BOOKS
‘The Bettencourt Affair,’ a Buffet for Scandal Aficionados
Books of The Times
By JANET MASLIN AUG. 23, 2017
THE BETTENCOURT AFFAIR: The World’s Richest Woman and the Scandal
That Rocked Paris
By Tom Sancton
396 pages. Dutton. $28.
The labyrinthine mess known as the Bettencourt affair has been
the stuff of scandal aficionado dreams. It has turned up repeatedly in Vanity
Fair, which would have had to make it up if it hadn’t happened. Here is Liliane
Bettencourt, the L’Oréal cosmetics heiress and richest woman in Europe,
surrounded by the onetime “Golden Boy of Paris,” eavesdropping servants,
bilkers of every stripe, vicious family warfare, fabulous ostentation, alleged
Nazis in the family tree and political corruption at France’s highest levels.
Celebrities, artists, estates, jewels, sailboats and one private island dot the
perimeter of her story.
The intrigue and implications that
arose from Bettencourt’s relationship with a younger man created a publicity
nightmare for nearly a decade. Coincidentally or not, L’Oréal’s business has
improved during that period of time.
“The Bettencourt Affair” is a
chronicle by the journalist Tom Sancton, who covered the story for Vanity
Fair. Sancton is no Dominick Dunne, who would have found the beating heart of
this thing, if there was one. (Questionable.) He’s more the type to call it
“‘Dallas,’ ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘House of Cards’ rolled into one.”
So Sancton lacks a gift for dish.
But he is an excellent straight-up reporter, and he has dug deeply into the
many, many elements that complicate this story. One lawyer involved even needs
a lawyer by the time it’s over. This book gives him the space to go beyond the
Bettencourt-for-Beginners version, which is this: To the ultimate dismay of
Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, her only child, Liliane Bettencourt became
infatuated with François-Marie Banier, a man 25 years her junior. Banier had
been a pretty, skilled charmer of older people since he was the teenage darling
of Salvador Dalí.
Over time, Bettencourt expressed
her affection by giving her platonic friend upward of a billion dollars’ worth
of assets. She made him the beneficiary of four separate life insurance
policies. Bettencourt-Meyers cried foul when she learned that her mother
planned to adopt Banier and make him an heir. At that point, the once-discreet
family lawyered up and went very public, with Bettencourt’s competence
questioned and Banier accused of “abuse of weakness” in a 2007 lawsuit. The
mother-daughter loathing, a long-held secret, came out in the open. “The mother
massacred the daughter, then the daughter massacred the mother,” one of the
many lawyers in this multidefendant story told Sancton.
From the butler who spent one year
secretly taping how Bettencourt was manipulated to the daughter’s efforts to
make witnesses her friends, there’s a lot to pursue here. One of the most
interesting parts of Sancton’s book is its history of L’Oréal, which began as
the first French company to produce hair dye that did not contain lead. The
formula was invented by Bettencourt’s father, Eugène Schueller, who also had
gifts for manufacturing and marketing. In 1909, he founded the French Company
of Inoffensive Hair Dyes (the translations here can be wonderful), which he
soon renamed L’Oréal.
Later came the buildup to World
War II, and a part of the family’s history that lay buried for years. L’Oréal’s
sales nearly quadrupled during the war, and Schueller was involved with a
company that sold paint and varnish — which were more necessary in Germany than
in occupied France. (“No tank rolls without paint,” Sancton writes.)
Schueller’s Vichy-friendly politics and alleged collaboration would come back
to bite L’Oréal decades later. Bettencourt’s husband, André, wrote expressly
pro-Nazi articles before joining the resistance.
In Sancton’s telling, there are no
sympathetic figures in this family. Bettencourt’s only appeal for others
appears to be her money, and she seems to have been an ice-cold parent. As to
how she could sound, here she is in a 1987 interview: “A rich woman, the term
itself is disagreeable. It’s an ugly word. I prefer fortune.”
The book’s portrait of Banier is
much more confusing. Nothing about his self-justifying has much credence.
According to him, Bettencourt first began sponsoring him when she visited his
apartment and said: “François-Marie, you need more space. You like fine things;
me too. I have the means to suit your tastes.” She then bought him the first of
assorted apartments that would be followed by a laundry list of other
valuables, including an island in the Seychelles that he claimed to disdain —
and that she forgot about as her mind grew foggier. He says he accepted all
this only to make her happy.
For most of the book, Sancton
makes Banier sound like a pure social climber. But suddenly, near the end, he
begins to celebrate the man’s protean talents. Banier has appeared in films by
Eric Rohmer and Robert Bresson. He has written a number of novels and published
many photography books, though most were sponsored by L’Oréal. He was a skilled
celebrity photographer who knew everybody who was anybody, and is certainly
good at dropping their names. “Princess Caroline told me this is the most
beautiful house in the South of France,” he told Sancton, when the author
visited him in Provence.
Sancton’s account leaves Banier in
2016, through with his ordeal and not too much the worse for wear. He was
sentenced to four years in prison, but got out of serving any time in a
follow-up judgment. He likes fame, though he insists otherwise. This book may
give him another shot at it.
A version of this review appears
in print on August 24, 2017, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the
headline: A Scandal Buffet For Aficionados. © 2017 The New York Times Company
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