Patricia Duff

He is one of the richest men in America, and some say she's the most seductive woman they've ever met. Ronald Perelman and Patricia Duff may be the glamour couple on the L.A.-New York social circuit - they're certainly the hottest subjects of gossip. His public life has been carefully chronicled on the business pages, but the juiciest stories swirl around his marriages - and his very expensive divorces. Her career as a political activist has put her name on the Rolodexes of every liberal cause in the western hemisphere, but it is her beauty - and how she exploits it - that people find so riveting.

"Other than Pamela Harriman, she is the single most seductive woman around men I've ever encountered," says a politically involved L.A. woman who has known both. "Patricia completely zeroes in on the male. She makes men feel brilliant and powerful and important. She puts her face in their face and looks at them and they become idiots. It's almost hysterical. They are overwhelmed by her beauty."

This summer, both coasts were roiling with the news that their often volatile, always entertaining two-year marriage was over. Details were hard to come by, mainly because Perelman moves through life in cloud of bodyguards, cigar smoke and secrecy bordering on paranoia. No one denies that the billionaire filed a summon for divorce in New York on September 6 but he didn't take the next step - filing a complaint. The rest, it seems, were intriguing rumors - rumors that Duff had bee locked out of Perelman's town-house complex on New York's Upper East Side, or that she'd decamped to a home she owns in Connecticut or to the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. Several New York tabloids reported that a reconciliation attempt on the night of September 1 foundered when Perelman had Duff searched and discovered she was wearing a body mike (though it had not been turned on).

By October, Perelman's publicist was issuing sunny statements declaring that the couple had kissed and made up, although some of Duff's friends remain skeptical. But no one - except, perhaps, Duff and Perelman - knows for sure because Perelman has discouraged reportage as only a billionaire can. It's the story everyone's talking about, but no one's openly talking to the press - because they're afraid of Perelman. While working on this story, I spoke to numerous people close to Duff who said that Perelman's publicist or his lawyers had called and warned them to be silent.

After interviewing more than a dozen of her friends and associates in early September, I attempted to contact Duff. One friend gave me the number for Duff's East 63rd Street town-house office and told me that someone would take a message and relay it to her. When I called, no one picked up.

A short time later, I was told that Duff was at the Carlyle. I called the front desk and was put through to her room. Nobody answered. The hotel operator later gave me a Connecticut number and assured me that Duff would be there in a couple of hours. The phone rang and rang. Then I tried the town-house number, which, I later learned, had been forwarded to Duff's house in Connecticut. No answer.

A week later, I again tried the townhouse number. A soft, indistinct voice answered. I asked for Patricia Duff. "This is Patricia," she said. I identified myself and asked if she was willing to talk with me about her life and her marriage.

"I'm afraid if I'm quoted, it could create problems for me," she replied warily. "There are things I've got to work out. I have to think about my little girl. This is not fun and games. There are things more important than putting a spin on this story. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize my situation."

She sounded nervous and distraught. Although polite, she was firm. She would say nothing. She, too, was afraid.

The recent crisis erupted at the end of August in a blowup that was exhaustively covered by the New York tabloids. Patricia Duff's entourage - including her 2-year-old daughter Caleigh and her nanny - arrived in Chicago on Sunday, August 25, for the Democratic National Convention and checked into the Four Seasons Hotel. Ron Perelman was scheduled to arrive on Thursday, the last day of the convention.

Duff, who has devoted most of her adult life to politics, spent the next couple of days schmoozing party potentates and addressing fellow members of the New York delegation. On Wednesday, she watched the evening's activities from the convention floor, then took her daughter back to the hotel. Later, she went to a party at Michael Jordan's restaurant that was also attended by First Lady Hillary Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. From there, she and a few friends moved on to a party she was hosting at the Hard Rock Cafe.

The next day, Perelman flew to Chicago in his Gulf-stream IV and rendezvoused with Duff at the Four Seasons. Perelman, according to one member of Duff's entourage, seemed "extremely hyper and manic." At around seven p.m., Perelman, Duff, Caleigh and their entourages piled into a convoy of three limos and headed to the United Center, where President Clinton was about to close the convention with his acceptance speech.

En route, Perelman asked Duff if she'd gone to the party at Michael Jordan's restaurant the night before. Knowing that he keeps close tabs on her at all times - she reportedly cannot go anywhere without his bodyguards and her cell phone to take his calls - she admitted that she had gone to the party.

Perelman was enraged - apparently, he had not given her permission to go. He reportedly ordered their driver to pull over and, storming out of the limo, announced that their marriage was finished. He then marched back to one of the other limos, got in and sped off to the airport. From there, he jetted back to New York.

Shaken, Duff had the driver proceed to the convention. She didn't make it through the President's speech, however, returning instead to the Four Seasons to call Perelman. He reportedly hung up on her. A short time later, displaying perfect composure, she glided down to the hotel dining room for a postconvention dinner that included Duff's old boss and Clinton media adviser Bob Squier, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and their wives. Perelman was to have hosted this event, but Duff graciously covered for him, explaining that he'd been called away on a business emergency. Throughout the evening, she charmed the many politicos who stopped by her table. It was a big night for her - with or without her husband. After eight years of meeting, greeting and cajoling big checks from the right people, her reward was within sight: Once Clinton was reelected, Duff expected to be appointed to a prominent post.

The following morning, Duff reportedly learned that Perelman had canceled her Chicago car service. Duff, Caleigh and their entourage were forced to catch a commercial flight back home.

Immediately, friends of the couple began taking sides. Duff sympathizers painted Perelman as a monster. "When she married Ron," one told me, "she made a pact with the devil. Only this time, she got in way over her head." In the New York Observer, Ben Jones, who is married to Alma Viator, Duff's former publicist, called Perelman "a control freak" who "has lost perspective of normal human relationships. That's what we used to call a bully." Others pointed to Perelman's contentious relationship with his second wife, Claudia Cohen, the former New York Post gossip columnist and current Live with Regis & Kathie Lee regular, who got an $80 million divorce settlement in 1994. The New York tabloids reported that Perelman ordered his ex-wife not to go out with Senator Alfonse D'Amato, warning her it would be her "most expensive date ever." When she defied him, the settlement checks reportedly stopped until she took him to court. The Star's headline asked IS THIS THE WORST HUSBAND IN AMERICA?

Friends of Perelman fought back, telling me that Duff was the real problem. "Ron's a business genius," said one, "but he's naive, he has no street smarts. He's as sweet as can be, but he's insulated. Probably has only four or five real friends and wouldn't know who the Yankees played in the World Series. With Patricia, he ran into a buzz saw."

Patricia Orr was born in Los Angeles but spent most of her childhood in Europe, where her father worked for defense contractor Hughes Aircraft. According to a 1994 Esquire profile by Jennet Conant, "she got her looks and her politics from her mother, a homemaker, who was a Kennedy liberal and always at loggerheads with her father over his work." Duff remembered her mother as "totally committed. She believed you had to do something, whether it was civil rights or women's rights or whatever."

At times, Duff and Perelman seemed to be deeply in love. He would often walk into her office late in the afternoon, affectionately take her arm and say, "Come on, Pat, it's time to go." Last Valentine's Day, Duff surprised Perelman by reserving a hotel suite and hiring the chef from Le Cirque to prepare a romantic dinner for two. On more than one occasion, Duff exclaimed, "I love this man! I love him, I love him, I love him!" And a friend of Perelman's notes, "He really loved her. He wanted to take care of her."

At other times, though, the tension between them was palpable. One visitor to the Creeks says, "You always felt like you were walking on eggshells. You never knew what the mood was going to be. They were polite, but tense."

The couple's relationship was followed like a soap opera by the household staff, the assistants, the drivers and the bodyguards. One member of the entourage admits that she and others often eavesdropped on Duffs calls. "She was worried he was going to leave her. She believed he would use Caleigh against her. She was afraid of his power and his wealth."

In August, the couple took a Mediterranean cruise with two other couples. (The help trailed a discreet distance behind in a second yacht.) One person who was present says of Perelman and Duff, "They really seemed happy together. Everybody felt hopeful."

The last week in August, the marriage blew up in Chicago.

As the weeks passed, the rumor mill churned. One looming question was: How would the couple handle the Fire & Ice Ball on October 17, one of the biggest events of L.A.'s charity season? Duff's name was on "save-the-date" notices sent out in August, as vice chairman of the ball. But when the invitations arrived in September, her name had been replaced by Perelman's.

Then, as the day of the ball approached, the winds shifted again. On October 11, Liz Smith reported that "Ron Perelman and Patricia Duff are off the rocky shoals of estrangement and together again in Paris ... ensconced in a two-bedroom suite at the Ritz ... displaying much togetherness and affection.... Love is a wonderful thing."

On the night of the ball, which was held on the Warner Bros. back lot, Perelman and Duff arrived together and posed side by side, smiling for the official photographer.

On November 11, Smith again reported that Duff and Perelman were "back together - I mean really back together - after a spectacular and much publicized separation."

Despite this public reconciliation, some of Duff's friends still have doubts. Weeks after the Fire & Ice Ball, Duff's New York number was still ringing through to Connecticut, and the phone message gave the number for the Regency Hotel in New York.

Says one Duff intimate: "Patricia went to the ball because she wanted to get things as calm as possible so negotiations could go on. She feels completely trapped. She fears he will use their daughter against her. All he cares about is winning. He needs to look good, and he will go to any length to make that happen."

Says another woman who worked with Duff, "This is not a woman people should be jealous of. This is a very tragic person."

COPYRIGHT 1996 Los Angeles Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group