Anyone who has ever found him- or herself the subject of an unauthorized biography (that’s you, Oprah, Angelina) can take a lesson from Estée Lauder, who was in such a situation in 1985 when Lee Israel came out with “Estée Lauder: Behind the Magic,” an unauthorized biography of the cosmetics doyenne just as she was about to release her own autobiography, titled “Estée: A Success Story.”
Rather than stew silently and leave everyone guessing, Lauder let her opinion be known. “I’m agitated because I really wrote my book myself and didn’t hold anything back, and now someone wants to get on my back to make money,” she told WWD in 1985, after dispatching her butler to buy the Wall Street Journal’s review of the competition.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
Those expecting the skeletons to come tumbling out of Lauder’s vanity were left disappointed. The big “reveal” in Israel’s book was Lauder’s divorce and eventual remarriage to her husband, Joe. However, that was something she had already covered in her biography. “I never told anyone I was divorced,” said Lauder. “Joe and I had a love affair all our lives. We all make mistakes in life. But I was big enough to write about everything in the book.”
As for who in Lauder’s camp had loose lips, she wasn’t afraid to point fingers: “Someone in my office must have betrayed me and given out a lot of information.…[Israel] doesn’t know me. She never saw me. If someone in my office betrayed me, then they just did and that’s all.”
The one allegation Lauder would neither confirm nor deny was her age, which, according to Israel, was 77 at the time. By that point, Lauder had held out so long, she considered it a game, she told WWD. “I am not young. I am not old. I feel very young at heart. People sometimes say to me, ‘Your husband is here,’ and they are referring to [my son] Leonard.”