At the gaming tables of a casino at Cannes, wealthy men and beautiful women surveyed their cards and pushed their chips across the green baize as immaculate waiters buzzed around with trays of cocktails.
Suddenly the hubbub ceased as a woman walked into the room, her beauty so dazzling the room stilled and everyone looked up from their games to marvel at her beauty. In a black sequinned gown and hat topped with ostrich feathers , she was dripping in jewels, an awe-inspiring sight.
Double trouble: Jenny and Rosie Dolly changed Harry Selfridge's life. They dominated Selfridge's later years and helped to bring about his eventual downfall
Each gem of the stunning necklace that adorned her slender neck and the bracelets that covered her arms from wrist to elbow were emeralds. One ring bore a gem the size of an ice cube.
As the woman made her way through the room, an impeccably dressed man of 70 — twice her age — trailed her adoringly. He was not her escort but her banker, there to hand her limitless wads of money.
He was Harry Selfridge, the American entrepreneur who had created London’s famous department store. A self-made millionaire who revolutionised shopping. He understood what women wanted and gave it to them in style. The beautiful woman was Jenny Dolly and with her twin sister Rosie, dominated Selfridge’s later years and hastened his eventual downfall.
The tragedy of Harry Selfridge was, while he succeeded brilliantly in pleasing millions of women who entered his department store - Jenny Dolly - the one woman whose approval he sought most, always remained just beyond his power.
During the course of almost a decade he bought her extravagant jewels, clothes and houses and bankrupted himself financing her ruinous gambling habit but never truly won her heart.
Selfridge was an inspired retailer who invented the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ - he understood shopping was about sex appeal and he made Selfridge’s a London landmark.
His addiction to beautiful women and high living would destroy him.
Harry Selfridge had a tough start in life. Born in 1856, his father deserted the family when he was five and his two older brothers later died, leaving Harry and his mother alone.
After getting a job as a lowly sock boy in a Chicago department store, Harry swiftly rose to the top. Dubbed ‘Mile-a-minute Harry’ because of his tremendous energy and fountain of ideas - he was the first person to suggest lighting shop windows at night and the first to open an in-store restaurant - he became general manager, then founded his own, rival store, which he sold for a huge profit.
At the age of 50 and flushed with success he travelled to London with its fusty and unwelcoming stores which were ripe for a retail revolution.
On one visit to London, he had gone into a store and a snooty assistant asked what he wished to purchase. When Selfridge replied that he was ‘just looking’ the assistant dropped his posh accent and told him to ‘’op it, mate.’
At first leaving his wife, Rose, and their four children in the U.S., he bought the now famous Oxford Street location and creating a palatial, five-storey store. It opened in 1909 and was a sensation. Assistants were encouraged to help customers rather than patronise them and goods were displayed so they could be handled.
The Dolly sisters: Twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly were 'as cute as dolls' with their almond-shaped eyes and dark, exotic beauty
With restaurants, a hairdressing salon and sumptuous soft furnishings,before Selfridge, cosmetics and toiletries had been hidden discreetly away at the back of the shop and considered too racy and taboo for display.
But in 1910 Selfridge saw them openly on sale in Paris and decided to follow suit, moving them to the front entrance of Selfridge’s so as people entered they were assailed by a cloud of sweet scents.
It was revolutionary and worked like magic.
Selfridge was an innovator: the store sold telephones, refrigerators and in 1925 held the first public demonstration of the television. His attention to detail was legendary: he was known as The Chief and would patrol the floors every day.
While he was devoted to business, he always found time for pleasure. In the U.S. he had had a series of affairs, including one with the dancer and bisexual advocate of free love Isadora Duncan.
In London, he began squiring the beautiful Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Any woman he set his sights on was given a personal tour of the store, choosing whatever she liked from fur coats to jewellery.
Inspirational: Mr Selfridge was the first person to suggest lighting shop windows at night and the first to open an in-store restaurant
He adored beautiful women but seemed particularly attracted to those with expensive tastes, which he was happy to indulge.
In 1910, he fell in love with a pretty French music hall singer, Gaby Deslys, famous for stripping to her underwear on stage and leased a house in Kensington for her and every day sent a Selfridge’s van with hampers of delicious food and bouquets of flowers. He bought her exquisite jewels including a black pearl necklace.
He installed his family at Highcliffe Castle in Dorset, freeing him to spend time with Gaby but by 1917 the affair had fizzled.
The following year, Selfridge’s wife, Rose, died of pneumonia. Selfridge was heartbroken: for all his womanising, he had adored her. His grief did not stop him from embarking on more affairs, with aristocrats and showgirls.
In 1921, he watched a stage show in which a pair of twins, Jenny and Rosie Dolly, were performing.
It was an evening that would change the course of his life. Dancers of Hungarian origin - their real names were Jancsi and Roszica - who had made their Broadway debut as teenagers, first in supporting roles but soon dancing as a double act, their mesmerising, identical beauty captivating audiences.
Innovator: Mr Harry Selfridge (seen at the Palace Theatre with Leslie Mitchell) paid attention to detail and would patrol the floors every day
Dubbed the ‘Dolly sisters’ their almond-shaped eyes and dark, exotic beauty made them ‘as cute as dolls’ and they attracted legions of rich admirers. In additon to their intoxicating beauty, the Dollies’ great appeal was that they were the quintessential good-time girls.
As Gary Chapman, author of a riveting biography of the sisters, observes, they were generous, fun and discreet. They never kissed and told, although they liked to shock. When one newspaper reporter was called into their dressing room for an interview, he found them both stark naked.
By 1925, when he was 69 and they were 33, Selfridge was totally captivated by Jenny.
Selfridge had been generous with his previous mistresses but with Jenny he lost all control becoming obsessive in his desire to please her. Knowing that she loved ice-cream, he had it flown daily from London to Paris, where she was performing.
He followed her around the social circuit from London to Paris and on to St Moritz, Deauville and Le Touquet, indulging her every whim. Once he had the jeweller Cartier set a pair of four-carat blue diamonds in the shells of a pair of live tortoises before sending them to the Dollies.
At one all-night gambling session in Deauville, they lost heavily. The next day, to console them, Selfridge sent Jenny a diamond bracelet and Rosie a string of pearls.
Despite his unwavering devotion, Jenny refused to marry Selfridge, and took other lovers while enjoying her benefactor’s patronage. He helped her buy a chateau near Fontainebleau,and gave her thousands to redecorate it and fill it with antiques.
Then in Paris, she took another lover, a French actor-cum-gangster named Max
Constant. One morning in 1933 their car hit a tree overturning and throwing Jenny 30ft into the air. She suffered devastating internal injuries, her skull was fractured and her face torn and mutilated.
Her dancing career which had relied so much on her beauty was over. Unable to work, she soon found herself heavily in debt and was forced to sell her jewels.
Selfridge helped pay for the operations to restore her face but had racked up huge debts of his own, thanks in part to the millions he lavished on Jenny and her sister.
In 1939 exasperated with his profligacy, the Selfridge’s board ousted him from the business he had created 30 years earlier. He owed £150,000 to the store and £250,000 to the Inland Revenue or £8 million and £13 million in today’s money.
A few years later, Selfridges (the store lost its apostrophe when he left) cut his pension from £6,000 to £2,000 a year and he ended up in a rented flat in Putney. Often he took the bus to Oxford Street to gaze at his creation. By then his clothes were so shabby that he was once arrested as a vagrant.
Jenny returned to the U.S. and married a lawyer but the marriage did not last. In 1941, lonely and depressed she hanged herself with her dressing gown sash in her Hollywood apartment. Rosie never recovered.
Selfridge followed Jenny to the grave six years later. Among the flowers at his funeral was a wreath of red and white roses with a card saying: ‘From Rosie and Jenny’.
Perhaps it is unfair to pin the blame on the sisters. As biographer Gary Chapman says: ‘Selfridge squandered his money on Jenny, but he chose to.’
He could not help himself. The man who knew how to seduce women in his stores was helpless in his own private passion.
The Dolly Sisters: Icons Of The Jazz Age by Gary Chapman is available in paperback, published by Edditt and also available as an ebook (Apple & Amazon).
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