While Paris Hilton is telling the world personal details that no one wants to hear, the astute can take comfort in knowing that she'strying to follow in the footsteps of that standard of Depression-era stories: The Mad-cap Heiress. Hilton's a tich too calculated to be truly mad, when set beside the most glamorously wacky heiress of the 1930s, Millicent Rogers.
Rogers was the granddaughter of H.H. Rogers, Standard Oil investor and robber baron. (The H.H. was said to stand for Hell-hound, and he was my husband's great-great grandfather.) Milicent was brought up in Southampton, Long Island and at 20, married Count Ludwig Salm-von Hoogstraetn, moved to Austria, where she took up skiing and dirndls, moved back to the US, got divorced and after two more husbands, settled down in Taos, New Mexico, to collect and design jewelry.
Her father was afraid of fortune hunters, so she was kept on a fairly tight leash, but she managed all the same. She made her debut in a Mandarin robe and a head dress from Chinatown. Rather than drive herself, she kept a Yellow Cab and cabbie waiting for her at all times. Her angular beauty was enhanced by gowns by Charles James and Valentina. (The Brooklyn Museum collection had her James gowns, and that collection is going to the Met.)
Ever the amoureuse, she had affairs with Clark Gable, a rather young Roald Dahl, and host of others, but gave it all up for the simple life in Taos. She died very young, barely in her 50s, and is still an inspiration for true connoisseurs of glamour.
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