She grew up in a mansion staffed by 40 servants and palled around with Hollywood's "A" list.
Yet, Jane Loew — whose grandfathers were both titans in the motion picture industry — has roots in Tucson that began when she was still a teenager.
She graduated from Tucson High School, raised a family here and also helped turn Old Tucson from a tumble-down movie set into a thriving tourist attraction.
Now she's come out with a book that details it all — from Hollywood hijinks to fascinating glimpses of how the very rich once lived in America. – Bonnie Henry
Mary Pickford was her honorary aunt. Cary Grant was her pingpong opponent. Elizabeth Taylor was her house guest.
She grew up in a home where the help numbered 40, including a footman and a head butler who wore white tie and tails.
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"I didn't realize how special it was," says Jane Loew, whose paternal grandfather, Marcus Loew, rose from a New York tenement house to create the Loew's theater chain and acquire MGM Studios.
Her maternal grandfather, Adolph Zukor — a teenage orphan who immigrated to the United States with $12 sewn into the lining of his coat — acquired what would become Paramount Pictures in 1917.
Both men lived in enormous mansions sprawled across expansive grounds. Zukor's, where Loew spent her happiest days as a child, was 30 miles from New York City and included an 18-hole golf course.
Pembroke was the Loew family estate on Long Island where Loew grew up after her grandfather, Marcus Loew, died when she was 4. It held 52 rooms, a tennis court and its own private harbor.
But it was not a happy childhood for Loew, whose parents divorced when she was 8.
"It was so rare in those days. I took on the guilt," says Loew, 85, who now lives in Tubac and has recently written an autobiography about her extraordinary life and the people in it.
The family no longer controls the theater chains or the movie studios. During the Depression, Zukor exhausted much of his fortune and also borrowed from others to keep Paramount out of bankruptcy, to no avail.
He had to sell his beloved Mountain View Farm, which became a country club. It took him years, but he repaid every penny he had borrowed.
Paramount, which emerged from bankruptcy, kept Zukor on as chairman emeritus of the board. He lived to be 103.
From an early age, Loew hobnobbed with Hollywood's hottest. During a dinner party at Pembroke, actor Cary Grant kept bragging about his prowess at the pingpong table.
So Loew's father, Arthur Loew, challenged Grant to a match, offering up his 15-year-old daughter as the opponent. The movie star lost the bet.
That same year, 1937, Loew permanently joined her mother, "Mickey," and younger brother, Arthur Jr., in Tucson, where they had moved two years earlier for Arthur's health.
Though Loew was glad to no longer be living with her father — a harsh, unsympathetic sort — she was less enthused about Tucson, finding it "unappealing and dusty."
Her views soon changed after she realized she no longer would be burdened by a chauffeur or a governess.
"For the first time I could go out with no one trailing me if I went to the movies with a friend," says Loew, who enrolled at Tucson High School.
There, she became the school's top tennis player.
"Jane was wonderful in sports, very competitive. And she was anxious for you to be competitive, too," says long-time friend Bobbe Rosenberg.
Loew once called Rosenberg up long after both had reached adulthood and asked her if she could play tennis with Paul.
"I said, 'Paul who?' " says Rosenberg. "She said, 'Paul Newman.' "
"You're damn right I could play with Paul. For her to have these people over was nothing, and she kept their privacy."
After high school, Loew enrolled at the University of Arizona and started dating Boyd Morse, a UA junior.
They married in 1942 after Boyd graduated and joined the Army. Their first home was a basement apartment in Manhattan, Kan., close to where Boyd was stationed.
Though the marriage produced four children — all born in Tucson — it did not last. The two divorced in 1957.
Long before then, Loew had made fast friends with several Hollywood stars, many through her brother, Arthur, who had moved to Hollywood and had become a producer.
Soon, he was squiring around young actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood.
When 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor became engaged to hotel scion Conrad "Nicky" Hilton, Loew and actress Janet Leigh gave her a bridal shower.
Afterward, the bride-to-be took Loew for what she describes as a "hair-raising ride" in Taylor's new powder blue Cadillac convertible.
Their friendship endures to this day.
After Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, died in a plane crash, Loew whisked Taylor from her home in Beverly Hills to Tucson and kept her tucked in her house for three weeks.
In 1961, Taylor was filming "Cleopatra" with Richard Burton in Rome and Loew met him on the set. "I was enthralled. That voice, that intelligence."
At the time, Loew had just divorced Bob Shelton — for the first time.
The two met in 1958 in Tucson, where Shelton was working to convert Old Tucson from a ramshackle former movie set into a first-class tourist attraction. It opened in January of 1960. (See accompanying story.)
The year after Old Tucson opened, Loew and Shelton married in Las Vegas. But when they broke the news to the children from their former marriages, there was such an outcry the newlyweds divorced.
When Loew's plane touched down in Tucson after her trip to Rome, Shelton was there to meet her. They soon married again, this time with the children in tow.
They built a home. They raised a houseful of teenagers. They worked to build up Old Tucson. They entertained everyone from John Wayne to columnist Art Buchwald.
In the end, they divorced again after 15 years, this time for good. Still, they remain good friends.
"She's a wonderful person," says Shelton, 86. "It's too bad we didn't stay together."
After the divorce, Loew met, married, and almost as quickly divorced Tucson landscape architect Guy Greene.
Her marriage to Philip Sharples lasted 23 years, ending in divorce in late 2005.
"Although I haven't been married as many times as Elizabeth Taylor, we prefer marriages rather than affairs," writes Loew.
In 1983, she helped start Tucson's Angel Ball. (See accompanying article.)
Her book, "Out of the Limelight," was years in the making. "I would tell friends a story and they would say, 'Jane, you need to write a book.'
"There are books out about my grandfathers, but they are so impersonal. I thought it would be good for my children and grandchildren to know where they came from.
"My two grandfathers came from absolute poverty to extreme wealth. It can still happen today — although it's technology, not the movies."
Ah, but would it make as good a story?
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