America's Last Great Socialite
If anyone embodied the ideal of the American dream in the 20th century, it was socialite CZ Guest. Blonde, beautiful, and married into political royalty, she seemed to float through life like she floated through her glamorous parties. But as much as Guest saw the glittering side of society, she was also steeped in its dark underbelly.
1. She Was A Golden Girl
CZ Guest would go on to alienate much of America with her worship of money, but she did come by her idolatry honestly. Born in 1920 in Boston, Massachusetts, her father Lynde Cochrane was an investment banker descended from an Earl, and the family was firmly entrenched in the world of the Massachusetts elite, the so-called “Boston Bramins”. True to her lineage, CZ began building her image from a young age.
2. She Had A Famous Nickname
“CZ” wasn’t always called that—her real name was the more mundane “Lucy.” CZ only came along, the story goes, when her brother (or some sources say her sister) started calling her “Sissy.” This morphed into CZ, and by the time she “came out” in 1939, “Lucy” was hardly ever seen again. CZ had a split identity in other ways, too.
ullstein bild Dtl., Getty Images
3. She Had A Split Personality
CZ’s mother Vivian had an adventurous streak—she had been a voice coach in New York and sang in several operettas—while her father was as blue-blooded as they come, stiff upper lip and all. CZ, however, was a strange mix of them both. She had perfectly turned out manners, but she could also be mischievous and risque when she wanted. So it wasn’t long before she sought a spotlight.
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4. She Was An Official Glamour Girl
Around the time of her debut into society, CZ entered a beauty contest and ended up winning as the “Glamor Girl of the Massachusetts North Shore”. The local contest seemed to scratch an itch for attention and admiration, and off the back of her modest success she began to model and act—and not usually in ways her father would have approved of.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
5. She Entered A Risque Profession
CZ made sure she wasn’t an average debutante, and she began to try out for acting and performing roles. Not only that, these roles were more risque than her regular white-gloved crowd was used to. She appeared in a cabaret show and as a Broadway showgirl, and in 1944 she was even in the famous (and sometimes infamous) Ziefeld Follies. She had her sights set on even more.
6. She Made A Deal With Hollywood
CZ made enough of a name for herself during these years that 20th Century-Fox eventually signed her on for a seven-year picture deal, a break that most struggling actresses never even got near. However, CZ soon learned that there are only so many places money and looks can take you, and her Hollywood career never got off the ground.
Of course, this didn’t mean CZ didn’t get exactly what she wanted.
7. She Was More Self-Aware Than People Thought
CZ had a perfectly polite yet ice-bitten demeanor—her friend Truman Capote would go on to call her the “cool vanilla lady”—and she was nothing but droll about her time “acting”. She coolly admitted, “I never made any films. I went out to parties with Victor Mature, Bruce Cabot, and Errol Flynn. … I loved every minute of it”.
When she finally left Hollywood, it wasn’t back home to the uptight Northeast.
8. She Posed For A Scandalous Portrait
CZ’s next move was to go down to Mexico and continue the party she began in California. While there, she (naturally) came into contact with some of the Mexican luminaries of the day, including the painter Diego Rivera. Rivera was taken with her, and the feeling seemed mutual: CZ happily posed unclothed for him, and the painting was eventually hung up in a bar in Mexico City.
But CZ always did know when to leave the party at the right time.
Unknown authorUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
9. She Started A New Life
For a blueblooded socialite like CZ, the exotic lifestyles of Mexico and Hollywood were just that: vacations from her real life. So once she had sown her wild oats, she happily went back to the East coast and began working toward the future her parents already laid out for her—an advantageous marriage to a wealthy man.
Now, she rubbed elbows not with actors and painters but with the New York elite. Again, it took her no time to get what she wanted.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
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10. She Made A Wealthy Match
News spreads fast in the upper circles, and the biggest news of that day was that Winston FC Guest, second cousin to Winston Churchill and a champion polo player, had just divorced from Woolworth heiress Helen McCann.
It was all CZ needed to pounce: soon, the pedigreed pair were engaged, and CZ made sure hers was the wedding of the decade.
11. She Had A Famous Writer In Her Wedding Party
Even during this early period of her life—she had just turned 27 when she married Winston Guest—CZ was accruing an enviable circle of friends made up of artists and intellectuals. Her nuptials even took place in writer Ernest Hemingway’s Havana home, with Hemingway serving as best man.
CZ then settled into the role of society wife, though it did come with certain strings attached.
12. Her In-Laws Hushed Up Her Scandals
The socialite life is not always for the faint of heart, and as a married woman CZ was now held to exacting standards. This included all but erasing the seedier parts of her past: there would be no more dreaming of Hollywood in this marriage, and rumor has it that her in-laws even tracked down the Rivera painting of her, bought it, and then stuffed it away in family storage to preserve CZ’s reputation (and their own). Then the other expectations began.
Edward Weston, Wikimedia Commons
13. She Didn’t Raise Her Children
CZ’s first duty as an elite wife was to have children, but she breezed past it like she did nearly everything else, having son Alexander and then daughter Cornelia in short succession. Still, she happily admitted that Alexander and Cornelia were practically raised by their governess, not her, adding, “I think children are better brought up with a governess. Children need discipline”. After all, CZ had things other than motherhood to worry about.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
14. Her Husband Was Selfish
Instead of looking after her children, CZ had to devote almost every waking minute attending to her husband’s needs, since, as CZ put it, “Winsto [sic] didn’t marry me to be a maid [to the children]”. She added, “I couldn’t go around with Winston, traveling, doing all the things he wanted me to do if I’d had to stay home”.
Besides, CZ noted, she wasn’t completely absent from her children’s lives: “Of course I saw them. I went fox hunting with them”.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
15. She Was Part Of The In Crowd
Despite these caveats, the next years of CZ’s life were golden; her days were filled with play premieres after yacht holidays after gala openings. Through these high society events, she made friends with artist and photographer Cecil Beaton, along with all the top socialites of her day—Babe Paley, Barbara Hutton, Gloria Guinness, and even Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor.
The further she stepped into this world, the more she proved she could stay there.
Los Angeles Times, Wikimedia Commons
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16. She Stunned Another Famous Writer
Around this time, CZ met the man who, even more than her husband, would cement her status in New York. After catching a glimpse of her at the premier for the opening of My Fair Lady in New York, the writer Truman Capote was immediately enraptured, writing of her (in a nod to Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye): “There are blondes and then there are blondes”.
With Capote came yet another step up for CZ.
Eric Koch for Anefo, Wikimedia Commons
17. She Became A Swan
Capote was famous in those days for arranging his “Swans” around him—society women that he considered the peak of sophistication and fashion. Among this cohort were CZ’s peers Babe Paley and Gloria Guinness, though their high breeding didn’t keep them from competing with each other for Capote's affection; Paley and Guinness in particular often traded barbs. CZ, though, had a different response.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
18. She Was Different Than The Other Swans
Although CZ enjoyed Capote’s company and the intellectual clout it brought her around New York, she was one of the only swans who stayed somewhat removed from him, keeping up a warm acquaintance without ever fully entering his orbit. As we’ll see, this would help her avoid one of the high society bombshells of the 20th century.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
19. She Earned A Competitive Title
With money as no obstacle, CZ quickly made a name for herself around town for wearing ultra classic, luxury American looks that would go on to inspire the likes of Ralph Lauren. Indeed, the New York Dress Institute named her as their best dressed socialite so often that they eventually put her in the Fashion Hall of Fame. It led to even more opportunity.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
20. She Got A Lucrative Offer
With CZ’s name constantly on the best dressed lists of New York, she began gaining a certain kind of fame among people in the know. Some were so impressed that they began proposing business ideas to her, including starting a line of riding shirts, off the back of her sartorial fame. But here, one of the steepest prices of her lifestyle came due.
21. Her Husband Forced Her Into The Shadows
Having a career as a socialite in 1950s New York wasn’t only unheard of, it was deeply frowned upon. So much so that when CZ brought up the idea of the riding shirts with her husband, he point blank refused to let her do it, with CZ saying he “wanted me home with the children”. Though CZ promptly cut off these ambitions, she didn’t let them go.
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22. Her Marriage Was Suffocating
Ever the debutante, CZ said very little on the matter of her husband insisting she stay his trophy wife instead of developing a career. However, she did admit much later that “I was totally under Winston when we first got married”. Given her Boston Brahmin reserve, this admission speaks volumes about the kind of pressure she might have been under during this time.
Only this was far from the only way CZ’s life wasn’t so perfect on the inside.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
23. She Spent Money Like Water
CZ and her husband Winston collectively owned millions of dollars in trust funds, but they spent like those funds were unlimited—including on stables that cost $200,000 a year (not even in today’s money) and several houses, from a Manhattan apartment to an 11-acre Long Island lot.
Yet those who watched the couple carefully would have seen just how precarious this all was.
24. They Made A Suspicious Downsize
Sometime in the late 1950s, Winston Guest began selling off properties at breakneck pace. He even sold his mother’s Palm Beach house, the Villa Artemis, trading it in for a smaller property. Then, in 1963, he also sold their New York apartment and moved his home base to the cheaper-to-keep Long Island estate.
It looked to many like the Guests had a cash flow problem. But few knew just how bad it was.
25. Her Husband Was Nearly Ruined
Winston Guest came from a long line of illustrious winners, so it likely took him far too long to realize he had lost…and in the hundreds of thousands thanks to bad business decisions. When he invested in Latin American airlines, his plans plummeted when Mexico nationalized it, and his state in the flyer Aerovias Panama was equally doomed and deeply in debt. It led to an excruciating moment.
Adam Moreira (AEMoreira042281), Wikimedia Commons
26. Her Husband Landed In Court
In truth, CZ’s husband had been dealing in bad debts for quite some time to stay afloat and keep his wife in the comfort she was used to. Even worse, in 1967 a Federal Court ruled that he was solely responsible for Aerovias’ financial predicament, and a federal marshal duly came to their Long Island estate to collect paintings and other pieces of art from them to sell and pay the debts off.
To CZ, it must have been mortifying. It was also just the beginning.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
27. They Were Forced To Sell Their Belongings
In late 1967, the Guest family's finest porcelain and furniture went up for auction in a Manhattan gallery. For three hours, the New York elite and opportunistic collectors alike bid on the dynasty’s offerings, allowing the Guests to scrape together just enough money to pay off the authorities.
Of course, they would never deign to be there themselves: just before the auction, Winston went to shoot quail in the Carolinas, giving every appearance of indifference. It was a tactic that CZ Guest was forced to use herself, and not much later.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
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28. Her Friend Published A Tell-All
In 1976, CZ’s old society friend Truman Capote dropped a bombshell on her curated world when he published an excerpt from his upcoming novel, “La Cote Basqe, 1965”. The title was a reference to a New York establishment for the elite, and the text was full of thinly-veiled barbs at the society women Capote had known and befriended.
In particular, Capote helped spread the word that CZ’s friend Babe Paley had a cold marriage bed, while her magnate husband kept other beds warm. The fallout was swift.
Barbara Niggl Radloff, Wikimedia Commons
29. Her Friends Snubbed Capote
Babe Paley wasted no time cutting out a stunned Capote, who had gravely underestimated the reaction his Swans would have. Much of her circle did the same. Fashionable women like Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill, and Slim Keith, once clambering all over him, would now have nothing to do with Capote after seeing their likenesses in print. CZ Guest, however, was different.
The Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons
30. She Remained Faithful
CZ Guest had always kept a cool distance from everything, including Capote himself. Perhaps as a result, there was no cruel caricature of her in “La Cote Basque, 1965,” and thus nothing but solidarity to her fellow Swans to get her worked up about the publication. So CZ didn’t get worked up, and she was one of the only society women who continued to see Capote.
CZ was never afraid to go her own way, and this was about to get her in her own kind of trouble.
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Eric Koch for Anefo, Wikimedia Commons
31. She Got Into A Dangerous Accident
CZ was, naturally, an avid horsewoman and a skilled rider, so it was a shock one day when she got into an accident while riding and cut her leg so badly that she went on bedrest. Thankfully, the polite society around her kept phoning up to ask how she was doing and keep her company. They also all seemed to ask the same question.
32. She Had A Hidden Talent
In between raising a family, taking care of her horses, playing tennis, and doing all the activities expected of a socialite, CZ Guest had also developed a green thumb, so much so that it was she, not a hired gardener, who worked on many of her house’s arrangements. Accordingly, all her friends now began asking her about gardening tips—and from this, CZ got an idea.
33. She Broke Her Silence
With free time on her hands now that her two children were grown, CZ began writing and then published a passion project on gardening, First Garden. Unusual for a humble homemaking book, CZ got all the luminaries she knew on the project; Truman Capote wrote the introduction, while her old friend Cecil Beaton did the illustrations.
It was her first foray into the world of work, and with work came the publicity tour. And with that came scandal.
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34. She Gave An Explosive Interview
In 1977, with the hubbub of “La Cote Basque” settling, CZ Guest sat down for a rare interview with The Washington Post. Now 57 years old, she took the opportunity to unleash a series of infamous quotations. Above all, CZ was done pretending “rich” was a dirty word, and announced a belief in the inherent superiority of the elite, equating their manners with morals.
As she put it, those “who are better educated and come from more affluent families … have learned courage and learned what’s right and what’s wrong”. She was hardly done, either.
35. She Adored Being Rich
In the interview, CZ also doubled down and argued that rich people—she hated the word “wealthy"—were actually a net good. “Look at the jobs I’ve given people,” she protested. “If you have money and servants then you’re helping somebody … If you have money then you give people pleasure. I wish I had more money”.
Nonetheless, this interview wasn’t even the most shocking thing CZ did during this period of her life.
36. Normal People Offended Her
To promote her book, CZ Guest went on a small press tour and found herself utterly horrified at the prying questions interviewers asked her about her money. She was deeply offended when one man identified her as a WASP and asked her about her thoughts on immigrants in New York City instead of the project she was promoting.
This time, though, she changed the topic politely. As you’ll see, another interviewer wasn’t so lucky.
37. She Got Her Hands Dirty
Even with these outspoken opinions and polite barbs, CZ could be very generous, even likeable. From 1980 to 1992, she ran a gardening column in the New York Post, and many colleagues of hers from this time remember her as smooth and affable. One even remembers watching her garden, knee deep in dirt, “better dressed than most women going to a black-tie event”.
This job also led CZ down some very odd, and dangerous, roads.
38. She Covered A Mob Funeral
In 1985, Gambino mob boss Paul Castellano was targeted and killed outside Sparks Steak House. Although this seemingly had nothing to do with the urbane CZ Guest, her editor at the Post wryly assigned her to cover the flower arrangements at Castellano’s funeral, and CZ gamely accepted. “I looked at the man in the coffin,” she recalled, “My God! How’d they put him back together?”
39. She Had A Preternatural Skill
Despite her incendiary Washington Post interview, CZ could very much use her words to smooth things over, too. When she founded the “Greening of New York” competition for amateur gardeners, she would make visits to some of the more needy city neighborhoods to visit the gardens, but had no issue at all charming these regular people.
As one of her colleagues recalled, while he got jumpy in a particularly rough part of East Harlem where one gardener lived, “CZ coolly talked plants and mulch with the fellow as comfortably as if we were in Palm Beach”. It wasn’t her only save, either.
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40. She Saved The Mayor
At the City Hall awards ceremony for the Greening contest, Mayor Ed Koch was three hours late, and the city gardeners, likely uncomfortable in their lavish surroundings, began getting restless. This is when CZ Guest swooped in to talk to each of them, often by name, circulating the room and asking about their flowers and plants until Koch actually showed up.
![Title: N.Y.C.'s Mayor Ed Koch
Creator(s): Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer
Date Created/Published: [between 1978 and 1989]
Medium: 1 photograph : color transparency ; 35mm (slide format)
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Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, Wikimedia Commons
41. She Wasn’t Hard To Please
One other moment from CZ’s life demonstrates her strange mix of contradictions and her pampered adventurousness. When she first walked into the New York Post’s dilapidated headquarters soon after starting her column, her guide was embarrassed by its musty smell, and apologized. An unbothered CZ merely replied in her tight, Boston tones, “My husband Winston and I hunted tigers in India with the maharaja. Do you know how terrible tigers smell?”
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
42. She Groomed Her Successor
CZ Guest didn’t just triumph over New York during her time, she also made sure her daughter Cornelia followed in her footsteps. She groomed the girl to expect the best of the world, and her official debut into society took place at the International Debutante Ball at the hallowed Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. It only got more opulent from there.
43. She Knew How To Throw A Party
Almost in tandem with her debutante ball, Cornelia’s 18th birthday drew in even bigger names. It was attended by Truman Capote (naturally), but also supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin John Bowes-Lyon, heiress Doris Duke, and Prince Egon von Furstenberg. As Capote explained the studded evening, “Cornelia has a No. 1 name. The Guests are from real patrician stock, unlike the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, who are descended from crooks”.
But this was just the ascension.
Unknown (Mondadori Publishers), Wikimedia Commons
44. Her Daughter Was The First Celebutante
In the end, Cornelia broke the mold that her mother had set up. She was named Deb of the Year after her coming out in 1982, and four years later she was crowned the Deb of the Decade, her name still clearly on everyone’s lips. Accordingly, the New York Times named her the “first ‘celebutante’”. All the same, Cornelia—and CZ—wanted more.
45. She Made A Big Brag
In another echo of her mother’s successes, Cornelia left New York to try her hand at acting, and with her mother’s full blessing. “Cornelia is some number,” CZ Guest puffed up her daughter in the press right after the girl left for Hollywood, “She is a star, and she wants to be a superstar”.
In the end, though, Cornelia ended up right where her mother had been, too: with few roles to speak of (though she did appear without a top in Time magazine).
But then again, her entrance into society had a black cloud hanging over it.
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46. Her Life Changed Overnight
Just as CZ and Cornelia were coming down from the girl’s official debut into society, misfortune came to their usually untouched halls. Winston Guest, though some years older than CZ, had always seemed hale and strong, but on October 25, 1982, he passed at the age of 76, leaving CZ alone—and in charge of herself—for one of the only times in her life. She used her time to do something very CZ.
47. She Finally Got What She Wanted
In 1985, three years into her widowhood, CZ Guest finally did design a clothing collection much like the one she’d had to turn down while married to Winston. In true socialite fashion, she designed a capsule collection made up almost entirely of cashmere sweaters; as she said, “I will only sell what I like to wear”. She liked it so much, she went even further.
48. She Made Niche Products
In 1986, CZ expanded her horizons into a line of sportswear—again, just like she had been approached to make all those years ago—and then in 1990, she introduced a fragrant, almost perfume-like insect repellent (along with other garden items) as the perfect mix of her interests: luxury and gardening.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
49. She Died As She Lived
CZ Guest lived long past the heyday of the debutante era, outliving many of her own socialite friends like Babe Paley and Gloria Guinness. However, in 2003, at the age of 83, she began experiencing difficulty breathing at her Old Westbury home in New York State and died just as her friend was driving her to the hospital. After all, it would be bad manners to keep anyone waiting.
50. She Made A Jaw-Dropping Comment
CZ Guest stirred up a lot of outrage on her gardening book tour, but the most notorious moment occurred in Atlanta. While there, she was shocked when a woman asked her in a television interview, right at the beginning: “Are you rich?” In response, CZ directly asked the woman if she’d ever terminated a pregnancy.
When the woman blanched, she followed-up: “My dear, you have just asked me the rudest question one human being can ask another. So I thought I would ask you the same kind of question”.
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