Her lean, clean looks and whiplash wit earned Nancy Gross from Pacific Grove the nickname Slim and a place in Truman Capote's Answered Prayers as the mordant Lady Coolbirth. Of all the men who fell for her— from Clark Gable to Ernest Hemingway—Slim married three: director Howard Hawks, who created Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not in her image; producer-agent Leland Hayward, the love of her life, whom she lost to Pamela Churchill; and Sir Kenneth Keith, the financier with the stiffest upper lip. In an excerpt from Slim (Simon and Schuster), written with Annette Tapert and finished just before her death this spring, Lady Keith proves you could never be too rich or too Slim.
Backstage With Barbara Ann
Even our famous B.A. has to go through the tough grind of a star s buildup. Olympic medals cut no ice on Broadway February 15 1949 EVA-LIS WUORIO
Backstage With Barbara Ann
EVA-LIS WUORIO
IN THE half-light of a Manhattan dawn last December a slender girl, her blond hair in pigtails, walked across Lexington Avenue from a small residential hotel to a small all-night restaurant for breakfast. It was too early for the hotel coffee shop to be open.
She was carrying a skating costume in a rawhide overnight bag and a pair of skates in red leather bags, and with her was a straight-backed, middleaged woman in a grey English flannel suit, a tartan bonnet and a long tartan scarf.