Martha's Insatiable Desires: the producer, the actress, and the fabulous French Impressionists

Martha's Insatiable Desires is the never-before-told story of how actress Martha Hyer stole approximately 10 million dollars from hubby famed producer Hal Wallis. As a couple, Hyer and Wallis were somewhat mismatched. He was a boy from the slums of Chicago whose success in the movie business (196 films over a 44-year career) owed as much to his ability to pinch a penny as to his aptitude for wheeling and dealing. Beautiful, sexy Martha was a relentless shopaholic who dealt with her addiction through skullduggery. To get relief from huge mounting personal debt she mortgaged Hal's Beverly Hills mansion, his 12-room oceanside "getaway" in Trancas Canyon, and their desert home in Palm Springs. And then there arose the itchy question of what to do about Hal's small but superior collection of French Impressionist paintings hanging there in the sun room of their L.A. abode doing nobody any particular good....