-
F.
Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
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| Talitha: Through a grate darkly |
- Yves Saint Laurent
Last night Paul and Talitha Getty threw a New Year's Eve
party at their palace in the medina. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were there,
flat on their backs. They couldn't get off the floor let alone talk. I've never
seen so many people out of control.
-
John Hopkins, 1968
[Talitha] arrived like a gust of wind, bringing a
tornado with her when she married John Paul Getty Jr. She brought something new
to that family and that whole world. She was a very beautiful woman who had
never even thought about being dressed by a haute couture house, despite having
the means to do so; she dressed a bit like a hippie. She was very touching, and
she was very pretty. Yes, she was all of that. But, above all, she was a
completely free character, and that, that was very important.
 |
| Party on... |
-
Pierre Bergé, L’Officiel, 2016.
A ‘free character’? It didn’t work out that way…
In the late 1960s, the term ‘beautiful
people’ came to be applied to a wealthy, indolent crowd of perpetual
party-goers, most often found in exotic locations, who enjoyed a robust pursuit
of alcohol, drugs and sexual liaisons. They differed from the ‘jet set’ in that
they gravitated more toward counter-culture trends and fashions. And no one was
more beautiful than Talitha
Getty (1940-1971).
 |
| The photo on the Edge of Forever |
And why shouldn’t her boyfriend at one point be French
aristocrat Count Jean De Breteuil, a dreadful man who seemed adept at using
heroin to kill rock stars and other celebrities.
She held court in Morocco where a thin
line etched in the cool sand of a midnight dune holds death at bay,
but somehow the wind always breathes the lovely sweet-tang perfume of decay.
We leave Talitha
Getty on that Marrakesh rooftop in blue moon aspic, her forever face both
curious and fearful, with that thousand-yard stare that looks so intently at absolutely nothing.
