Valerie Delacorte


Valéria Hidvéghy or Valerie Pascal Delacorte was a Hungarian actress, philanthropist and writer.

Life

Delacorte was born in Budapest and broke through the iron curtain to marry the film producer Gabriel Pascal. She is best known today for her 1970 memoir of him, The Disciple and His Devil: Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times in 1995 she wrote that the character of Eliza in the guise of a Magyar princess in "My Fair Lady" was due to her first husband.
After Pascal's death she married George T. Delacorte, Jr. in 1959 and together with him became a philanthropist as well as safeguarding Pascal's correspondence and legacy. She outlived this second husband as well and in 1991 three years after his death, made her first donation of $1 million and five Old Master paintings to the Norton Museum of Art. In total she donated 60 paintings to the museum.
Delacorte died at her home in Palm Beach Gardens.