She said her name was Miranda, that she was a rich, gorgeous blonde, and she enchanted a vast circle of men, from Robert De Niro to Quincy Jones. But who was the woman behind the voice? VFArchive
got the call in the middle of the night— this was in '80 or '81," remembers Buck Henry."It was a confusing long-distance call, apparently from somebody I knew. I called back, got an operator, but of course [I now know] it was all phony. It was an act. Ultimately I'm talking to this girl who says she has no idea who I am, and I have no idea who she was.
"My mind reeled," Henry says. Ever since, he has made a hobby of collecting all the information he can about the woman who called herself Miranda Grosvenor."I have a book's worth of material on her," says Henry."I couldn't begin to tell you the whole story. It would take 10 hours to tell it all.... The stories are too long, and I want to save some of them.... And I've only scratched the surface. Some of it is really dark and strange.
She reached him at home for the first time on a night in May 1982. Somehow, giving only the name"Ariana," she managed to keep him on the phone. In retrospect Perry realizes she had done considerable research on him. She knew his resume by heart and within minutes had coaxed him into a conversation about his passion for 1950s doo-wop records.
The photographs and letters didn't hurt. Perry had pushed to meet her, but she always had an excuse: She had to study. There was a problem with her father. She had to work. But she did send him a photo, cut out of a magazine, of a lithe, voluptuous model. A separate snapshot showed a white Ferrari parked on what appeared to be a college campus, with a blonde behind the wheel. Perry admits he swooned.
Miranda, in turn, took pains to persuade Henry she really was a rich, gorgeous blonde, an effort that led to the Johnny Carson incident and an even stranger episode in New York. Henry was staying at the Essex House on Central Park South, to which he returned late one Friday night after a long rehearsal as host ofAt the desk was a message from Miranda Grosvenor.
Amazingly, Whitney's admission only deepened Perry's feelings for her. Now, he told himself, he knew the"real" Whitney."It didn't matter to me," he sighs."I was so deeply involved." That fall Perry, an enthusiastic University of Michigan alumnus, flew to Ann Arbor to watch one of his favorite football players, the celebrated Michigan wide receiver Anthony Carter. He had mentioned his interest in Carter to Whitney, only to have her insist she would arrange a chat. When Perry arrived in his hotel room, the phone rang."Richard Perry, this is Anthony Carter," the voice on the other end said."Whitney Walton asked me to give you a call.
Just before seven Perry walked to the Park Lane. Within minutes he was standing before her door. His mind raced. He didn't know what to expect—a model, a college student, a maniac with a carving knife, or the woman he would spend the rest of his life with. He knocked. The door was unlocked and he pushed it open. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. He sat beside her and took her hand. As his eyes adapted to the darkness, he began to see her face.
They parted with a hug and a quick kiss, and Perry agreed reluctantly to meet her the next evening at the Carlyle Hotel bar. That afternoon Perry went to the apartment of singer Art Garfunkel to pour out his woes. Garfunkel, he was aware, had also taken Miranda's calls. In fact, Garfunkel said, he had been so enraptured by Miranda he had almost taken a Swiss vacation with her. The two men were so deep in conversation Perry almost forgot his second meeting.
The episode lingered with Perry for months, in scenes he would replay in his mind again and again. In time he got over it. There is no surprise in her reaction, no dismay, no sense of hearing an outlandish story for the first time. Only anger and a dash of sarcasm. I press, saying I am certain she is Miranda Grosvenor."It's not me," she says flatly."There's a lot of people named Whitney Walton.... This is intrusive, this is invasive. I'm a social worker."
"The first thing I remember is she had a big poster of Vitas Gerulaitis, the tennis player, on her door," says Abel."I remarked on it. She said they were great friends. They talked on the phone a lot."
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