Miranda Grosvenor was the fictitious name of an elusive Louisiana woman who enchanted dozens of famous men with sweet telephone talk in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1999, Vanity Fair exposed the mystery woman as Whitney Walton, a Baton Rougesocial worker and bored fan who made a full-time hobby of calling stars. Her voice and conversation style were reportedly so alluring that wealthy and powerful men fell in love without ever meeting her, and rearranged their whole evenings around speaking to the mysterious stranger. As "Miranda," Walton engaged in late-night telephone conversations with such stars as Billy Joel, Warren Beatty, Bob Dylan, Buck Henry, Eric Clapton, Michael Apted, Bono, Mike Nichols, Vitas Gerulaitis, Ted Kennedy, Johnny Carson, Art Garfunkel, Peter Gabriel, Robert De Niro, Rush Limbaugh, and Richard Gere, telling them that she was a blonde Tulane University student, wealthy socialite, and international model. According to Vanity Fair, at least two of her telephone paramours, Quincy Jones and Richard Perry, proposed marriage. Billy Joel wrote songs which he sang on Miranda's answering machine, considered her at times his "only friend," and considered writing a musical about her. Many others bought her jewelry and sent her plane tickets. NovelistKinky Friedman created a Miranda character in his detective novels. According to John McCall, the multimillionaire shampoo magnate and novelist, Miranda's telephone calls dissipated at some point in the mid-1980s. Though no one knows why "Miranda" retired, it was rumored that she "disappeared" in the wake of threats from lawyers of tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis.
Movie and book deals
In 2000, HarperCollins paid close to $1 million for Walton's memoir, Miranda Rites: My Life As the Mysterious Hollywood Sweet Talker, scheduled to be published in December 2006, as well as her audiobook rendition. The deal was struck after agent Dean Williamson hired a private detective to track her down, whereupon he finally persuaded her to tell her story. In January 2001, Robert De Niro, one of Miranda's former talkmates, purchased the film rights to the story. In late 2007 online book retailers advertised a January 2008publication date and had identified the planned book as having with 256 pages. An audio version was also at one point available for pre-sale on Amazon.com. In January 2008 HarperCollins reported that the memoir had been cancelled, without giving a reason. Grosvenor's creator, Whitney Walton, died of natural causes on February 24, 2016 in Baton Rouge, at the age of 74.
