.

It started with Janet desperate for a job: her parents had just written that all the summer jobs back home in Galesburg, Illinois, were taken up while Janet was away in New York as a guest editor at Mademoiselle. There was no question Janet was the prettiest GE that summer, although Sylvia Plath was a close second. They were both radiant blondes, all-American, but Janet was taller, and her features were more vivid. She was standing in the Barbizon lobby with Neva Nelson, another guest editor, when a small, pudgy man approached them with a camera and asked if they wanted to be models. Neva, who had had to make her own way through life, was street smart and wanted nothing to do with him, but Janet followed him into the Barbizon coffee shop, where she signed a contract on the spot. He now had what he needed. He took that flimsy written agreement to Mademoiselle and informed them that Janet was under contract with him, and he would not let her appear in the magazine without sufficient compensation.

Betsy Talbot Blackwell was now in a bind. Janet had already been photographed for the August College Issue alongside the other GEs, and they could not exactly brush her out of the pictures. So with her hands tied, BTB struck a deal, first with the man with the camera, and then with Eileen Ford. At BTB’s suggestion, Eileen would buy out his contract with Janet to avoid any further embarrassment. To make it seem as if Eileen had indeed discovered Janet accidentally, BTB “happened” to be sitting with her guest editor at the Stork Club when Eileen bumped into them and “discovered her.”

So there was Janet, in a dark-blue-checked gingham dress, the same in which she had arrived at the Barbizon three weeks earlier. Eileen handed her a map of New York City and some pancake makeup, and told her to learn both. Janet was clueless, but Lorraine, who had some time to spare, jumped in to help. She later recalled Janet as tall, blond, with a large smile and perfect teeth, a mix between “Goldie Hawn and Grace Kelly,” with “the bounciness of Hawn and the classiness of Kelly.” The two spent the afternoon together while Lorraine explained to Janet the essentials of modeling, and Janet chatted about Mademoiselle. By the end of the afternoon, with Janet’s makeup done to perfection by Lorraine’s practiced hand, Janet had officially gone from Mademoiselle guest editor to Ford model.

Back at the Barbizon, Grace Kelly had watched with some envy as Carolyn became financially independent, certainly not rich but with enough to