JEWELL DIANNE "LADY" WALKER - A MISTRESS OF BILLIONAIRE J. HOWARD MARSHALL - WHO WENT CHRISTIAN AND DIED OF A FACE LIFT

 JEWELL DIANNE "LADY" WALKER

1940 - 1991

She was beautiful, vivacious, greedy and lusty and a lot of fun. She made her way up from exotic dancer to a personality on the Houston, Texas social scene where showing off isn't thought of the way it is in say, Puritanical Old Money New England.

Before there was Anna Nicole Smith, there was Jewell Dianne Walker, called "Lady," in the life of billionaire James Howard Marshall II.  

We might not have known that this influential business man, who came from an illustrious background, who had not only an elite Yale Law School education, but was a member of high society, and who achieved his extreme riches in the petroleum business, had another mistress in his life for near a decade, if it were not for her daughter, Cerece Walker. She wrote a book "Before Anna Nicole": A Mother, a Mistress, A Millionaire & Me : A Lady's Story from Rags to True Riches. That, and that Marshall sued her estate to get money back when, ironically, he found out though her will that she'd had another lover.

The end of the story is that before she died - of a face lift - though her daughter thinks that's mysterious - Lady became a Christian, as did her daughter. They were involved in the Lakewood Church, the massive congregation of John Osteen, also based in Houston. (As it's said, everything is biggest in Texas!) Thus in the end she moved from a personal relationship with a flesh and blood man to a personal relationship with Jesus. This was a great relief to many.

Because of her belief at the end of her life, it's assumed that despite being a Mistress, Lady was saved, forgiven for her indulgent lifestyle with someone else's husband because she recanted and was sorry. 

The title of the book also says something that we all need to remember. A Mistress is never "just" a Mistress. She has other experiences, other relationships. In her life she probably experienced all the archetypes of femininity.  The Maiden.  The Mother.  The Lover.  The Old Woman. She experiences innocence, seduction, motherhood or nurturing, and perhaps wisdom. 

There is much to the story "in between." 

Born in the World War II era of 1940, Dianne, as her friends called her in her Houston high school, went from rags to riches. But not overnight. She got the clothes, the furs, the jewelry, the cars, the objects of art and exquisite accommodations - once J. Howard Marshall was in her life. Before that she went from relationship to relationship and lived an unstable life, one that dragged Cerece through upheaval. She had several marriages and divorces. 

It is said that she was married to one man and living with another when she met J. Howard.

For  Dianne, being a Mistress to a rich man was the most stable experience of her life, a total upgrade. The upgrade is one of the reasons why so many are vulnerable to being Kept. She was 42ish when she met the man in his late 70's. By then she had lived through quite a bit. Lady Walker had been a topless dancer and had once been known for a mother-daughter (that's Cerece) stripper act. The billionaire met her in a strip club. 

Marshall was a fascinating man, an Alpha Male of the highest order. Images of him in a wheelchair marrying Smith a couple years after Lady's death don't give you that impression, but he was, and he was also most of his life very handsome. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he could have. His namesake son, however, suggested that by the 1980's his dad had started going bonkers about strippers and went from careful with his money to overly, unwisely generous. 

How generous was the man with his Mistress Jewell? He gifted her an estimated $15 million in jewelry and other things.  He called the gifts consulting fees.  Like the courtesans of the Belle Epoch in Paris, Lady bought furniture and art, quality items that were investments but showed off her acquired riches and eventually much of this would be auctioned after her death.

J. Howard Marshall II was born in 1905. He first married Eleanor Pierce in 1931, had two sons, and divorced in 1961. So far his life seemed conventional and what was expected of him. He married again, to Bettye Bohannon, in 1961, and stayed married to her until 1991 though he was with Lady many years at that point. This wife succumbed to Alzheimer's. So when he met Lady, reportedly in 1982, and began a relationship with her, supposedly he said he would marry her if and when Bettye died. What ended their relationship was Lady's own death in 1991.

Likely both grieving and lonely, the billionaire then met the far younger Anna Nicole Smith. He died in 1995 and that would set off legal action between his then wife, Smith, and his family.

This month we'll look into the life of Jewell Dianne "Lady" Walker, who is not the first stripper (or exotic dancer) who became a Mistress of the Month featured here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. 

C 2022

References for this post, include the book above, Find - a - Grave, numerous reviews of the book, Cerese Walker's Facebook, Wikis, articles such as Lawyer : Billionaire Wracked With Guilt in the Houston Chronicle - March 1, 2001, by writer Bill Murphy  Future posts will contain references and links where needed.

In September 2018 our Mistress of the Month was Gypsy Rose Lee, Stripper Mistress of Waxy Gordon in the Speakeasy Era.

DID THE POLYGAMOUS MORMON MISSIONARIES FIND CONVERTS AMONG POLYAMOROUS HAWAIIANS?

Today the Mormons go by the name Latter Day Saints and their church is called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

SUNSTONE MAGAZINE POLYGAMY AND THE EARLY MORMON HAWAII MISSION by John J. Hammond, who was a college professor.  (There's even an audio to listen to at this link!)

A very interesting article about the history of Mormon missionaries coming into Hawaii really.

Here's an EXCERPT:

Although Mormon Church leaders and many members had been secretly practicing polygamy since at least the early 1940's, Apostle Orson Pratt had made that practice public on 29 August 1852.  The news circulated the world in non-Mormon newspapers and created something of a sensation in the Sandwich Islands.

In a 16 March 1843 letter to Brigham Young, Hammond reported that the news about polygamy 'Does not create half the excitement which I had anticipated; the people appear as if some unseen hand had prepared them for it.  The (Hawaiian) government officers were not at all surprised at it but told us we would be narrowly watched, and if we were caught marrying two women to one man, they would be down heavy upon us; we told them that was not what we were sent out for, but to preach the gospel and to live in subjection to the (secular government) powers that be and to uphold them.

And Another:

In April 1854, Mormon Elder B.F. Johnson, who had been converted to polygamy by Joseph Smith (the founder of Mormonism) in the early 1840's, wrote an essay defending it against scathing attacks that were appearing in Honolulu newspapers.  When he could not find a newspaper that would publish it, he arranged to have it printed in San Francisco in the form of a twenty-six-page pamphlet, entitled WHY THE LATTER DAY SAINSR MARRY A PLURALITY OF WIVES; A GLANCE AT SCRIPTURE AND REASON. He distributed four hundred copies throughout the Islands, and was thrilled with the attention they received. "For many days," he wrote, "there was general excitement throughout the city (Honolulu) and had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of our enemies, it would not have made a greater sensation."

***

Did the Hawaiian's accept Mormon Christianity because they understood Polyamorous lifestyle?  This article suggests just the opposite. I consider that only allowing a man to have many wives, but not allowing women to have many husbands, might have irked some of the Hawaii women.

April 2014 is the month in which I featured SISTER WIVES (Modern Mormon Polygamous couples) so check that out in my archives if you're interested in the man-sharing lifestyle!

MISTRESS OF THE MONTH KARIN STANFORD : HE WAS MARRIED WITH FIVE CHILDREN, SHE WAS 19 YEARS YOUNGER, HE'S PAYING $4000 a MONTH IN CHILD SUPPORT

MISTRESS OF THE MONTH KARIN STANFORD : HE WAS MARRIED WITH FIVE CHILDREN, SHE WAS 19 YEARS YOUNGER, HE'S PAYING $4000 a MONTH IN CHILD SUPPORT

KARIN STANFORD is Mistress of the Month for May 2011!

She's Jesse Jackson (Sr.)'s ex, with whom he has a daughter, Ashley. Karin has gone after child support and been fairly quoted in the news, though she says it was the FEDS who outed them.

Jesse Jackson is one of those Christian Ministers who has a lifestyle that's barely conservative, a charismatic man, and one who had Presidential ambitions. It was he who counseled then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, when Bill got caught lying about Monica Lewinsky. It just may be that because of his affair with Karin, Jesse had to give up on a White House Future.

Karin says she has "no regrets," and thinks of their daughter as a miracle child, born in 2000. Karin started life over as a professor of Pan-African Studies and Politics - at California State College, Northridge, in Los Angeles California, and is the author of a book titled "Cancer Survivors, Breaking the Silence - Inspirational Stories of Black Cancer Survivors", as well as other books.

Like many modern mistresses, she is an educated woman, who could support herself well, without a man's help. Never the less, love and awe of a man, led her to being a mistress, at least for a time in her life. 

UPDATE AUGUST 2013: Karin, if we count hits only, is probably the most popular mistress I've written about. A recent comment about what would have happened if a CONSERVATIVE Public Figure had been involved with Karin intrigues me. As recent new information comes out about Monica Lewinsky and President William Clinton comes out, I think that in fact there have been many politicians linked with women other than their wives. Some of these mostly men are Republicans, some are Democrats. Some of these men have suffered for it, even if it only appeared they had an affair, or it was discovered they had many affairs, and some have fathered children in long term adultery. Consider Gary Hart. However, defining who is a mistress these days is complicated by the general lack of marriage, couples who lived together, people who have an alternative lifestyle such as living in deliberate polygamy or living with more than one lover all in the same household. I don't dwell on those who have affairs but not RELATIONSHIPS, and where there is a child there is usually a RELATIONSHIP.

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39 WIVES : CHRISTIAN SECT IN INDIA POLYGAMY

Polygamy anyone? Well, some people think a man and his mistresses is not all that different than having more than one wife... Linking to a breaking Yahoo news story about "Ziona Chana, a 66-year-old man in India's remote northeast who has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren ... They all live in a four storied building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, media reports said."