Dear Ann
An energetic self-promotor, Eppie Lederer was a natural as the wise and wisecracking Ann Landers, advice maven to millions. But her own family problems were harder to solve.
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Cindy Pritzker describes Jules in those years as no "world beater" and "overwhelmed by Eppie's success." But in London he could still be the visionary who had founded Budget, and so he spent more and more time there.
Charles Laff was in London with Jules in August 1972 when they went to a party at which they met a registered nurse named Elizabeth Morton. Twenty-eight years Jules's junior, Elizabeth, says Laff, had "long red hair, was down-to-earth, a girl-next-door type, not somebody who would knock your eyes out, but educated and articulate." Jules hated to eat alone, and dinners with Elizabeth soon led to more intimate pursuits.
One day in 1975, Eppie called Notre Dame's president, Theodore Hesburgh. "I just learned from Jules that he has been seeing a lady in London," she said. "I'm devastated. I must talk to you." En route to South Bend, she wrote a draft of the famous column in which she told the world that she was getting divorced.
"In one way, you hate to say it, but she probably outgrew him," Hesburgh suggests today. "People she knew, issues she was involved with. You don't have to be a genius to understand. If you're married to a lady who's 100 times more known than you are, you start getting introduced as Eppie Lederer's husband."
Eppie told Jules that he had to get out of the apartment, but, says Laff, the divorce proceedings were amiable. "Jules did not get divorced from Eppie because he didn't love her anymore," Laff explains. "They never stopped loving each other."
Presumably feeling some guilt, Eppie went to Marshall Field's and bought Jules underwear and socks, the wardrobe staples that she feared he would not know how to buy for himself. When Jules and Elizabeth returned from their honeymoon to an apartment in Sandburg Village, Eppie made sure the cupboards were stocked.
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After the divorce, there would never be a time when Eppie would be without what she called "a gentleman friend." She was small, vulnerable, and instantly recognizable. She delighted in the attention, but she feared, says one friend, being approached by "somebody drinking or coming on too strong." Going to dinner or a charity function alone was out of the question. Her escorts were always handsome, well mannered, sophisticated; as she got older, they tended to be far younger than she. According to one of them, the Chicago public relations executive Martin Janis, who was ten years her junior, "in her mind, she was in her 40s."
Janis maintains that Eppie was "happily single. She used to say, ‘I don't want to have to share my closet with somebody.'" Cindy Pritzker disagrees. Eppie probably "would have liked to [remarry], if the right person had come along. She wanted somebody to care about and somebody to care about her. But it just didn't happen."
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