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CAROLYN’S FIRST CHILD was born via C-section on June 19, 1951, after a labor that stalled for too long. Malcolm chose the name Deborah Jill. Carolyn brought their new daughter home to Manhattan House the following week. Carolyn only had one person in mind for godmother, and when she asked Grace to guide Jill and take care of her spiritually, Grace immediately said yes.
That first summer with the baby, Carolyn found herself absorbed in the small duties of being a new mother, the urgently compelling but rarely recorded moments that make up a new parent’s day: the cries from the nursery in the morning that sent Carolyn hurrying to Jill’s crib, the bottles to be made and rinsed, all the tiny outfits to be neatly folded and put away. Then there were the walks over to Central Park in the hazy late afternoons of July and August, with the baby in her shiny new carriage, a white cotton cap on her head. In those first few months, Jill passed her earliest milestones, the first smile, the first cold, the first tooth.
As the baby grew, Carolyn found herself reshaped. She no longer saw the world from her own solitary perspective; now it was refracted through the experience of her daughter. There was no doubt that little Jill would grow up in a home that was financially stable—Malcolm’s career in advertising was going so well—but even so, Carolyn kept one eye on the family bank account those first few months. Her husband liked to live well; they were going to miss her income. Eileen Ford made it clear that the doors were open whenever Carolyn was ready to come back; Eileen herself had quickly returned to work after the births of both her children. Carolyn knew she was lucky in this respect: while most employers in 1951 told their pregnant employees to leave and never come back, Eileen actively encouraged her girls to return to work after having children—as long as they had shed their baby weight, of course.
So in the new year of 1952, six months after giving birth, Carolyn left little Jill with her nanny and made the short walk over to Second Avenue and the Ford offices. Here, Eileen took out her tape measure, wrapped it once around Carolyn’s waist, and declared her back to form. Soon after, Eileen decided she was ready to promote Carolyn from a “junior” to a “miss.” While “juniors” worked exclusively for the teenage market, “misses” appealed to slightly older customers as well: brides-to-be, newlyweds, and young mothers. By June, Carolyn was on the cover of Family Circle magazine wearing a pale pink taffeta wedding gown, complete with crown and veil, holding up a spray of roses and with a large diamond engagement ring on her finger. That same summer, she posed as a “young modern newlywed” next to a white-jacketed husband to advertise tablecloths: “When all eyes are on their table they make sure it’s at its very best.”
It felt natural to be back in front of the camera. Carolyn knew how to widen her eyes to keep them looking bright, to turn her head to show her most appealing profile, to hold her back straight and her shoulders square while she angled an arm or leg this way and that. In the magazines, Carolyn played the ideal of the modern woman—smiling, polished, self-assured, married or about to be married, awash in postwar prosperity, with every appliance and product at her disposal. When she ran back home at the end of the day to baby Jill, she felt that she was doing her part to fulfill the fantasies she promoted in those photographs. She was doing her duty, keeping the baby neat and smiling, the apartment organized, and her husband happy.
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CAROLYN STAYED CLOSE to Manhattan House, but Grace was its satellite, in almost constant motion. Her movie career was taking off, and she was traveling all the time. She made High Noon in California opposite Gary Cooper, then Mogambo in Africa and England with John Ford. From there she was called back to Hollywood for her first film with Alfred Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder, closely followed by Rear Window. Although she had signed a contract with MGM, she made it a condition that she would be able to live in New York when she wasn’t filming, so when each shoot came to a close, she returned to the Manhattan House and her “family” there: Carolyn, Malcolm, and Jill. Then, in the spring of 1953, Carolyn announced she was pregnant again, and that October, she gave birth to another daughter, Robin Brooke Reybold.
Malcolm picked out the name, as he had done with Jill. After enduring another C-section, Carolyn was pale, but it was nothing that a daily swipe of red lipstick wouldn’t fix. Grace took the elevator upstairs to the eighteenth floor to visit whenever she could, spoiling little Jill as she adjusted to having a new sister. By now, Jill had grown into a toddler with a mop of light brown hair curling around her ears and eyes that had turned to deep brown, just like her mother’s.
Robin was just a few months old when Carolyn returned to modeling. The family needed the extra income more than ever. Malcolm had been flying home from a business trip when he began spitting blood. Plagued by ulcers for many years, Malcolm was suffering from complications, and they were severe. The doctors removed three-quarters of his stomach, some of his upper intestine, and part of his pancreas. It would be many months before he would be able to work again. The medical bills were piling up, and someone needed to pay the rent.
After weeks
