Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman (1920-1997) lived a life for that a man would have been showered with admiration, by friends and foes alike. For his political acumen, his sexual exploits, and his cool jet-set life.
As she was a woman, Pamela Harriman’s story raises eyebrows even today, in a much more open society than the one she lived in during the mid-20th century. To describe her as a great courtesan is not so wrong when one thinks of those ladies with ambition. Even great courtesans ruled through their men, like Madame de Pompadour. Pamela Harriman, though, became US ambassador to France in her own right.
There are 3 well researched biographies about Pamela Harriman’s life. The newest biography by Sonia Purnell is the friendliest to her subject and sees her as a politician from the start. According to Purnell, Pamela Digby Churchill was used as a courtesan by her in-law family, the Churchills, to help the English war effort during the Second World War. Christopher Ogden judges her more as an equal, like he would have judged a man. His biography was the first to be published, when Pamela Harriman was still alive. I bought it when I read about it, my copy is from 1994, and I came out liking Pamela Harriman as a person. Less so the life she had led for a long time. The biography written by Sally Bedell Smith is the most conservative. When you can choose between a good and a bad intention Pamela Harriman might have had, the author usually goes with the bad one, and she gives reasons for it.
The front cover pictures of the books give a good idea about Pamela Harriman’s looks over the years. Sonia Purnell shows her earnest and youthful. The two others show her in later life. Sally Bedell Smith chose a conservative looking picture; Christopher Ogden chose a picture that makes one feel her energy.
Pamela Harriman lived in an age where a career for a woman was not very likely, but possible. Margaret Thatcher, the only female British Prime Minister during the 20th century, was a contemporary. Aristocratic British born Pamela Digby needed a whole life to get a political career of her own. She was more hindered than pushed by the deemed necessities of her class for women – having a rich husband and living a luxurious life.
When thinking about her, and also about other ladies born into high class, but with little money of their own in the early 20th century, like e.g. Jaqueline Kennedy, the most important matter for them was to marry and to keep their lifestyle. Everything else came later. Almost none of the women dared a career to get the money, almost all thought marriage their only choice. Their formal education was often poor, and directed them to a traditional life.
To be honest, the kind of money they had in mind is even today hard to earn with your own hands and your own brain. To get an education that enables you to work in a well-paying job is easier today. But a well-paying job requires you to spend long hours. Inbound is not the kind of money you have access to when you marry a millionaire.
Pamela Digby gave her luck a push when she married then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s only son in 1939. He was a good-for-nothing guy, and this was known to almost everybody. Pamela chose him because he was her way out of a boring life without purpose. Being a Churchill gave better options. When one is young, one underestimated the attached problems. She was confronted with her husband’s debts and she had to accept difficult arrangements to pay them off. At the same time, she was willingly used by her in-laws to entertain important American visitors that could help bring the USA into the war to support Great Britian. Through those efforts she met married billionaire Averell Harriman and quite a few others, with all of them she had affairs. Her full body effort was known, and intended, and honoured by Winston Churchill as a vital source of support to his political strategy, as Sonia Purnell points out. The end justifies the means; all is fair in war and at sea.
After the war she divorced her abusive husband and was looking for something to do. She had boundless energy, but no education and her reputation had suffered from her war exploits. Marrying American journalist Ed Murrow (who already was married) and to leave for the USA did not work out. Sonia Purnell argues that Pamela Chruchill would have done a lot for a political career, but to be honest, there are no signs she did try. It was then her infamous time as a courtesan started – she had long affairs with Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, one of the Barons Rothschild, and shorter affairs with other men. Those lovers gave her jewellery, apartments and a life in luxury, but neither a sense of belonging nor respectability. Sonia Purnell, who had access to her personal papers, argues all wanted to marry her. The other biographers say no. During that time, she lived in France.
When she decided to leave for the USA in the early 1960s to marry Broadway producer Leland Hayward, she was a rich woman in her own right. This is often forgotten. She did not need him for money, but for being a married woman and having a purpose in her life.
Strangely, she never found that purpose alone. She could have started a charity or similar, but that would have needed a lot of work and money for a normal result, nothing outstanding to start with. By then she was used to get importance through her men. Leland Hayward – from my point of view (and Sonia Purnell’s) – used her and needed her more than she him. Reading the 3 biographies he seemed pretty cool about her and had no scruples spending her money. When he died and left her little, he had spent almost all her money for his (unsuccessful) projects. Following his death, not only did Pamela Hayward no longer have any significant financial resources, but she also had problems with her stepchildren and was embroiled in various legal proceedings concerning the inheritance.
She was very lucky that Averell Harriman and she came together again after her husband’s death and his wife’s death. Averell Harriman not only had the money and the connections, but also the admiration for her to let her start her own political career. Her husband was almost 80 years old when they married, so she did take over his activities first, then made them her own, and afterwards started real ones of her own.
Bill Clinton, former US president, was supported by Pamela Harriman at the beginning of his career and still holds her in high esteem. She had changed to a politician in her own right in supporting the Democratic party. Later during the Yugoslav war, in the 1990s when she was US ambassador to France, she was important for the peace process.
Would she have had a political career in case she had married a business leader after Leland Haywards death? I doubt it. She would have made his goals her own and continued and strengthened them.
It seems Pamela Harriman had difficulties defining a purpose of her own, something she really believed in. Sally Bedell Smith’s book is called “Reflected Glory” and mirrors that sentiment. Most of us do rarely follow an exact plan, but life is happening and forming paths for us. There are few people who know exactly what they want and even fewer who make it happen. All others adapt with more or less grace to what life throws at them. What makes Pamela Harriman different is her energy in doing more than her respective husbands did.
There are other ladies out there, who have a similar spirit and energy. One of them is the new Mrs. Porsche, Gabriele zu Leiningen, former Begum Karim Aga Khan with an PhD in Law. Another one is Corinna Larsen, Princess Sayn-Wittgestein-Sayn. She is the lady who got 100 million US$ from the former Spanish King Juan Carlos as a present and was able to hold on to the millions through court cases and all.
They are all beautiful, of course, but that is only a basis. Like Pamela Harriman, they have and had much more. Intelligence, shrewdness, courage, toughness, thirst for adventure, of becoming more than a normal life would give them. They are special in their ambition and pretty outstanding in their personal achievement.
Those lives are not for everybody, many people would politely decline and most would be not able to endure the hard sides. But let’s be honest, women like Pamela Harriman are very cool and deserve admiration.
All rights to the books belong to:
Bedell Smith, Sally: Reflected Glory, The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman, first Touchstone Edition 1997, Touchstone, Rockefeller Centre, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, manufactured in the United States of America, ISBN: 0-684-83563-0
Ogden, Christopher: Life of the Party, The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, 1994, Warner Books, Inc, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, printed in the United States of America, ISBN: 0-4-46-60264-7
Purnell, Sonia: KINGMAKER, Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power, 2024, first published in the UK by Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DZ, printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, ISBN: 978-0-349-01472-2