Sloan Simpson

Sloan Simpson, born Elizabeth Laurenson Simpson on October 18, 1916, in Dallas, Texas, was an actor, fashion model, fashion consultant, and television and radio personality who later adopted Sloane as her surname. She died in 1996. Simpson is also remembered for having served as First Lady of New York City during the mayoralty of William O'Dwyer.

Simpson grew up in Highland Park, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, where she was known during childhood as Betty. Her father, William Sloan Simpson, held the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the U.S. Army and had served with President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, including at the Battle of San Juan Hill. Her grandfather, John R. Simpson, founded the Exchange Bank, which later became the First National Bank of Texas. For her education, Simpson attended the Sacred Heart Convent in the Torresdale neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Beard School, now known as the Morristown-Beard School, in Orange, New Jersey. She graduated from Highland Park High School in University Park, Texas, and subsequently completed undergraduate studies at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

Her career in broadcasting began in December 1953, when she launched a radio program called The Sloan Simpson Show on WOR in New York City. The weekday evening program, running twenty-five minutes and airing at 9:05 pm, covered fashion, current events, and celebrity gossip. The show expanded to national distribution through the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1954 to 1955. A television version of the same program debuted on WOR-TV in January 1954, though the station canceled it in April of that year. Simpson also made guest appearances on several other television programs, including the talk show Leave It to the Girls, the debate program Let's Take Sides, and the quiz show One Minute Please.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Simpson took on acting roles in film and television. She appeared on Broadway in 1957 in Brigadoon. She played the character Harriet Byrne in the 1960 film The Pusher and made guest appearances on The Phil Silvers Show on CBS-TV and Naked City on ABC-TV.

Simpson's work in the fashion industry included modeling for the John Powers agency, serving as a fashion coordinator for Stern's, a regional department store chain operating in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and later working as a fashion consultant for the Flemington Fur Company, where she supervised fashion shows across those same three states.

In her personal life, Simpson married Carroll Dewey Hipp on November 10, 1938, and the two later divorced on September 23, 1943. She married New York City mayor William O'Dwyer on December 20, 1949, a union that drew 250 congratulatory telegrams to O'Dwyer's office, including one from President Harry Truman sent from Air Force One. Following O'Dwyer's re-election in 1949, a police corruption scandal uncovered by Kings County District Attorney Miles McDonald led President Truman to appoint O'Dwyer as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. O'Dwyer resigned from the mayoralty, received a ticker tape parade along Broadway's Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan, and relocated with Simpson to Acapulco. The couple briefly returned to the United States in 1951 to appear before the Kefauver Committee. Simpson and O'Dwyer divorced in 1953.

In February 1956, burglars broke into Simpson's three-room apartment on East 52nd Street in Manhattan while she was visiting her mother in New Hope, Pennsylvania, stealing jewelry valued at $5,000, including diamond earrings and bracelets.

In 1960, Simpson relocated permanently to Acapulco, where she worked as a clerk in a hotel dress shop, served as a correspondent for the fashion publication Women's Wear Daily, acted as a tour representative for Braniff International Airways, and operated a boutique. She became known locally as the First Lady of Acapulco.