Home & Hosts

Come Christmas, Jack and Jackie Kennedy plan to spend their holiday in a white Palm Beach mansion on loan from old family friends: C. (for Capton) Michael Paul, 59, and his wife Josephine, 60. The home is a showpiece, with eight bedrooms, nine servants' rooms, a loggia filled with tropical greenery, a 72-ft. heated swimming pool, an ocean-view terrace and 400 ft. of beach. Its owners are every bit as remarkable: between them, the Pauls own major stock interests in a big brokerage house, oil wells and real estate. They are philanthropists on a noble scale: in October Josephine Paul pledged $1,000,000 to Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Their stable of race horses is first rate: one filly, Idun, won $392,490 before her retirement two years ago. Paul, a talented violinist, is a leading patron of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His wife is an art connoisseur and a collector of Meissen china.

A Man's World. Josephine Paul was born in Iowa and raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of a well-heeled builder and real estate investor. Even as a young woman, she showed sharp business sense, and with her sister, she ran a successful greeting card company. After her marriage to Charles Ulrick Bay, a multimillionaire stockbroker and investor, she took an active interest in his business affairs. In 1946, Bay was named Ambassador to Norway (he was the son of Norwegian immigrants), and for the next seven years the Bays hobnobbed with world celebrities in and out of Oslo.

When "Rick" Bay died in 1955, his widow found herself the sole owner of 73% of the stock and all of the capital ($28 million) of the venerable Wall Street firm of A. M. Kidder & Co. She promptly incorporated it and became the firm's president and board chairman, the only woman ever to head a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. "I like a man's world," she explained. "Wall Street isn't frightening." In addition to Kidder, she was board chairman of American Export Lines for two years (until she sold her one-third stock interest), has held directorships in several other companies.

The Fiddler. In 1959, Josephine Bay married Michael Paul. The son of a surgeon who became a general in the Imperial Russian army, Paul was born in Ulanvdinsk, Outer Mongolia. As a schoolboy, he studied violin in St. Petersburg in the same class with Heifetz. When he was twelve, Paul enlisted in the army, rode off with the Cossack cavalry, was wounded and captured by the Germans. He escaped from prison camp and made his way across Siberia, China and Japan--fiddling for his board and keep.

In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, Michael Paul arrived in San Francisco. He was only 15, and, with a chestful of medals, he was glamorous enough to become the subject of a book, The Young Russian Corporal. At the request of the U.S. Shipping Board, Paul toured the nation's shipyards, helping build morale among the workers. He also made some powerful friends, among them the National City Bank's Frank A. Vanderlip, who gave him a job in China after the war ended. Later, Paul started a rare-metals import business, bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, finally got into the oil business in a big way. Since his marriage, he has replaced his wife as board chairman of A. M. Kidder and, with Josephine, manages their vast business and philanthropic interests.

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