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Monica Lewinsky grew up in a $1.6 million Beverly Hills home. Her parents owned three cars, including a Cadillac and a Mercedes, and spent freely on themselves (symphony season tickets, artwork and wine) and on Monica and her brother Michael, including tennis lessons ($720 a month), baby sitting ($300 a month) and hairstyling for Monica ($100 a month). Vacations frequently involved spending amounts in excess of $20,000 a year. The monthly psychiatrist's bill was $1,800.
Then in 1987, Marcia Lewis filed for divorce from her husband, Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, who headed a lucrative oncology practice. She accused Lewinsky of carrying on an affair and having "a violent temper" that induced profanity-strewn tirades against her and the children. Meanwhile, Dr. Lewinsky charged Lewis with running up his credit-card bills in anticipation of the divorce. The settlement downsized the family's life-style; Bernard Lewinsky, who paid $6,000 a month in spousal and child support after the settlement, now lives in a one-story stucco house. It is worth $700,000, but it lies in a modest section of Brentwood, a few blocks from Nicole Brown Simpson's house.
Following the split, Lewis became an occasional contributor of gossip to the Hollywood Reporter and in 1996 published The Private Lives of the Three Tenors, a quickie biography of Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti gushing with tales of the singers' amorous adventures. Her publisher, Steven Schragis of Birch Lane Press, says Lewis recommended that the book's publicity notes include this teaser: "How did the author, a glamorous Beverly Hills writer formerly with the Hollywood Reporter, get all the inside dope? She denies rumors she and Domingo were more than friends in the '80s, but read the book and see what you think." Last week the tenor said he knew Lewis "socially" but denied any liaison: "She came to several of my performances over the years. But that is all."
The Lewinskys' divorce came just as Monica entered Beverly Hills High School. Eden Sassoon, 24, and the daughter of celebrity hair stylist Vidal Sassoon, was a classmate who would often have Lewinsky over to her house. "She was not my best friend. She was sort of a hanger-on," says Sassoon. "She was very outgoing, sweet, charming. If you needed anything, she'd always help. Growing up in Beverly Hills, well, you know it's different, and perhaps being overweight, she'd overcompensate to please."
Lewinsky left Beverly Hills High abruptly during her junior year. At Bel Air High, a tiny $12,000-a-year prep school designed for smart kids facing personal problems, a more self-assured Monica began to emerge. She got involved in drama, the choral group and art. Still dealing with a weight problem, she didn't have a boyfriend. But it was a more fulfilling time. In her senior year, Lewinsky made valedictorian in a class of seven. In the school yearbook Monica's senior year, a classmate calls Lewinsky her "guardian angel." Lewinsky's page included dedications to her parents, her brother and her friends and a paean to her favorite soap opera, Days of Our Lives. The page is also dotted with quotes from Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth--and Dr. Seuss ("It's fun to have fun but you have to know how"). Her classmates voted her "most likely to have her name in lights."