WHY ARE YOU AGAINST FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS MISSY? IS THIS TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO BEING A MISTRESS?

Question for Missy:

Missy, I want to know why you're against Friends With Benefits  I'm 21 and a senior in college.  I'm smart and I use contraception.  I have two friends I have sex with.  We think this is a good way to avoid having sex with partners who would want more with us.  We're not ready to get married to anyone.

Becky

UCLA - Los Angeles

Answer from Missy:

I'm for Choice and respect that the Friends With Benefits lifestyle is your choice at this time in your life. However, it's possible that you might be missing out on being completely available to someone else who might be an excellent choice as a partner in your life in your youthful stage.  Let's face it that as the years go by it's more difficult to meet someone to partner with, not impossible but more difficult. Many college students find their first partners while at school.  After that is a career building period, with many feeling themselves established seeking a first marriage in their late twenties. Into your thirties a great number of previously available potential partners are already in commitments.  I tend to think a woman should consider being a Mistress only after having experienced their twenties - early thirties. By then a person probably knows themselves well enough.

Right now you're sort of man sharing and maybe you'll also find that an interesting way to live your life as a Mistress.  Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot we continue to try to define what a 21st Century Mistress is or is not.  We know being a Mistress does not necessarily mean adultery or being involved with a person who is married.  We also know that there are many who give it a try and do not like it.  The days of the Classic Mistress, a woman who is fully supported for her lifetime by a rich married man, may be over.  We also know that the best mistresses are not known to us. a

I tend to think that a woman should experience her sexuality and figure out where she's at with it before she partners. I also tend to think this, which I recently shared with a man I know.  I said to him - and to you - and my readers - that idealistically I think it should be that people get to experience loving in many ways and with many people - with everyone in the know and unbothered by jealousy - but pragmatically we choose commitment to have and hold family.  In the Western world the majority do marry and attempt to restrict their lives to just one partner, making those in Open Relationships or who share a partner with someone else in the minority.

And though there are women who Keep men, and there are women who have more than one lover at a time, it's usually men who have arrangements such as this.

So check in with yourself Becky, and ask yourself if you're the type to happily remain independent and relatively unattached, and what it would be to have great sex with someone you love rather than with a friend you like.  Will you be OK when one or both of your Friends With Benefits partners end it with you because they found someone Special?

Missy

AUDREY MUNSON as THE SETTING SUN

From Sunset Magazine Cover in 1915

Audrey's looks were considered Classic and so, as a model,

she often embodied mythological characters

from the pantheons of the Romans or Greeks.

This image, found in Google Images, is the cover of Sunset, The Pacific Monthly magazine, for October 1915.  The sculpture called The Setting Sun, which was photographed for the covert,

was made by Adolph Alexander Weinman for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

 

FLORODORA GIRLS : MANY MARRIED MILLIONAIRES

According to the book, The Curse of Beauty by James Bone, which is about the career and life of Audrey Muson, Marion Davies had appeared in the 1930 movie The Floradora Girl but in real life she had been a Ziegfeld Follies girl.  (The costumes these girls wore left a lot to the imagination compared to the clothing actresses wear on the Red Carpet today.)

Evelyn Nesbit had also been picked out of Floradora Chorus line....

You know I've dedicated a month to these women in the past!

You may be interested in:

February 2017 Archives find:

EVELYN NESBIT : Teenage Beauty and Mistress of Architect Stanford White: Before It Was All Over There Was A Murder

July 2013 Archives find"

MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

AUDREY MUNSON : UNSTABLE and SPINNING CONSPIRACY THEORIES : POSSIBLY PREGNANT BY HERMAN OELRICH JR? THE SILVER MINING HEIR?

Page 189: "Ever since Girl O Dreams, Audrey's mental health had seemed to ebb and flow.  At times, she became convinced the world was out to get her, she spun incredible conspiracy theories, and lost her reason. She looked for culprits, weather secretly funded by the Kaiser, or part of some other imagined plot.  At other times, she was again her bright and charming self, childishly enthusiastic, friendly, and disarmingly funny. She seemed to lack control over her moods, and there is some suggestion that she tried to self-medicate with drugs - although her mother always vehemently denied it.  Audrey was at war with herself."

Audrey even wrote a long letter to the State Department going against Hermann Oelrichs and others, people who had deeply hurt her. The Gypsy Queen's world about Dead Sea may have been taken to mean Jewish people.  Audrey seemed to be antisemetic at a time when that was not uncommon. If she had not been secretly married to the man, perhaps she had been his Mistress and pregnant at one time.

Page 188 : Excerpt from her letter:

"You will see how pro-German Hermann Oelrichs is when he tried to frame me up with an Irish Doctor I called upon for an errand.  The Doctor had witnesses in the Anti-Room and tried to make out because I was going to England that I was about to become a mother.  I have heard this openly discussed in street-cars and one the street by women who were this mans (sic) agents." (Misspelling is hers.)

Was she actually ever pregnant?  A miscarriage? An abortion? Gave the child up for adoption in Canada?  Her mother said no.  Audrey was unsure.

Here is where I have to express that more than one woman who spoke up to defend herself or was open with her opinions, and who made an enemy or two, found themselves labeled "crazy" or mental illness was used as some sort of defense. As well, I speculate that her mother, Kittie, may have done the best thing possible for Audrey at the time because the mother-daughter duo were so poor. An institution might not be much but might provide as much as a homeless shelter might today.

But early in 1919 the Munsons were living in Long Beach, New York, in a boarding house owned by a sixty-five year old man who was on his third marriage, a Doctor Walter Keene Wilkins, and though it became convoluted and he always denied he was the murderer, Doctor Wilkins was convinced of murdering his wife with blows to her head with a hammer.  He was sentenced to die in the electric chair but committed suicide awaiting.

Page 199 : Detectives told the press they were seeking an actress as "the other woman" in a love triangle to explain why the normally amiable Dr. Wilkins hammered his wife to death.  Two days after Dr. Wilkins was arrested, the Washington Times reported: "A definite clew indicating that a pretty young woman may prove to be an important factor in the solution of the murder of Mrs. Julia Wilkins whose husband Dr. Walker K., Wilkins, who was indicted for murder in the first degree, has been found, according to Detectives working on the case.  The eternal triangle is on the verge of being revealed, these Detectives assert, and sensational disclosures which will dwarf others so far unearthed, are soon to be made."

A postcard-sized ad of Audrey in her swimsuit was the clue.

This began the infamy of Audrey Munson which would ruin her modeling career and render her unemployable.  But both Dr. Wilkins and Audrey denied they had more than passing hellos between them.

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THE LASTING SCULPTURAL LEGACY OF AUDREY MUNSON "MISS MANHATTAN" in NEW YORK CITY

Two of the best YouTube videos about Audrey Munson I found, illustrating some of the sculptures she posed for. Additional information from the book by James Bone below.

 

This video is short but sweet. 

From the book here are the locations of some enduring pieces - a short list.

 A twenty five foot sculpture across from New York City Hall... It's the second tallest sculpture in New York city as the Statue of Liberty is first. It's on the Municipal Building.

The Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel near Central Park.

Arch at the end of the Manhattan Bride as "Spirit of Commerce"

Entrance of New York Public Library.

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AUDREY MUNSON : AN ATTEMPT TO BE ACCEPTED BY SOCIETY and MARRY A SILVER MINING HEIR GOES WRONG : THERE'S NO GOING FROM BOARDING HOUSE TO NEWPORT "COTTAGE"

Unlike the ever critical mother of Maria Callas, whom was our Mistress of the Month last month, Audrey Munson's divorced mother Kittie, seemed to not only depend on her, but appreciate her. Home from a day of holding poses, her muscle's stiff, Kittie would massage her daughter.  Kittie also went to work at poorly paying jobs to provide.  It would be Kittie, however, who determined that Audrey was not capable of dealing with the world and committed her to a mental hospital.

Kittie also took her daughter to Eliza the Gypsy Queen when she was a girl.  The Gypsy Queen seemed to be making a soothsaying tour at the time.  She told her:

"You shall be beloved and famous.  But when you think that happiness is yours, its Dead Sea fruit shall turn to ashes in your mouth.

You, who shall throw away thousands of dollars as a caprice, shall want for a penny. You, who shall mock at love, shall seek love without finding.

Seven men shall love you.  Seven times you shall be led by the man who loves you to the steps of the altar, but never shall you wed." (page 2)

So, after three silent films beginning in 1915 Hollywood, Inspiration, Purity, and Girl o' Dreams, after years of modeling for famous sculptures and photographers, Kittie was an early Hollywood film star with aspirations and already having spurned some of the men who had been interested in her.  The lack of publicity for the last film and what may have been a significant rip off by the film maker added to her stress. Mother and daughter moved to the beach community of Santa Barbara, where it was clear that daughter was supporting them both.  It was a time in which women still had a few years wait for the vote and bra's were being patented as liberating. Audrey was photographed wearing a man's one piece swim suit that was more revealing than what women wore into the ocean and seemed to be a spokeswoman for liberation. 

Around 1916, Audrey took the fifth man into her life and this time, though there had been speculations about her sexuality due to her nude modeling, this man probably was a lover. She wrote a semi fictional newspaper account of her love life and gave him the name Gordon, but other than that he was a "movie director" and an older man, not much is really known about him.

Audrey moved to Newport, Rhode Island. If she was a Mistress, her involvement with a silver mining heir, Herman Oelrich Jr., whose mother, Tessie Oelrich, had been unusually accepted by society, though they were Catholics, may have been when. (Audrey had been raised nominally as a Catholic as her mother was of Irish Catholic ancestry.) Kittie Munson was very much one to promote the two of them had married - perhaps secretly.  While there seems to be no document that would prove a marriage, perhaps Kittie wanted to save Audrey's reputation. For on the 1930 and 1940 United States census, she is listed as Audrey M. Oelrich.

Though he did eventually marry, Herman was a lousy choice to be a husband.  He was violent and alcoholic and possible gay.

During this time, ripped off financially and rejected or unable to find a suitable mate, Audrey began to have the mental problems that were probably triggered by stress.

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DANCER

No that's not Audrey....

 

AUDREY MUNSON AS AN ARTIST'S MODEL : SHE SAW IT AS AN AUDIENCE OF ONE : ON SCULPTOR and EVEN A LADY LIBERTY COIN

Arnold Genthe - Photographer, Felix Benedict Herzog - sculptor, Isadore Konti - and so very many more.  Audrey saw her nude posing as for an audience of one.  She was paid about fifty cents an hour. 

Using the Inflation Calculator here: Fifteen cents in 1913 be about fifteen dollars an hour in 2024. (An unlivable wage.)

In this Rochester-made video it's noted that she was the model for over 100 statues exhibited in the 1915 World's Fair and a Lady Liberty coin.  (According to the book, she demurred and said she had been just one of the models for the coin.)

At the time Audrey's nude modeling was considered daring but not pornography.  She embodied the classic Greek and Roman notions of womanhood and femininity. She was never posed or enacted a sexual act. The term "supermodel" came decades later into pop culture, and today's models for photography and on runways rarely also pose as artist's models for sculpture. She is the model for many works of sculpture that endure today.  In 1915 at the World's Fair, sculptures of her were made just for the exhibition.

Audrey Munson was at the height of her fame after she made Hollywood history acting in a 1915 film called Purity.  It was after that film - she made two more - that she attempted to live separately of her mother and enter society, perhaps hoping for a suitable rich husband.

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AUDREY MUNSON : AMERICA'S FIRST "SUPERMODEL" : AN ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT WITH A MARRIED MEN LED TO HIS SUICIDE AND THE END OF HER CAREER and SANITY

AUDREY MUNSON

Audrie Marie Munson

1891-1996

I'm electing Audrey Munson, called "America's First Supermodel" to the Honorary Mistress of the Month pantheon here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, because she denied that she had an affair with a married man, but whatever the truth of it was, it ended her career after he, assumed to be love sick and mentally ill,  murdered his wife.  There was plenty of evidence that he did murder his wife, with seventeen blows to the head with a hammer, so the question is, was Audrey a victim of the sexism of the era and the press?

There is also the possibility that she was the mistress of a silver mining heir, one of the richest men in America, who was known to be alcoholic and abusive (and possibly gay, though he did eventually marry), Herman Oelrich Jr.  Audrey may have become pregnant by this man but whatever actually happened, her mother seemed to cover the adventure by declaring her as Audrey Oelrich on two United States census.

Audrey Munson never earned much money and she and her mother, Kittie, who was divorced, mostly lived in boarding houses. She was a chorus girl (called a chlorine) and made her Broadway debut before the age of 18. And she was supposed to have been "discovered" while walking down the street. America's first supermodel made about fifty cents an hour or thirty dollars a week. A loaf of bread was about a nickel but this was just enough for the daughter-mother duo to pay their rent. They were living in one that Doctor Walter Wilkins owned when the murder occurred. 

Perhaps the doctor's motive was to get rid of his wife because she was an obstacle to marrying Audrey. Audrey and her mother moved out and went to take care of business in Canada, behavior that they justified but which was considered suspicious. He denied any involvement with her. She declined to testify against him.

Doctor Wilkens commit suicide by hanging himself while awaiting the electric chair. 

Eventually Audrey herself was committed to a mental institution by her mother and lingered there for sixty-five years. However, her mental or emotional decline may have started before this scandal. She died in obscurity having reached the age of about 104!

Was she cursed as the title if this book suggests?

Was Audrey driven to insanity - paranoia - because of the infamy of this scandal? 

Did Audrey take the Gypsy Queens predictions for her life too seriously, and interpret what happened through the eyes of the psychic?

Now, I have to admit that I hesitated to elect Audrey Munson to this honor because I frankly think her obscurity ended some years ago; there are very many YouTube videos and articles about her and her tragic life that I had to curate. I hope to bring something a little different to my coverage of her.  So while I will be using James Bone's book about Audrey - The Curse of Beauty -  I cast my net wide for information about Audrey Munson.

The first notion that came to me is is that we need to think about what Monica Lewinsky, a young woman who was raised in far more liberated times when it comes to sexuality, has been through. I've been an advocate for getting off Monica's back since way back in the day when she became infamous due to her involvement with the then President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, who didn't suffer a bit in comparison. Let's go back to Audrey Munson's day - the early twentieth century when the judgement about a young woman's sexuality could effect her entire future. It was even assumed that any woman who acted or sang or danced was a prostitute. In 2016, when I covered ballerina Celestine Emarot, the Mistress of Baron Charles de Chassiron and Ferdinand De Montguyon and the French ballerina Courtesons, we learned that a young dancer often had to have a "patron" so she could afford the lessons, toe shoes and clothing, and eat. Not so long ago it was near impossible for a unmarried adult woman to be supported in this world without a man with limited educational and career options.

I'm always trying to sort through the expectations of purity, the expectations of waiting until married (or at least marrying the first man one has sex with), the expectations that one will be sexual after marriage, the expectations that one will marry, the expectations that one will marry once and stay married - and then all the changes in attitude we've gone through until here we are today.

In 1908, she made Audrey Munson first performance as a teenager at the Rocky Point Amusement Park in the "Dancin' Dolls" chorus line. By 1909 she was performing at the Casino Theatre in New York on the "Great White Way" which was what Broadway was called because of the new electric lights.

She became one of the Floradora Girls and all six of the original girls married a millionaire. (Evelyn Nesbit had also been picked out of a Floradora chorus line as a teenager. Certainly she must have heard of the scandal when Nesbit's lover killed another man over her.) Before she turned eighteen, Audrey made her Broadway debut in "The Boy and The Girl." 

Her first break in New York as an artist's model might have been because she was sighted on the street by photographer Felix Benedict Herzog.  For three months she posed for him but with her mother in attendance to protect her. She posed for mythic schemes like in Old Master's Paintings.

Audrey was called "Miss Manhattan" because so many sculptures around Manhattan were ones she posed for, as well as the "Panama-Pacific Girl" and "The Exposition Girl" because she posed for those marketing events for paintings, sculptures, and magazine covers.  "American Venus" is also a more general affirmation of her as a beautiful model.

Audrey was the first Silent Screen era actress to appear nude in a film called Inspiration in 1915!  It was one of three films she appeared in. The film was not pornography. To give some perspective, The Birth of a Nation, Hollywood's first motion picture, came out the same year.

But so much went wrong.  In 1931 by Oswego County court order she was committed to St. Lawrence State Hospital in Ogdensburg, New York and live there almost sixty-five years - the majority of her life. Though her mother thought it was temporary, the woman eventually moved to a boarding house in the same town. Audrey may have had schizophrenia.

So this month I'll muse about the curse as well as what all made Audrey "crazy" enough to be committed to a mental hospital (then called insane asylum) by her own mother, where she languished the majority of her life!  Her records, which staff members saw during her years there, were sealed and she was buried in an unmarked grave.

Missy

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You may find these archived posts interesting:

September 2016

CELESTINE EMAROT-  MISTRESS OF BARON CHARLES de CHASSIRON and FERDINAND De MONTGUYON and the French Ballerina Courtesans

February 2017

EVELYN NESBIT : Teenage Beauty and Mistress of Architect Stanford White: Before It Was All Over There Was A Murder

 

BLACK

 

TALKING TILL SUNRISE : DOMESTIC VIOLENCE and SUICIDE and EATING DISORDERS : SOME PHONE NUMBERS FOR YOU IF YOU NEED THEM!

This month's posts have reminded me that Domestic Violence is not restricted to the poor, as is stereotyped, and that Suicide is not the way to solve emotional and psychological pain.  I want you, my readers, to be as healthy in body and mind as one can be. So I'm going to offer a couple phone numbers that may be the first step to improving your life if you are suffering. Though I don't personally deal with Domestic Violence and have never been Suicidal, friends of mine have been. I'm not making light of these issues at all.

Yes, I've talked on the phone for many hours with a friend who was depressed and in therapy and mostly it was all over a man, a man who was actually a good man but simply working on his PhD. and had little time for women in general, but was just not that interested in her.  They were not having an affair.  Not yet, anyway.  She was obsessed with him and had developed quite a fantasy about what might happen in their relationship simply because they went for coffee and held hands on a walk. I stayed on the phone with her - long distance - until the sun rose and she could call her therapist for an emergency appointment.

We live and learn. All these years later, I have more knowledge and experience, and think I would probably deal with women friends who were in relationships that would never make them happy a bit differently. I never played therapist and suggesting therapy to another person took a long time for me to do. I still think that having a confidant or two is important and that loyalty and faithfulness in friendships is so important. However, sometimes as a close personal friend it takes you a while to realize that your friend who is in such pain needs someone to talk to who has a professional perspective.

I recently met a young woman who told me that talking about your personal life or problems to strangers made it obvious to her that a person needed to be in therapy.  I do not agree with that.  Sometimes disclosure and sharing are exactly how people bond and find out they have some things in common.  (I also found out later that this particular young woman had serious problems such as drug addiction, a petty criminal record, and so on, so she was intensely in to therapy.)  No, a therapist is not a friend!  They are paid professionals with education and experience in the field of psychology.  A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who can prescribe medications.  Usually a person sees a therapist first.  (And if you're in therapy and it's not helping, you may need to switch to a different one.) With a friend I'm not able to be objective like a professional might be.

Understanding what is or is not abuse or violence is important just as understanding what is or is not depression rather than just a bad mood or sadness.  

If you find yourself in a relationship or circumstances like Maria Callas did, well, this is 2024 and you don't have to be tortured like Maria. 

988 is the designated number to go right to SUICIDE PREVENTION and CRISIS HOTLINE - and you can SMS (text) with them too.  The previous 988 Lifeline phone number 800-273-8255 will always remain available to people in emotional distress or suicidal crisis.

https://988lifeline.org/current-events/the-lifeline-and-988/

And then there's the NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE

Hours: 24/7. Languages: English, Spanish and 200+ through interpretation service 

800-799-7233  SMS: (Text) BEGIN to 88788

https://www.thehotline.org/

I suspect that Maria Callas had an eating disorder.

National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders (ANAD): The Helpline 888-375-7767 is open Monday to Friday.

Missy

HOW DOES THIS TOO SWEET MAN BREAK UP WITH THE WOMAN "FRIEND" WHO WON'T TAKE THE HINT

Question for Missy

Hi Missy,

I'm a disabled man in my sixties who can still function sexually but isn't interested in a relationship. I met a lady at the senior center who isn't disabled and have been friends with her for about two years.  At about the year and a half point she started to come on to me.  About six months ago it was her birthday and she said she wanted to have sex with me for her birthday.  I told her no.  I was married for over 30 years and haven't had sex with anyone since my wife died. I told her that.  I still love my wife and always will.  Also I told this woman to stop calling me so much.  Her therapist told her also that she wasn't listening to me when I told her I just wanted the friendship.  I told her that by text, by e-mail, and when we talk. She backed off for a while but the other day we were sitting in the park together and she asked me why I wouldn't have sex with her.  I think I've said it a lot of different ways.  She also says it's not just about sex and that she loves me and would marry me. How do I get her to take the hint?

Roger

Los Angeles

Answer from Missy

Wow Roger, that is a whole lot of not taking the hint. Roger, I think this woman is sexually obsessed with you and you're like a a "love drug" to her.  

You've never had sex with her though she has been after you for it and it sounds like you've been clear with her verbally. Now you must also, through your actions, break with her firmly and consistently. You have to tell her one final time that the two of you are just not on the same page. And this might mean not seeing her around the senior center too.  Are you willing to do that?

If you call her, call her back, or see her for any reason - just the two of you - she will get a dose of her "love drug" and she will not give up on you.

Here are some suggestions:

Even at the senior center be sure that you are not alone with her. Sit with other people at lunch, for instance.

Suggest to her when you do break with her that she join a dating club to meet someone more to her liking.

If you have a friend who you honestly think might make a good companion for her, introduce them.

Your message in Comments, which I do not publish for the Questions and Answers aspect of Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, also indicates that you hate to lie. I want to suggest that gentle honesty is the best policy, however, because I think she is addicted to you and obsessed, and I've had women friends who were obsessed with men in the past, I know that the slightest suggestion of interest in her would be enough to keep that obsession going. The slightest.  She has a therapist to work with, which is a good thing.

But while musing about how to answer your question, I found a hilarious article on the net that I'm going to link to here.  It's so funny I laughed all the way through.  To you, and my readers, I suggest you click on this link and read this!  It's from GQ magazine and by writer Victoria Coren from 2015.

British GQ MAGAZINE : 20 WAYS TO MAKE HER LEAVE YOU by Victoria Coren Mitchell

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MARIA CALLAS : LA TRAVIATA : 1958 in LONDON

For those of you unfamiliar with opera, I offer you this link to the three acts which were adapted from a play by Dumas by Verdi.   ENO.ORG - OPERAS LA TRAVIATA

About this time Maria, born in 1923 was in her mid-thirties, still wanted a baby, was married but not happily and would face a difficult divorce.

THE RAGGEDY END OF A RELATIONSHIP WITH ARISTOTLE ONASSIS and AN OPERA CAREER: MARIA CALLAS' LIFE ENDS AT ONLY FIFTY THREE

This post wraps up the coverage of Lyndsy Spence's devastating book about the life of Maria Callas though you'll have to read all the details I could not possibly include in this month's dedication to the opera star. 

Betrayed by Aristotle Onassis, Maria Callas accepted that it was over with him. He married Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and a month later he called her and expected her to pay attention to him. She ignored him and phoned her and then he threatened to drive his car through the gates of her building. So she saw him but remained firm. Though the former First Lady and the Greek Shipping Magnate had a contract that she would spend two nights a week with him (implying sexual agreement) he expected Maria to have sex with him. Maria gathered her strength to consistently reject him.

Callas's career continued to be blotted with interruptions, changes of mind, and various reasons to cancel. She saw that she could not return to the stage because the public would always expect more of her, not less. An extraordinary tragic actress?  Would she shine in a film of Medea? 

A fortune teller told Maria that she would die young but would not suffer. (Her body double's costume caught fire and it was reported it was she! She was also firm in her opinion that her mother and sister were leaches when they called to express concern after hearing of the incident in the media.) For a film she lost weight to go down to130 pounds and also got an eye lift and did her best. Her film debut in 1970 was well received out of respect for her more so than the film. 

It seems that Maria Callas had a harsh awakening but had gained her perspective.

She told reporters that year that Aristotle Onassis had been an addiction and it was over.  Onassis turned himself into the victim and said Jackie made him unhappy and so their dynamic changed and Maria now called what she had with Aristo a platonic passionate friendship. However she was escorted by famous men and gained her more modern and independent outlook, Maria could not give up on the man. Jackie had spent 20 million dollars the first year of their marriage and Aristo was starting to hate his wife, but Maria, who had been with Aristo for nine years, gave in to him again. The marriage contract with Jackie allowed him a mistress!  But when he took up with Jackie again, Maria took an overdose again. She always claimed these were accidental overdoses.  This time the press got word and it was printed in Paris that she had overdosed. She sued to preserve her reputation.

Perhaps at this time Maria Callas' was at the height of her fame. Now the opera star said that she and Aristo were best of friends. Privately she was conflicted about him. She saw that he had a split personality. He said he wanted a divorce from Jackie but was also bound by their marriage contract so he cut her Jackie's allowance and started treating Jackie as he had Maria. Jackie made a life for herself in America as a response.  Maria wanted the world to know how badly Aristo had treated her though.

In 1971 she finally filed for divorce in Italy as a new law had been passed. It was rumored she would marry Onassis, who was also supposed to be filing for divorce. Maria Callas had finally grown into herself, dressed as she wished, wore pants and joked about her fat legs and wore her eyeglasses. Her self-acceptance - self-love - made her stronger to reject Aristo.

She knew some wanted her to come out of retirement and she hesitated and rejected one offer after another for stage and to make films.

She did sing at the Royal Festival Hall in a London Farewell Concert.

You can watch it here.  And as I watched it, I could not help but think that it was almost impossible to believe this woman had lived through so much. Beautiful, graceful and gracious, entirely professional, I can only wish that at some moment in time before her death in 1977, that Maria Callas had a sense of how far she had come and how much she had accomplished. The people around her tormented the perfectionistic Diva but one hopes that she learned to love herself.

Missy

Maria Callas 'London Farewell Concert' at the Royal Festival Hall with Giuseppe di Stefano, 1973

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You may find other posts by searching for Onassis or Kennedy in the Google Blogger search feature!

LAROSA HABANA CUBA

20th CENTURY JEWELRY and THE ICONS OF STYLE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Post originally on Mistress Manifesto on May 26, 2018 

With Maria Callas, our opera singer Mistress of Ari Onassis, who was left behind temporarily when he married the windowed First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, on the cover, who wouldn't want to see what fabulously expensive gems she owned.  And another of our Mistresses, Wallis Simpson - who became Duchess of Windsor when the King abdicated so he could marry her, is included.  Besides bios of some of the world's wealthiest and arguably most beautiful and accomplished women in the world included (what about that Daisy Fellowes?! Or what about Ganna Walska?!) you might want to page through this one and read the bios but also, as I did, think to yourself, that a piece is gaudy or that you wish you could own a mock-up with cubic zirconia if not the real thing!  I and a friend paged through together and did think a lot of the jewelry was too much, that it overwhelmed the wearer and the dress in most cases.  But something very lovely about this book is that the necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings photographed are shown with photographs and paintings of the women wearing the items, putting them in scale, as well as some design sketches done before a single stone was reset.  Now famous jewelers and designers are name dropped in this book as you might expect - Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Boivin. Boucheron, Faberge.  Some of these jewelers remade pieces to update them or to combine the gemstones from more than one old necklace.  (Kind of like my old friend K who wore a diamond ring that used her husband's mother's and grandmother's stones.)  You may decide you like diamonds mixed with turquoise or red coral or not. The tiger motif was very popular apparently.  And then there are the diamonds and pearls that are worth more than you'll earn in a lifetime. As for Onassis, you will find him in this book looking unexpectedly dapper and handsome when he was younger with more society babes than diva Maria.  As for the Duchess of Windsor, who was plain old Wallis Simpson before she made her inroads into British society, those of you who are fascinated with this women will be happy to see photographs of her happy and having a good time and looking radiant and even beautiful; she wasn't always sullen or looking lonely out a window!

Interested in Maria Callas? - in my archives for Maria Callas she is Mistress of the Month for January 2010.
Interested in Wallis Simpson? - Duchess of Windsor - in my archives for Wallis Simpson Windsor, she is Mistress of the Month, August 2010.

MARIA CALLAS: NO PURPOSE IN LIFE - CODEPENDENT - DOMESTIC VIOLENCE : AND THE THREAT OF JACQUELINE BOUVIER KENNEDY

In Italy, Maria Callas' marriage remained valid, making it impossible for her to marry Aristotle Onassis, despite their purposeful but "jokey" lies to the press. Both had the Greek Orthodox church in their heritage and her marriage to Giovanni Battista Meneghini was not recognized by that church, but no matter. At forty-two years old, Maria was without a purpose in her life. She had given up singing. And she gave up her American citizenship and regained her Greek citizenship thinking that might further her desire to legally divorce. Living on the Greek island he owned, Scorpios, Maria could not hide the reality of their failing relationship from staff, Yet on that island, she felt she could hide from the world. Swiss cosmetic treatments did nothing to help Maria have Aristotle exclusively. Her desperation to have him was not attractive and on Scorpios he gave her a beating so bad she feared for her life.

Maria Callas kept forgiving and making excuses for Aristotle Onassis' behavior. Aristo was not in good physical condition, which worried Maria, and he was also abusing sleeping pills, drinking heavily, and giving himself steroids and taking other medications that he thought would improve his virility. Having overdosed herself in suicide attempts, Aristo's alcohol, cigarettes, and all the rest gave reason for her worry.

 

By the summer of 1966, Maria knew the relationship was ending. Aristo was still feuding with Ranier III over Monaco but also part of the Paris social scene. Onassis did not regard her or treat her as if she were his wife but as a courtesan. He felt no obligation towards her and wanted her to be independent of him. The press reported that they had split. In Venice, Italy, on the beaches of Spain, and on the ship, the Christina, she was no longer at his side. He might have purchased an apartment for her in Paris, though to save face she said she had bought it herself, but Ari hosted a dinner for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in that city.  No other woman, from long ago or the near past was a bigger rival to Maria than Jackie. No doubt Maria lived around Aristo and for Aristo, but why didn't he set her free?

That is my question. Why was he so sadistic and mean that he wanted to break the will of one of the most talented and well known women in the world, while he pursued another?  He could be overly affectionate of Maria in public and then abandon her to visit with Jackie.  Maybe his judgement was clouded by lust but he proposed marriage to Jackie, negotiated with her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy for a financial settlement upfront; Aristo suggesting $3 million, she suggesting $20 million. He married Jackie.

Meanwhile Maria left for Las Vegas, where she overdosed. Then to Mexico, where she overdosed again. Maria Callas was falling apart psychologically, emotionally, and physically.

Onassis told Jackie he would protect her. To others he claimed to be behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy.  Author Lyndsy Spence writes that Jackie was romantically involved with Robert at one time after the assassination. Onassis had been romantically involved with her sister, then Princess Lee Radzwill. The twists and turns of the involvements of these strong personalities is truly a Greek drama or perhaps the plot of a tragic opera. 

We see that exquisite pain is not reserved for the poor.

Missy

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MARIE CALLAS : "GOD HAS GIVEN ME TWO BIG CROSSES TO CARRY" : AN UNDERSTATEMENT IF THERE EVER WAS ONE!

In this post I'm conscious of developing some strong opinions about Maria Callas and her life. - Missy

In chapters 14 - 15 of Lyndsy Spence's book, we learn just how horrible the relationship between Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis was, an on and off again relationship in which he challenged her belief that it would work out in the end with affairs with other women, including Princess Lee Radziwill, the sister of First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and then Jackie herself. Maria Callas came to realize that the man she called "Aristo" was a liar and manipulator who exaggerated his stories of his dramatic life for effect. This book gives us a devastating account of domestic violence and madness. Why did Maria allow Aristo to treat her with disrespect? He even beat Maria, sometimes badly. Was she so influenced by old Greek attitudes of how men treat women, how husbands treat wives?

In 1962, Maria was thirty-eight and had devoted her life to developing her operatic voice and her career. She wanted to be married to Aristo but was also always conscious of trying to have some control over her public image and the media. He played her like a yo-yo. When she said that God had given her two big crosses to carry, she meant her mother and her husband.  I'd add to that her father, her sister, Aristotle, the media, personalities associated with the opera including competitors, the courts, and people in the record making business, her ongoing struggles with weight and appearance and low self-esteem. There seemed to be no part of her life was peaceful.

Maria Callas began to give less than stellar performances, and to face that her career as a singer would be ending, yet there were options for recording (making records) and the possibility of staring in a film which also faltered. She would give her last opera performance at the age of forty-two.

This began an era in which Onassis wrangled to keep control of the principality of Monaco while Prince Ranier III prevailed. Onassis spun his web of deceit not only on Maria Callas, but on Princess Lee Radziwill, as he aimed to have the ultimate trophy wife -  Lee's sister, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.  Aristo believed that all women had sex for money and it was only a matter of how much.  He gave mistresses bracelets worth thousands as a goodbye gifts. Eventually he would give such a bracelet to Lee.

Maria Callas may have been a hypochondriac or she might have dealt with sexist doctors who made little of her complaints. She had surgeries for abdominal hernias and, in 1963, there's a possibility that she had another pregnancy or abortion, though this may have just been a rumor as she gained weight.

As her Mother continued to create embarrassment for her in order to financially gain from Maria, Maria and Aristo both seemed to have spoken to the media in ways that were not just from concern about reputation, but also to manipulate each other. They were co-dependent in this way and also, eventually, in the use and overuse of prescription drugs. While Mother was clearly unstable and wicked, something I felt conscious of as I listened to the audiobook is that Maria herself is cast as having to live with so much turmoil but is not outright called mentally ill or unstable herself.  I think she was, and I say that conscious of stereotypes of women, strong women, women who have earned their status and money, who are demanding. Was she independent? Emotionally she seems needy and dependent on the approval of Aristo.

Maria would eventually be emotionally blackmailed into providing some financial support to both her parents, and her mother was willing to attempt suicide to accomplish this. However, Maria seems to have been a hysteric; she too would attempt suicide a few times over Aristo.

Staff, including those aboard his ship, the Christina, were aware of Maria and Aristo as a couple, how they went from holding hands to have arguments, how he sailed without her or got her off the ship because another woman was taking a cruise with him. He would sometimes have Maria on board with her rivals, such as Princess Lee Radzwill, and then make a show of ignoring her. He disappeared for long periods of time when he did not contact her. Perhaps one of the most evil things Aristo did to Maria was play on her insecurities about her body, her weight, and her loss of weight, as she likely developed an eating disorder to become thin and then he'd claim to be attracted to bigger women. At one point she was keeping track of what she ate, each gram of food, knowing that the tiny feminine Princess was his ideal. (Actually he liked androgynous  women.) Author Lyndsy Spence writes that Onassis was also a good customer of the prostitutes of Parisian Madame Claude.

Though Maria was capable of self-support and earned well enough to afford Swiss clinic cures, an elaborate and plentiful wardrobe, world travel, and the support of her parents, Aristotle Onassis was significantly richer. Like a Classic Mistress, Maria was gifted a Paris apartment, though she lived with him in his. She wore the clothes he bought for her.  Because her career decline coincided with her desire to be available to Aristo when he called upon her to cruise, she came and went as he wanted, often waiting for his attention. As the press demanded to know where the relationship stood, at different times both Maria and Aristo claimed they would marry and then said it was a joke.

Their relationship was co-dependent. It was also volatile. Aristo provoked Maria and manipulated her. She screamed at him in front of friends and business associates. Before Onassis screaming had been limited to what she wanted out of the operas she performed in. 

Maria lied to herself about her relationship with this destructive and cruel man, who wanted to even the score with Robert Kennedy, the Senator and brother of President John F. Kennedy.  Had Aristo used Princess Lee to get to Jackie? 

Even as he courted the widowed Jackie after the assassination of her husband, JFK, and showed her his private island Scorpios, Aristo did not let Maria go. It's my feeling that her adoration for him was something he needed. 

When her voice cracked during a performance and she started over, Onassis went backstage to congratulate her on her courage. As she attempted suicide in Paris, he found her and walked her around the apartment to keep her alive. But he had provoked her. That was when she found a love letter and gift of jewelry meant for Lee.

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MARIA CALLAS - TOSCA

DIVA INDEED!

Originally posted  August 29, 2010

MARIA CALLAS : METAMORPHASIS : THE END OF MARRIAGES andTHE BEGINNINGS OF A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP WITH ARISTOTLE ONASSIS

In her early thirties, soprano opera star Maria Callas finally lost the weight  that had plagued her and became fashionable. On stage she wore gorgeous costumes but it was now the time in her life to dress for her fans, the international public. In 1954 Maria went to a Swiss clinic where she accepted a new type of weight loss medical treatment; Special shots to stimulate the weight loss and injections into her thyroid. She lost 140 pounds and developed an hour-glass figure. She also had her teeth capped and surgery to slim her upper arms and lift her eyes. She had spa treatments like massages and facials. But the more fascinating fiction was the rumor that she had swallowed a tape worm in a glass of champagne out of desperation!

Then Maria Callas went out shopping and bought in excess. She possessed hundreds of dresses, hats, and shoes.

She was recording. She was performing. Her new beauty attracted to her even more men fans. Yet she was very married, and by the Italian way of thinking, however her confidence improved with her appearance, however "flirty" she might be at times, she was off limits.  Even if her marriage was one of "convenience" and her husband was rumored to go for fat prostitutes?

By 1949, Maria may have reached her most commanding and demanding phase, the Diva phase, you could say. She was having issues with her contracts, lawsuits had started to fly, and she was cast in the press as not just difficult, but a tyrant. However, she was also doing interviews and performances on television. Would we in our feminist consciousness think she was too demanding? Hadn't she earned the right to defy her husband as agent?

Her reason for living was singing but, some realized that her voice was in decline. After years of training and exercise, the sour or shrill note was noticed. In the 1958-1959 contract era, Maria Callas was fired from the Metropolitan, the opera company in New York that had been her goal in coming to America all those years before because she hesitated to sign the contract. However, she made appearances in many other cities in America and Europe and these productions might not have been the Met, but they were sold out.

And Maria Callas still wanted a child. Time was running out. She spoke of remarrying after her husband died just as rumors that she was infertile swirled. She was married when, after a performance, she met Aristotle Onassis and his much younger wife, Tina, who invited them to sail on the Christina, the Onassis pleasure ship. This first invitation was declined. Aristo's marriage with Tina had been breaking before he met Maria. Tina had two children with Aristotle but was bored with the jet set life style and her husband's abuse.

A society hostess, Elsa Maxwell, got herself into the situation, encouraging the two towards each other, and told Maria to take everything in life that was offered her. Meanwhile, Onassis' attitude towards love was that all women eventually had sex for money - so to speak.  Not outright cash but in exchange for jewelry, gifts, travel. He pursued Maria, claiming he was married in name only. She was flattered to be pursued by a man with such ardor, passion and intensity.  Maria began to have serious problems with her husband who she now considered to have been pimping her - as her manager. As confrontations with her husband increased, Maria was also not taking Aristo's calls. However, she well knew that the Italian attitude laws regarding divorce put her at a terrible disadvantage and then there was her career and reputation both as a woman and an artist.

The Principality of Monaco figured into the romance. The tiny principality might not have been officially owned by Onassis but he owned the casino and so the income into Monaco. And his boat, the Christina, named after his only daughter, was docked in Monaco.

Another invitation to cruise came from Onassis, who had the famous British Winston Churchill and his family aboard the Christina. This time Maria Callas and her husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, accepted the invitation.

Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis had things in common. They spoke Greek together. She laughed at his jokes. They dined alone. The two of them went to a holy site of the Greek Orthodox church, the religion they both were raised in, knelt together, and received a blessing: Maria would consider this to be like a marriage. (Though not divorced, her Italian marriage was not recognized by the Greek Catholic Church.) Then, it was clear to others on the Christina that Aristo and Maria were having an affair. Tina Onassis used the situation to her advantage in asking for a divorce from Aristotle. But, had Maria misunderstood her seduction?  Aristo had told her of his sexual exploits and at the end of the cruise he gave her a bracelet which was his way when he was through with a mistress.

Ten years younger than her husband, but still an "older man," Aristo became Maria's obsession. Back home in Milan she immediately asked her Giovanni for a divorce. Since she was an American citizen, Maria wanted to have a fast American divorce, which, at the time, was fastest in the state of Alabama. (Tina Onassis too would consider Alabama.) Maria's husband was not going to let her go easily.  He showed his character by using threats of International shame to keep her married to him. To the public she stated that Onassis had nothing to do with the divorce. Maria's horrible mother threatened to put a curse on her, again not concerned with her daughter's happiness, only that Maria continue to earn and keep her family in money. As rumors of the affair became international, Maria threatened to kill her mother.

Was Ari the real reason for demanding a divorce - finally - when her marriage had been a disappointment to her as a woman? According to Lyndsy Spence, whose book Cast a Diva, is the prime reference for my posts this month, here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, Maria did become pregnant by Aristotle Onassis.

I'm aware from other books that this has been a controversial question.  Some suggest that Maria had a baby in secret and the child was adopted.

In 1959 Giovanni Battista Meneghini did file for a legal separation from Maria Callas.  The Italian law was in his favor and if she remarried without an Italian divorce, she might be considered a bigamist. Italy had been of great importance to her opera career. She worried that if she had a child, her husband would take it from her. Onassis wanted her to have an abortion and it was rumored his wife, Tina, had abortions as well. Maria had wanted a child for years and so it must have been crushing when, around her fourth month, she either had an abortion or a miscarriage.

In Monaco Arstoi and Maria and been photographed dancing together. She announced that they would marry, which he dismissed as a joke. By 1961, Onassis had gone on cruises on the Christina without Maria but also with her. There were opinions that she was loosing her voice, but could any opera singer go on for decades? Onassis became verbally abusive of Maria, and it was her weight and her looks, the things she had so little confidence because of, that he picked on.

It occurs to me that Onassis was one to enjoy the pursuit of a woman and that Maria seems to have been far more serious about him than he was to her. Did he ever actually love her?

I will continue on in the next posts about Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis...

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CIGAR

 Ari Onassis, rich as a Greek shipping magnate,

 was a true cigar aficionado, 

rarely seen without a habano between his fingers.