I don’t normally like to post knee-jerk reactions to the news of celebrity deaths. There are far too many graveyards in the blogosphere where eager hearse chasers leave bunches of thorny roses in honor of recently deceased stars for me to compete with. But every now and then a figure passes away who touched my life, albeit briefly, in a singular way. Such a figure was Ruth Ford, who was 98. I first met her thanks to Vanity Fair magazine which hired me to do an interview with her for my column on “Curious Collectors.” The column was not a great success and it did not run for very long. (I had had much more success with my earlier “Conspicuous Coffee Tables” column.) And Ruth Ford was an odd choice for the series since her collection consisted of a vast number of paintings by Pavel Tchelitchew, many of which belonged to her brother, the writer Charles Henri Ford, who had lived with Tchelitchew for many years.

But nothing could stop me from doing it. Ruth Ford was a glamorous figure to me. I knew of her work in several B-movies, and of her work on Broadway as Estelle in Sartre’s No Exit and Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun. Plus she lived in the Dakota, that somewhat gloomy edifice on the edges of Central Park where John Lennon and Rex Reed also lived. The Dakota had been the setting for Rosemary’s Baby, starring that other famous Ruth, Ruth Gordon. It has an eerie fascination for me. I had always wanted to get inside. I was not disappointed.

Walking into the apartment, which seemed to occupy an entire floor and wound around like a labyrinth, I was immediately struck by how dark everything was. Most of the shades were drawn. Heavy curtains further obscured the light. The atmosphere reminded me of some Victorian mansion in an old Hollywood horror film. The Spiral Staircase, in particular, sprang to mind. Miss Ford, who at this time had to have been in her 70s, appeared like a ghostly mirage, draped in exotic fabrics and lavish Oriental jewelry. The space reeked of incense and dust. She was a slight figure. Her famous dark hair had now become grayish blond (at least that’s how I remember it, and I vaguely recall it was hidden behind a turban). She stared into my eyes and spoke with a dramatic actressy voice, but one that was graced with laughter and amusement. She was seductive and charming, and I immediately felt welcome, but not necessarily at ease. (Ruth Ford, fitted by Balmain, below.)

From the moment she took my hand, it was obvious who was in charge. I rarely got a question in edgewise as Miss Ford led me on an extended tour of the apartment, showing me posters and fliers from various shows she had appeared in, digging out old photographs and family albums of her youth in Mississippi while regaling me with name-dropping reminiscences of her days in the sun on the stage. It was clear after just a few minutes that we weren’t going to be talking much about Tchelitchew, and we barely glanced at the paintings (of which there were dozens on the walls, on easels, and leaning against each other on the floor.) The interview was about Miss Ford and Miss Ford alone. (I later learned that she was eager to sell some of the Tchelitchews, but the market for his style at that time, mid-80s, was in decline.)

As our interview drew to a close, and photographs had been taken, a man entered the apartment. He was even older looking than Miss Ford, with a shock of white hair and a half-crazed expression that made one think either he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum or was the next recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was her brother Charles Henri Ford. (If the Times obit is correct and Ruth was 98 when she died, then she was in fact Charles’s older sister. He was born in 1913. Charles, below, shot by Cecil Beaton.)

I must admit at that point in my young career, I was not fully aware of his accomplishments, although his name was familiar to me. But he rectified that immediately by inviting me up to his apartment a few days later where he showed me back issues of the surrealist art magazine View which he had edited, as well as many poems, paintings and sketches he had done. He lived in what he described to me as a “valet’s room” on the top floor. It was a fraction the size of his sister’s pad and I was surprised that there were no Tchelitchews in it. Instead, it was spare and ascetic, a monk’s cell. Charles was a whirlwind of energy, despite his advancing age. He reminded me of the saintly lama that Ronald Colman meets towards the end of Lost Horizon, and considering Charles’s fascination with Tibet and Nepal, this was not entirely by accident. His young companion, a Nepalese, joined us for tea. We passed a pleasant afternoon. As I was leaving, Charles gave me a copy of his “coffee table book” Spare Parts, signing it with a flourish.

Later, after my article appeared, Ruth Ford (shown, above, modeling for the artist Armin Hansen) called me and invited me over for tea. I did not go. There was something vacuum-like in her need for constant stroking that made me wary. I had already devoted a great deal of my earlier life to taking care of my mother, a bewitching narcissist, with mental problems, whose need for attention was titanic. I felt the same way about Ruth Ford. She wooed you with mountains of charm, but left me with that sinking feeling you’d be lucky to escape with your life.

I did run into her several times at museum openings, cocktail parties and sometimes on the street, since I lived just a few blocks away. I have always chided myself for not getting to know her better. My fear of being subsumed by her Sunset Boulevard persona was unwarranted. I could have handled it. I had, in fact, managed to be quite friendly with Diana Vreeland who was known to be “difficult.” But Mrs. Vreeland had created her formidable personality through sheer force of will. While Ruth Ford, whom Sondheim (according to the obit in the Times) considered a great “salonniere,” was more dependent on the famous names surrounding her. She had been married to Zachary Scott, who played Monte Beragon in Mildred Pierce, opposite another fiery larger-than-life presence, Joan Crawford, below. And later in the 70s, Ruth Ford was the companion of Dotson Rader, whose books on the rebellious 60s were favorites of mine.

I did, however, keep up with Charles. He was, I soon discovered, the author with Parker Tyler of The Young and Evil, one of the best, and most important, early gay novels. Written in 1933, it was published in Paris by Olympia Press. And soon became a much-sought-after collector’s item. Later it was reprinted in paperback, with a Tchelitchew cover, and it was in this edition that I read it and realized what a genius Charles Henri Ford really was.

One irony of the Ruth Ford story for me is that when I wrote the column about her Tchelitchew collection, I included a throw-away line about the artist being “the lover” of Charles Henri Ford. My editor insisted that I take that out. It might get us in trouble, he argued. “In trouble?” I asked incredulously. “Everyone knows they were lovers. They lived together until Tchelitchew’s death in 1957.” This was the 80’s, for God’s sake! (Detail of Tchelitchew’s The Bathers, below.)

Faced with what I considered homophobic censorship, I bristled and refused to change it. But I was overruled, the change was made (”lovers” was replaced by “friends”) and a lingering resentment on my part for having to couch my terminology in order to “pass” at Vanity Fair caused me to be less accommodating in the future, and might even have “queered” my position with the magazine. There were other factors, of course, but I don’t think that it was a total coincidence that my contract was not renewed a year later. I went off to write for other magazines where I could let my hair down fully, including Out which became a mainstay of my writing career in the 90s. I noticed with some amusement today in the New York Times obituary that now, in 2009, the Times had no problem with calling Tchelitchew Charles’s “lover.” We’ve come a long way, baby. And somehow I think that Charles’s fascinating sister, Ruth Ford, would have approved.