John Hendrickson and Marylou Whitney in August 1996 in the living room at Cady Hill, the socialite's Saratoga Springs home. (Luanne M. Ferris, Times Union archive)

John Hendrickson died at age 59 at Saratoga Hospital on Aug. 19, 2024. The Times Union’s Paul Grondahl wrote this profile, which ran in the paper on Aug. 18, 1996.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — On cue from Edward the butler, Marylou Whitney, an actress from way back, made her entrance with her beau, John Hendrickson. Into the rainbow-sherbet-hued living room of Cady Hill, the sprawling Whitney estate, came the 70-year-old socialite wearing red stiletto heels and a short dress poufed out with crinoline and reminiscent of the famous Marilyn Monroe air shaft scene in “The Seven Year Itch.'' Real $100 bills were tucked into her cleavage.

Times Union photo by LUANNE M. FERRIS-- FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 1996, CADY HILL, SARATOGA HOME OF HEIRESS MARYLOU WHITNEY. FOR GRONDAHL INTERVIEW OF MARYLOU AND HER BOYFRIEND JOHN HENDRICKSON. L-R; JOHN HENDRICKSON AND MARYLOU WHITNEY, ON THE COUCH IN THE LIVING ROOM SNUGGLING DURING INTERVIEW.

Whitney pushed Hendrickson in a wheelchair. He wore pajamas and clutched a cane, his face a death mask of ghastly white makeup behind bifocals, with heavy age lines penciled in, all topped with a bald cap sprouting a fringe of gray hair. Plastered on Hendrickson’s bathrobe were fistfuls of play $10 bills.

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Hendrickson held a hand on his 31-year-old heart and produced a phlegmy, consumptive cough.

“He may not last long,'' Whitney said in a stagey whisper, climbing up into Hendrickson’s lap and covering him with wet kisses. "Ooh … ahhh … you’re my sugar daddy. Every girl wants a sugar daddy.''

So it was on a recent afternoon at Cady Hill, a place where fantasy and reality sometimes intermingle. Hendrickson exited to remove the makeup and costume, while Whitney remained in character.

“I guess this is intermission,'' said Edward the butler, who fetched cucumber sandwiches and fresh-squeezed tomato juice from the servants in the kitchen. "You never know what surprises are going to happen around here.''

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In Hendrickson, a former tennis instructor and Alaskan with an aw-shucks accent and deep chortle of a laugh, Whitney said she has discovered her fountain of youth and an elixir of happiness.

In Whitney, the sole heir to the $100 million fortune of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny'' Whitney, Hendrickson said he has encountered "the soulmate'' he never knew while dating women his own age. Amour, he said, has rendered all her riches and the fact she is four decades his senior meaningless.

“We’re just two people in love trying to grab our share of happiness in the world,'' Hendrickson said, claiming he did not even know Whitney’s precise age. He added that it mattered not a whit that onlookers might mistake Whitney for his mother while they are out on dates. "If they told me that, I’d say ‘I hope she spanks me,' " he said.

During a 1996 interview, Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson poked fun at the public attention paid to the near-four-decade age difference and her wealth: She wheeled him out in old-age makeup, covered in fake money. (Luanne M. Ferris, Times Union archive)

Whitney, mother of five and grandmother to a dozen, said her love for Hendrickson has caused her to rethink her role as the grande dame of the Saratoga social scene.

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“I can hardly wait to be Mrs. John Hendrickson,'' Whitney said. "I could give up all the Saratoga society stuff........

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