Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women by Michael Gross Page A
Authors: Michael Gross
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Frazier Jelke III both were arrested for procuring in 1952—and the women arrested with them called themselves “models.” The resulting scandal “threw the whole modeling business back twenty years in public esteem,” according to Harry Conover. A bright light had been cast on the murky underworld of modeling. “When I first came to Seventh Avenue, house models doubled as escorts for out-of-town buyers,” says designer Bill Blass, who arrived in the garment center as a sketcher in the early 1940s. “The assumption was true. Those girls really did put out, Christ, with the gross manufacturers who employed them. Most of the models were kept, and some turned a trick or two.”
Within a week of the arrest, a bill was introduced in the City Council to regulate model agencies, and two models appeared at the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building carrying placards that read THERE ARE 5,000 LEGITIMATE MODELS IN NEW YORK CITY . DON ’ T BELIEVE SENSATIONAL NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ! Prostitutes were said to be carrying hatboxes as part of their pose. Models carrying hatboxes were being spit at on the street. The hatbox fad ended.
It was also the beginning of the end of the Conover agency. Harry still lived high. In 1955 he and Candy shared a ritzy six-room apartment at 1199 Park Avenue. But as anyone in the modeling business knows, appearances can deceive. Conover’s weight had risen over two hundred pounds, he’d grown a little mustache, and his psoriasis was spreading. He rarely saw his children from his first marriage. And his relationship with Candy wasn’t much better. He made her pay for her three births and two abortions out of her own earnings. Candy’s mother moved in with them. “He seemed to tolerate Grandmother; she had an incredible hatred for my father,” says Harry, Jr. “My pop psychology guess is that she felt he took her little girl and turned her into a wicked, wanton Cover Girl in lipstick.” Harry started spending his nights and the agency’s money in restaurants and bars, entertaining employees and friends. When he was home, he frequently shuttered himself in the bathroom.
“Our relationship became one of simply sharing living space,” said Candy. “I didn’t much care that he almost never made a sexual advance towards me. In fact, I was relieved.” He initiated sex only when drunk. He referred to his wife’s ample bosom as “revolting.” Sometimes he hid friends in his bedroom closet when he tried to seduce her. Her mother figured he was cheating. But Candy felt he just wanted to be revered and preferred the company of dependent pals to that of an increasingly independent woman. “I detested our marriage,” Candy said. Although she adored their children, “I didn’t care whether Harry Conover even existed.”
Not only was he never at home, he was rarely in the office. Neither was Candy. She’d formally quit the agency after the marriage and set herself up next door at the Conover School for Career Girls, a supposedly separate operation that actually fed Conover’s agency. Harry bragged that he wouldn’t make a deal without consulting Candy first. Indeed she was taking over the business as he became ever more scarce. “He liked hanging out at all the watering holes, the Stork and Toots Shor’s,” says Harry, Jr. “It kept him in the columns.”
In his absence Candy stepped out front. “The main source of income was Candy, sitting at that desk at the school, talking to mom and a girl,” says Fertig. “Depending on her sense of what kind of money they had, she’d decide what to charge them. She always tried to get money up front. She liked cash because it was untraceable. I remember Harry laughing when she was away, saying she’d stash hundred-dollar bills in books and they’d flutter all over the living room.”
In spring 1958 Conover disappeared. “I was eleven,” says Harry, Jr. “I’d just come home from Trinity. He said, ‘I’ve been a bad boy,’ slung his
Within a week of the arrest, a bill was introduced in the City Council to regulate model agencies, and two models appeared at the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building carrying placards that read THERE ARE 5,000 LEGITIMATE MODELS IN NEW YORK CITY . DON ’ T BELIEVE SENSATIONAL NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ! Prostitutes were said to be carrying hatboxes as part of their pose. Models carrying hatboxes were being spit at on the street. The hatbox fad ended.
It was also the beginning of the end of the Conover agency. Harry still lived high. In 1955 he and Candy shared a ritzy six-room apartment at 1199 Park Avenue. But as anyone in the modeling business knows, appearances can deceive. Conover’s weight had risen over two hundred pounds, he’d grown a little mustache, and his psoriasis was spreading. He rarely saw his children from his first marriage. And his relationship with Candy wasn’t much better. He made her pay for her three births and two abortions out of her own earnings. Candy’s mother moved in with them. “He seemed to tolerate Grandmother; she had an incredible hatred for my father,” says Harry, Jr. “My pop psychology guess is that she felt he took her little girl and turned her into a wicked, wanton Cover Girl in lipstick.” Harry started spending his nights and the agency’s money in restaurants and bars, entertaining employees and friends. When he was home, he frequently shuttered himself in the bathroom.
“Our relationship became one of simply sharing living space,” said Candy. “I didn’t much care that he almost never made a sexual advance towards me. In fact, I was relieved.” He initiated sex only when drunk. He referred to his wife’s ample bosom as “revolting.” Sometimes he hid friends in his bedroom closet when he tried to seduce her. Her mother figured he was cheating. But Candy felt he just wanted to be revered and preferred the company of dependent pals to that of an increasingly independent woman. “I detested our marriage,” Candy said. Although she adored their children, “I didn’t care whether Harry Conover even existed.”
Not only was he never at home, he was rarely in the office. Neither was Candy. She’d formally quit the agency after the marriage and set herself up next door at the Conover School for Career Girls, a supposedly separate operation that actually fed Conover’s agency. Harry bragged that he wouldn’t make a deal without consulting Candy first. Indeed she was taking over the business as he became ever more scarce. “He liked hanging out at all the watering holes, the Stork and Toots Shor’s,” says Harry, Jr. “It kept him in the columns.”
In his absence Candy stepped out front. “The main source of income was Candy, sitting at that desk at the school, talking to mom and a girl,” says Fertig. “Depending on her sense of what kind of money they had, she’d decide what to charge them. She always tried to get money up front. She liked cash because it was untraceable. I remember Harry laughing when she was away, saying she’d stash hundred-dollar bills in books and they’d flutter all over the living room.”
In spring 1958 Conover disappeared. “I was eleven,” says Harry, Jr. “I’d just come home from Trinity. He said, ‘I’ve been a bad boy,’ slung his
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