FLORENZ ZIEGFELD HELPED LAUNCH MANY WOMEN'S CAREERS

 

The film came out in 1936 and featured a large and well loved cast of 

characters, in particular the leading men William Powell, Luise Rainer, and actress Myrna Loy.

It suggested the life of Florenz Ziegfeld, 

as a man who womanized, made a fortune but lost it, 

and who helped launch many a showgirl's career.

Ziegfeld girls often went on to pursue modeling, acting, 

and marrying or mistressing rich men.

Several of them have been featured here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.

When it came to actresses, it was Mary Pickford who established United Artists, along with others. Clara Kimball Young was the next, and by 1916 many actresses had the same idea. They wanted more control over their careers, to expand, and to prosper.

EXOTIC

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SUGAR BABY ICON : SHE ADMITTED TO BEING MATERIALISTIC : WAS THAT THE PROBLEM?

Peggy Hopkins Joyce was and is considered to be the icon of the Gold Digger, a woman who seduces men to marry her, men who have money, is insincere or without love for them, divorces, and then moves on to her next conquest. But it seems to me that the flamboyant Peggy was in her youthful bloom when she succeed to do so and that, although some men do the same, and without apology, few women can get away with it. 

I say that as more than one woman friend of mine has found herself married for money or traded in by her husband/partner when a richer woman wanted him. The ruthlessness of such maneuvers can be heartbreaking.

Peggy was honest about her materialism and perhaps because she projected some humor about it and herself, it wasn't held against her too much. It was part of her personae. She claimed her reputation. Some say she was "The Original Material Girl." Some say she was an inspiration for Marilyn Monroe of Diamonds Are A Girls' Best Friend fame for her depiction of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Years went by and Peggy went without marriage, and without children, though we have no idea how many men came into her life or left it between marriages or if she ever wanted to be a parent.

Peggy was born in 1893 as Emma Marguerite Upton. She had two marriages later in her life.

Peggy's fifth marriage was to a man named Anthony Easton, an engineer. They married in 1945 and were married until about her sixth marriage in 1953 was to Andrew Glifford Meyers, a retired banker and she died of cancer in 1957 still married to him. I wonder if she ever went by Mrs. Easton or Mrs. Meyers.

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DELICATE

 

PAT POWERS ATTEMPTED TO LAUNCH PROTOGEE PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE'S MOVIE CAREER

Excerpt page 131:  Joe (Joseph P. Kennedy) could not have picked a better time to make his debut as a movie mogul. The years 1926-1927 were one of the most prosperous periods in Hollywood history; almost every one of the 740 films made each year was a box-office success.  Movie-going had become a worldwide obsession. There were over 50,000 movie theaters around the world, more than a third of them in the United States and Canada.  Annual receipts in North America alone came to more than $120 million.

With Pat Powers, Joe plotted to fold the ailing Producers Distribution Corporation into Associated Exhibitors with the view of merging the fused entity with FBO to make an even bigger company. Joe was on the financial periphery of Pat's efforts to launch Peggy Hopkins Joyce, riding high on the success of his uninhibited and lavishly rich version of The Merry Widow, Erich Von Stroheim declined to take part in furthering of Peggy's screen career. Instead Micky Neilen (who Gloria Swanson had given up on in order to marry Henri de la Falaise) undertook the mission. The result was The Skyrocket, a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson.

Excerpt page 164:  Soon after The Merry Widow was finished, Stroheim agreed to have lunch at the Ambassador with Pat Powers and the canny Irishman's new protégée, Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Powers wanted to launch the former Ziegfeld beauty as a film star. Stoheim, however, was still smarting from his experience with Mae Murray and was in no mood to start another ex- Broadway hoofer;s screen career.  Instead he hypnotized Powers with a project of his own, a double feature to be called The Wedding March and The Honeymoon that he would write, direct, and star in himself, and that would make tons of money for whoever financed it.  As he explained to Pat and Peggy, the appeal of his project was that it could be shown in two parts, tobe screened with an hour's intermission...

Missy here : As was and is often the case, a woman's career depends on being the protégée of a man, some patronage, and if he fails, so does she.

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THE SKYROCKET : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE IN 1926

This was Peggy Hopkins Joyce's first full length movie, as she had done "shorts" before

 and it was intended to launch her movie star career 

and allow her to be know for an accomplishment

 other than meeting, marrying, and divorcing rich men...

It's a rags to riches to rags again story.

According to author Axel Madsen, on page 131-132 of his book, Mickey Neilan had bought the Edendale studio from a bankrupt Harry Garson and Clara Kimball Young for $300,000, 

refurbished it, and with financing from Pat Powers made a movie about Hollywood, called The Skyrocket. The film was "a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson!

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SHE PURSUED ACTING WHILE SHE PURSUED MEN

IMDB : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : MOVIE ROLES 

Here's a YouTube video featuring the 1933 trailer for the movie International House, which also starred the comedian W.C. Fields.  Peggy Hopkins Joyce didn't act in many movies, despite her said career orientation. But note that other actresses played Peggy!  And she was the January 1926 Winner of the Photoplay Award (sponsored by Photoplay Magazine, a fan magazine) for the Best performance - of the month - for her work in the movie The Skyrocket. This was a silent film, as were the 'shorts' she appeared in as early as 1916.

VELVETY

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE & CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : ZIEGFELD FOLLIES SHOWGIRLS WENT INTO ACTING

In this passage from the book by Axel Madsen, a man named Pat Powers, nineteen years older than Joseph P. Kennedy,  who'd started out as a policeman, had become a businessman and had gotten involved in the nickelodeon business, in particular the Edison-Biograph company.  At the time a number of small companies were at war with each other to dominate the movie making business and the movie theater business. 

Excerpt page 99 :  Powers was a loner. He sold out to (Carl) Laemmle and for the next decade was in and out of film investments with a variety of partners. Known as a "bonus shark," he loaned production money at steep interest rates or became a participant in the profits. One partner was Lewis Selznick, the former jewelry dealer from Kiev who had persuaded his sons they were heirs to a kingdom, but who had lately lost his fortune. When he hadn't been able to pay a debt of a mere $3000, Selznick's enemies had forced him into bankruptcy. His sons, Myron and David, vowed vengeance.

Clara Kimball Young adored Powers and believed him to be the most wonderful, clever man in the world. He had lost money, however, by becoming a major stockholder in Equity Pictures. A year later he had invested $120,000 in one movie --- The Miracle Man with Lon Chaney --- and made three million dollars.

Now in his mid-fifties, Pat had become infatuated with the icy blond charms of Peggy Hopkins Joyce. She had distracted Mickey Neilan (who Gloria Swanson had once had a between-marriages affair with) and told (Charlie) Chaplin of her gold-digging days while skinny dipping with him on Catalina. Peggy had added MGM's frail wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, to her list of conquests, wanted Erich von Stroheim to write and direct a film starring his Peggy. Pat was courting the stormy, individualistic Stroheim because in The Merry Widow, MGM's current hit, the director had managed the feat of turning Mae Murray, another ex-Follies hoofer, into a star

Reflating the careers of former chorus girls was not among Joe Kennedy's ambitions in 1924....

Lewis Szelnick's mistress was Clara Kimball Young.

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EMMA MARGUERITE "PEGGY" UPTON BECAME PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE THROUGH MARRIAGES : MICKEY NEILAN WENT FROM PEGGY TO GLORIA

In this passage, the way movie stars, directors, producers, and financiers intertwined in Golden Era Hollywood reminds me that it was once a very small town.

Excerpt page 79  Mickey Neilan swept her (Gloria Swanson) off her feet that summer with his madcap, brilliant, vivacious insouciance and his claim that there were only some 290 days before he was free to marry her. "After Herbert, how could I not love him?" she would ask. "After one afternoon with him, how could I not forget Craney Gartz and every other handsome man who had ever tempted me?  As Mickey waltz me into my first real love affair, it never occurred to me to utter a syllable of protest."

While waiting for his divorce to become final, Mickey lived like a young lord at the Los Angeles Athletic Club next to Charlie Chaplin, who was trying to escape the sensational charges surrounding his divorce from the teenage Mildred Harris.  Mickey's romance with Gloria was particularly torrid and came after his affair with Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a former Ziegfeld Follies girl who distracted him so much from his long and confused  Strangers Banquet that the  cast and crew had to wait two weeks after the starting date before Neilan showed up. The term "gold digger' had been coined in honor of Peggy around 1920.  Born Margaret Upton in Virginia, the bid blonde had arrived in Chicago in 1914, changed her name to Hopkins, and landed her first millionaire husband, Stanley Joyce.  Divorced with a million-dollar settlement, she had, in quick succession, netted four more millionaire husbands. Dressed in stylish mourning outfits, because Henri Letellier, a famous Parisian publisher and man-about-town, had just taken his life on her account, she had cruised into Hollywood with a three-million-dollar bankroll, bent on a movie career.  After Mickey's infatuation with her had cooled, he had introduced her to Chaplin, who used the story of her relationship with Letellier as a basis for A Woman of Paris.

Notes: Herbert Somborn was Gloria Swanson's second husband.  She had an affair with Mickey but decided on marriage to Henri de la Falaise, during which she had her relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy.

A Woman of Paris was Chaplin's movie that came out in 1923

Margaret Upton is an Americanization of her name given a birth : Emma Marguerite Upton

The Author was incorrect that Peggy changed her name to Peggy Hopkins. The name was a result of her second marriage.

in 1910 she married Everett Allen Archibald Jr., a millionaire. But she was only fifteen years old and so the marriage was annulled. (What kind of parents did she have?)

In 1913 she married Sherburne Philbrick Hopkins, a lawyer from a prominent and rich family. She left him to pursue acting and with his approval that she marry James Stanley Joyce.

in 1920, she married James Stanley Joyce.  She married two days after ending her marriage with Hopkins. This was her most famous marriage because of the story that she refused to come to him on their wedding night unless he wrote her a check for half a million dollars first.

During this era in Hollywood, in which Pat Powers, an associate of Joseph P. Kennedy, attempted to move Peggy into an acting career, she then married in 1924 to Count Gosta Gustave Morner, who she said was her first true love. They divorced in 1926.

Peggy had two more husbands in her life, years later. This information was culled from Wikipedia.  I note that her reputation as a "Gold Digger" came because of her many marriages to rich men, but also because she attracted other men who wanted to marry her, but I wonder if it was only that she was beautiful and charming. What about men who go after a woman knowing they may not succeed with her?

Missy.

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PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE ORCHID LADY OF STAGE AND SCREEN

 

In the Roaring Twenties Peggy Hopkins Joyce was called

 "The Orchid" or "The Orchid Lady of Stage and Screen: 

Orchids were (and often are) exotic and, when rare, expensive,

 and require special care, 

just as she did.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE 

 SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER

First posted on April 5th 2010

Born Emma Marguerite Upton

1893 – 1957

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE was the most publicized Mistress-Courtesan of the 1920's and 1930's. She was introduced to Florenz Ziegfeld, who owned the famous showgirl venue New Amsterdam Theatre, by a dressmaker to fashionable ladies, Madame Frances, and her career began. She was a heartbreaker and international celebrity, perhaps the first famous to be famous woman of the 20th century. She was known for her spendthrifty ways as well as a steamy sex life. Was Peggy ruthless and sociopathic? Or did she simply decide at a young age that she would do well, beyond her childhood as the daughter of a Norfolk barber?

She had three multimillionaire husbands. And a great number of generous patrons. She came to own one of the largest blue diamonds known to the world in her time.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE

First posted April 6 2010

Excerpt Page 84 :

"Though the gold digger is a comic, not a tragic figure, she is not totally uncomplicated. While men adored these creatures, they were also made slightly uneasy by them. It was appealing to have a glamorous plaything whose favors could be bought for no more than the price of a fashionable apartment, a generous allowance, and a regular supply of steak dinners and expensive jewelry. But in making such a hard-nosed exchange, these women exhibited not only a deep cynicism but also a degree of power, which is one reason men felt a certain anxiety in their presence. Men were also made uncomfortable by females who so flagrantly flouted the social rules designed to keep people in their places. Unlike the courtesans of Europe, who occupied an established an respected niche, the American gold digger was a renegade; there was nothing subtle, or admirable, about her methods - or her goals."

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

First posted April 9 2010

Excerpt Page 43: 

In her memoirs Peggy described her transition from society wife to Broadway showgirl as the ultimate Cinderella story... As she told it, she left home in March on 1915 with a single suitcase full of clothes and headed by train to New York, where she ensconced herself in the Hopkins family suite in the St Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue... Wearing torn stockings, her last pair of fresh underwear, and a plaid suit that badly needed cleaning, she headed south towards Times Square pondering the ways of the world.

"Hunger certainly makes you think about things," she wrote. "When I was a kid I used to think that it was Love that was the most important thing in Life, then after that experience in Denver I thought it was money, but now I know it is food." - Peggy Hopkins Joyce

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MISTRESSES DISCOVERED IN THE GLORIA SWANSON STORY : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE and CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

As you know, MISTRESS MANIFESTO depends most often on books - biographies and memoirs especially - that have been published in the past and which I've selected and read cover to cover.  Once in a while I read a book about one of the women I plan to elect to the Mistress of the Month pantheon, and I find that another Mistress or two has been mentioned.

That's been the case reading 'Gloria and Joe' by Axel Madsen, which was my primary source for posts last month about Gloria Swanson.

Golden Era Hollywood - Silent Films - Talkies -  The development of technologies, the movie-makers - producers - directors - studio heads -  Madsen's book tells a lot.  To my surprise a woman I wrote about in April of 2010, Peggy Hopkin's Joyce, called a 'Gold Digger' and who ended up one of the world's largest diamonds, is mention. Another woman mentioned is the actress Clara Kimball Young, who, shame on me, I never had heard of before. These two women who were in Hollywood and hoping to become movie stars in the same era as Gloria Swanson.

Now, if you've been reading MISTRESS MANIFESTO, you know that the Classic Mistress is a woman who was (or maybe is) entirely "Kept" by a man who she isn't married to. Kept as if being financially provided for, often for her entire life, sometimes though he is married to one - or several women - over time.

Gloria Swanson was a talented and determined woman whose personal life suffered because of her fame and wealth and perhaps her own unconventional values. However, I think that if she had come of age in the 1960's she would have had affairs but not married the men she did when it was believed with good reason that a celebrity could have their fans turn against them if they went against the morals of the day. Having a series of lovers and not marrying them is rarely such a scandal now. 

But what about Peggy Hopkins Joyce? Clara Kimball Young? Let's find out what author Axel Madsen wrote about them in his book Gloria and Joe. I'll add-to with research and reportage as we go along.

Missy

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GLORIA SWANSON SAID "IF YOU'RE 40 YEARS OLD AND YOU'VE NEVER HAD A FAILURE ...

You've been deprived!

Gloria Swanson by A. L. Whitey Schafer

August's Posts Will Begin Tomorrow!

 MISSY ASKS YOU!

Are you a person who learns from your failures?

 

GLORIA SWANSON : A WOMAN OF SCIENCE and INVENTION

ANOTHER SIDE OF GLORIA SWANSON : While researching around Gloria and Joe, I found that the Library of Congress Blog included Gloria in it's WOMEN OF INVENTION website!

Excerpt: When the legendary screen diva Gloria Swanson died in 1983, she was 82 years old. Yet, for all the things she did–the multitude of lifetimes she seemed to live–it does not seem possible that one person was able to fit all of it in just eight quick decades. Consider what Gloria Swanson (whose legendary film “Sunset Boulevard,” from 1950, was among the very first films added to the Library’s National Film Registry) was: an actress, film producer, fashion designer (and fashion icon), acclaimed visual artist, best-selling author, newspaper columnist, businesswoman, health advocate, radio host, and television pioneer. And, even then, she still found the time to raise three children and marry (and usually divorce) six husbands!

Additionally, one aspect of her life for which Swanson should also be remembered is as an inventor, patent holder, patent facilitator/executive and humanitarian. It’s a quartet of labels that all arrived, more or less, together.

 Read all about it!

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BLOG : GLORIA SWANSON WOMAN OF INVENTION 

MISTRESS GLORIA SWANSON & WIFE ROSE KENNEDY : A LOVE TRIANGLE

 Joe Kennedy told his wife that Gloria Swanson  was his most important business partner.

Excerpt page 212 : ... The two women in his life played along.  Echoing Joe's exact sentiments, Gloria told Rose she was grafted she had her husband to giver her the right business advice because her affairs were a mess.  Gloria would always wonder what exactly Rose knew, and she always watched for a remark, a glance, a gesture, that would tell her whether Rose was a saint, a fool, or a better actress than she.  There were moments she knew she was being tolerated, for Joe's sake, and moments when Rose must have been aware of the fatuously surprised face Gloria showed.

Rose willed herself to believe that her husband told her.  She, they, had nothing in common with Gloria, no convictions, no sanctity. The mere fact of lying - if that was what Joe was doing - showed he respected that sanctity, the family they had created together, even if he had deserted their marriage bed. So to Rose, Gloria was a talented star, incipiently crucified by her own good looks, terribly lonely behind the put-on self-deprecation and blasé indifference to her own fame. Gloria was a woman married to an affable but untalented man and therefore desperately in need of Joe's solicitude and financial acumen.

Joe Kennedy promised Gloria that she would never have to be alone with his wife, Rose. He had Gloria come out to the family compound in Hyannisport. But the day came when Gloria was tricked into being taken to talk to the Cardinal O'Connell of Boston. She bluffed that she had only a business association with Joe. He knew better. He told her that Joe was in trouble. His Catholicism was being challenged by having the affair with her. She was offended. She thought the Cardinal should be talking to Joe. But the message was clear. She was being told to quit the affair with Joe, to leave him be. It's possible that Rose's father was the person who had contacted the Archdiocese of Boston. The gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported that the former Boston mayor (Rose's father) had ordered Joe Kennedy to get out of Hollywood.

When Joe dumped Gloria, he simply left Hollywood without making plans to see her.  Some years went by and, perhaps both had become philosophical, because the author reports of a friendly-enough phone call and favor.

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GLORIA SWANSON : SINKING MONEY AND TIME INTO THE MOVIE 'QUEEN KELLY' WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Excerpt page 201 :  Gloria and Joe were having dinner on Rodeo Drive when Joe handed her a leather--bound copy of Stroheim's massive script and told her Robert Sherwood had finally read it and pronounced it the best film story ever written...  (Queen Kelly's script was originally entitled The Swamp.)  

Excerpt page 14 :  By starting their ambitious film project as a silent (film) four months after the release of the all-talking Lights of New York, producers Swanson and Kennedy and director Stroheim were extraordinarily careless, suicidal, or both.

The movie was worked on in 1928-1929 - the years in which the stock market fell and the Great Depression took hold. At the time technology for recording wasn't terrific and frustrated the actors and directors who had to carefully move on set to be near hidden microphones.  Sound engineers were trained by the telephone companies and if an actor turned his head away from the microphone they'd have to yell cut and start over. Some actors waited to see how it would all work out. Some actors lost their careers when the public heard what they sounded like. In some cases sound was added to silent film. All all-talkie was a film in which the entire film from start to finish had sound - the actors voices - background.

Excerpt page 205 : ... (A front page story read..) "Miss Swanson will appear in a few talking sequences and it marks the first time for her voice to be heard by the general public. She had never made any personal appearances tours nor has she ever spoken over the radio.: A Variety item a week later announced that Ben Glazer, the overseer with Le Baron of the Stroheim project, was working on the screen treatment of FBO's first talkie, a film scheduled to go into production in ten days.  Persistent rumors that Stroheim and Swanson did not see eye to eye on Queen Kelly were only laid to rest on November 5 when Motion Picture news reported that the film "went into actual production Thursday morning on location at the old Lasky ranch."

Another possible issue that might have delayed the making of Queen Kelly was that Joe Kennedy said that more than anything he wanted the two of them to have a child. Kennedy already had many children with his wife, Rose. Gloria said there was no way she would be willing to do that.  Yet, it is possible that she did become pregnant and had an abortion.

Excerpt: Queen Kelly, in the scheme of things, was an anachronism, a Gloria Productions film for United Artists, shooting on RKO stages because of its star's personal relationship with the ancien regime... and with each passing week, wearing out its welcome

In the end, Stroheim went way over budget and the money lost was significant. Queen Kelly was released as a silent film by United Artist in 1931. According to Wikipedia, it was released as a part-talkie in European and South American markets because of a contract she had with Stroheim and that version had a different ending - a different director and cinematographer - a year or so later.

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VIVACIOUS

 

PLANNED DOWN TIME NOTICE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO WILL BE "DOWN" AT SOME POINT IN THE NEAR FUTURE

To my regular readers!

After blogging for so many years, it's time to move MISTRESS MANIFESTO to a new theme and format. Although this, and some other adjustments, may happen quickly and easily, a day or so perhaps, I want you to know that I'm preparing for glitches or more time consuming actions. I will be trying to do technology updates bit by bit at first without disappearing from the Internet, but it's likely my tech will have more recommendations....

Missy

GLORIA SWANSON and JOE KENNEDY : THE WAY THEY WERE

 He was married with many children, she was married with two.

Excerpt page 194 : Gloria was very much one of Hollywood's own, and honored player of the movie colony's most popular pastime, a party-giving and party-goi9ng, but Joe was not.  His Catholicism and Boston sense of propriety prevented him from a too ostentatious display of his double existence  Though many in Hollywood would later make the comparison, Gloria and Joe were no Marion Davies - William Randolph Hearst twosome who flaunted their liaison.

For one thing, Gloria and Joe were both married with children. She was no starlet looking for  a sugar daddy; he, no elderly tycoon hopelessly in love with a chorus girl. She saw in him someone who was plainly going far, and she fell in love with his business savvy and can-do openness. He was the one man in her life she trusted when it came to money. To him, she was one of the most desirable women, one of the symbols he had grappled with all the way up from East Boston  He fell in love with a woman who was everything Rose was not.  Gloria was, first of all, fame --- a woman whose public personality spoke to people of golden youth and glitter.  To discover that she was also a creature of shadows was part of his lover's ecstasy. She was a woman of her own means, self-confident and elusive, possessed of a dignity that was both paralyzing and magnificent. In their intimacy, she was almost tomboyish --- terse and disarming.  Fun, too.

Excerpt pages 194-195 :

Smitten with her from the first meeting at the Savoy Plaza (Palm Beach - Florida) two months earlier --- with the idea of her as well as the fact --- he was not only giving her advice but smothering her with attention.  He loved uncovering the Gloria Swanson millions would never know --- the quiet, slightly weary person with soft hair and a dark, husky voice so different from the screen image, the woman who boasted that she'd never been kept.  None of her homes, he happily discovered, was a place into which friends casually dripped.....

They made love at his place. Here, he was in control of comings and goings of staff and underlings. On Crescent Drive (Beverly Hills), her waking hours were a series of disturbances by butler and maids, secretaries and assistants, and her moods ran in channels dammed up by her staff.  On Rodeo Drive (Beverly Hills - his place) order flowed effortless from the master.

Excerpt page 209 :

...When he had a moment alone with Gloria, he called her the most desirable woman, held her gaze with his electric blue stare, and said he couldn't wait to take her out that evening. She told him they had to be reasonable; they couldn't be seen together.  "We're business associates," he grinned.

"Business is done in the daytime if both associates are married," she said.

If you want to know the slightly more scintillating details - not pornographic but - certainly get yourself a copy of this book.|

In this passage, we note that Gloria Swanson had never been kept and was proud of that, as a woman who had earned her own for years. All Mistresses are not Kept, and all adulterers are not Mistresses, and so here we go again trying to define Mistress. It is the nature of the relationship that defines it, I believe, but in popular thought it's all about money and sex, as if love doesn't count.

Gloria Swanson's husband Henri moved into an affair with actress Constance Bennet.

Missy

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GLORIA SWANSON AND THE "BANKER" JOE KENNEDY : HE DID HIS RESEARCH AND WAS INTENT ON SEDUCING HER ... SHE LET HIM ...

Not only because he desired Gloria Swanson as a woman, but because he wanted this actress, perhaps the most famous and successful in the silent film era, to work for his studio and make money together.

Joseph P. Kennedy was the youngest bank president in the United States in 1914 when he was only twenty-five years old.  He had graduated from Harvard and was vividly aware of the discrimination against Catholics and the Irish. He went on to make a fortune in the stock market, and in real estate, and he wanted to add a Hollywood studio and movie making to his wealth portfolio. Though he had many a success in business, reading Axel Madsen's account, I couldn't help but think that he was overly confident that he could also succeed in Hollywood. He went after Gloria Swanson in a manner that would suggest that he had done some research and knew that she was in debt because of her own efforts to produce her own movies.

It's easy to vilify Kennedy but it would also seem that Gloria Swanson didn't resist his seduction.

Circa 1928  Joseph P. Kennedy invited Gloria Swanson and her husband Henri de la Falaise to come to Palm Beach, Florida, where he'd bought a house for his family. He was welcoming and so was Palm Beach society. Calling cards, invitations, parties in her honor, teas, receptions, and business meetings too. He was very proud of knowing her.  He also endeavored to get Henri out of the way. 

 

Excerpt pages 174-175: 

In retrospect, Gloria would remember the tact with which Joe made the offer that could make her husband distinct his own man and, if Henri was clever, rich as well. In her autobiography, her smile o gratitude to Joe when the two men came to a quick verbal agreement immediately precedes her account of how the next day she and Joe tumbled into bed. Her indebtedness to Joe no doubt softened, in her own eyes, the adultery that, since the kiss on the train, she knew was inevitable. In a reversal of the story of the biblical David, who sent Uriah into the most dangerous part of the battle so he could possess Bathsheba, Joe was ready to heap gold on the man he wanted to cuckhold.

Kennedy biographers would wax saucily on how Joe eliminated, with some permanence, the coveted movie queen's husband, but neither Gloria nor the Kennedy memorialists could explain how Joe was able to offer Henri a Pathe directorship in January when he didn't become a Pathe advisor until February. Gloria was, of course, writing for posterity, and by having Joe's generosity and Henri's opportunism preceded her surrender, she softened her image...

Henri would leave no memoirs of his own, and we can only speculate on whether it all passed over his head or whether he knew he was defeated and went for the proffered brass ring. ... he might have been the first to sense he was on a sinking ship and that his wife's impending adultery set him free, morally, to concentrate on enriching himself.

Joe's infatuation was hard to ignore. Others saw how he was dazzled and drawn by Gloria's presence, how his own success - Palm Beach, Gloria, the lot - all made him live beyond the rules, how she exerted an attraction that went beyond physical beauty.

Excerpt page 193 : ... (Circa 1928) ... (Joseph P. Kennedy) took over Gloria's life.  He arranged everything, including Henri's departures. The lovers had two distinct lives: one with each other when Henri was in France, another when the marquis was in town. Joe arranged his own existence so as to be in Hollywood when Henri was not and in the east when Gloria's husband was home.

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BASKETFUL

 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY - THE PATRIARCH : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 JOSEPH P. KENNEDY - THE PATRIARCH : 

The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw. 

MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

first posted February 26, 2018

This is a fine work, well researched with permission of the Kennedy Family who allowed sealed documents at the Kennedy Library to be open to the author, and can be read just for the historical content.  Joseph. P. Kennedy was the self made man who fathered U.S. President John F. Kennedy and left his many children millions.  We Americans seem to know a lot about them, and this vast family still has some illustrious members. Of surprise to me (and I've read so many books about the Kennedys and Jackie and Marilyn) is that Joseph P. Kennedy had quite the relationship with Franklin Roosevelt before and after he became President of the United States and was no stranger to visits to the White House, but also that he socialized with William Randolph Hearst and his Mistress Marion Davies.  Author David Nasaw's focus is entirely on Joseph P. Kennedy so the relationships of all other's named, including his wife Rose, are not detailed, and if you've read a lot of books or seem a lot of films around the Kennedy's much of the information you read here may seem repetitive.  However, I'm reviewing this book for MISTRESS MANIFESTO because of the many characters in it that you have read about here (and can easily summon up using the Google Search feature embedded in the side bar to bring up past posts about!)

These include: 

Joseph P. Kennedy's Mistress Gloria Swanson

William Randolph Hearst and his Mistress Marion Davies

Missy Lehand, said to be the in-Whitehouse Mistress of President Franklin Roosevelt,

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, daughter of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy.

Clare Boothe Luce (Who I owe a month to.)

And of course Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who I think would have made a better Mistress than a Wife.

I came away with an understanding that Joseph, though frequently not home due to business, and the fact that he and Rose seemingly lived separate lives though united by their children. wrote loving letters to his children and had not abandoned his fatherhood.

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Here's where you can find posts in my archive:

November 2019

MARGUERITE "MISSY" LEHAND :OFFICE WIFE AND WARM SPRINGS MISTRESS OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

July 2013
MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

March

KATHLEEN “KICK” KENNEDY ; Sister of J.F.K., Widow of Billy Hartington, Mistress of Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam When They Died in A Plane Crash

GLORA SWANSON IN JAZZ AGE PARIS : YOUNG and RICH - READY TO REMARRY - PREGNANCY and THE NIGHTMARE ABORTION

Gloria Swanson in Jazz Age Paris : She wrapped a movie called Madame Sans Gene, which was being touted as another success and galas for the opening were being planned in New York City. Starting in January 1925 she would be making $7,000 a week. She had met the man who would become her next husband, French nobleman Henry de La Falaise, reputed to be a millionaire himself. He wasn't close. Her net worth was higher. He was alarmed by her spending; A costume party in which guests danced to three bands, for instance, or that she had bought gifts for every member of the cast and crew of the film. She was mixing with the most famous and successful creative people in Paris.

Excerpt page 109: News of Gloria Swanson's sumptuous wrap party reached American gossip columns, together with rumors that the screen idol had gone totally French - indeed, that as soon as her divorce became final in January, she would marry a French Millionaire and quit the movies. ...... She discovered she was pregnant.

Gloria  had signed the morals clause in her contract. Her divorce from Herbert Somborn was not final and she dreaded being known to have had an affair by giving birth "very prematurely." She couldn't marry Henri de La Falaise asap and become a bigamist. She decided having an abortion was the only thing she could do. And she decided to do so without telling him.  It would not be her first abortion. For she had been aborted during her first marriage to Wallace Beery. She called a journalist, the only person she thought she could trust to explain her dilemma and find a doctor for her.

Excerpt page 109 : ... When she said she saw no other solution but an abortion, he agreed. "You and Henri are both young," he said. "You have all the time in the world to have another child." The words stung. When she was seventeen a nurse had told her the same thing. She had judged Wallace Beery harshly then, had never really forgiven him, and now she was ready to do the same thing.

Andre (Davin) arranged the abortion while Henri arranged a civil wedding.  As it turned out, she was given permission to legally marry Henry earlier than she had thought and as it turned out the abortion had been arranged for the day after she had the permission to marry!

She married Henry and then Andre went with her to the abortion doctor. She was given ether (put her under before the surgery) and afterwards she was "surprised she could walk." She went back to their hotel suite at the Plaza Athenee and went to bed, awakening with a serious fever. 

Except page 110: By nightfall she was drenched in fever. Henri called a doctor, who had her hospitalized. Each time she woke up. Henri was there. She told him the truth; he told her she had tetanus. He didn't say that such infections were often fatal and characterized by violent spasms and rigidity of many or all the voluntary muscles. Nurses tried to make her stand up; her feet folded under her. Finally, she had her first meal sitting in a wheelchair. Everybody applauded when she began moving her toes.

Of course, the truth of her illness was kept a secret. 

Excerpt page 111: The return to America was a triumph. Gloria's marriage to a nobleman and her long battle with death had provided Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount with millions of dollars' worth of free publicity, and Zukor and Lasky pulled out all the stops. Adoring crowds nearly smothered the far from recovered movie star, but it was out of the question for Gloria to lay low.

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