Celebrities to be guests at Castle de Haar
During September, wealthy, noble and famous guests often came to Castle de Haar. The baron considered it important to be in highly regarded circles. Movie stars, high business relations and wealthy friends. About some of the guests Baroness Alexandra van Zuylen (1957) can tell fascinating stories!
Gregory Peck
Actor Gregory Peck always brought a huge stack of the latest movies especially for us kids. He and his wife were close friends of the family and they often came to the castle in September. They were incredibly kind. We set up a movie projector and movie screen in the ballroom and nestled on the floor with blankets. You can still see the hole in the minstrel gallery row through which the lens of the projector stuck!
Billy Wilder
On Sundays after church, we ate lunch in the dining hall. My mother always had the same thing served, salads with eel and herring. My father then refused to come to the table. He did not like the smell of fish and claimed he could smell the odor on the other side of the castle. He then ate Spaghetti by himself in his room. One of the guests who did love Dutch fish was Billy Wilder. He kept bragging about it!
Hélène Rochas
Besides us, the children, about four or five guests always slept in the châtelet in September. To get to the dining room for dinner, they would always then cross the hangar bridge, a separate corridor from the châtelet to the chateau. You pass under it yourself when you leave the chateau. We knew that there were always bats in the hangar bridge and had great fun doing so. In fact, the guests were all afraid of bats. But we knew how to deal with the bats!
One time a bat flew into Hélène Rochas' hair! Imagine, she was of course beautifully dressed and hung with jewels. Her hair she always had in a very beautiful chignon. It was her trademark. And now a bat flew into it. She screamed so loud you could hear it in Harmelen.
Later, when Madame Rochas came back to the castle, she always had a chambermaid walk in front of her. She made quite a parade out of it. She hid under veils and protected herself with a fire screen. Anything to prevent a bat attack!
Swifty Lazar
There used to be no cell phones. And our guests hardly ever sought out the only phone in the phone room either. They much preferred chatting with each other and hearing what everyone had done after a day on the town. The only one who was really on the phone morning, noon and night was impresario Irving "Swifty" Lazar. He once managed to leave such a high phone bill that my father forwarded it.
Back to series:
September tradition