THE END IS A NEW BEGINNING : A NEW MARRIAGE AND A MOVE WEST

Isabel Rosario Cooper moved out of the hotel in D.C. and may have been evicted from it. Soon she was living in another hotel in New York City.  A investigative journalist who was interested in exposing MacArthur to criticism for political reasons found Isabel and she showed him the love letters. It seems that this journalist was integral to a negotiation in which MacArthur didn't get away with stranding Isabel financially. $15,000 is said to have been the amount of settlement. Using an on-line inflation calculator this would be about $325,000 today. General Douglas MacArthur wanted the woman he once wished to possess to move back to the Philippines but she did not.

Now she did sail back to Manila for a visit. Then in 1936 when she was about twenty-six, she arrived in Seattle, Washington state, from Manila and she would never again set foot in the Philippines. She claimed American citizenship based on her father's American citizenship.

"It is telling that MacArthur's last communication with Isabel Cooper includes both a ticket and a job ad.  The classified ad column - "For women" - lists a variety of occupations deemed appropriate for women in 1934, ranging from commission sales and demonstrations of various products (food, Christmas cars, cosmetics), care taking for a young attorney and son), food services, nursing, and office work.  It reflects his thinking that Isabel Cooper was a kept woman, no more, that there would be no more generosity to support her life of leisure. Isabel Cooper could get a job. (Excerpt pages 25-26)

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Missy here:  This makes my blood boil. It tells me that General Douglas MacArthur was a narcissist. He was the seducer and he was the one who abandoned her. However beautiful or charming she was, Isabel was very young and he was old enough to know better. He wanted to use up her youth and vitality and derail her career and the way he treated her, the whole Go Get a Job thing is insulting and horrible. 

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"The domestic arrangements are tacit, but clear; MacArthur relies on his mother to provide him with the comforts of home while he ensures her well being. He turns to Isabel Cooper for sex and emotional fulfillment, but also to buttress his fragile ego.  Her role is not just to be adored but also to admire him.  Her presence is an indicator of his virility. Even though she is not officially his hostess, enough people in Washington know of her presence to conclude that MacArthur's sexual prowess must reflect his military rank."  (Excerpt page 26)

Instead, in 1938, she married a law student who she had met while living in Washington D.C. Franklin Kennamer. The Great Depression had begun in 1929 and World War II is coming. The marriage doesn't last. She has gone from being Isabel Kennamer to Belle Cooper.

But by 1941ish Belle Cooper was living in Hollywood, ready to give her career as an actor, dancer, and singer another whirl and took on another name for acting. She asked the same journalist who had helped her get a settlement from MacArthur for any help he might have - any connections he could offer. She continued to report into him and by 1951 when she was 40ish she had finally landed a film role of some significance in "I Was An American Spy." The film's story touches her personal life with MacArthur because he was the person who gave the Medal of Honor to the woman who was the spy during World War II. This worries her and she begins to reinvent the relationship, considering him to have been a father figure. However, the film was not successful and this was the best role she ever got.

Three months after her divorce from Kennamer, she married again, in 1944, to Milton Moreno. And then again in 1946 - no divorce between them recorded. She is thirty-seven. There is no record of this man in her life. Her may have been a batterer. There were reports of her showing up to work with bruises. Did he take off?

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SHE FOLLOWED A TRAIL OF LOVE LETTERS : HE CALLED HER BABY GIRL - DARLING OF MY LIFE - and MY BELOVED

Excerpt: 

"On the ninth of December, 1930, a young woman disembarks from the President Fillmore, which has just docked in New York City after a long ocean voyage. Isabel Cooper has finally arrived from Manila, having come to the United States at the behest of her lover, General Douglas MacArthur.  She is eighteen, or twenty-one, or somewhere in between.

She follows a trail of love letters strewn across the Pacific, written by MacArthur and posted from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kobe, Yokohama, Tokyo, Honolulu, and San Francisco.  They mark his route home after being recalled from his two-year assignment as the commanding general of the Philippines Department.  They also mark the intensity of his ardor for the charming, worldly Filipina performer he had met the year before.  (How worldly could she be as a barely legal woman in 1930?)

Just weeks before Isabel Cooper's arrival, the fifty-one year old MacArthur is promoted to the rank of general, ordered to Washington, D.C. and appointed by President Herbert Hoover as the chief of staff of the United States Army.

MacArthur installs Isabel Cooper in a suite at the Chasleton Hotel, conveniently near his State, War, and Navy Building office.  His redoubtable mother, Pinky, lives with him in the official chief-of-staff residence in Fort Meyer, Virginia.  He lavishes Isabel Cooper with gifts, mostly clothes. Their liaison is not a secret to Washington insiders -- it is his mother that he wants to keep in the dark."  (pages 15-16)

(Her letters back to him do not exist.  Did he destroy them?)

Quoting one of the letters Douglas wrote to her:

"My love encompasses you and enshrines you deep in my heart... I kiss your dear lips and press your soft body to my own... I long for you so that the memory makes me feel ill and faint." (page 19)

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DOUGLAS MACARTHUR'S SECRET AFFAIR

I chose this video among a few about Isabel Rosario Cooper and Douglas MacArthur because of the quotes taken from other books on MacArthur that admit to Isabel's existence, as well as because there are photographs and video of her.  The book by Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez has created new interest in the woman.  According to this YouTube poster, MacArthur sacrificed his Presidential ambitions over his love affair... 

It seems to me the whole thing cost her more.

ISABEL ROSARIO "DIMPELS" COOPER : FILIPINA ACTRESS and MISTRESS OF FAMOUS MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR,

General Douglas MacArthur is the American Military leader who was in the Army, and successful in what was called the Phillipine Campaign, an effort to keep the Japanese out of East Asia. He uttered the famous words "I shall return." (And he did.) But when he left the Phillipines in 1929 between World War I and World War II, he asked Isabel Rosario Cooper, his much younger Mistress to come back to the United States with him.

ISABEL ROSARIO COOPER

"Dimples Cooper"

1914* to 1960

In 1929 when the General was recalled to the United States, to San Francisco, and left Manila, he sent Elizabeth love letters. In 1930, MacArthur was asked to serve as as U.S. President Herbert Hoover's Chief of Staff. MacArthur asked Elizabeth to move to Washington, D.C. so they could continue their romance. She was a film actress and singer, who performed in vaudeville acts also as a dancer, and is sometimes called a showgirl. She first appeared on stage at the age of five.

Born to a Scottish father and Chinese-Filipina mother, called Eurasian, Isabel was young - about eighteen or twenty (she may have fibbed about her age a bit) and he, born in 1880, was fiftyish. They were introduced at a party where he is said to have fallen in love instantly at the sight of her beauty and femininity. Called "Dimples Cooper" she was famous for being the first actress in the Philippine films for performing on on-screen kiss in 1926, daring at the time but just a kiss. For her his invitation was a decision to leave her home country and a promising career. His love letters to her survive but hers to him do not. Actions speak louder than words.  She moved to D.C.  He set her up in a 'love nest' in the nation's capitol.

The General came from an American pioneer family and spent his life in the military; begining with a military school education and top of the class at West Point; World War I, World War II, and Korea. He married a woman named Louise Cromwell Brooks, called a socialite, in 1922, and divorced seven years later, childless. His military career was illustrious, however, it seems he had little time to be a husband.  And so he met Isabel Rosario Cooper at a time when he was leaving a marriage. Or was she the reason for the divorce?

According to author Vernadette VIcuna Gonzalez, Isabel has been erased from any recounting of Douglas MacArthur's life. I muse that perhaps this is because his international fame was so much greater than anything she achieved or perhaps it is because he himself did not openly admit to having had her in his life. He wrote a book about his life and did not include her. I went on numerous sites about him, and these sites detail his power and might in military actions, but it's true there's no mention of Isabel in them. Some do not even mention he was ever married.  Britannica, Wikipedia... Perhaps it's because he came from a culture, a time and place, in which only legal wives were honored with acknowledgements. Or he intended to always keep her hidden away. I did watch a number of YouTube videos that were uploaded after this book came out, and I'll be posting one that quotes from a few books about MacArthur that do include at least bits and pieces about Isabel. Sadly, it's suggested she was only in place for sexuality. It's even said that he only bought her clothes to wear indoors and in bed.

There is another aspect to this story and that is Isabel Rosario Cooper also only spent about ten percent of her life with this man, but her only claim to fame is because of her association with him. Make no mistake about it, she was with a national hero in the United States but also her native Phillipines. One wonders if or who knew about Isabel during their involvement and if there was a conspiracy or silence or his fellows just thought it was none of their business what he did when he was off work.  (If so, I agree with that. I don't believe we should take our personal lives much into our working life.)

I wonder if Douglas meant to shelter Isabel, to have a private life that was protected from media and fame for both of them, or if he was ashamed to have not married her. It could be said that she made a sacrifice to be with him. Certainly various authors have made their claims and assumptions about his sexuality or even his relationship with his mother.

Sadly, it seems that the General wanted to hide her away. Reading this story I was reminded of another Mistress that I profiled here at Mistress Manifesto Blogspot, Marita Lorenz, who as a young woman was involved with Cuba's military and political leader, Fidel Castro.  She too was left waiting for his visits, almost a captive. Well, Douglas was gone a lot, and so Isabel went out to night clubs and kept herself busy. She was a young vital woman and perhaps also the thirty years in age between them has become a problem.

Their relationship is estimated to have lasted five years. (However, I do think that is an estimate!) May of 1934 is marked as the time in which she finally moved out of the hotel and into a rooming house; this has to be a downgrade and perhaps suggests he's no longer keeping her.  Much of their relationship was spent entertaining herself, even traveling to Cuba for vacation, as he is gone, out of the country, in Europe, taking care of business and accepting accolades, without her by his side. He may also have been offended at her pleas to him to help certain of her family members. One article I read (not this book) suggested she had actually been evicted from the hotel and moved to New York City and into another hotel due to an enemy of MacArthur's who wanted to expose him for political reasons. Be it that she was angry with him or she needed money, according to this book, she showed her love letters and managed to get $15,000 from him which she was supposed to use to move back to the Philippines.

In 1937 MacArthur married Jean Faircloth, a marriage that brought an only child into the world a year later - in Manila!

After MacArthur, Isabel did not have an easy life. She didn't move back to the Philippines. She did not succeed to become an actress in American films though she had a number of minor background roles as a servant and minimal speaking parts after the end of their relationship. By coming to MacArthur, she left her entertainment career behind. She had two husbands and died of a sleeping pill overdose that was considered suicide at the age of forty-six.

Isabel's body rests in an unmarked grave in Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles (the burial ground for Hollywood greats such as Bing Crosby and Rita Hayworth) while MacArthur rests in a Norfolk, Virginia mausoleum which is a pilgrimage site.

As Vernadette Vicina Gonzalez brings Isabel back to us in her book, I will attempt to also honor her here as our Mistress of the Month.

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You may also be interested in:

MARITA LORENZ : MISTRESS OF FIDEL CASTRO (and then GENERAL MARCOS PERES JIMENEZ) TURNED CIA COLLABORATOR - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH  appears here in the May 2015 archive

THE STRANGE CASE OF "BLOOD AND GUTS" GENERAL GEORGE PATTON and MISTRESS JEAN GORDON : DID HIS WIFE's CURSE PUSH HER TO SUICIDE? appears here in the  September 2022 archive.