Lethal Dose

in its entirety:

From a 1971 Time Mag Article

A few times every century, a great beauty is born. I am not one of them. But what nature skipped, I supplied—so much so that sometimes 1 cannot remember what is real and what is fake.

—Princess Luciana Pignatelli,

The Beautiful People’s Beauty Book

It is not that the princess has a weak memory: even an IBM super multiprocessor system would be hard put to keep track of the surgical, spiritual, chemical and cosmetic chicanery credited with transforming her from what she calls “a lump” of a young girl into the “internationally renowned beauty” of today. Her nose has been bobbed, her eyelids lifted, her breasts treated with cell implants. Hypnosis, silicone injections, and mysterious processes she calls “diacutaneous fibrolysis” and “aromatotherapy”—all have somehow been fitted into a schedule already jampacked with appointments for facials and pedicures, yoga lessons and gym classes. In The Beautiful People’s Beauty Book (McCall; $5.95), Luciana Pignatelli reveals the secrets and sham, pressures and rewards of a lifetime dedicated to pleasing that most demanding, unrelenting, infinitely precious of friends—the mirror.

Disastrous Union. Most of the princess’s 36 years have been spent in the pursuit of beauty. But then, as she explains, “glamour can begin only when all the groundwork has been laid.” For Luciana, the groundwork came early in adolescence, when “all legs and big feet, thick at the waist and thick in the nose,” she was taken in hand by her half brother, Rodolfo Crespi (married to Consuelo Crespi of the best-dressed set). Rudi pushed lipstick, Consuelo set aside some best dresses, and at 18, Luciana was shuttled from Rome to London to have her nose fixed (the working model was a cross between Vivien Leigh’s and Consuelo’s). Six months later, she changed her name as well by marrying Prince Nicoló Pignatelli Aragona Cortes; the union was “a disaster” from which she emerged, 15 years later, with two children, one title and “a shattered ego.”

To help rebuild it, she had silicone injections to fill out her cheeks and plastic surgery that lifted her upper eyelids but did nothing for her spirit. Hypnosis, yoga, cell implants and love affairs helped her morale, but by the end of one liaison Luciana realized, “I had really become very plain looking—almost nothing on my face, nothing on my nails, the most casual clothes.” After another year during which she was “so bored I used to remove the hairs from my legs, one by one, with tweezers,” Luciana went back to Rome to face facts and her mirror: beauty, after all, was her business. She became a fashion coordinator and beauty consultant to Eve of Roma, a cosmetic house, and that led directly to another husband: Eve’s president, Burt Avedon.

The book—described by her husband last week as “a straightforward approach to narcissism” —is saturated with beauty tips and tidbits, both from the author and her friends. Model Mirella Haggiag, for example, recommends going back to sleep after the breakfast tray arrives: Princess Ira von Furstenburg prefers dinners alone (a man is sure to order “pasta or curry with rice, and how can one resist?”). Mrs. J. Paul Getty Jr. imports vegetarian pté from Holland to London, uses no eyeliner but the pure kohl she collects in Marrakesh. Emilio Pucci is high on massage (”I have two Filipino girls who come to the house: I would find it distasteful to be massaged by a man”). Luciana also quotes her mother’s beauty plan: “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I go to bed early. I exercise, and I walk 21 miles every day.” Adds her daughter proudly. “After she turned 60, she also had her face lifted.”

Luciana herself has her hair streaked white-blonde once a month, reserves a fast day (mashed potatoes and camomile tea) every two weeks, and takes liver injections every two months to smoothe her skin. Her personal recommendations include washing hair with jhassoul (”Ask friends going to Morocco to get a few bars”), smoking Filipino cigars instead of skin-sallowing cigarettes, constant visits to the hairdresser and gymnast, separate bedrooms (”much more conducive to sex”) and homosexuals as friends (”a brief, loud hurrah for their incredible eye for line, proportion, detail and style”).

Whirlwind Tour.
Author Gore Vidal, also quoted in the book, supports the princess all the way. “Beauty is exterior: it is not interior,” he says. “Not only does it not matter if there’s nothing inside, it probably helps. Character has a tendency to ruin looks.” Meanwhile, Luciana, in the midst of a whirlwind U.S. tour promoting her book, is eager to get back to Europe. “I understand,” she writes wistfully, “there is a doctor in Paris who does eyelash implants . . .”

mary, mary, quite contrary

My Nana Lethal was named Mary. She was stylish and classy, and worked at the Library. My mother used to call her “Mrs. Van Asta” which I think was a Massachusetts approximation of “Vanderbilt” and “Astor” b/c she thought she was a snob. My mother, not being Irish, didn’t understand. My grandmother was used to maids; my great-grandmother had her own business as a pastry baker and my great-grandfather ran numbers out of his lunch counter downtown, so they were upper-class lace curtain Irish. When she married my grandfather, a black Irish (”shanty irish”) fireman, my great-grandmother had a fit. She loathed him and so did her doberman, Lucky. Many people have commented on my physical and emotional resemblance to great-grandma Lethal, and I have her persian lamb jacket with mink collar. It fits to a tee.

Anyway, Nana Lethal and Papa Lethal slept in twin beds with a prominent crucifix in between. Papa Lethal was a ladies man, though, and an accomplished ballroom dancer, which is where his mistress came in. Conveniently, she was also named Mary. To avoid confusion? My father did something similar when he married my mother on his birthday, “so I’ll always remember.” He only had to remember for ten years.

When I was younger, I thought it was awful that Papa Lethal cheated on Nana Lethal until I got a little older and realized she was probably relieved. He was a handful! At the end of his life we pieced so much of it together and my cousin said, “All those times he’d ‘take me out for ice cream,’ he’d drop me at Auntie Blanche’s and wave goodbye. He must have been going to see ‘The Other Mary.’” My poor cousin was once ambushed by “The Other Mary” at the supermarket who proudly introduced herself as “your grandfather’s friend, Mary” much to her horror. When Nana Lethal died, The Other Mary came to the funeral (!) and even brought my aunt some Boston baked beans. “I threw them in the garbage,” my aunt said. We know that The Other Mary has a son and I’ve wanted to wait near their house to catch a look, but my father shushed me. “Now, now, don’t say those things,” he chided me. “Say what things? You took them all to lunch!” And he did - my father, Nana Lethal, Papa Lethal, and The Other Mary! One can only imagine the conversation: “Does he make you butter his bread, too?” I asked Daddy Lethal to recount it to me but he just mumbled something like, “Who the hell knows? They’re all old, who cares?”

At the end of Papa Lethal’s life, he went blind. I went to visit him in the hospital and he still had it.

“How old are you now, Donna?” he asked me.

“Thirty-five.”

“But you can’t be! I’m only twenty-nine, heh heh!”

God love him.

City of the (Charlie’s) Angels

I once wrote that a sign of my Angelenism (if that’s not a word, it is now) was seeing my ex-husband in traffic. Well, yesterday I had another sign. Returning home from a hike and a vigorous bike ride, I stepped into the shower. About 30 seconds later, I realized I still had my sunglasses on. Granted, they were on my head, but still …