The Murder of One of Europe’s Richest Men; the High Price of Being Babe; a Bohemian Tragedy

A special delivery from the Vanity Fair Archive. View in your browser | Update your preferences     A daily digest of things to discuss over drinks January 08, 2022 Escape the January chill with one of these long reads from the V.F. Archive.   Babe When Babe Cushing, the most captivating of "the fabulous Cushing sisters," married CBS chairman Bill Paley, her glamour and his power made them the golden couple—in New York society there was nothing beyond the Paleys. But Babe became her husband's most precious possession, slavishly fulfilling his whims while her family disintegrated around her. And her aura of perfection—for three decades she was the ideal and envy of all her peers—belied a deepening pain and resentment. Sally Bedell Smith, in this excerpt from her biography of William S. Paley, In All His Glory, records the high price of being Babe. R E A D  M O R E »     Up Ship Creek When a cargo ship got stuck in the Suez Canal to the tune of $10 billion lost daily in global trade, an amused public giggled—and then our supply pain kicked in. R E A D  M O R E »     The Man in the Latex Suit The 2005 killing in Geneva of Edouard Stern, then one of Europe's richest men, stunned the global financial elite. Once the heir apparent to Michel David-Weill, his father-in-law, at the investment bank Lazard Frères, Stern was known as much for his brutal arrogance as for his dashing style. With exclusive access to the financier's inner circle, including the friend who found his latex-clad, bullet-riddled body, Bryan Burrough revealed the fears and enemies that plagued Stern's last days as well as the erotic entanglement that came undone just before his death. R E A D  M O R E »     Supercalifragilistic Lin-Manuel Miranda! He sings! He dances! He writes Tony-winning musicals and Oscar-nominated scores! And, in 2018, he starred in Mary Poppins Returns! As Bruce Handy wrote, there's no such thing as just a spoonful of… R E A D  M O R E »     Bohemian Tragedy Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America's richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—have been known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistleblower, the San Francisco–based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, Alex Shoumatoff investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians' annual encampment. R E A D  M O R E » Get on the list Subscribe to our Hollywood newsletter for your essential industry and awards-season news, every day. Sign Up Now     This e-mail was sent to you by VANITY FAIR. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, vanityfair@newsletter.vf.com, to your address book. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2022. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.