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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JOSEPH P. KENNEDY PRESENTS by CARI BEAUCHAMP ! MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY PRESENTS by CARI BEAUCHAMP ! 

MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

First posted May 14, 2009

Long wait for this new book from the public library but worth it! Joe Kennedy made a fortune in the movies about the time (1920's - early 1930's) that talkies and sound film came into being, leaving most silent stars in the dust! Read all about his outside of marriage relationship with actress Gloria Swanson... (Did his bail out of her misfortunes end in a rip off and personal betrayal?)

pages 276-277

...Rose (Kennedy - Joe's wife, mother of eventual President John F. Kennedy) never publicly wavered from her deep-seated belief that Joe's relationship with Gloria was purely professional... (Goodwin) was incredulous about Rose's "strange attitude" and concluded that "it is impossible to believe that Rose did not know," yet she had "willed" that knowledge out of her consciousness. it was "better perhaps to follow the pattern set by her mother long ago: to suffer in silence rather than take the enormous risk of shattering the entire family and bringing public disgrace upon herself and her husband."....

... Gloria too was shocked at Rose's failure to see anything untoward in her relationship with Joe. "If she suspected me of having relations not quite proper with her husband, or resented me for it, she never once gave any indication of it." Was Rose "a fool, I asked myself as I listened with disbelief, or a saint? Or just a better actress than I was..."

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AYN RAND : A LITERARY AUTHOR WHOSE BOOKS STILL SELL LIKE CRAZY

And the oldest published books are collector's items 

and can be found on-line selling for thousands.

Two of the best known.

Ayn put in significant time as a Hollywood screenwriter as well.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD NOVEL BECOMES A FILM and NATHANIEL BRANDEN COMES INTO THE LIFE OF AYN RAND and HUSBAND FRANK O'CONNOR

Page 211 Excerpt:  (Regarding The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's novel, which she had worked long and hard on, not being hoped for literary hit or the well received film, which premiered in Hollywood in June 1949 and was seen in Warner Brother's theaters after that.)

But the larger explanation for the disparity lies within Rand's character. She would not admit that she had written a flawed script.  From adulthood, if not before, she positively refused to consider that she bore significant responsibility for any of the conflicts, failures, or disappointments of her life.  "In all the years I knew her, I never heard her say anything remotely to the effect that she had acted badly, mistakenly, or unfairly," recalled a former friend. As her fame increased and she became conscious of her own iconic stature with readers and audiences, she tended increasingly to fuse her life with the lives of her characters, whose mistakes, if any, arose from ignorance of other's bad intentions and not from a lack of objectivity, diplomacy, or wisdom. She remembered obstacles and disappointments less as ordinary, if infuriating, setbacks than as episodes in a tug of war --- like Roark's *a character who appears to be her idealized man), like Equality 7-2521's - with evil. People and events appeared as black or white. She minimized to the vanishing point the help she had received, failed to mention thinkers who had influenced her, and presented herself as a wholly self-created soul. ..."

Page 219 Excerpt: Of all the readers and viewers of The Fountainhead, however, only one had personal meaning for her, she later said. This was a nineteen year old college freshman named Nathan Blumenthal.  A few years after meeting her, he would legally change his name to Nathaniel Branden.

***

Book Review/Report:

Nathaniel Brandon had read the novel for the first time at age fourteen... In the fall of 1949, when the Canadian, who was also of Russian-Jewish heritage, was in his first semester at UCLA, he wrote Ayn Rand and began a correspondence with her. Husband Frank suggested she call the young man and she did, inviting him to visit her at the couple's ranch. She was forty-five and a woman of power and he was a college freshman. They talked for nine and a half hours - all night long - about her philosophy and how to make sense of the world. He was invited to come by again. Ayn considered him to be a genius.

Romantically, Nathaniel Brandon was involved with Barbara Weidman, who was also Canadian and of Jewish heritage, also read and loved The Fountainhead, and also was a student at UCLA. He brought her along to meet and talk with Ayn on the next visit. She too was intellectually stimulated by the conversation and Ayn as an example of an intellectual woman. Meanwhile Frank occupied himself with farming enough to have a somewhat successful business of it.  Ayn and Frank had welcomed so many visits from Nathaniel and Barbara that they began to regard them as, and call them "the children."

I wonder, especially because of reports that Frank never initiated sex with Ayn, if Ayn had ever wanted children.

***

Excerpt page 230:  Most intriguing to them was her marriage.  O'Connor, who could have posed for an Esquire ad and who exuded warmth, gentility, and wisdom, was unresponsive to philosophical discussion and even to most books, yet Rand, who usually placed the highest premium on analytical intelligence and self-assertion, called him her "top value."  Seated, she would glance around to be sure he was nearby; she continuously touched him and held his hand.  "Frank is my rock," she told Barbara.  To Nathaniel, she said, "He believed in me when no one else did." and "We have the same sense of life." He was silent because he was "Too disgusted with people to share what he is with the world," she told them...."

In the fall of 1950, Rand began touching Nathaniel, too. She sometimes held his hand as they strolled the grounds and talked about their ideas and her work.  Barbara saw nothing odd in the older woman's affections for Nathaniel.....

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AYN RAND EARLY in HOLLYWOOD : WORKING SUBSISTENCE JOBS and A ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHY

Anne C. Heller is the author.

Page 68 excerpt:  From mid-1928 until the summer of 1929 - the last summer of the nation's long, carefree era of prosperity before the Great Depression - the girl with the sign of a crown on her forehead worked as a waitress, a department-store clerk, and a door-to-door saleswoman.  It was an embarrassing and probably a frightening time for her.  At age twenty-two she was without dependable employment in what was still to her a foreign country. She had half-jokingly boasted to family and friends that she would be famous within a year of reaching Hollywood, but for the moment she stood outside the golden circle of that City's opportunities. She had to borrow small sums from her Chicago relatives, and, according to unpunished letters from her parents, for a time on a twenty-five dollar monthly subsidy from them, in order to pay her Studio Club rent. Worst of all, her legal standing in the United States was in jeopardy.  While she had been working for DeMille, the director presumably sponsored visa extensions for her with the immigration service, as was the custom in movie industry.  Without a permanent job or a powerful sponsor, she had reason to fear that her time in the United States was running out.  At one point, things looked so bleak that Anna (her mother) actually urged her to come back to Russia, or at least to return to her relatives in Chicago.  Rand of course, refused.

Pride was not a defect of character in Ayn Rand's universe. She concealed her menial jobs from industry acquaintances by working in the suburbs, and she disguised her dire financial condition from O'Connor, who was making ends meet by working in a restaurant alongside Nick and Joe. (His brothers.) She wanted her suitor to see her at her best - that is, to see the woman in Ayn Rand. She already believed, as she would later write, that romance should never be mixed with suffering or pity.  Echoing her mother's Victorian maxims, she also thought that a woman should avoid cooking or cleaning in the presence of her lover and steer clear of becoming her lover's pal.....

Excerpt Page 71 : Ayn Rand and Frank O'Connor were married in the Los Angeles City Hall of Justice on April 15, 1929, either just before or just after Alice Rosenbaum's via officially expired.  Two weeks later, she and her husband took a borrowed car to Mexicali, Mexico, and re-entered the new name, Mrs. Charles Francis O'Connor, and a new legal status as the wife of an American citizen.  As such, she was entitled to a rapid evaluation to become a permanent resident, and eventually, a citizen. By June, having proved that she wasn't wanted for crimes in Soviet Russia, she received a permanent visa, the equivalent of a green card.  With only one exception, she never left the United States again. 

Missy here:  Comments from Frank's relative that Frank loved Ayn more than he loved any woman, feel telling to me. She had moved from the YMCA accommodations, where virtue of the young women who stayed there, was said to be protected, into a furnished room so she and Frank could become lovers. The author suggests that because of his Catholicism this would have propelled him to marry her anyway. I wish O'Connor's sense of his religion and sexuality were better known as this comes into conflict with the reportage that, after his mother's death, at age fourteen he dropped out of Catholicism and became a strong, life long atheist like Ayn. One of the reasons is that frustration with him sexually could have propelled her into seeking what she could not get out of her marriage elsewhere.

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AYN RAND ; LONG MARRIED SUCCESSFUL NOVELIST - KNOWN FOR HER OBJECTIVIST PHILOSOPHY - FRANK O'CONNOR HER HUSBAND - NATHANIEL BRANDON HER MUCH YOUNGER MARRIED PSYCHOLOGIST LOVER

AYN RAND

Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum

1905 (Russia) -  1982 (New York)

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."  - Ayn Rand  (page1)

Ayn Rand was born into a Russian Jewish family, but didn't make much of the religion of her birth, instead promoting a philosophy of how best to live life, with the emphasis on an individual's self-interest. As a child, her family was prosperous enough to vacation travel to London and Paris and she also found herself in a decent grade school that ignored the tiny quota for Jewish students and took more like her. She also graduated Petrograd State University, where she was a member of student writing clubs, in the fall of 1924. The nineteen year old graduate then enrolled in a new school, State Technicum for Screen Arts, meant to train actors and cinematographers. In 1925 she got a passport and applied for a Student Visa to America, with her impoverished family and her mother making personal financial sacrifices to support her ambitions.

Fleeing a hostile existence in which Jews were targeted, Ayn was the one in her family to make it America. She went to Berlin, then Paris, and arrived on a steamship to New York harbor in February 1926. She went first to Chicago and relatives of her mother's and she promised to return to Russia but did not. In 1931 she became a citizen and endeavored to get her family out of Russia but was thwarted. As the years passed, and the Holocaust of World War II occurred, she was unsure if any of her family left behind in Russia had survived in Europe, thus pointing to a disconnect from them. Rand hated Russia and the Marxists and her experiences there would forever influence her thinking. She would become the anti-Communist heroine of Capitalism but not a Christian one. She - and the man who would become her husband, were atheists. Giving herself a new, made-up, name was perhaps her first act of recreating her self, a self that believed in individualism.

However, Ayn was also one of those who wanted "Communists" eradicated from Hollywood in the 1940's, still a controversial move.

She'd begun writing as a child - ten years old - sixteen; a first novel: Perhaps she knew writing to be her strength. She left Chicago for Hollywood and an encounter with Cecile B.DeMille, also of Russian-Jewish heritage, got her a job as a screenwriter circa 1927 which paid her rent at a YMCA owned residence for women unchaperoned. Mythologies have sprung up about their "chance encounter." It's said Ayn likely managed to run into DeMille just as she was said to have stalked the man she wanted to marry. By 1928, none of her scripts moving towards development into movies, she was cut to part time employment. Then when DeMille moved on to form Goldwyn-Mayer, she was left without a job.

Hollywood also was where she met the man she chose as a husband, actor Frank O'Connor, who is described repeatedly, and in so many words, as an accommodating gentleman. (His brother is described as both gay and essential to the relationship and I kept wondering if he also was gay. Especially when I read that it was said that he had never initiated sex with Ayn, but she did with him.) Initially, he was doing better than she. He went from background acting to small speaking roles.  

'He was earning enough to buy his young wife her first portable American typewriter, a radio, and a beautiful made-to-order walnut desk.  He presented her with a brand new copy of Webster's Daily Use Dictionary; inscribed with a love poem he wrote, based on the letters of the alphabet. Together they purchased their first car; A used Nash, bought on time, which Rand would never learn to drive.  He decorated their new apartment, giving his wife another glimpse of his artistic talent. They were happy.' (page 75)

In a rare "role reversal" of sorts for the time, after O'Connor's small parts in films did not suffice, Ayn became the bread-winner, the one whose career was to be followed. In essence her husband became a Kept Man, but married, known only for his relationship with her.

They bought land to ranch and he became a gentleman farmer out in the San Fernando Valley, but when Ayn tired of Hollywood, they moved to New York, with promises to return some day. They never did.  Another couple took care of the property and the farm for many years. There were times during their marriage in which he took small jobs to help out financially, but it was up to him to arrange the flowers and spend time painting. A decision was made and the couple left Los Angeles for the Big Apply in the fall of 1934.  We The Living, a novel by Ayn Rand, was published in 1936.

It was in that city that the couple went from a shared room to owning a decent apartment to live in for years, and where Ayn sweated over writing her novels, as fame and fortune were hers. It was also during these years that a complicated and sophisticated of relationship intrigue went on, perhaps essential to Ayn's emotional and psychological stability.

She was about fifty-two years old and had been at it for thirty years before she became world famous and she had worked very hard at her writing. Rand was devoted to it, considered a genius, and she became extremely concerned that she top the success of her prior two novels as she worked on her third.

When it came to support for her career, Ayn did not only depend on her husband or her friends. Rather a much younger man and his fiancée had come into her life - their lives, starting with their long visit out in California, almost as devotees to her philosophy. The youthful Nathaniel Brandon was engaged and eventually married the same woman, Barbara. Perhaps sex wasn't ever going to work out for this couple, but eventually Ayn and he had an affair beginning in the mid 1950's, reportedly fifteen years long, one that her husband and his wife also accommodated and sex was only part of their relationship. 

Years went by, the young man matured, became a psychologist, met a younger woman who did not come with complications, and sought to divorce his wife. The hesitation - and the conniving - was about how he might sustain all the important roles he played in Ayn's life, other than the romantic or sexual. This new development happened about the time that Ayn had recovered from a years-long serious depression, after her second novel, The Fountainhead, which she'd spent years working on, was met with criticism. (Her novels today are considered classics, still sell very well, and her philosophy still has influence, especially on economic policies.) Ayn was in charge again. She had called off sex with Nathaniel Brandon and now wanted to start it back up but clearly, at least to him, she was no longer attractive to the younger man.

How Ayn and her husband Frank and Brandon and his wife Barbara slowly came to agree to what would be considered today to be an Open Relationship, was of special interest to me and, I think, would also be to the readers of Mistress Manifesto. It could be argued that husband Frank O'Connor had become a Kept Man as a husband but notions of who should dominate a relationship and be the bread-winner back in the day are now considered old fashioned. I would also say that when it came to self-determination and satisfying one's needs Ayn dominated the marriage and was superior in meeting her needs, while not abandoning her husband.  The moral qualms, if there were any, seem to have been those of Brandon.

However, when the truth finally came out, she was extremely angry and indignant. She banished the younger man from her life.

Continue with me this month as we explore these complicated relationships.

Missy

P.S.  Although Rand was an advocate of hard work and earning one's own way in the world, of self-responsibility and a sort of moral righteousness, although she wore a dollar sign pin, she was never wealthy by today's standards and her sense of morality was not that of the typical American citizen.

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The book by Anne C. Heller is the primary reference for this month's posts.

LESLIE MCRAY on IMDB HAS A BIO : SHE'S ACCOMPLISHED!

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0574447/bio/   click on the link and keep reading!

Excerpt:  Leslie McRay was born on her mother's fifteenth birthday. She was brought up living in and out of orphanages. Through a series of numerous step-fathers she was eventually brought to Hollywood, California. Having no self-esteem, her mother put her in the local beauty contest and she became "Miss Fullerton". After that win photographers then sponsored her in many other contests in which she was often successful, including "Miss Los Angeles" in the "Miss Universe Contest", "Miss Hawaii in the "Miss World Pageant" and consequently won a trip around the world with "Miss Universe". She ended up in the Philippines and was asked to marry into the Marcos family. 

LESLIE MCRAY BOOK AUTHOR, ACTRESS, ACTIVE FILM PRODUCER : WE REVISIT HER DARK MEMOIR

(First published November 2, 2010, this month we revisit this important book, a memoir of a mistress who had a particularly horrible experience with it.)

LESLIE McRAY was our MISTRESS OF THE MONTH, NOVEMBER 2010

Leslie wrote a book that was published in 1990 called "KEPT WOMEN" subtitle which is now in it's 3rd edition.  She wrote it with Ted Schwartz.

The book is heavily dependent on psychotherapy, and the diagnosis of kept women as being abused children who grow up with a real lack of self esteem and an addiction to the approval of men, usually based on their beauty and sexual prowess.

Yet, I noticed, she said that many of these Mistresses had their own incomes of $30,000 to $100,000 a year. So most of them really didn't need the money, as I see it, and probably had some education or intelligence and the self esteem to be competitive in the work place.

I feel sorry for Leslie that her mistresshood came to what it did and I admire her courage to overcome her past and her own demons to write the book, which does delve into a very dark, scary, aspect of mistressing that some, not all, mistresses experience. This includes sadio-masochism.

Many mistresses apparently "shared and bared" their souls to Leslie, and of course they remain unnamed.

Leslie is also psychology-sure that the whole set up of being kept, by a usually married man, is one in which the man and the mistress are people who cannot keep a commitment (something I personally do not believe is always true either).

Leslie is from a world of beauties who modeled, won contests, and met and were kept by men of international fame. She won something like 70 beauty pageants.

These men who kept Leslie and other women were men with great fortunes - doers - important men. Yet her experience with them was horrible.

She left the mistressing life that caused her so much pain and survived. She is now an active film producer. She has a film on the 9/11 terrorist attack to her credit.

Missy

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AUDREY MUNSON : EXPLOITED SHATTERED BROKEN : A COME BACK AFTER YEARS OF REJECTION AND POVERTY BUT FIRST THE PERFECT MAN

I discovered a link to some news articles and "The Queen of the Artists Studios" is a series of articles from 1921 written by Audrey Munson (perhaps with a ghost writer)  At the time Hollywood was making a film about her life called "The Audrey Munston Story" which became titled "The Soul Within."

ANDREA GEYER ; Link to Images re Audrey Munson News Articles

She ended up more that disappointed and fighting for money owed her.

Page 249:  "The "Perfect Model" now sought "The Perfect Man." Audrey had been badly battered by the double blow of Oelriches's rejection and the Wilkins murder-suicide.  Her movie career was over and she had been reduced to selling kitchen utensils door-to-door with Kittie.  Her manager had robbed her and she was still living with her mother at the age of thirty.  It was time to find a husband."

***

The press loved the story and soon enough it became a national obsession to find this woman a husband.  Some reported that she was looking for a man who resembled a Greek or Roman statue. It was a time in which Eugenics, the study of how to cause humans to reproduce in order to increase what were considered perfect characteristics of health and beauty, was popular.  Since she embodied the perfect woman, she needed a perfect man. Letters from all over became to arrive, men proposing themselves to her. Now the often rejected Audrey was like a kid in a candy store, finding reasons to reject potential suitors.

She wrote that the Gypsy Queen had told her she would reject six and marry the seventh.  Actually she rejected the seventh - if we think of all these potential suitors as one effort and with the suggestion that she was rejected by the perfect man. 

In April of 1922, she declared that a man named Joseph H. Stevenson was the one she wanted. It did not work out, though there is a mystery to this. Stevenson may have gotten engaged or married to someone else. His name is common enough to not assume.  Audrey, overwrought by yet another tragedy, attempted to poison herself - suicide.

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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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WHERE DID SCOTT THORSON GO FROM THERE ? : TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING ISN'T GOOD AFTER ALL

Of the many YouTube videos I watched, I thought this one would be the best to include here at Mistress Manifesto.  It's an interview in which respect is shown and Scott Thorson's intelligence comes forth. Scott Birmingham is given as a film critic.

Tantalizing isn't it, that Scott was working on another book?

I hoped he'd fins the peace within himself and the stability in life to keep writing it.

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S WONDERLAND MURDERS and THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD HAS BEEN TURNED INTO AN A FOUR PART DOCUSERIES

As part of my re-research, I found the podcast on YouTube and listened to it.  Scott spoke and was one of the people interviewed....  I thought this was an excellent podcast and have respect for Michael Connelly, who is also known for his many crime fiction books.

YOUTUBE : FULL AUDIOBOOK MICHAEL CONNELLY's WONDERLAND MURDERS AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD

MGM will air the series adapted from the book on September 8th... a couple days from now.

SCOTT THORSON ! LIBERACE'S BOYTOY REDUX : A YOUNG KEPT COMPANION - BROTHER - SON - LOVER

SCOTT THORSON has passed away.... on August 16th...

SINCE I FIRST HONORED SCOTT THORSON AS MANTRESS OF THE MONTH, HIS LIFE HAD BEEN A ROLLER COASTER RIDE!  Since the end of his relationship with the star Liberace (who died in 1987), he was a witness for the WONDERLAND MURDERS which was tied in with illegal drug dealers, got busted for illegal drugs, got financial help from unlikely but compassionate people, messed up again and spent years in prison, had worked on (and maybe published) another book, and outed himself as the lover of another famous person - MICHAEL JACKSON ! ***

I'll weave original posts that appeared here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO with the newer information.

SCOTT THORSON ! LIBERACE'S BOYTOY  (original post)

January 23, 1959 – August 16, 2024

Google Images

Scott is on the left in his chauffer uniform when he was part of Liberace's show.

 Ladies and Gentlemen! 

I've been meaning to include Kept Men in this blog, and recently I started thinking about Scott Thorson, who was involved with Liberace, the famous piano player and showman, whose clothing and outrageously rich life-style became as much a part of his act as his piano playing. 

Scott wrote a book with co-author Alex Thorleifson back in 1988, called "Behind the Candelabra" and I decided to re-read it.

Scott was born in 1959, and he's still with us, last I heard living with a common law wife (in the book he stated that he is bisexual) and through the years he's been struggling with drug addiction, and I suspect some emotional problems.

A movie is going to be made from the book after all these years, starting Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Scott.  I look forward to seeing this HBO production, because I always want to see what film makers do with a book which I found sincere and well written. 

Let me tell you a little bit about Scott.  I think you'll realize that though he was a Kept Man or Boytoy in a homosexual relationship with Liberace, he has much in common with many a Mistress / Mantress through history and today. 

First, he came from a disadvantaged background. Scott's mom was mentally ill and as a result he lived in a number of foster homes, not all bad, his last being a happy situation. As a foster child he had to work doing odd jobs and he started earning what he could at the age of 10.  His dream was to be a veterinarian. He met Liberace in 1977 and Liberace's oldest dog was ailing. As a couple and in the time they were together they would buy each other dogs and own more than two dozen.

Liberace was rich, famous, and powerful, and 40 years older than Scott, who was just 18  years old when they started. Within a month of their first meeting Liberace hired him but also made it clear sex and a very personal relationship was part of the bargain. 

Scott left his foster home and moved in with Liberace with their primary residence being Vegas. He was to learn that Liberace, his family, and his management, all did whatever possible to hide the the entertainer's homosexuality. (Maybe Liberace's mom never figured it out. Everyone else did.)

Scott was a known secret among many. 

Liberace had an active sex life and would die of AIDS, a disease that he did not get from Scott.

Scott's previous experience with relationships and sex was limited. He was not promiscuous, or into porn, and had not been a prostitute, but for a while he lived with an older gay brother in San Francisco and had teenage experiences. 

Liberace would come to dominate Scott's life. In order to be with him almost constantly, to travel and be part of Liberace's life, Scott had very little freedom, and few friends his own age. Financially he had a salary and was part of the fabulous show. Like many a person Kept by someone much wealthier than themselves, Scott found himself on a low but livable salary because he was gifted with jewels, clothes, and much else beyond that salary. 

To please Liberace, Scott had cosmetic surgery that included a chin implant, cheek bone implants, and a nose job.  Liberace wanted him to look like a son.

He also lost a lot of weight to be more in Liberace's image and likeness. As a result of legal prescriptions given by the doctor who performed the surgery, he became a drug addict. He's had a long struggle with addiction since.

Scott displaced the previous protégé and would be displaced five years later himself. 

Liberace talked adopting him and also supporting him for his lifetime.

When he found himself thrown out as the previous protégé had, he was confused and upset, and he sued.  Scott himself says this was no "Palimony" case....

Aren't you interested in learning more about SCOTT THORSON?

VARIETY on SCOTT THORSON and NEW FOUR PART SERIES ON THE WONDERLAND MURDERS - BROADCAST DATE SEPTEMBER 8th.

Missy

*** We'll get into the Scott Thorson - Michael Jackson relationship later this month!

C 2012-2025 All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights.

First published October 3, 2012

So here we are in 2025...

First, because I wanted to read it, I searched for a copy of Scott Thorson's second memoir, which I believe to be entitled Shattered Candelabra or Beyond the Candelabra. I was unable to find it and do not know if it was actually published or distributed. Perhaps he is still working on another book - one that includes a relationship he had with singer Michael Jackson.

In 2013, the film Behind the Candelabra aired in May. It was based on Thorson's memoir but from everything I read, he was pretty much drummed out of having any input on the film. That might well have been because he was a felon behind bars for a drug possession conviction that included charges of burglary and that went on from 2008 - 2012. Towards the end of his prison sentence Thorson was diagnosed with cancer. (I do not know what his medical condition is now but wonder if it was a misdiagnosis.)

I personally loved the film and have seen it three times. It brought Thorson and his story to the people. I thought the film attempted to be fair in showing both the positive and negative aspects of his relationship with Liberace, who had gone to extreme lengths to hide his homosexuality, but died of AIDS.

Thorson was in serious trouble again when he got out of prison but got caught using someone else's credit cards. He was given five years probation.  At this time Dennis Hof, the then alive proprietor of the brothel called the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada, and some of the prostitutes there, pitched in and provided over a hundred thousand dollars in bail money to get Scott out of prison. What?  Who? They only knew of him?

I was impressed!

It's my notion that, hearing of his story, knowing the ways of Vegas that most of us cannot, these Hof and some of his workers came forward because they understood that Thorson had been used up by Liberace and thrown to the street as a youth. Deserted, abandoned, and left fending for himself, after experiencing great wealth, but also accepting the control of his life - and even his face - by Liberace, Scott Thorson, who had been with the star from the age of 16 to 21 - I should say the underage of 16 - had not been educated for any career that could move him into a successful and self-sustaining life.

Thorson had sued Liberace after their relationship and did win some money, far less than he asked for, and not an amount that would keep him living at all close to the lavish lifestyle he had experienced. He was not well emotionally or psychologically and, like many others, he probably used drugs to feel better at first, then due to addiction.

Because of his drug addiction - though one report is that he was encouraged by Liberace to get involved - in 1981, he had come in contact with a violent and powerful drug dealer in the Hollywood Hills - and pulled into a quadruple murder investigation of The Wonderland Murders. (Wonderland is the name of the street where the drug dealer had a house, the center of his operations. This drug dealer also happened to be a club owner locally.) Thorson was not innocent when it came to drug dealing but was innocent of the murders. Thorson was been given a new name and put into a Federal witness protection program because of his testimony.  At one point he got involved with some high profile televangelists.

Thorson's probation for lesser offences after all this required he stay off illegal drugs but he could not. Testing positive, being given chance after chance, he was arrested again and this time ordered to serve up to 20 years. He served seven and was let out in 2020.

To me Scott Thorson is a man whose life has been tremendously difficult and more than he could bear. And wherever he is at this moment, I sincerely hope he can turn it around.

I ask my readers this:

What happened when you were sixteen (or before you were twenty one and a legal adult in all ways) that effected your entire life? Where are you now because of it?  How has it made you the person you are today?

Missy

C 2012-2025 All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights.

Information about Scott Thorson's life comes from multiple and often repetitive news articles.

You may also be interested in 

March 2020  HEIDI FLEISS : GIRL NEXT DOOR TO HOLLYWOOD MADAM TO BIRD SANCTUARY

July 2016   PORN ACTOR JOHN C. HOLMES and Wife SHARON GEBENINI and MISTRESS DAWN SCHILLER Love Triangle Relationships Played Out Through The Wonderland Murders

ARE YOU A HOLLYWOOD MISTRESS?

Does a rich and famous actor or director or someone in Hollywood keep you?

Missy wants to know!

SONDRA LOCKE : IMPORTANT OBITUARIES CELEBRATED HER BUT HER DEATH WAS NOT ANNOUNCED UNTIL MUCH LATER

VANITY FAIR - SONDRA LOCKE OBIT - THE TRIUMPH and TRAGEDY of SONDRA LOCKE by Yohana Desta  

EXCERPT: “I understood it would be at the risk of our relationship,” Locke said to the Post, referring to her desire to move away from Eastwood films. “And when I did, that was the beginning of the end.”

By 1989, it was clear the relationship was falling apart, she said. Eastwood was secretly involved with another woman and had two children with her. Meanwhile, Locke claimed that she had had two abortions over the course of their relationship, because Eastwood had told her that he didn’t want more children.

One April day while she was filming Impulse, she returned to their shared home to find that Eastwood had changed the locks and boxed up her clothes, the Post notes. Locke then filed a lawsuit. in depositions, Eastwood characterized her as his “occasional roommate . . . for 10 years,” per the Post. They ultimately settled the suit, with Locke securing a three-year, $1.5 million deal with Warner Bros. to develop directing projects.

NEW YORK TIMES OBIT - SONDRA LOCKE 74, IS DEAD - OSCAR NOMINATED ACTRESS by Julia Jacobs

EXCERPT: Ms. Locke made her directorial debut in 1986 with "Ratboy," a somewhat satirical tale of an alien boy with ratlike features.  "In sociological terms, he exists somewhere between E.T. and the Elephant Man, as an innocent alien adrift in an unsympathetic world." Janet Maslin wrote in a largely unfavorable review in The Times.  Ms. Locke also starred in the movie.

After many years off screen, she re-emerged this year in "Ray Meets Helen," a romantic drama, directed by Alan Rudolph, about two lonely late-middle-aged strangers who meet after separately coming into money.

THE GOOD - THE BAD - AND THE VERY UGLY by SONDRA LOCKE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

SONDRA LOCKE

THE GOOD, THE BAD, and the VERY UGLY - A Hollywood Journey

Sondra Locke has an innocent wistful quality to her looks, and she's a very spiritual in a New Age kind of way, seeing ghosts, believing in synchronicity, signs, and portents. Yet, like many people who have psychic abilities, she had not a clue about what was really going on in her life with long term lover and keeper, Clint Eastwood, until it was a shock. She was maybe the last to know.

They met on a set for a film he hired her for, had an affair, and it lasted - and was good- for a long time - years. In that time she had two abortions and a sterilization, to do it Clint's way.

Now, Clint was clearly married when they met and so was she - to a gay man from her home town who she apparently always held in high regard. They both went their own way with other partners and did not divorce for years. Sondra at times contributed to his support. Clint knew all that.

Clint was married, straight, and a father. But IT TURNS OUT HE WAS ONCE KEPT BY A GAY MAN early in his career!

Though Sondra Locke was and is an actress, her relationship with Clint was first and foremost, and though she was paid - poorly - for her work in his films, she was loyal to him, loved him, and gained some benefits. When he was out of town she busied herself with decorating and refurbishing a house of her dreams - which Clint owned and she came to think of as her - their - house.

She lived the life of a wealthy woman, a woman who had other people - Clint's people - to take care of a lot of things so she could focus on a major redecorating project. She got used to him coming and going, being here, there and everywhere. She was in shock and denial for a long time. After all, she and Clint had been a couple in his - their -social life for a long time and now some of those friends, catching change in the air, were stepping back, not wanting to be involved or only suggesting she needed a lawyer.

Sondra Locke writes intelligently, honestly, and with the perception of what happened after the fact. It sounds like Clint got tricky and nasty when he wanted out (or her out of their Los Angeles house, one of many) and that he had been dishonest with her for a long time too.

One of the problems many mistresses have is getting recognition for the value they have in a man's life and having that translated to finances. (Remember we are not discriminating here in saying a woman - a man. We know there are kept homosexual people and heterosexual men kept by women!)

IT WAS IN THE TRADITION OF THE EUROPEAN (KINGS) IN DAYS GONE BY THAT A WOMAN BE COMPENSATED FOR THE TIME SHE SPENT WITH HER ROYAL, especially if she gave him children; being a mistress kept a woman out of the marriage market though sometimes she was married off into a cover marriage. Because all mistresses are not dependent women and the things women do are often thought of as free, it becomes a feminist issue.

C 2010 - 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All rights including International and Internet Rights are reserved.

The book is C 1997 by Sondra Locke William Morrow is the publisher.\

Note January 2024  I'll be excerpting from Sondra Locke's book during this revisit to past posts.  I hadn't before.  Missy

SONDRA LOCKE : THE GIRLFRIEND IN CLINT EASTWOOD FILMS and HIS MISTRESS OFF SCREEN ; THEIR LONG RELATIONSHIP ENDED UGLY

SONDRA LOCKE

Image by Georges Biard

Wikimedia Commons attribution

1944-2018

(Sandra Louise Smith)

Back in July 2010, when Mistress Manifesto was a newish blog, I featured actress Sandra Locke as Mistress of the Month. Here is what I wrote:

She's an actress and director, an interior designer and home renovator, but she had a lot of time off and waited around for her lover... actor Clint Eastwood. Her income from the work on his films was small and she lived a life of more luxury than on her own salary with him. When she wanted and needed to do more - become the producer of film projects - he found her less desirable. She had two abortions and then a tubal sterilization at age 30 to keep him happy. She's sorry about that now, but there it is. She wanted her relationship with Clint to endure but, while he had these demands of her, he cheated and had other children with other mistresses...

Sondra Locke is a woman who could have made it on her own financially without Clint. But her case is interesting... because she kept a marriage with a gay man who had his own long term relationship all the while. ***

They spent over a decade as a couple - some count thirteen years. The first film, in which she played his love interest was The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Then she was in the lead role with Eastwood in the film The Gauntlet (1977). Then they hit special success in Every Which Way But Loose, which may people remember because of a orangutan named Clyde that also had a role. (1978). In that film and the sequel called Any Which Way You Can (1980) Sondra finally got paid well, reportedly six figures plus a percentage of the profits. She had a career before Clint Eastwood but had taken a pay cut for the Josie Wales film. Because she she played the role as a country singer in these two films, there was briefly an attempt to get a singing career going. Bronco Billy (1980), Sudden Impact (1983). In 1985 Clint Eastwood directed Sondra in an Amazing Stories episode.

1989 Locke sued Clintwood and it was settled out of court. He was accused of fraud, of ruining her career.  He sued too accusing her saying she had not fulfilled her agreements with him.  The lawsuits went on for years.  

Sondra died of breast and bone cancer at the age of seventy-four. She had been Oscar nominated in 1968 for her roll in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.  She is best known for her films with Eastwood.  However, she did continue to work as a producer and director.  And when she died she was still married to her husband Gordon Anderson. Their loyalty was lifelong, though they were undoubtedly in an Alternative Relationship, one that Clint Eastwood seemed to understand and then use against Sondra. In the excerpts I have chosen from her memoir, I'll do my best to move the story along for you.

Missy

C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

*** Gordon Anderson was homosexual and pursued various relationships during his marriage to Sondra.  Sondra considered him to be her only family.

CASSANDRA PETERSON HEARS THE WORDS "YOU'LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN"

Excerpts from the book Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson

Chapter You'll Never Work In This Town Again

"It fills me with so much hope and pride that women are finally able to speak out about the treatment we've had to endure from men. Women have always had to worry about the damage to their livelihoods,  not to mention the loss of their dreams and aspirations, which could result from resisting men's unwanted advances, or God forbid, reporting it.  These days men are finally having to think very seriously about the potential damage to their own careers that engaging in this type of sexist behavior may cause.  One way or another, it will catch up with them, and karma's a bitch."

(Cassandra goes on to describe some of the experiences she had beginning as a girl when the neighborhood child molester tried to get at her, another at age 12, then in the 7th grade,)

"Miraculously - seriously - miraculously I made it through my teen years without getting raped, although I had some very close calls. I learned over time to never walk alone at night, to never park in dark areas, to always check to see whether anyone was hiding in the back seat of my car before getting in, and to keep an eye in the rear view mirror to make sure no one was following me.  It's great to grow up feeling like you're being hunted, right girls?"

(On an interview for a national commercial, a man asked her if she liked performing a certain sexual act and got up from his desk without any clothes on below his shirt.) "Shaken I jumped to my feet and headed for the door as fast as my feet would carry me.  As I literally ran down the dark hallway, my commercial aspirations in the dumper, I heard him yell these very words" You'll Never Work In This Town Again."

Please note that I normally cite the page number but the e-book I downloaded does not have page numbers showing.

As I read this, I was reminded of experiences I've had, such as being groped suddenly by a stranger when I sat waiting to get into a restaurant. That man was old and I wondered just how many women had been groped by him, how many got chased around the desk in his office. 

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights.