The Real Deal: Nina van Pallandt
With a twinkle in her eye, an inviting smile, and a bloody funny sense of humour, the Danish singer and actress Nina van Pallandt triumphed over controversy and outrageous fortune.
If you’re going to be a footnote in history, you might as well be a spectacular one. In 1972 Nina van Pallandt was linked to Clifford Irving, who happened to be working on one of the most audacious literary grifts of the 20th century. Irving, you see, somehow convinced the storied publisher McGraw-Hill that he could deliver the autobiography of the billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. In an act of chutzpah that makes it look like Stephen Glass did nothing more than dangle a modifier, Irving produced a manuscript having never spoken to the gilded hermit who was too busy storing his urine in glass jars to participate in a book.
The fraud was so egregious that Hughes emerged from hiding to repudiate it, and Irving spent almost two years in jail as a result. Van Pallandt played a crucial role in the unravelling, for she revealed she and Irving were actually on holiday in Mexico when her paramour swore blind that he was interviewing the ascetic drill-bit scion.
It was an intervention that, certainly at the time, outweighed her impressive showbiz résumé.
Born on July 15, 1932 in Copenhagen, van Pallandt was the prototypical Danish beauty, with golden locks, a nose just off- centre enough to be interesting, a neck that made swans appear hunched, and a smile that crenulated into dimples. Her initial breaks came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. You would look at her once because she was Nordically magnificent, but you’d remain in her thrall because she was just bloody funny.
On television she could be relied upon to deliver a blend of glamour and giggles that her male counterparts would never have to reckon with. And she did it alongside old stagers such as Morecambe and Wise as well as more innovative (for the time) sitcoms, such as Taxi.
It was on film, however, that she caught the eye of the auteur Robert Altman. He cast her in 1973’s neo-noir homage The Long Goodbye, and she elevated the damsel in distress trope to something way more spicy. So much so that a notoriously grizzled New Yorker reviewer noted that, “In the Chandler milieu, what could be better casting than the aristocratic Nina van Pallandt as the rich dish — the duplicitous blonde, Mrs. Wade?” Pauline Kael wasn’t done there, though. “When Nina van Pallandt thrashes in the ocean at night, her pale-orange butterfly sleeves rising above the surf, the movie becomes a rhapsody on romance and death,” she wrote. Which is quite the transition from singing lukewarm protest songs with titles like Listen to the Ocean and Little Donkey just a few years before. But more on that later.
Van Pallandt would go on to become a featured player in Altman’s ensembles, with turns in 1978’s A Wedding and 1979’s Quintet. She was also tapped by Orson Welles for a role in his hoax documentary F for Fake. Never heard of it? Us neither, as old Orson had not only drunk the Kool-Aid by then but had gone back for seconds.
Via one of those degrees-of-separation curiosities that Hollywood throws up, van Pallandt subsequently starred opposite Richard Gere in 1980’s American Gigolo. He played an escort and she was his original pimp. Imagine Pygmalion but with blow jobs and lines like, “I made you. I taught you everything you know. How to dress, table manners, how to move, how to make love.” Fast forward to 2006, and Gere would play van Pallandt’s ex Clifford Irving in the film The Hoax, with Julie Delpy taking the role of van Pallandt. Irving is even credited as one of The Hoax’s co-writers.
Before all that, however, Nina van Pallandt had another life. She started out as a singer who blended folk and calypso. Quicker than you can say ‘cultural appropriation’, she scored a connection to the Bond universe when her schmaltzy song Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? was featured in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But while George Lazenby’s career tanked, hers experienced a gentle elevation.
There were three marriages along the way. The second — to Frederik, Baron van Pallandt — secured her both her title and a duet buddy. Her transition to nobility seemed effortless, mainly because she already looked the part of minor Danish royalty. Their band was imaginatively called Nina & Frederik, and they were frequently found in the British top 40. They even played the London Palladium in 1966.
It was probably just as well that she and Frederik parted ways, though. For in yet another example of crazy things happening to the men in her orbit, the titled Dane was murdered on his yacht in the Philippines in May 1994. Some say local pirates were the culprits. Others blame an Australian syndicate of which Frederik was a member. Most believe that drugs were involved. So much so that in The Book of Dope Stories (2001), the author, Howard Marks, claimed Frederik was transporting large amounts of weed onboard his vessel at the time of the killing. Like we say, it most likely worked out for the better for Nina.
Flying solo across the pond, her singing performances were not as warmly received. In The New York Times on April 6, 1972, John S. Wilson rather cattily remarked that while “a twinkle in her eyes and an inviting smile give her voice some helpful support”, “a striking appearance, an amiable personality and a serviceable voice are not quite enough to sustain almost an hour in the spotlight”. Ouch.
Ultimately, however, it should be pointed out that Nina van Pallandt is still with us at 91, having outlasted the controversies and outlived the deadbeats. In a world of M.V.P.s, she remains the one and only N.V.P.
