Former B.H. ‘Queen Bee’ Grace Robbins Tells Of Her Life With Famed Author In New Book
Long before she was to become one of the original “queen bees” of the ’60s and ’70s Beverly Hills social scene, Grace Palermo was simply a hardworking gal from Brooklyn well on her way to making a name for herself in the advertising jungle of Madison Avenue. One fateful Sunday in September 1962, however, her life was to change virtually overnight. She had spent a leisurely day reading a popular novel loosely based on the composite exploits of Howard Hughes, Bill Lear, Jean Harlow and several others.
One thing she couldn’t do that day was put it down; though it was some 600-pages in length. Finally, she completed the tome, had dinner and was off to dreamland…her thoughts being about this interesting and immense work she had just read and “what an imagination that writer must have.”
The book was The Carpetbaggers and the author one Harold Robbins, a then 47-year old New Yorker who had been penning best sellers since 1948 including Never Love A Stranger and The Dream Merchants. His graphic and racy material has been called an intricate part of that era’s sexual revolution.
When Grace arrived at her Grey Advertising office the next morning ready to begin her casting duties on TV commercials for Revlon and Proctor & Gamble, she ran into commercial agent Archer King who was accompanied by a man she’d never seen before. Needless to say, that person was the one and the same Harold Robbins.
To say the two were immediately smitten would be an under-statement. He invited King and Grace to be his lunch guests in his suite at New York’s Americana Hotel and, after a meal of lobster and Dom Perignon, walked her back to her office passing a jewelry store en route. Asking her if she could have anything in the store, what would it be? “Oh, I just love that little bracelet” was her reply thinking she was making idle conversation.
Grace returned to her desk and duties but shortly thereafter a courier arrived from the store and delivered the casually wished-for bracelet. From then on, it was a whirlwind romance, highlighted by a weekend stay at The Beverly Hills Hotel and her first visit to the City where she was to become a much envied and admired hostess for nearly the next two decades.
She has chronicled these exciting years in a 274-page effort Cinderella And The Carpetbagger released late last month by its publisher, Bettie Youngs Books.
Harold had grown-up in Brooklyn, the son of a pharmacist. He spent his youth hustling and stuffing ballot boxes for Tammany Hall but also creating a bigger than life aura, eventually turning his far-out imagination about himself into reality.
By the time his career ended, he was as the time the best-selling American fiction author of all time with 24 of the most popular novels in literary history and sales of more than 750 million, translated into 32 languages worldwide.
When Grace and Harold finally tied the knot, the latter had become a much sought-after celebrity in his own right. The couple was in demand by the ultra-chic partygivers from Manhattan, Palm Beach, Paris, London, Cannes, Palm Springs and, of course, “the Hills” – Beverly and Holmby to be exact.
Their fairytale, larger-than-life existence included residences on North Beverly Drive, New York and Palm Springs, plus splendid villas in the south of France and yachts moored there and Acapulco. An invitation to their renowned, annual New Year’s Eve parties was a prize possession.
The Robbins’ pals abroad included artist Pablo Picasso, author James Baldwin, and international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Domestically, it was a “who’s who” of Hollywood and Broadway.
The books kept rolling out of Harold’s vivid imagination (The Adventurers, The Inheritors, The Pirate, The Betsy, The Lonely Lady, Dreams Die First, The Spellbinder, etc.) —one bestseller after another, most of them made into movies. As in the case of the government, the only problem is when some entity brings in $1 million and spends $1.5 million, it doesn’t add up.
While Harold was writing, Grace busied herself raising their daughter, Adreana (who herself has joined the “family business” as an author of a novel), maintaining the homes, doing charity work and even developing a fledgling career as a nightclub singer.
One day, shortly after her husband proclaimed: “I want an open marriage,” their long love affair was about to end. And expire it did after a bitter divorce and eventually Harold’s death in 1997 at age 81.
“I had the time of my life—in fact, several lives. It was a true storybook romance and I loved just about every second of it,” she exclaimed.
