Alice Ormsby-Gore
The Honourable Alice Magdalen Sarah Ormsby-Gore (22 April 1952 – c. 4 April 1995) was a British socialite and model. She was the youngest daughter of William David Ormsby Gore, 5th Baron Harlech, and his first wife Sylvia Thomas. She had 3 older siblings, Jane, Julian and Victoria, and one younger brother, Francis. She was raised on a farm in Wales before Lord Harlech became British ambassador to Washington during the Kennedy era (October 1961 – fall 1963). After that, she grew up on an idyllic 1,500-acre estate, Brogyntyn Hall in Shropshire in the West Midlands of England. On May 30 1967, Alice’s mother Lady Sylvia Ormsby-Gore was killed in a motor accident. She left school at 14 and then held an assortment of jobs from shop clerk to manager of a rock group, as both a photographic model and a runway model, and helped train horses.
Aged just 16, in late 1968, she met musician Eric Clapton, who dragged her into heroin. The couple announced their engagement on 7 September 1969. In 1970, Ormsby Gore moved into Hurtwood Edge with Clapton. The couple did not marry but stayed together for five years. Clapton maintains he was not in love with Ormsby-Gore but she was deeply in love with him. He, on the other hand, was in love with his friend George Harrison’s wife, model Pattie Boyd Harrison.
Alice Ormsby-Gore starred in Israel’s musical “Hair” (שיער) which opened on June 1 1970 at the “Oasis” Theatre in Ramat-Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel, and ran for six months. From December 1969 to March 1970, her fiance Eric Clapton had an affair with Paula Boyd, Pattie Harrison’s younger sister, in order to reach Harrison. Alice, now eighteen, had developed theatrical aspirations and, during their separation, had won a part in an Israeli production of the “tribal rock musical” Hair. She sung the “Black Boys” song. She recalls: “I just went to the audition in London and got the part (…) I had to learn Hebrew and ended up spending several months in a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee.”
The production was directed by Patrick Garland and co-produced by Reudor Wardimon. The musical director was Steve Gillette and the choreographer was Oliver Tobias. The music was by Galt Macdermott and the lyrics by George Rangi and James Rado, translated by Ehud Manor.
When the show’s run ended, she returned to the very different milieu of Hurtwood Edge with Clapton.
In early May 1972, she stood on Central Park’s band shell to deliver the “welcoming remarks” at the fourth birthday celebration of the Broadway production of Hair, which took place on May 7th Central Park’s Mall at 2 p.m. and consisted in a free two-hour concert with frisbees, flowers, baloons, and cast members imported from foreign companies, including Alice from Israel and Chris Jagger (Mick’s brother) from London.
Clapton broke the engagement and ended their relationship for good in 1973, after recovering from his heroin addiction with the help of Ormsby Gore’s family.
In 1974, aged 22, Ormsby Gore found her elder brother, Julian Ormsby Gore (33), dead in his apartment from gunshot wounds, an apparent suicide. Ormsby Gore’s father William David Ormsby Gore died as the result of a car accident in 1985. He was succeeded by Francis Ormsby Gore, 6th Baron Harlech.
Alice Ormsby Gore died of a heroin overdose in poverty in a bedsit in Bournemouth, Dorset aged only 42.
