A Dangerous Woman: American Beauty, Noted Philanthropist, Nazi Collaborator - The Life of Florence Gould

by Susan Ronald

Overview

A revealing biography of Florence Gould, fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid a dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940’s Paris.

Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris at the age of eleven. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould. She guided Frank’s millions into hotels and casinos, creating a luxury hotel and casino empire. She entertained Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Kennedy, and many Hollywood stars—like Charlie Chaplin, who became her lover. While the party ended for most Americans after the Crash of 1929, Frank and Florence stayed on, fearing retribution by the IRS. During the Occupation, Florence took several German lovers and hosted a controversial Nazi salon. As the Allies closed in, the unscrupulous Florence became embroiled in a notorious money laundering operation for Hermann Göring’s Aerobank.

Yet after the war, not only did she avoid prosecution, but her vast fortune bought her respectability as a significant contributor to the Metropolitan Museum and New York University, among many others. It also earned her friends like Estée Lauder who obligingly looked the other way. A seductive and utterly amoral woman who loved to say “money doesn’t care who owns it,” Florence’s life proved a strong argument that perhaps money can buy happiness after all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250092212
Publisher:	St. Martin''s Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Born and raised in the United States, SUSAN RONALD has lived in England for more than twenty-five years. She is the author of seven books, including A Dangerous Woman, Hitler's Art Thief, Heretic Queen, The Pirate Queen, and Shakespeare’s Daughter.

Table of Contents

Part I The Aspiring Chanteuse

1 San Francisco 3

2 From Fire to Flood and Death 14

3 La Parisienne 27

4 War and the Boy Next Door 37

5 Young Mrs. Heynemann 50

6 Home Again, War, and Folies 58

7 The Man They Call "Franck" 68

Part II The Crazy Years

8 Taming All Those Monsters 87

9 Leaving the Perfumed Air of Bohemia 100

10 Careless People 106

11 An Amusing Intermezzo for Millionaires 118

12 Taking Stock 130

13 The Monégasque Feud Fit for a Prince 140

14 Hollywood Calling 152

15 The Phoenix Rises 159

16 Scandal, America, and Separate Lives 168

17 Dark Horizons 178

Part III Darkness Falls

18 Fifth Columnists and Fellow Travelers 191

19 Fall of France 202

20 Ludwig 213

21 The "Anything Goes" Occupation 219

22 In the Garden of Earthly Delights 230

23 The Occupation, 1942-1943 238

24 Florence the Banker 248

25 Liberation and Treason 261

Part IV Still A Gould

26 No Safe Havens 279

27 Paper Clips and Friends Cast Long Shadows 284

28 A Fortune to Give Away 296

29 Queen of the Riviera 307

Epilogue 315

Author's Note and Acknowledgments 321

Cast of Characters 325

Glossary 337

Notes 339

Selected Bibliography 365

Index 371

Editorial Reviews

12/04/2017
Ronald (Hitler’s Art Thief) provides an unvarnished account of the life of avant-garde socialite Florence Lacaze Gould, whose dazzling, gilded lifestyle belied her dark side as a libertine, Nazi collaborator, and war profiteer. Born in San Francisco in 1895, Florence spent much of her childhood in Paris after her family was displaced by the 1906 earthquake. After a brief marriage to millionaire Henry Heynemann, Florence wed Frank Gould, scion of a railroad mogul, in 1923. They maintained an open marriage (Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx, and Pablo Picasso were among her many lovers). Known as a great beauty with “sexually charged allure,” Florence was also a sharp businesswoman who owned successful casinos, restaurants, and hotels. Ronald sprinkles the narrative with vignettes of high society in Paris during the roaring ’20s and ’30s; Florence hosted a salon for the literati during the Nazi occupation years, during which she also bought looted artwork, bribed and bedded members of the Gestapo, and was caught up in a banking scandal. Although Florence’s letters and photographs were inaccessible to the author, Ronald compensates with layers of research into the period and surrounding players. While the dense historical detail may deter lay readers, history lovers will welcome this impressive book about a captivating, flawed woman. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Dangerous Woman:

"Energetic...Ronald's group portrait is breath-taking and quite modern." —New York Times Book Review

“A lively picture of the world in which Florence moved, withall its intricate financial shenanigans, rivalrous investors and glitteringsocial occasions... Florence’s great talent—along with her business acumen, hersingle-mindedness and her refusal to be burdened by doubts or scruples—was toinvent and reinvent herself to blend in with and exploit every place and everytime.” —Wall Street Journal

“Ronald provides an unvarnished account of the life of avant-garde socialite Florence Lacaze Gould, whose dazzling, gilded lifestyle belied her dark side as a libertine, Nazi collaborator, and war profiteer . . .History lovers will welcome this impressive book about a captivating, flawed woman.” —Publishers Weekly

"Drawing on many published sources, newspaper reports of Gould's scandalous escapades, and Gould's often fraudulent testimony when she was interrogated as a Nazi collaborator, Ronald conveys the glittering surface of Gould's life. .... A light, lively narrative about a singular, narcissistic woman." —Kirkus

Praise for Hitler's Art Thief:

“[A] riveting portrait of Gurlitt, who detested the Nazis, and stole from them, but did their bidding in the name of ‘saving modern art’.” —The New Yorker

“Ronald situates Gurlitt’s life and career amid the turmoil of Weimar Germany and then the evolution of Nazi art-looting campaigns from the late 1930s to the end of World War II, [adding] many new details about Gurlitt’s dealings.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Susan Ronald tells the back story of what may be the most startling art-world bust in modern history.” —USA Today

“One man’s extraordinary career of thievery . . . an exhaustively researched and well written book that has a cautionary tale for all of us.” —Forbes

“Outstanding. . . Hitler's Art Thief brilliantly examines the motivating forces, both internal and external, that led Hildebrand Gurlitt to go work for the Führer.” —The Jerusalem Post

“Another chapter in the unfolding story of Holocaust art and its provenance, Hitler’s Art Thief provides the background of a story that came to light when more than a thousand works of art, valued at more than $1.35 billion, were found in a tiny Munich apartment.” —The Jewish Week

From the Publisher

2017-10-11
A biography of a seductress, gold digger, and Nazi collaborator.As Ronald (Hitler's Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe's Treasures, 2015, etc.) repeatedly asserts, Florence Gould (1895-1983) was "an unmitigated snob and egotist" whose only goal in life was "having a good time in high society." Born in America to French parents, Gould had aspirations to become a world-famous opera singer; when her talent did not measure up to her outsized self-assessment, she became a chorus girl. After divorcing her wealthy first husband, she caught the eye of Frank Gould, the alcoholic son of railroad magnate Jay Gould, whom she wrested away from his second wife. Frank provided her with jewels and a string of hotels and casinos in French resorts. He also had a predisposition to collecting his own coterie of mistresses while she thrived in the company of "pretty boys" and lovers, including the besotted Charlie Chaplin. Gould's "beauty, charm, and fabulous wealth had become a deadly man magnet," Ronald writes. She had a reputation "as a lioness, devouring the men she wanted at will." Drawing on many published sources, newspaper reports of Gould's scandalous escapades, and Gould's often fraudulent testimony when she was interrogated as a Nazi collaborator, Ronald conveys the glittering surface of Gould's life. Without intimate correspondence or diaries, however, she fails to uncover her subject's feelings, motivations, and thoughts, resulting in a one-dimensional portrait of an astonishingly selfish woman. Chronicling her many affairs and swirling social life, Ronald homes in on Gould's liaison with Ludwig Vogel, a former German Luftwaffe officer, who became her lover and protector during the Nazi occupation of France, one of "a dizzying, revolving door of German men." Vogel, though, was the most important, keeping Gould supplied with all manner of "delectable treats" while most Parisians were nearly starving. Although doggedly investigated after the war, not least for her part in a money-laundering scheme, Gould suffered no reprisals, devoting herself to art, music, and pleasure.A light, lively narrative about a singular, narcissistic woman.

Kirkus Reviews

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