Slim Chance

I just read Slim Keith's memoirs. I was mostly interested because she was married to one of my favorite directors, Howard Hawks. Turns out he was a liar, a cheater and a cold fish. Oh well.

Born in 1916, she had nothing going for her except her charm and her looks. She came to Hollywood in the mid-30s, though she had no interest in breaking into movies (which actually gave her a leg up). She soon became friends with all sorts of stars, like Cary Grant and William Powell, not to mention all those invites to William Randolph Hearst's place.

Then she met Hawks and, once he got a divorce, they married, though he was twice her age. The marriage may not have gone well, but Hawks wanted to create his perfect woman on screen, and he modeled her after Slim. In fact, Lauren Bacall (whom Slim brought to Hawks' attention) is called "Slim" in her debut, the Hawks film To Have And Have Not.

Soon she was stolen away by agent-producer Leland Hayward--her great love. Of course, he had to get out of his troubled marriage to Margaret Sullavan first. (Slim was never anyone's first wife.) The marriage lasted for a dozen years till, in what you might call poetic justice, Hayward left her for Pamela Churchill Harriman.

At loose ends, she married Sir Kenneth Keith, a rich British businessman. There was no love in this marriage, and, after running a British manor for a few years, she left him and lived out her years in New York.

She knew everyone--Clark Gable, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Paley, Truman Capote, Mary Martin, Jerome Robbins, Charles Lindbergh--everyone.

She traveled around the world in luxury, and never wanted for anything. But what sort of existence was this? She obviously had something going for her, but she never worked a day in her life (not official work--she did try to set up more than one household--with the help of servants), and seemed to get her prestige, not to mention her dough, from her husbands. She did have one child, a daughter, Kitty, with Hawks, who was her pride and joy. Still, I don't know if I'd call her life glamorous or gruesome.