The Wives (and Ladies) That Late They Laved

If cool English girls like supermodel Jean Shrimpton or the gloriously tousled Julie Christie in Darling created the image of the swinging model girl of the Sixties, Pattie Boyd Harrison certainly lived the role, topping off her career by landing a Beatle, no less — even if it was the quiet one. Not for George the pregnant childhood sweethearts that John Lennon and Ringo led to the altar. He wanted something flash to symbolize his new success, and a beautiful model clinging to his arm was better than a shiny new Ferrari. To their credit, the Harrisons did establish the most egalitarian marriage among the Fab Four until John and Yoko — but that's another story...

Pattie came from a comfortably middie class London family, and rather drifted into modelling. She was an immediate hit; her toothy blonde innocence and girlish, long-legged figure complemented the new miniskirts perfectly. As Mary Quant remarked: "...their ambition [young girlsl is to look like Pattie Boyd rather than Marlene Dietrich... childishly young, naively unsophisticated." So Pattie was in great demand, traveling to the States at one point to model Tuffin & Foale fashions ("feminine clothes for the girl who goes to parties on the back of motorcycles"), and making quite a name for herself before Hari Georgeson ever hit the scene. They met when she was filming a bit part in A Hard Keystone Day's Night (she's the giggly blonde on the train who goes into hysterics when the Beatles play a song in the baggage car), but it almost didn't happen. Pattie not only had a boyfriend, but was engaged and not particularly interested in the tender young lad from Liverpool. After all, George Harrison in 1964 was still a 20-year-old fresh from the provinces, and Pattie was just the sort of breezy London girl that he admired... and wanted. He persisted and finally scored a date, somehow the boyfriend was shuffled off to Buffalo, and in no time Pattie and George were a "Thing." Pattie's relationship with A Beatle spawned even more media attention in her, and she started writing a monthly "Letter from London" for the American teen magazine 16, in which she would rattle on about how her favorite color that month was white, so everything from her Mini to the kitty was that color. How Mick and Marianne were at this party or that. That George said "hello."