Palm Beach is on edge.
No, it’s not the economy.
It’s just that best-selling author Larry Leamer’s book about wealth and loathing on The Island is about to hit the bookstores.
And in a place where one’s image often costs millions, there’s uneasiness about the book’s content – especially when it is penned by the man who deconstructed mercilessly Arnold Schwarzenegger in an much-talked-about 2005 biography.
“People come up to me in restaurants and ask me if they’re portrayed in a positive light,” Leamer says. “Some are, then some aren’t.
“Folks on the island obtained advance copies. I have no idea where they came from, but they’re being passed around.”
Madness Under The Royal Palms officially comes out Jan. 27. It’s Leamer’s 12th book. He’s also known for another bio of late-night TV pioneer Johnny Carson and a trilogy about the Kennedy family.
Leamer
But on this millionaire’s playground that once served as winter home of the famous Democratic family, Madness is the buzz of the season.
“Social climbing is the only sport that if you get caught doing, you lose,” Leamer says.
And it so happens the book’s main theme is Palm Beach’s obsession with status and money.
Ever the clever marketeer, Leamer was playing it close to the vest Wednesday at lunch, mostly with details. He doesn’t want too much revealed just yet, but he leaked some things.
The book opens with scenes of a party for British royal Prince Edward at the home of socialites Barbara Wainscott and David Berger.
Several people at the party become the main characters.
And among them is Palm Beach Daily News gossip Shannon Donnelly. Leamer writes about how she went from a childhood in a law enforcement family in Newport, R.I., to becoming what he calls “one of the most powerful reporters in the country.”
“There’s the extraordinary irony with Shannon that the daughter of a cop became a social arbiter, a society cop. She makes or breaks people here.”
Some of his other characters included the beloved Buffalo, N.Y., steel heiress Cathleen McFarlane Ross, shipping heiress Liz Gillet and her former favorite walker, Peter Rock, society hostess Pauline Pitt and rich Brit Dame Celia Lipton Farris, whom he compares to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Leamer also makes a big deal of two murders. He spent more than 30 hours in jail with millionaire wife-killer Fred Keller, who recently died of cancer.
“I couldn’t read him,” Leamer said. “He was a true sociopath, just evil.”
And the other was committed by Sonny Peixoto, a penniless former Boston cop who became a fixture at society functions.
In 2007, Pexioto killed his galpal in his West Palm Beach garage apartment then jumped to his death from a high-rise on Flagler.
“Sonny wasn’t like Keller,” Leamer says. “He was more pathetic. Only in Palm Beach would he have been able to get into society like he did, just crashing.”
Leamer also looked at the emergence and influence on The Island of two minorities: Jews, who once lived in gilded “ghettos” while being banned from The Breakers and most country clubs; and gays, who were shunned by polite society.
What’s not in the book? Donald Trump.
“The publisher thought the guy is overexposed as it is,” Leamer says.
If Leamer moved about town painlessly during his research, it’s partly because he’s a local.
“I moved to Palm Beach (in a beach-front condo near Worth Avenue) in 1994 with the idea of writing this book,” Leamer said. “But I couldn’t figure this place out. I felt like I landed in the strangest, most exotic place designed to make people feel unwelcome.
“I just hope I got it right.”
(For those who just can’t wait, Leamer is blogging about Palm Beach on the Huffington Post and on his website, leamer.com)