Mudd in Your Eye : One of Magnate’s 7 Mistresses Files for Palimony

As the mistress of multimillionaire Henry Mudd, Eleanor Lorraine Oliver had it all--mink coats, fancy cars and a thoroughbred or two.

The co-founder of Harvey Mudd College treated Oliver, 37 years his junior, to rides in limousines and a flight on the Concorde. During a 13-year relationship they dined on Beluga caviar, traveled to exotic locales and mixed with the city’s elite.

But the door slammed shut on that lifestyle last week when, two years after Mudd’s death, representatives of a trust he had set up evicted Oliver from the Studio City house that she said she bought with Mudd.

“You live in the house thinking it’s yours. You fall in love with it,” said Oliver, 41, as she sat in the $600,000 hillside home, her life with Mudd packed away in cardboard moving boxes. “It’s just hard having the rug pulled out from under you.”

Oliver--one of seven mistresses kept concurrently by Mudd--said that Mudd referred to her as his “wife” during their relationship, even setting up a trust fund to support her the rest of her life. But when Mudd and Oliver had a falling out shortly before his death at age 77, he revoked the trust fund and demanded that Oliver pay rent on the house, she said.

The alleged broken contract is the basis of a $5-million palimony suit that attorney Marvin Mitchelson has brought against the Mudd estate on Oliver’s behalf. It is scheduled to go to trial Aug. 3.

The representatives of the Mudd trust have obtained a court order that holds Oliver responsible for $21,875 in back rent and recently forced her to move from the four-bedroom house. Attorneys for the trust and executors of Mudd’s estate--his widow, Vanessa; his accountant, Seymour Bond, and First Interstate Bank--will not comment on the subject. Neither will Harvey Mudd College.

“I would really like to be able to give you our side, but the problem is there is pending litigation,” said Jamie Broder, an attorney representing the four parties.

Oliver is happy to tell her story. Indeed, she and a friend are writing a book about it.

Oliver said she met Mudd in 1974 and was immediately enchanted by “the distinguished-looking gentleman” who enjoyed discussing philosophy and politics.

Mudd was the retired chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Cyprus Minerals Co., a major producer of gold, silver, copper, lithium, coal and barite. The company was founded by Mudd’s grandfather, Col. Seeley W. Mudd, who reopened ancient copper mines on the island of Cyprus.

The family history boasts a number of other colorful characters, from about 20 Mudds who fought in the Revolutionary War to television newscaster Roger Mudd. Ancestor Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was imprisoned for treating John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Henry Mudd claimed his fame in 1955 when he and his mother, Mildred, founded Harvey Mudd College, one of six Claremont Colleges, in his father’s name. The college has been rated for three years by U.S. News & World Report as one of the top science and engineering schools in the country.

Mudd was chairman of the board of trustees from 1958 to 1981, and remained on the board until his death. He also served on the boards of organizations including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

He apparently had other interests as well.

Mudd had seven mistresses, including Oliver, according to court documents filed by the estate’s attorneys.

“Henry Mudd was a man who loved women,” court documents filed by his estate’s attorneys said. “Unlike most men, however, Mudd had the financial means, the time and the inclination to establish intimate relationships with many women concurrently. Plaintiff was but one of seven mistresses whom Mudd ‘dated’ simultaneously.”

The documents state that Mudd often traveled with several of the mistresses at one time, alternating women from night to night.

But the documents dispute Oliver’s palimony suit--questioning whether there was an oral contract to support Oliver and saying that the couple never lived together. The documents also characterize Oliver’s role as similar to that of a prostitute.

The documents claim that Mudd met Oliver after seeing her “baubles routine” at the Pink Pussycat in Hollywood, where she worked as a stripper. The affair started when Oliver agreed to have sex with Mudd to repay a $10,000 loan, the documents said.

Mitchelson, who said a judge turned down the other side’s bid to dismiss the case, discounts those arguments.

Oliver, who talked of meeting Mudd on the cocktail party circuit, said that after she met Mudd their relationship graduated from friendly lunches to very friendly trysts. Their on-again, off-again affair lasted about five years before Oliver ended it in an effort to save her marriage, which had been weakened by her husband’s cocaine addiction, she said. Oliver left her husband in 1985.

It was a few months later, as Mudd and Oliver resumed their romance in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, that Mudd presented her with a delicate gold band encircled with diamonds, Oliver said. She considered it a wedding ring.

“He told me he considered me his wife and I could consider him my husband,” Oliver said. “He said there was no reason for me to go out and work and that he’d support me.”

Nevertheless, Oliver said, she saw the other mistresses at Christmas parties and even traveled with some of them and Mudd.

“It was one of those situations that a lot of traditional wives accept--that they’re not going to have the exclusive attention of their husbands,” Oliver said. “I accepted it as long as it didn’t affect my relationship with him.”

Mudd had been through two marriages that “left a bad taste in his mouth,” Oliver said. He told Oliver that he also had engaged in sexual relations with men and frequented transvestite bars. He bragged about an affair with a well-known Hollywood actor and was “into anything and everything that was kinky,” according to a book synopsis copyrighted by Oliver and Jessica Graham.

But to Oliver--who, the synopsis points out, never engaged in kinky sex--Mudd was a prince. “He treated me better than any man had ever treated me,” Oliver said. “For that reason, I loved him very much.”

Mudd asked Oliver to draw up a monthly budget and he agreed to pay her $8,000 a month. That amount climbed to $8,500 a month. Court records include a budget dated July, 1986, that itemizes 42 categories of monthly expenses, including $1,083.38 for a housekeeper, $739 for clothes and $99 for entertainment, including trips to the circus.

Sometimes the couple would spend only an afternoon together. On other occasions, they would jet away for two-week junkets to England and Hawaii, Baja and the Cayman Islands, she said. Throughout their relationship, Mudd indulged Oliver’s love of furs, cars and $200 hand-painted porcelain dolls.

“If he knew I liked something, he’d buy it,” Oliver said. “For instance, I like horses. He bought me two horses.”

Mudd also showered Oliver’s children--Sara, now 13, and Tino, now 7--with presents and even attended a “Grandparents Day” at Sara’s school. In return for the generosity, Oliver and the children, unsure what to get the man who had everything, would make donations to the college.

“Henry was by no means a secret,” Oliver said. “He was very much a part of our lives.”

In 1989, Mudd bought the Studio City house on Fryman Road after looking for a house for Oliver to live in, court documents said. Oliver claims that she also chipped in $8,000 of her savings for the house.

Mudd told Oliver that the property was going to be in his name, but that she could live in it rent-free for the rest of her life, she said. It was her understanding, she added, that the house would revert to Harvey Mudd College when she died. Court documents filed by Mudd estate attorneys say that Oliver entered into a rental agreement with Mudd--a charge she denies.

She said Mudd also set up a trust to provide her with about $100,000 a year after taxes in the event of his death. “I really felt that he was telling me the truth,” Oliver said. “I had no reason to doubt him.”

But the sweet life began to sour in 1990 after Mudd married another of his longtime mistresses. He tried to reassure Oliver that the marriage was purely a business arrangement, she said.

It was not long before Mudd stopped seeing Oliver as frequently and cut down on her support, Mitchelson said. There were also confusing signs that Mudd was in contact with Oliver’s ex-husband, whom Oliver was not speaking to at the time.

“I said I was really confused and really wondering who I could trust,” Oliver said. “He said: ‘If you don’t trust me I think we’d better get a divorce.’ ”

That night, April 9, 1990, was the last time she and Mudd spoke. He subsequently cut off her money, sent her rent notices and revoked the trust. He died five months later.

In the meantime, Oliver wasted no time in consulting with Mitchelson, the celebrity divorce attorney who represented Michele Triola Marvin in her landmark lawsuit against her former lover, actor Lee Marvin.

“This is my most interesting palimony case,” Mitchelson said recently, smiling broadly as he thumbed through court documents on Oliver’s case. “I always dreamed there’d be a case like this--the multiple mistress case.”

Mitchelson represented two other mistresses in palimony suits against Mudd in 1986 and 1988. He said the cases reached “good” settlements, but the agreements forbid Mitchelson to disclose how much money the women received.

In April, Mitchelson represented Oliver when the Mudd trust filed a detainer to force her out of the house. Lawyers for the trust successfully argued that Oliver had rented the house from Mudd and that she had failed since October, 1990, to pay $1,250 a month in rent.

Oliver argued that she had never had a renter-landlord relationship with Mudd. She said she gave him back $1,250 of the allowance he paid her each month because he told her it helped his accountant. The judge ruled against her.

But Oliver has hopes of retrieving the house through the palimony suit, which claims Mudd promised Oliver $8,500 a month for the rest of her life and a lifelong home in the Studio City house. In return, the suit says, she was on call to him 24 hours a day.

Meanwhile, Oliver has moved into a smaller house in Oxnard. She is living off the money she saved from child support, her monthly allowance from Mudd and the sale of a Jaguar that he gave her.

Oliver said that Harvey Mudd College continued during many of the legal entanglements to hit her up for donations.

“I sincerely ask you to take a moment to send in this year’s gift today,” said an April 25, 1991, letter. “You are important to us!”