Behind the Curtain

Tourists or newsmen who wandered close to Beautycoon Elizabeth Arden's Arizona Maine Chance health-and-beauty farm last week were brusquely shooed away by grim-faced guards who sprang from behind cactus clumps. A total of 21 armed men--six Secret Service agents, six members of the Arizona highway patrol and nine Maricopa County sheriffs deputies--guarded the place around the clock, seven men to each eight-hour shift.

Behind the security curtain rested the most prestigious guest ever to adorn Arizona Maine Chance: the First Lady of the U.S. For Mamie Eisenhower's stay, the management had prettied up a seven-room cottage, coating the outside with white and blue paint and redecorating Mamie's bedroom in pink, her favorite color (Elizabeth Arden's, too).

Aboard the Columbine III with her. Mamie had brought a cook, her personal secretary, her maid, half a dozen Secret Service agents, her sister "Mike" (wife of retired Army Lieut. Colonel George Gordon Moore), and an old friend. Mrs. Ellis D. Slater (wife of the retired president of Frankfort Distillers Corp.). The management's delicate logistics problem was how to post secret Secret Service men so that they 1) could guard Mamie while she was in or near the swimming pool, but 2) could not see, or be seen, by poolside women. It took considerable brow-furrowing to find a spot--behind an oleander hedge on a bank sloping down from the pool--where the guards would be within earshot but not eyeshot.

For the farm's ordinary guests, who pay $400 to $600 a week, it is early to bed and early to rise. On the breakfast tray, along with grapefruit and coffee, the guest finds a schedule card listing, half-hour by half-hour, her activities for the day, e.g., calisthenics, scalp massage, "intracellular masque," daily manicure and pedicure, a reducing ordeal that consists of being coated with hot wax and left to stew. In between treatments, she is firmly encouraged to drink down plenty of vegetable juices, "potassium broth," and a secret-formula "diet tea."

Was Mamie getting the full waxworks? The White House and the Arden empire clammed up tight. Indeed, an Arden executive in Manhattan, asked about Mamie's schedule, refused to admit that any such place as Arizona Maine Chance existed.

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