Princess and the Hollywood drug parties
Biography claims Princess enjoyed wild Hollywood party and was even offered drugs by Jack Nicholson
Princess Margaret rubbed shoulders with Hollywood bad boys at drug-fuelled parties and was once offered cocaine by Jack Nicholson, according to a new book by Sue Mengers, a famed celebrity agent. The biography claims she spent the night getting tipsy and flirting with John Travolta.
IT IS no secret that the Queen’s younger sister was the wilder of the pair, spending many raucous nights dancing into the early hours.
But a new book hints at the extent to which Princess Margaret eschewed the shackles of royal life, alleging that she rubbed shoulders with Hollywood hellraisers at drugfuelled parties and was once offered cocaine by Jack Nicholson.
The biography claims that she turned down the drugs but was by no means offended enough to leave early, going on to spend the night getting tipsy and flirting and dancing with John Travolta.
The anecdote is detailed in the biography of Sue Mengers, a famed celebrity agent, whose star-studded Hollywood parties during the Seventies and Eighties have become the stuff of legend.
Mengers is said to have been on good terms with Princess Margaret, although it is unclear how they first met.
The book claims that she threw a party in her royal acquaintance’s honour at her home in 1979.
The cream of Hollywood was said to have attended, with guests including Sean Connery, Farrah Fawcett, Robin Williams and Barry Manilow.
Nicholson’s apparent faux pas, in which he is said to have pulled the Princess aside in a bid to get to know her better, did not go down well with the hostess.
Mengers was said to have been furious when Nicholson, who was accompanied by his then girlfriend Anjelica Huston, offered her guest of honour drugs, fearing that he had blown her chances of an invitation to Buckingham Palace, which she craved.
But Margaret was seemingly undeterred by the actor’s alleged behaviour. Dressed in an eye-catching black-and-silver Dior dress, the Princess, who would turn 50 the following year, was the centre of attention and was enjoying herself immensely.
Having turned down Nicholson’s offer, she is said to have stayed at the party until 12.30am, dancing repeatedly with Travolta, who was 24 years her junior. Eventually, her friend, Prince Rupert Loewenstein, a Bavarian aristocrat who managed the financial affairs of The Rolling Stones, took her home. Mengers would later reveal that she considered the party a disaster.
She said in an interview: “Every time [Princess Margaret] looked my way I curtsied. I was curtsying all night! She thought I was an idiot.”
In the book, called Can I Go Now? The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood’s First Superagent, Brian Kellow, the author, reveals that his subject had come into contact with Princess Margaret 10 years earlier when she was in England with Barbra Streisand, a client, to promote her film
Funny Girl.
The Princess was due to attend a screening but, before she arrived, a Buckingham Palace employee is said to have ordered that everyone must be seated before she arrived.
Mengers took offence at the suggestion and asked that Princess Margaret take her seat first to enable Streisand to get a standing ovation as she entered.
She was unsuccessful but Kellow claims that such brashness was typical of Mengers, who found success thanks to a mixture of bluntness, charm and ambition. She is described as a ground- breaking Hollywood agent who was the first woman to achieve a level of power and influence comparable to her male counterparts. She represented Streisand, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen and Ryan O’Neal, among others. Mengers died of pneumonia in 2011 aged 79.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman declined to comment on the book’s claims.