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Without any scruples and without any dough;
They platted a town with the object in "view,
To rob the poor suckers as they came passing through.
With his profits, Billy Skirvin bought an acre in the new Spindletop field near Beaumont, and hit oil. The Skirvins struck it rich. In 1906 Billy moved his family to Oklahoma City, set up the American Oil & Refining Co. and sold shares in its holdings. With the money, he built the 14-story Skirvin Hotel, still one of Oklahoma City's best.
No Shoes. Billy Skirvin did not go in for society stuff. He loved to sit in the lobby of his hotel in his stocking feet, talking. In later years, he drank, and about 9 o'clock every evening, a thin, wiry little woman would come down to the lobby, pick up his shoes and lead him off upstairs. She was Mabel Luty, and she was his confidential secretary for 31 years.
But Billy did his best to make Pearl (he never could remember to spell it Perle) happy. He put $36,000 into sending her East, gave her a fancy car, and kept her there in good husband-catching style. In 1916, Perle met George Mesta. A year later she married him. George Mesta was 54, a tall, blond man of Italian descent who was president of the Mesta Tool Co. in Pittsburgh, and a World War I $1-a-year man in Washington. For Perle, he was the first big step. After the war, he took her abroad 22 times, started building her a $600,000 limestone house in Pittsburgh where she could entertain. He contributed $100,000 to Coolidge's campaign, and Perle was rewarded with three overnight visits to the White House. Then in 1925, Mesta, to whom his wife referred affectionately as "the wop," died. Perle got $845,000.
Getting Ahead. Perle never lived in the $600,000 house, which was finished just before Mesta's death. She found Pittsburgh society "too stuffy." She bought a place in Boston, and sold it after two weeks, bought a cattle ranch in Arizona, and resold it because it was "too lonely out there." She also took a place in Newport, began entertaining cautiously and discreetly, got inside the door at aloof Bailey's Beach, eventually established herself firmly among the matriarchs of Millionaire's Row. She struck up a friendship with Hoover's courtly Vice President Charles Curtis, who spent a week at her Newport mansion. He got her presented at the Court of St. James's in 1931.
Once Perle Mesta had to drop her social campaigning and hurry back to Oklahoma City. There brother O. W. Skirvin was keeping an eye on old father Billy. He peeked into his father's safe, found the old man had made out stock transfers of his American Oil shares to his three children.
Billy learned of his son's doings, in a fury tore up the certificates.
Perle sued her father for misappropriation of the hotel's and oil company's assets. Some suspected that Perle was afraid faithful Secretary Mabel Luty would get her inheritance. Receivers were appointed and the case was bitterly argued for six years. In court, old Billy wept. The judge bellowed at them: "You Skirvins ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
On appeal, the court turned the properties back to Billy. That same day, he was injured in an automobile accident, died two weeks later. Perle got about $400,000.
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