Betty Shingler Talmadge

1923 - 2005

Betty Talmadge, former wife of senator, dies at 81

By TOM BENNETT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Betty Shingler Talmadge of Lovejoy, a hostess, cookbook writer, and the ex-wife of the late U.S. Sen. Herman E. Talmadge, died Saturday at Piedmont Hospital following a long illness. She was 81.

The graveside service for Ms. Talmadge will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Rose Hill Cemetery in Ashburn.

At her 1,200-acre Lovejoy Plantation in Jonesboro, 20 miles south of Atlanta, Ms. Talmadge hosted elaborate parties for political and media guests, and invitations to them were coveted. The parties were memorable, with Ms. Talmadge's pet goat walking about as guests sipped cocktails.

Ms. Talmadge also operated her home as a reservations-only restaurant, and hosted Japanese tourists at $5000 an evening for 100 guests. The visitors believed they were eating at and walking about a locale that was in "Gone With the Wind" — a notion Ms. Talmadge encouraged. She claimed that Lovejoy Plantation is the inspiration for the home "Twelve Oaks" in the fictional book by Margaret Mitchell and in the MGM film, made on sound stages and lots in Culver City, Calif.

The book, film and Georgia's onetime most powerful political family were linked in 1940. That year Eugene Talmadge, a resident of McRae in Telfair County in south Georgia and then Betty Talmadge's father-in-law, purchased the Lovejoy farm. Betty Talmadge acquired it and $150,000 cash in her December 1978 divorce from Eugene Talmadge's son, Sen. Herman E. Talmadge.

Ms. Talmadge based her "Twelve Oaks" claim for the Lovejoy Plantation on the fact that author Margaret Mitchell had relatives, the Fitzgeralds, who had lived near the Lovejoy farm.

'Gone With the Wind' expert Herb Bridges of Sharpsburg, Ga., said: "The movie people sent research people to Georgia and all through the South. They visited, I'm sure, Betty Talmadge's house. But they looked at three dozen more.

"The movie people would say, 'We like the columns on this one, the windows on that one.' But as far as saying that Betty's house is a house used in the film, or actually used by Miss Mitchell in her story, it is in a way, but there were so many houses that were used, you can't flatly say that about any one of them."

While a U.S. senator's wife, Betty Talmadge was a prominent hostess and socialite in Washington, D.C. She was a frequent bridge partner of Lady Bird Johnson, who also visited her at Lovejoy Plantation.

Although a Democrat, Betty Talmadge hosted luncheons for Pat Nixon and Judy Agnew, the wives of President Richard M. Nixon and vice president Spiro T. Agnew, while their husbands were under fire during the Watergate scandal.

Ms. Talmadge was a food broker for the Talmadge country-cured ham label and Cagle's chicken hot dogs. She and her former husband once owned the ham-curing business and created the Talmadge ham label still seen in food markets; they sold the business in 1969.

Ms. Talmadge co-wrote the cookbook "How to cook a pig and other back-to-the-farm recipes," with Jan Robitscher and Carolyn Carter, published in 1977 by Simon & Schuster. She wrote "Betty Talmadge's Lovejoy Plantation Cookbook," distributed by Peachtree Publishers in 1983.

She stumped the panel on television's "What's My Line" in 1955, signing in only as "Betty Shingler." In 1983, Ms. Talmadge played a waitress in the made-for-TV movie, "Murder in Coweta County" filmed in Georgia.

At the Newport News, Va., shipyard in 1973, Ms. Talmadge smashed a bottle of champagne against the hull, launching the nuclear attack submarine Richard B. Russell, named for Herman Talmadge's former fellow U.S. senator.

Ms. Talmadge lost a race for the Democratic nomination for Congress from Georgia's Sixth District in 1978, finishing third. State Sen. Virginia Shapard won the Democratic primary runoff but lost in the general election to Republican Newt Gingrich.

Ms. Talmadge divorced Herman E. Talmadge, then a fourth-term U.S. senator from Georgia and the powerful chairman of the Agriculture and Forestry Committee, in 1978 but kept his last name.

They made front-page headlines across the nation in 1979. She said that Sen. Talmadge, then on trial before the Ethics Committee for violating Senate rules, kept large amounts of money in an overcoat in a closet at their Washington, D.C. condominium. She drew upon the fund to supplement her allowance. Although the senator testified he received small cash donations of $5 to $20 from political supporters, Betty Talmadge turned over to the Ethics Committee $7,700 in $100 bills. The Senate voted 81-15 in October 1979 to "denounce" Sen. Talmadge. He lost a 1980 bid for re-election.

The Talmadges were the state's biggest newsmaking couple during his years as a U.S. senator from 1957 to 1980 and earlier while he claimed the office of governor for 67 days in 1947; as he served without legal challenge as interim governor for 13 1/2 months in 1948-51; and while he served as governor in 1951-55.

The Talmadge family had Georgia's most powerful political machine from 1926 to 1980. Herman's father, Eugene Talmadge, was Georgia agriculture commissioner from 1927 to 1932; governor in 1933-37 and 1941-43; and was elected governor again in 1946 but died in December of that year before taking office.

Ms. Talmadge never remarried. Herman Talmadge married Lynda Cowart Pierce in 1984. He died in March, 2002.

Leila Elizabeth Shingler was born Sept. 17, 1923 in Ashburn, Ga., the daughter of Clinton F. Shingler Sr., a rural letter carrier, and Stella Julian Shingler. She attended the University of Georgia.

At 18, she married Herman Talmadge at the governor's mansion in Atlanta in December 1941; his father was then governor. It was Herman Talmadge's second marriage.

A son, Robert S. Talmadge, drowned at Lake Lanier at age 29 in 1975.

Surviving are a son, H. Eugene Talmadge of Lovejoy and eight grandchildren.

--Staff writer Mike Morris contributed to this article.