Martha, We Hardly Knew Ya,

by Mike Gange

Martha INC.

Christopher Byron

Wiley, $39.95, 404 pages

Martha Stewart is one of the most famous women in the media, getting more daily attention, and mention, than Queen Elizabeth. Her hour long, syndicated TV show is carried in nearly every North American market. Her initial public offering (IPO) on Wall Street made her a billionaire. Her life style and entertaining books top best seller lists and her magazines are enormously popular. Yet Martha is not happy, satisfied or easy to get along with.

Christopher Byron has captured the dish on Martha Stewart in Martha INC. He says she is more a construction of reality than the epitome of entertaining she conveys herself to be. Byron lives in Westport, Connecticut, as does Martha, and has come to know her quite well. Although Byron writes about her admiringly, he also points out her flaws and her sinister side. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Martha can be nice or really nasty. And controlling. Very, very controlling, as she showed when she went to the publisher of this book trying to get it pulled. Later, she offered to pay Byron for his work as a writer if she could edit it.

Martha was born Martha Koystra, in 1941, to a working class family in New Jersey, where her mother was a stay at home mom and her dad was a bad tempered, hard drinking, high school gym coach and later, a salesman. A head turning blonde in her high school years, Martha escaped poverty by working as a fashion model. While working her way through university, she met and married a young law student named Andy Stewart and went to work as a stock broker at a second rate firm on Wall Street. She quit selling stocks as a recession hit in 1973; most of the friends she had once sold stocks to were going through financial difficulties.

Byron admiringly points out how everything Martha touches turns to gold. She has learned her lessons from every situation she was in, always coming out on top and managing to promote Martha in the process. Even her deal with K-mart, where she was supposed to help save the down-market retailer ended up with her gaining in-store promotional space and network ads for her videos, books, kitchen ware and linens, while K-mart eventually filed for bankruptcy. Her monthly magazine, Martha Stewart Living, enjoys a circulation of more than two million. Her daily one hour TV show, syndicated by King World Productions, reaches 50 % of the women in North America. Her weekly appearance on CBS’ morning show comes with a guaranteed 30-second ad for Martha and her branded products.

But Byron also points out, in spite of being a billionaire, Martha is a cheap, cantankerous workaholic. For example, on a cooking segment of her TV show, she complained about the cost of using three bottles of wine in the recipe. While soft spoken and charming in front of the camera, Byron reports Martha is just as likely to shout foul mouthed obscenities at her staff and crew if the segments go awry. Martha sleeps about four hours a day, works 20, and expects the rest of her office staff and crew to keep up with her. She fights with her Connecticut neighbors over property lines and encroaching trees, over fences and noisy children. She demands her privacy but thinks nothing of having dozens of huge delivery trucks arrive at her door to supply her catering and entertaining needs. Friends who have gone into business with Martha have found themselves supplying the labour or the capital, only to have Martha grab the profits and the credit.

Byron both admires Martha for what she has done, and dislikes her for what she has become. A determined reporter, Byron has found many things Martha did not want him to know and instructed others to avoid telling him in the hopes of keeping the details obscure. His persistence helped him gather telling quotes from friends, neighbors, school mates, business associates and Martha’s ex-husband. As a result, Martha INC is both fascinating and fabulous.

Consistently through out the book, Byron shows how Martha works at re-writing her personal history, whether in her magazine columns or her books on entertaining. Although she had a traumatic childhood, in her regular columns she portrays it as idyllic and heart-warming. Her father may have worked as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, but Martha stretches the truth in calling him a pharmacist. She and her husband lived in a tiny two room apartment when they were first married, but Martha lets on she elegantly entertained eighteen for her first Christmas.

Martha has no real friends, employees who don’t respect her and has gone to court to fight her neighbours. Ironically, the one thing she writes and broadcasts about, domestic bliss, is something that is not now, nor has it ever been, part of Martha’s life.

Mike Gange teaches Media Studies and Journalism at Fredericton High.