Like Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson in the film Sunset Boulevard, Martha, 81, loves being on camera, looks spectacular, and probably believes as Desmond did, โThe stars are ageless, arenโt they.โ
She calls being a sex symbol โfantastic.โ
But Marthaโs decision to pose where once young bikini-clad beauties like Kate Upton, Tyra Banks and Christie Brinkley graced SIโs cover should not come as a surprise to Martha insiders.
Long before the public ever heard of her, Martha was considered a very hot and desirable lady โ holding sex-themed parties in her Westport estate, Turkey Hill, that would not have been appropriate for inclusion in her first big book that made her a star, โEntertaining.โ
Those parties, involving a very small select group of couples and singles shocked some of Marthaโs close friends who were invited to her sexy get-togethers for the first time.
They were also usually held when her attorney husband and later New York publisher, Andy Stewart, was out of town.
โMy husband was sort of horrified at the behavior he saw going on,โ recalled Marthaโs close friend, Norma Collier, a former model and Marthaโs catering business partner for a time.
โMartha, for instance, was on [another manโs] lap. She was acting pretty playful. My reaction was that Martha walked on the wild side. This is part of who she is.โ
Collier died at 82 in 2021.
In the swinging Seventies, according to friends, the Stewarts had a black bottom pool installed.
โThey had nude pool parties,โ Collier said. โBut Martha told me that she was not inviting my husband and me because she thought we were uptight Republicans, wet blankets.โ
At at least one of the parties, according to Collier, โcertain guests on arrival were asked to place their house keys into a fancy bowl and at the end of the evening retrieve a set of mystery keys and go home with the owner.
โI thought it was a joke and maybe it was a joke. But back then those kind of things were known as key parties for the sexually adventurous, and Martha was both creative and adventurous.โ
She added: โMartha was not embarrassed by any of this, said it was fun, and liked it. She was an experimental person and would do anything to get kicks or shock people, and Andy would go along with anything Martha asked him to. They were two young people not clinging only to each other.โ
In the mid-Sixties, before their only child, Lexi, was born, Andy and Martha decided to take a grand tour of Europe in a Volkswagen bug.
In โEntertaining,โ she wrote that the trip was the beginning of her โserious culinary education.โ
But omitted from the book, but revealed by a close source, an upsetting incident occurred while they were staying in a hotel in Florence.
The couple met a handsome Englishman at dinner, and the threesome broke bread and consumed wine.
By 11 p.m., all were a bit tipsy and Andy wanted to call it a night.
But Martha didnโt and when Andy went off to bed alone, Martha and the other man left together.
As a married stockbroker, Wall Street guys and men-about-town salivated over her.
She was hired, in part, to sell stock, as one of her bosses said, โbecause of her great legs.โ
One of her stockbroker colleagues was Brian Dennehy, the future actor.