PAMELA Harriman, or Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman to be exact, is the life and soul of the party. In the 40s, the recent debutante got her foot on the ladder by marrying Winston Churchill's only son Randolph, and climbed another rung by having an affair with Averell Harriman, the millionaire American war emissary to London; she then hit the top in the 70s, when at 51, and newly widowed, she teamed up again with Harriman, then 79, and tied the knot.
Averell's prestige (he had become Governor of New York) and enormous wealth (around US$100 million [HK$773 million] from his father's railroad fortune) put the new Mrs Harriman at the centre of Washington's social set. Her work on behalf of candidate Bill Clinton was also to her advantage, since the President-elect handed her the job of Ambassador to France.
But life has begun to turn sour for Pamela Harriman. And perhaps not surprisingly, the downturn is reflected in a dwindling bank balance, while lawyers hover menacingly overhead.
Harriman has found herself pitted against Averell's blood relatives - from daughters to great-grandchildren - in a family feud that dwarfs most others.
Averell died in 1986, leaving his fortune in the hands of his wife, creating a long line of discontented descendants. But no member of the discreet family said a word until his daughter, Kathleen - who at 76 is older than her stepmother - began to dig into what had been happening to her father's estate.
The Harriman offspring had begun to resent Pamela's aggressive control of the family's cash, and insistence on redecorating the home built up by their mother, who died in 1970. So when, in 1993, Kathleen began to look through the books, what she found did not please her. Much of the US$30 million placed in trusts to be looked after by her stepmother was being frittered away on disastrous investments, including a loss-making resort in New Jersey. It also appeared she had been lending herself millions of dollars and failing to pay it back.
