A Dangerous Woman

by Susan Ronald

  What Stavisky proposed to Bayonne was a simple nineteenth-century banking solution: lend money at seven percent and issue bonds to investors at five percent. The two percent difference would be used to cover the operating expenses and contribute to the general good of the town.7 It was what Stavisky did in Orléans, he explained to Garat. Stavisky omitted to say, however, that the police were hot on his trail for his involvement in the municipal credit house of that city. What Arletty did not know was that the Goulds used their local Crédit Municipale to help fund their casino expansion and other short-term loans for operations. What she might have known, however, is that Florence was an investor in the municipal credit houses on the Riviera.

  In essence, the scam consisted of Stavisky taking jewels, certificates of deposit, gold, stocks, bonds, and any other valuables into his vaults as “assets” to back the municipal credit’s bonds over and above the “loans” made. Often, the loans were made to “dummies,” or cloaked to Stavisky’s cohorts, and the assets were sold before the owners could reclaim them. So long as Stavisky kept churning the sale of the bonds, and he replaced the real jewels with paste or glass ones, he seemingly kept ahead of the law.

  Just before Christmas 1934, Stavisky went on the run, moving Arletty and their two children (their son was followed by a daughter) to the Hôtel Château Frontenac in Paris. Stavisky was a “professional skipper”—a term used in the hotel trade for guests who serially leave without paying—owing the hotel over 35,000 francs. Then he took the last of his wife’s jewelry—three bracelets, her earrings, and a diamond—and told her to find a furnished apartment to wait out the storm. His body was found a few weeks later, shot in an “apparent suicide,” in a seedy hotel room in Chamonix near the Swiss border.8

  Stavisky began life as a café singer, graduating to the romantic realms of bringing down a government. Bayonne’s Mayor Garat was jailed, his thirty-year reputation in tatters. Paris’s Prefect of Police, Jean Chiappe, was offered up as a sacrificial lamb to the people who demanded to know who in the government had been protecting Stavisky for years. Worse was still to come. The far right thundered its discontent in print and took to the streets calling on the entire government to resign and call new elections. Everyone on the left was corrupt, they screamed. The Radicals were muddied by the royalists; the anti-Semitic right-wing Action Française and Croix-de-Feu rioted in the streets of Paris, with forty thousand people attempting to storm the Chamber of the Deputies. Fifteen people were killed and more than a thousand injured.9 In shades of Hitler’s attempted Beer Hall Putsch some eleven years earlier, the alleged right-wing-inspired coup d’état failed before it could begin.

  Still, it wasn’t Bayonne or Orléans that brought down Stavisky, politicians, and the police who enjoyed the fruits of his embezzlement. It was Stavisky’s greed in attempting to sell Hungarian agrarian bonds on the international stage. The scheme was halted by the Bank of International Settlement in Basel, Switzerland, when it raised all the right questions about “Monsieur Alexandre.” In all, Stavisky took everyone for the approximate equivalent today of $268,778,000, ruining acres of politicians, not to mention miles of investors. The problem for Florence was that she had been one of his investors and her “friend” Arletty hadn’t warned her or, indeed, given her inside information. Their longstanding friendship apparently cooled. Florence must have dreaded Frank’s reaction if the Gould name was once more dragged into another scandal—albeit innocently.

  * * *

  While the loss of the money and the value of their shares in the Riviera municipal credits were a pittance in their vast fortune, Florence and Frank both knew that the repercussions of the scandal would deepen the Depression and further weaken the already tottering government. More instability could only harm business. Between their casinos (those “dens of vice,” as politicians of any stripe called them), Stavisky, and Florence’s showy decadence, Frank could be forgiven for believing that they might be the targets of some unknown reckoning.

  Indeed, perhaps the time had come to look to reestablish their home in America, he thought. France, he believed, would lean farther to the left. Perhaps this was behind the Goulds’ decision to rebuild the Palais de la Méditerranée and succumb to the relentless pressure from SBM? The timing of the decision seems to be more than a coincidence. The shock announcement about the rebuilding of the hotel and casino was coupled with SBM’s press release that it would “buy the operations” for an undisclosed sum and an annual payment to the Goulds of $100,000. While the Goulds would still own the bricks and mortar, the decision made it easy to plan on going home, at least until the dust settled.

  Days later, the government fell. Frank was right—there was a resounding victory of the left. To calm frayed public nerves, the new administration proclaimed that there would be a huge public trial with anyone affected by the scandal asked to bear witness against Stavisky and all those acres of politicians facing ruin. That, from the Goulds’ perspective, was a nonstarter. They needed all the political goodwill possible from the city of Nice to get their casino operations trading again. They would need to swallow hard and avoid any further mention of the Stavisky name.

  Did Frank forbid Florence from seeing Arletty, as he had done with Zelda? Was he aware of Florence’s investment follies? More than likely, no, in both cases. Whether Florence privately helped the broken Arletty, as she would later do with other friends, remains one of her many untold stories.

  Instead, arrangements were made to sail on the Île de France that October. While the New York Sun declared that Mr. and Mrs. Frank Jay Gould were aboard ship, Frank seems to have decided at the last minute—as was his custom—not to travel.10 No reason was given, and no clarification was offered publicly if he had wired his approval to New York to allow Florence to act under his power of attorney with the new manager of his American business affairs, Mrs. Lola Walker. Certainly, Frank felt unable to “fit in” with Florence’s traveling companions and former lovers Melchior de Polignac, Armand de la Rochefoucauld, and especially Madeleine Manigler.

  Aboard ship, there were many others whom Florence knew, or aspired to know, too. The entire cast of Noël Coward’s latest hit, Conversation Piece, were flattered by Florence’s attentions. More than likely, the returning American millionairesses, Mrs. William Rutherford Mead, widow of the wealthy architect, and Mrs. George Davenport, whose family inherited the vast fur trade from the frontiersman George Davenport, were happy to make her acquaintance and asked Florence’s opinion about what the deuce was going on in France?

  Most prominent among those who joined Florence’s entourage was Félix Wildenstein—of Wildenstein & Co.—the elegant and distinguished cousin of Florence’s adviser in fine art, Georges Wildenstein. Georges was the ultimate employer of Madeleine Manigler. Nathan Wildenstein, the founder of Wildenstein & Co. and Georges’s father, had already passed the reins of the French company over to his son while he headed up the New York gallery. This, too, could have been another reason for Madeleine’s trip to New York. Rochefoucauld, as head of the French Jockey Club, was also a friend of Georges Wildenstein’s, since the latter was a major player in thoroughbred breeding and horseracing. As for de Polignac, he, naturally, provided free champagne for all.

  Despite press reports that Florence had come to New York to buy American silk stockings, her real reasons for the trip were masked. The previous year, Frank had changed his will to favor his wife, and Florence seemingly wanted to understand her husband’s American empire. In anticipation of returning semipermanently to America, Frank had acquired a home in Ardsley-on-Hudson, in Westchester County, for $25,000, adjacent to the family estate at Lyndhurst. Given the proximity to the family home, it is probable that Frank’s sister, Anna, had a hand in the negotiations. The magnificent mock-Tudor mansion of the style seen throughout Westchester County was called Mora Vocis after the time separation in Gregorian chants, where the vocal accent is on the last syllable. It had equally breathtaking views over the Hudson River as Lyndhurs
t’s. Its previous owner, Justine B. Ward, had had the house built on North Mountain Drive some seven years earlier by renowned architects William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich.11

  But Florence didn’t stay at Mora Vocis to get to know her new neighbors. The Plaza in Manhattan was more to her liking, and provided her with an easy base from which she could shop for all the antiques and furniture in New York City’s best boutiques and auction houses that her new home deserved.12 By night, she went to see Broadway shows like The Great Waltz, financed by Rockefeller money. Although opulent operettas were still popular in Paris and on the Riviera, in New York they were prohibitively expensive to produce, and often did not give the comic relief Americans craved. Florence was awed by the cast of 180, the hydraulic sets, and the fifty-three-piece orchestra. Another Broadway hit, The Ziegfeld Follies, struck a chord, too. Billie Burke, the widow of Flo Ziegfeld, worked with the theater-owning family the Shuberts to revive the popular 1920s format.13

  By the time Florence’s ticket was booked, she knew that the idea of returning “home” was no more than window dressing. In the one week that she remained in the United States, she also managed to visit Buffalo and Washington, D.C. Precisely why she chose Buffalo, unless it was to see the American side of Niagara Falls, she never said. It is particularly perplexing since she would have had invitations to see the Wildenstein stud at Saratoga Springs, some six hours away by car today.

  She declared to the New York Herald, shortly before leaving, that she had come to “shop” and that while “New York was grand,” the Goulds’ primary residence would remain in France. She promised the reporter, however, that she and Frank would return together that winter.14 Surely, Frank would be unable to brave the Atlantic winter seas, or survive New York winter.

  The swift side trip she made to Washington, D.C., is easier to decipher. The public promise of returning to America was gauged to please, without a care for the truth. In fact, the Washington trip aimed to set in motion a resolution to Frank’s federal tax problems. Apparently, no taxes had been paid in more than thirty years.15 The purchase of their Ardsley home had a two-fold purpose: to prove to the French government that they were nonresident Americans, and, as such, they should enjoy a privileged tax status there; and similarly, to demonstrate to the IRS that they would become New York residents, hoping they might get away with paying taxes only on their U.S. income. As any expatriate American knows today, payment of U.S. federal taxes is not just on the sums earned in America, but rather on one’s worldwide income. Frank and Florence were maintaining the inarguable from the viewpoint of U.S. legislation. The jury was out on whether the wheeze would succeed.

  * * *

  On May 29, 1935, Florence was once again off to New York. Again, without Frank. This time, however, it was to be part of the gaiety and glamour of the maiden voyage of the French Line’s newest, sleekest ocean liner, the SS Normandie. Designed by the former shipbuilder to the czars, the Normandie was not only the fastest turbo-electric steamship ever built, but also the first new liner designed to take the predominantly upper-crust passenger. With its main dining room swathed in Lalique glass, many commented on it as resembling Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. Still, it was longer at some 305 feet, wider, and higher than the Hall of Mirrors, too. The twelve full-height Lalique glass pillars made it a veritable city of light, able to seat seven hundred guests at some 157 tables.

  A strange picture of Florence survives from the voyage. She is smiling radiantly, dressed in her white Chanel suit, black turtleneck, her pearls, and heels. To her left is an older gentleman dressed in a dark sports jacket and light trousers, smiling lasciviously at her. Next to him is a reasonably handsome man in a swimsuit with a towel draped over his shoulder. To her right, slightly behind that man, is a heavyset man in a gray tweed suit, who looks more like a bouncer or a bodyguard, gripping Florence’s elbow tightly. In front of this man is a thin, elderly man—not Frank—but who rather has an air of an off-camera Boris Karloff. The “Boris” lookalike holds on to Madeleine Manigler’s arm. As for Madeleine, she is dressed in a black swimsuit, her hair bundled up in a white turban, and a towel draped lazily to the front, hiding her legs.

  Something stands out in this photograph: the lasciviously smiling man looking over Florence’s left shoulder fancies his chances, and Florence doesn’t acknowledge his existence. Two questions spring to mind, as well. Had Florence been aware that the Third Reich was already planting its spies aboard the best ocean liners, as reported a year earlier in the New York Sun during her stateside jaunt?16 If so, would she have cared?

  Evidently, the gulf between Frank and Florence had deepened. Even Florence’s charm could not undo the past. Was it her impressive gallery of collected lovers? Was it Stavisky, or Frank’s loathing of his wives dragging the Gould name through the mire? Or was it her closeness with Madeleine Manigler? Frank’s secretary, Magdeleine Homo, remained loyal to Florence and may have known his feelings, but she never revealed the family’s secrets. Besides, who knows what goes on in the lives of couples—even the couples themselves?

  * * *

  While the rest of France was bracing itself for the Stavisky Affair trial in December 1935, Madeleine Manigler bought Florence a Christmas present to remember: a two-month-old bear cub. If Josephine Baker could take her jaguar for a walk down the Champs-Élysées, Florence could do the same with her bear. The huge cage arrived at Florence’s hôtel particulier on rue Albéric-Magnard on Christmas morning. Frank was furious. It was unconscionable to treat a wild animal like a toy. Not only that, but it was incredibly dangerous. Still, not to feed it would be murder, Manigler replied.

  So Frank ordered his valet, Joseph, and his maid, Lucy, to feed it milk from a baby’s bottle. Then he rounded on Madeleine and Florence, and told them to find a permanent home for the bear cub—tout de suite. Florence and Madeleine would be compelled to personally drive the animal to the local zoo in a hired van, where they claimed to visit him regularly. Florence’s sister, Isabelle, certainly did, since she grumbled that the bear cub had eaten the sleeve of her mink coat.

  Still, Florence’s laughter about the purchase resounds loudly through her thank-you note to Madeline. “Thank you for the gift. It has cost me a fortune!” Simply put, Florence had decided that she adored bears, and bought four more bear cubs to roam the grounds of the Goulds’ Maisons-Laffitte estate. Naturally, she had a huge enclosure sculpted within the grounds. The bears’ arrival also meant that Florence had to employ her own keepers. Frank, certainly, was unamused.17

  17

  DARK HORIZONS

  As in law or war, the deepest purse finally wins.

  —MAHATMA GANDHI

  Sometime between 1934 and 1935, Florence met two men who would alter her life for the next decade. One was an international wine merchant who married into a German sparkling wines family, and bought his aristocratic “von” from his wife’s aging aunt. The other was a former drawing instructor. More than likely, it was the wine merchant she met first through the auspices of her friends, Melchior de Polignac and his American wife, Nina. The wine merchant’s name was Joachim von Ribbentrop.

  The former drawing instructor and high-school art teacher worked for Ribbentrop. He might have been another notch on Florence’s belt, too. From 1934, he spearheaded the Franco-German youth movement, called the Comité France-Allemagne, or CFA, aimed at closer socioeconomic relations between their youth. He was tall, blond, thirtyish, and handsome. He was also married to a French woman, Suzanne, and spoke perfect French. His name was Otto Abetz.

  Such Francophiles at the highest levels of Hitler’s Third Reich were welcomed by French royalists like de Polignac, antiparliamentarians, and French fascists. Florence, like many entrepreneurs, was disaffected with the Third Republic. Left-wing politics was a costly irritant to business, and disrespect for all politicians was every bit as rampant as today. All the same, Frank was obliged to take any interest Germany had in the politico-economic affairs of France, since he’
d been appointed the French Riviera representative of the Banque de France.

  That said, neither Florence nor Frank were aware that the French secret services took a dim view of German interests in their country. Germany had represented a threat since the armistice of 1918 in clandestine defense circles. The French Service de Renseignements, or Intelligence Services, known as the SR, was comprised of several Deuxième Bureaus (Investigative Intelligence Services) for each branch of the military, with the army having the largest and best-funded department. In this finely tuned machine of state, information was passed from the SR to the different military Deuxième Bureaus for investigation, and if required, action would be taken. Embassy branches, too, supplied intelligence either directly to the SR or to the relevant Deuxième Bureau concerned with a particular burning issue.1 As early as 1922, the chief of French military intelligence went so far as to report, “Humiliated by its defeat, Germany is obsessed with thoughts of revenge.… One single danger dominates all others at the moment, and that is the German danger.”2

  By the time Hitler seized power in January 1933, French Intelligence Services had become so alarmed, for so long, that its many governments seemed to think the agencies were crying wolf. Few were aware that after the publication of Mein Kampf in July 1925, Hitler dictated an even viler manuscript in 1928 that remained unpublished. In that work, Hitler declared that French power was a “question of life and death to Germany” and that it must be destroyed to “make it possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter.”3

  This was always at the heart of Lebensraum for the Nazis. Yet, from 1933, Hitler extended the hand of friendship, a steel fist disguised in a velvet glove. The men engaged personally by Hitler to enact that policy of rapprochement were Ribbentrop and Abetz. From 1934, any negotiations between the French and German ministers for foreign affairs involved Ribbentrop on the German side. His Büro acted as an unofficial, shadowy foreign ministry designed to suborn the official, and generally independent, foreign diplomatic services of Germany. Likewise, the roles of Ribbentrop and Abetz were personally determined by Hitler. The pseudo-aristocratic Ribbentrop’s mission included sweetening diplomatic relations not only with France, but also with Great Britain. His office at 64 Wilhelmstrasse—opposite the foreign ministry—became the personal representative of Hitler outside Germany along with the Berlin headquarters at the “Brown House,” where all NSDAP ideological decisions were made. To merit recruitment to Ribbentrop’s office, applicants had to be dynamic collaborators and self-starters, whose initiatives had been proven in Europe and the USSR.4