They met in a routine way. Handsome, quick-smiling Mrs. Louise Macy thought she should be working in Washington, in the war effort. Gaunt Harry Hopkins was a good man to see about a job. She met him at the St. Regis in Manhattan, armed with a letter of introduction from their mutual friend Lawrence W. Lowman, a CBS vice president.
The socialite, a grass widow, and the Iowa harnessmaker's son, a widower, got on famously. A few nights later they were dining together at a little restaurant on East 51st Street. They talked again about war work; they also began talking about themselves. They went together to see Katharine Cornell play Candida, to a party at the W. Averell Harrimans. By the time they were invited to a quiet dinner given by Lord and Lady Halifax for the departing Winston Churchill, they had decided to be married. The engagement was one of the secrets Winston Churchill -first person to know about it -took back with him to England.
The Woman. In smart sets from Santa Barbara to Long Island, "Louie" Macy is popular. She radiates good spirits, talks well, laughs easily. At 36 she is trim as an athlete. She dresses with elegant plainness -sometimes in colors to match a ginger-brown French poodle which she leads on a pink patent-leather leash. Her dark hair falls in a long bob; her eyes are bright blue, a little gap between two front teeth emphasizes her firm chin and nose.
She grew up in Pasadena, went to the Madeira School in Washington, then to Smith College, married a Manhattan attorney named Clyde Brown Jr., divorced him in Reno within a year.
She got into fashions, became Paris editor of Harper's Bazaar. As a career woman, she had extravagant energy, ambition and good humor. At Paris fashion-selection time, she worked hard all day, entertained visiting buyers until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, was bright as a lark when her office opened at 9.
After the Lowlands invasion, Louie Macy returned to Manhattan, soon quit Harper's Bazaar to start a swank whole sale dress shop. Her first spring style show was a flat flop. She tried again with a fall & winter collection. This flopped, too, and she turned to being a nurse's aide. She was the model for a recruiting poster prepared by the Office of Civilian Defense.
The Man. Harry Hopkins, at 51, does not look like the kind of man Louie Macy would look at. His face, sallow and lined by illness, is not so much against him socially as his restless, jittery wriggling which keeps his suits wrinkled and baggy. His thin, straggly hair is combed carefully over a growing bald spot.
His background could hardly be more different from Mrs. Macy's fashion career. He played basketball at Iowa's Grinnell College, before going to Manhattan as a $45-a-month social worker. In those days he was shy, uncertain, socially awkward. But he learned fast.
Today no man in the U.S. is more fanatical at laying down and arguing for New Deal policies. But somewhere up the ladder from young social worker to Presidential alter ego, Hopkins doffed the reformer's sackcloth, donned a sports jacket.