Yesterday I read the sad news about the death of Evelyn Keyes, one of those remarkable Hollywood actresses who never quite achieved the fame of her co-stars but nevertheless was a figure of fascination among the cognoscenti. Evelyn Keyes was a thinking man’s actress who wrote several books about her unusual career, in particular a memoir entitled Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister which gently poked fun at her most celebrated — but often overlooked — role in Gone With the Wind. What struck me in reading her obituary is how often Evelyn Keyes was married. She’d been married four times including to Charles Vidor, John Huston and Artie Shaw. It’s a bit ironic to me personally because I once had dinner with Evelyn Keyes in Hollywood when I was researching the life of Paulette Goddard (see blog entry for August 2006). I had grilled her about why Paulette kept marrying famous men (in her case: Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque). I should have been grilling Evelyn about her own marriages!

Keyes and Goddard are just two examples of famous people who married famous people. It’s a phenomenon that I find strangely fascinating. Evelyn’s husband Artie Shaw had eight wives, including Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth. Rita herself had five husbands, including Orson Welles, Dick Haymes and Prince Aly Khan.

George Sanders, who anyone reading this blog knows is one of my favorite actors, had several wives, including not just one but two Gabor sisters: Zsa Zsa and Magda (below right). Zsa Zsa herself has been married nine times!

Mickey Rooney was famously married eight times, including once to Ava Gardner. But this type of serial marriage is more a female phenomenon, at least in the way I am discussing here. Apparently there is a man in the Guinness Books of World Records who has been married 29 times! But I am more interested in people for whom marriage was a stepping stone of sorts to ameliorate their lives, to advance up the ladder, to conquer new worlds and experience exotic adventures.

Pamela Harriman was perhaps the most celebrated exponent of this type of serial marriage. She was a Digby who married Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, then producer Leland Hayward (famously married to Slim Keith), then Averell Harriman, one of the most powerful men in the United States. She used her influence wisely and became one of the premier power brokers in Washington D.C. In the course of researching my step-grandmother Jessie Reed, the Ziegfeld Follies showgirl who was married five times, twice to well-known vaudeville comedians, I also learned about Peggy Hopkins Joyce who was as famous for getting hitched seven times as she was for owning the world’s most expensive diamond and for being a star of the Follies on Broadway. She and Jessie (below), who never really profited from any of her scandalous marriages, had a lot in common.

But perhaps the most compelling case of serial marriage, at least in terms of high society, glamour and untold wealth, was the magnificent Mona von Bismarck.

Born in Louisville Kentucky in 1897, Mona was the strikingly beautiful daughter of a horse trainer and breeder based in Lexington. She got out of the manure and the muck by marrying Henry J. Schlesinger, the son of one of her father’s clients, and the heir to a large Wisconsin fortune. That marriage did not last very long, although it did produce a son (who would cause Mona some embarrassment in the 50s when he allegedly bounced a check at Van Cleef & Arpels while buying jewels for Linda Christian, Tyrone Power’s wife) — and armed with a $500,000 settlement, she soon married wealthy banker James Bush, considered “the handsomest man in America.”

Her third marriage to utilities magnate Harrison Williams was the true prize, stunning her wide circle of friends who knew nothing about the affair, including one of her best friends who was dating Williams at the time. He ran a complicated holding company that had assets of $700,000,000 before the Depression took its toll. With his money and connections, Mona Williams became one of the leading figures in international society, with homes in New York, Paris, Palm Beach and at Villa Il Fortino in Capri. Their Georgian manse at 1130 Fifth Avenue, which had been built by Delano & Aldrich for Willard Straight, and had stylish interiors by Syrie Maugham, became the absolute hub of New York’s glamorous social whirl. Their cottage Oak Point in Bayville on Long Island was one of the chicest beach houses in New York.

Her massive aquamarine eyes beguiled the leading lights of her day, including Diana Vreeland, who saw her as a muse of fashion, Cecil Beaton who took some extraordinary photographs of her, Salvador Dali who painted her in more flattering terms than most of his surreal subjects, and Coco Chanel, with whom her husband was rumored to have had an affair. Truman Capote is said to have modeled his character Kate McCloud, from his notorious unfinished novel Answered Prayers, on Mona.

After Harrison’s death, Mona married Count “Eddie” von Bismarck, the grandson of the famous German chancellor, and an interior decorator. Together they lived a life of glamorous idleness. She was the first and foremost exemplar of the Best Dressed List. Her beautiful gowns by Vionnet and Balenciaga set the tone for most of the jet set. Gore Vidal has intimated that Eddie may have been gay, but that did little to dampen their enormous cachet in international circles. No doubt it helped. When Bismarck died, Mona married his doctor, Umberto de Martini, who died in a car accident in 1979. Mona lived until 1983. She was definitely the marrying kind, but also a kind of arbiter of grace and style the likes of which we may never see again.

In Evelyn Keyes’ obit, Tab Hunter was quoted as saying he’d like to make a film based on her life. What a great idea. But that got me thinking. Shouldn’t someone make a movie about Mona Strader Schlesinger Bush Williams von Bismarck de Martini? With uncommon zeal, she brought a new twist to an old adage: “Marrying Well is the Best Revenge.”