In "That Woman," her solid biography of the woman who was born Bessie Wallis Warfield and, on Dec. 10, 1936, became the King of England's excuse for abdicating his throne, Anne Sebba argues that her subject actually did the world a great favor.
By compromising Edward VIII to the point where he could not possibly perform his royal duties, Wallis Simpson may have kept Britain safe from a Nazi sympathizer.
Scotty Bowers, whose gee-whiz, scurrilous Hollywood memoir, written with Lionel Friedberg, is called "Full Service," performed tireless sexual services while working as a gas station attendant and bartender. Among those he claims to have befriended are "Eddy" and "Wally," as he addressed them. Bowers was surprised to hear that the ex-king and his wife wanted him to embroil them in various menages-a-trois with partners of both sexes. "This was the romance of the century, for crying out loud," he said.
Was it? Both books have the same thought about whether the love affair between the Duke of Windsor, as Edward was known post-abdication, and the Duchess, as Wallis was known after they married, was the romance of the century: no.
'A giant cover-up'
Bowers, happy to gossip, claims to have heard from Cecil Beaton that the Windsor myth was "a giant cover-up by the royal family and the British government to conceal the truth about Edward's sexual preferences." Sebba, who has actually done research, turns up considerable evidence to support this idea: "Few who knew them well described what they shared as love."
"That Woman" depicts Wallis as a woman who sought power and privilege but never expected the damage she wrought or the wrath she engendered. Born in Baltimore and married twice before she met Edward in 1931, she could be as tone-deaf as she was ambitious. She was delusional enough to hope, once she went to England and took up with the future king, that her own family history "would stand up against these 1066" - as in William the Conqueror - "families here."
It didn't. And after Wallis completed her own conquest, she spent the rest of her life paying the price. She grew notoriously acquisitive. She lived in fear and frustration. And she baffled many who knew her. Sebba, like all biographers of this strangely androgynous woman, is a bit mystified by her subject's magic powers of seduction.
"That Woman" also underscores Edward's considerable shortcomings. There was the dreadful baby talk, the pouty selfishness, the "ethical impotence" and the total lack of intellectual curiosity and historical perspective.
Name dropping
Not surprisingly, Scotty Bowers plays no role in Sebba's account. But this handsome ex-Marine and his friendly gas station have long been alluded to in Hollywood memoirs. And now, at last, they go public. "Full Service" drops many names, often with the laughable faux naivete that ghostwriting provides.
As befits a book by an octogenarian describing "sexcapades" and "shenanigans," this book aspires to disingenuous innocence. "Full Service" tells its supposedly true stories in a thoroughly fake fashion. Wallis Simpson? "She did it in style." On this one thought, "That Woman" and "Full Service" happen to agree.
