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Brenda Frazier, Debutante of the Century: The Dark Side of America’s Most Famous Socialite

In 1938, Brenda Frazier's face was on the cover of 'Life' magazine. By 45, Diane Arbus photographed her skeletal and hollow-eyed in bed, still in full makeup. What happened in between is a study in what society does to women it decides to consume.

There is a memorable line in Anita Loos’ 1927 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Towards the end, the main character declares that “a man being rich is like a girl being pretty.” The problem with equating those attributes is that a man can always make more money. If a girl’s value lies entirely in being pretty, that is akin to being very rich at age 21 and getting a tiny bit poorer every day for the rest of your life. No one worried about that decline more keenly than Debutante of the Century Brenda Frazier.

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Brenda Frazier was born in 1921. She came into the world with a trust from her grandfather for 4 million dollars, the modern equivalent of $72 million. This was not nearly as important, at least in the eyes of her family, as the fact that she was pretty. She had a famously icy mother who refused to hug her—she was made to curtsey, formally, instead—and an alcoholic father who, when Brenda was four years old, went to a Harvard-Yale football game and never came back. He died of throat cancer when Brenda was age 12. Her mother was often absent, travelling to Europe for Christmas, leaving Brenda to open presents alone with the butler. As for schooling, Brenda would later recall, “I was pretty good in my classes, but that was altogether unimportant. Indeed, it was possibly dangerous; it might disqualify me for marriage to someone who was a brilliant catch, but unfortunately stupid.” She was, however, said to be an excellent painter by her teachers, and she enjoyed playing piano. But again, Brenda noted, “You do not become a grande dame in high society by playing the piano or painting seriously.” The joke in the newspapers was that “She went to Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, and graduated to the Stork Club and El Morocco.”

As she came of age, her mother, known as “Big Brenda’ seemed to take an interest in her once more. Big Brenda’s efforts were channeled with a single-minded passion into enhancing her daughter’s beauty and fame. This was explicitly done so she could secure the best marriage. The fact that this might not have been strictly necessary—that little Brenda could simply take her trust fund, buy a chateau in the South of France and spend the rest of her days painting in the sun under a large straw-brimmed hat—was never suggested. Such was the downside of an era in which female ambition was largely channeled in only one direction. 

Brenda Frazier would later recall, “The only way I could gain love or acceptance was to submerge my desires in my mother’s—to be a passive tool of her whims.”   

By the time she was age 13, Brenda visited clubs wearing jewels, strapless dresses and a full face of pale white........

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