Kid Carolina

by Heidi Schnakenberg

  Dick maintained his extravagant lifestyle with Marianne, and the pair used Beekman Place as their launchpad for many wild nights in New York. As he had done with Blitz, Dick threw Marianne huge parties in New York, Sapelo Island, Miami, and on Dick’s yachts, parties that sometimes lasted for days on end.

  Dick’s divorce from Blitz and marriage to Marianne effectively estranged him from his sisters, who refused to meet her. Although Mary and Blitz didn’t always get along, Blitz was family and the mother of their nephews, and they found Dick’s abandonment of her unforgivable. Dick didn’t let this worry him, though. As his mother, Katharine, had done before him, he wanted a fresh beginning with his new spouse. He knew they would get over it eventually. And Marianne was pregnant with his fifth child.

  Dick set about spoiling his new bride. He spent tens of thousands of dollars renovating Beekman Place to fulfill Marianne’s every want and need. As a wedding gift, he deeded the entire island of Sapelo to her on a napkin. It was another of Dick’s reckless promises that he had no intention of keeping.

  At Dick’s insistence, Marianne gave birth to little Michael Reynolds in July of 1947 on remote Sapelo Island, without adequate medical services available. The birth was difficult for Marianne, who nearly died when she lost too much blood. She was saved by Dick’s personal pilot, who flew off the island to retrieve pints of blood from a local blood bank. In spite of the ordeal, Marianne was excited to have a baby in her life, and Michael’s birth healed tensions between Dick and his sisters as well, just as Dick predicted. Mary and Nancy made up their minds to accept and embrace Marianne, although behind her back they continued to poke fun at what they considered to be her unrefined behavior and flamboyance.

  Dick’s joy at his newborn son didn’t last long. According to him, Marianne drank heavily during her pregnancy and after Michael’s birth. In September, Marianne left Sapelo with the baby and went to New York on her own after a falling-out with Dick. Dick begged her to return to the island, but Marianne refused and told Dick that if he came to New York, she would “take care of him.” Dick went to New York anyway, and when he arrived at One Beekman Place, he found Marianne drinking most of the time, with Michael in the care of nurses. She often went out all night on her own, and on one occasion the servants found her passed out in the baby’s nursery with a cigarette burning on the floor. The baby was still sleeping in the crib. Luckily, nothing had caught fire, but cigarette smoke twirled up next to the baby. The servants fought with Marianne to get her out of the room. Marianne grabbed Michael and lurched back and forth over an open window with the baby in her arms. Eventually the servants wrestled the baby from her and carried Marianne to bed.

  Dick was alarmed by the incident. He confided to his sisters that he felt he had made a mistake in marrying Marianne, but Nancy, by now the family leader, urged him to make the marriage work for the sake of the baby. Nancy was tired of defending Dick’s womanizing, and she was adamant that he commit himself to his wife and children. Dick didn’t know it, but Marianne had also confided in Mary that she felt increasingly ignored by Dick.

  Dick took Nancy’s advice and tried to put the incident behind him. In December of 1947, Dick threw Marianne a surprise birthday party at New York’s Carnival Café. Dick’s guests took over the entire balcony, which looked down on a horseshoe-shaped dinner table. Marianne walked in and asked “What’s this?” Dick said, “Honey, it’s a surprise party for you.” Dick spent an exorbitant amount of money on roses that decorated the place and guests were served filet mignon and champagne, while the waiters enjoyed high-dollar tips.

  Back at Devotion, Blitz had become something of a drinker since the divorce, and continued her policy of refusing Dick access to his sons as a way to punish him, even though Dick only halfheartedly tried to see them since he returned from the war. In the years to come, Dick would spend more time searching for fresh projects, new things to build, and new boats to sail than he would seeking out his boys.

  Meanwhile, Blitz aimed to raise them so they would be the opposite of their father in every way. They were made to do chores and work in the house and on the estate, and in the process they became full-fledged outdoorsmen. In Dick’s absence, the boys’ other male relatives, like Uncle Will and Mary’s and Nancy’s husbands, tried to spend more time with them and act as makeshift father figures for the attention-hungry youngsters.

  Michael wasn’t yet one year old when Marianne became pregnant again. Dick became enraged and accused her of deliberately getting pregnant so she could get more money out of him. Dick drank more and Marianne grew deeply depressed, even picking up a smoking habit in spite of the fact that she was pregnant.

  Marianne spent more nights out on her own. Dick began having mild health problems at the time and was often resting or recovering from hangovers. Marianne, who was growing more bitter by the day, used to mock Dick’s illness and sometimes kicked him out of the bedroom. When he wasn’t around, Marianne would ask the servants, “What happened to the dope?” or “Where is the body?”

  When he wasn’t fighting with Marianne, Dick got involved in politics again. He was asked to bail out Harry Truman, who was in need of emergency campaign cash in order to beat Thomas Dewey in the election of 1948. Dick grudgingly donated tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign but told Truman he was still upset for not being paid back the hundreds of thousands of dollars he loaned the DNC during and since FDR’s election, which now amounted to about $270,000. On inauguration day, Truman called Dick into his office and told him, “I owe my election to you.” After Truman won, he arranged a secret deal with the IRS so Dick could write off all the campaign donations to FDR and Truman as “bad debt” on his tax returns. Again, Dick and his wife soon accepted White House invitations from another sitting president. Dick was later praised as one of the few wealthy men of the era who stuck by President Truman.

  In business, Dick was elected vice president of Consolidated Caribou silver mines, one of the leading producers of silver ore, and joined other former presidential aides in investing in the company. Dick also made one of his smartest aviation moves at this time. In 1949, he invested in a small crop-dusting airline that was run out of Atlanta, called Delta. Dick bought the majority of the airline’s shares and poured money into it over the next two years. By 1953, Delta had expanded to international passenger service and became a world-class airline.

  For a moment, Marianne and Dick would know joy again. Marianne gave birth to another boy, Dick’s sixth son, Patrick, in December of 1948. Marianne and Dick decided to commemorate the birth of their second son by making a vow to sober up and start a new business together. They opened up the Sapelo house and turned it into the Sapelo Plantation Inn, in part to help cover the soaring maintenance costs for the house. The chatty brochure read, “Expert and thoughtful attention given to every detail to make your stay comfortable and enjoyable… careful selection of guests assures you of congenial companions during your visit.”

  Dick also added a subsidized boys camp to another part of the island for underprivileged families in McIntosh County, but closed it just a few years later when he discovered that the “underprivileged” boys from Darien were being dropped off in expensive cars.

  With the two baby boys in the care of nurses and governesses most of the time, Dick and Marianne gave up their vow of sobriety and resumed partying throughout their sons’ infancies. They sailed to Miami Beach, Sapelo, New York, and the French Riviera on a regular basis.

  The more they drank, the more verbally and physically abusive both Dick and Marianne became. Dick often became furious when Marianne wore revealing clothing in the presence of other men, which was the primary source of their arguments. Once Dick tackled Marianne to the ground in a choke hold and she pushed him back against a fireplace mantel, knocking him unconscious. When the fights were really bad, she hurled furniture and dishes at him and mocked him for being a coward when he didn’t fight back. On one occasion, Marianne backed Dick up against the wall of their gar
age, cursed at him, and said, “You’re a sissy, why don’t you stand up and fight?” Then she picked up objects in the garage and threw them at him. Most of them broke on the floor, but one hit him and cut his forehead. In New York, their fights and screaming matches sometimes got so bad that Dick would call the police to scare Marianne into submission. Marianne also called the police to have Dick arrested, but when they arrived, they couldn’t find any reason to. The police never arrested either of them for domestic disturbances, but they spent plenty of time acting as marriage counselors. In record time, the romance and the marriage had spiraled into violence and loathing.

  It had been only a few short years and two kids, and Dick was increasingly abandoning Marianne, just as he’d done with Blitz. Even when they were on vacation together, Dick spent more time eating and drinking with his yacht crew than with Marianne. Marianne was bored with the isolation of the yacht and Dick’s drunkenness, and she usually bolted ashore, alone, whenever they docked in a major port in France or the Mediterranean. Marianne’s many lonely nights and Dick’s drinking eventually drove her into the arms of other men. By 1950, Marianne had attracted the attention of some of the world’s most famous playboys. But Dick wouldn’t be lonely.

  The Knickerbocker Ball

  The striking, raven-haired, former British correspondent for the New York Times named Muriel Marston Greenough had attitude, passion, and a major temper. The Canada-based socialite, born December 28, 1918, to Thom Marston and Eleanor Heselton, looked like a 1940s version of Meryl Streep and was once a familiar face at the Garden of Allah in Los Angeles with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, founders of the famous Algonquin Roundtable. She was also friends with Maurice Chevalier, Gloria Swanson, and Charlie Chaplin. As a young woman, Muriel even appeared in several foreign films with her famous friends.

  She attended school at Havergal College in Toronto, the Château de Broussailles in Cannes, and Le Lierre in Paris before she married Colonel Harold Laurence, a Bengal Lancer, at the tender age of sixteen and traveled around the world with him. The couple spent three years in India, where Muriel studied Sanskrit and Hindu practices under the guidance of a maharajah. But Muriel was much too young when they married and the relationship didn’t last—they were divorced in 1939. Upon her return to England, Muriel reported on the Blitz in Britain and was offered a job with the New York Times to write about the blackouts, wartime fashion, and female wartime workers. But she did not emerge from the war unscathed. Muriel narrowly escaped Nazi bombs on numerous occasions and watched as friends were killed right before her eyes. She was an extreme claustrophobic, and no matter how traumatized she was by the bombings, she wouldn’t go down into the bomb shelters or the Tube to escape. But on one occasion she was forced into a cellar, where she was trapped with a fellow war correspondent, Richard Greenough. When they emerged three days later, they were in love.

  At the time of their marriage in 1946, Greenough became a director for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and was stationed in Prague. Their marriage put an end to her career at the New York Times and Muriel devoted herself to a life of social dinners and events. But when Greenough cheated on her in 1950, Muriel started divorce proceedings. She continued to live off Richard Greenough as well as money she had obtained in her divorce from Laurence, and her own family’s money. Muriel was already well off, but she wasn’t filthy rich, and her mother, who had grown up poor, wanted to see her daughter become a Vanderbilt or a DuPont. During the fall of that year she attended the Knickerbocker Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, looking for love. There she introduced herself to Dick Reynolds—a move that would forever alter her fate.

  It was getting late—a cold November weeknight in Manhattan when only the independently wealthy considered going out. The Waldorf-Astoria was hosting a big charity ball and everyone would be there. Muriel lay half asleep in her Upper East Side apartment when a friend from her interior designing days, John, called. “Did you forget that the Knickerbocker Ball is tonight? Where are you?”

  “I can’t be bothered. I’m exhausted and I have a splitting headache.”

  “Another hangover?”

  “Very funny.”

  Muriel hung up and returned to bed.

  John called back. “I trust that you’re getting dressed.”

  “I told you, I’m not going.”

  “Meet me on the corner of Park in an hour.”

  “Fine. There better be some rich eligible bachelors there.”

  Muriel rolled out of bed and dressed. She left her Seventy-ninth Street apartment at ten and met John on the corner of Fiftieth Street.

  “You look gorgeous, as always,” said John.

  They kissed each other’s cheeks and walked to the hotel. Doormen ushered them to the main ballroom where music was playing. The doors opened to a large crowd of well-heeled New Yorkers dancing, drinking, and smoking inside the massive, balconied room.

  “Let the party begin,” John said with a wink.

  An hour later, Muriel was dancing with John when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see a dashing blond man who clearly had had one too many. He smiled from ear to ear.

  “May I have this dance?”

  John motioned for her to go on and Muriel joined Blondie in a two-step. Muriel looked into his eyes and felt as though she’d met him before.

  “My name is Dick. And you are?”

  “Muriel.”

  “It is very nice to meet you.”

  Dick looked at Muriel so intently that she had to look down at her feet to conceal her blush. They danced and talked for the better part of an hour.

  “How about a drink, Muriel?” They walked to the bar and sat down. Dick asked Muriel lots of questions about herself, which she loved. As they talked, Muriel kept up with Dick, drink for drink, which he loved. Dick was impressed by this very attractive woman who could match him in both booze and brains.

  Finally Muriel said, “I really should get back to my table. My friends will wonder what happened to me. Won’t you join us?”

  Dick happily followed Muriel to her table and sat down with her friends. His star power at the party was evident—all eyes followed the blueblood heir, and Muriel found that their table was suddenly the center of attention. Dick mingled easily with New York’s millionaires, who in turn adored Dick’s relaxed Southern charm and his soft North Carolina drawl. His popularity was enhanced by his excessive smoking and drinking, giving those around him permission to party with abandon. He was the life of the ball, and Muriel couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Later that evening, Dick invited Muriel, along with the better part of the crowd at the Knickerbocker Ball, to join him for a nightcap at One Beekman Place. Muriel walked outside into the still energized New York night to meet Dick and his instant entourage, who were in a limousine waiting outside. The smell of sewage, manhole steam, alcohol, and perfume filled Midtown’s post-party early morning air. It was a classic mid-century New York City night and, as usual, Dick Reynolds was at the center of it all.

  They pulled up to One Beekman Place. The small, hidden, riverfront street on Manhattan’s East Side ran from Forty-ninth Street to Fifty-first Street and was the place where millionaires congregated. Dick’s enormous twenty-two-room duplex was a sight to behold. In addition to its sweeping views of the East River, it included a bar custom-made for Dick, which, Muriel observed, was as large as the bar in Club “21.” The apartment was already heaving with guests by the time Dick and Muriel arrived. A beautiful, buxom redhead was making the rounds. Muriel settled down with a martini and observed the scene. As the night groaned on and the crowd grew more and more intoxicated, Dick invited Muriel to his study. He was fascinated by Muriel’s history as a writer and thought she might be interested in his own publishing endeavors. He pulled out his self-published book, Escort Carriers in Action in the Pacific, and spoke about his wartime experiences.

  As Dick rambled on to Muriel about the war, pointing to different pictures of
aircraft carriers, Muriel, smitten, was less interested in the carriers than she was in Dick’s handsome face. She started to feel guilty that she was keeping the guest of honor distracted for so long.

  Muriel was flattered to have Dick’s full attention, but she would soon have to go home. The more she drank, the more her headache came creeping back. She eventually excused herself from Dick, regretting having to do so, and retrieved John. On her way out, the lovely redhead bid her goodbye. With barely a glance over her shoulder, Muriel walked back out into the pre-dawn city with John.

  On the way home, the twosome gossiped about the party and Muriel gushed about Dick. John informed her that Dick was the Dick Reynolds, of the Reynolds tobacco fortune. The name still didn’t ring a bell. John asked Muriel if she had heard of Camel, and she said, “Of course.”

  “They’re the Camel people. One of the richest tobacco families in the country.” Muriel nearly swooned as dollar signs flashed in her head.

  John also told her that the redhead was his wife—a B-movie and Broadway actress.

  Muriel was appalled. “What? That bimbo was his wife?” “I’m afraid so. Sorry to dash your hopes.”

  “Someone needs to rescue that man.”

  John went on to tell Muriel that Dick was once married to a nice woman, Elizabeth “Blitz” Dillard, who came from another respected tobacco-farming family in Winston-Salem. Dick was married to her for years and they had four children. But when he returned from the war, he left her, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, showed up in New York with Marianne O’Brien, aka Redhead.