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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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 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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GLORIA SWANSON AT THE HEIGHT OF HER CAREER : SHE FELT BLACKMAILED INTO AN EXPENSIVE DIVORCE BY HER HUSBAND AND THE HAYS OFFICE

Excerpt page 5 : In 1924, Hollywood movies were made on sets built on stages and back lots. Newfangled rear projection and process-screen photography even enabled characters to sit or stand in front of a screen and appear to be anywhere in the world.  To go overseas to make a picture was unheard of. ...

With the possible exception of Mary Pickford, who never managed the transition from  the girlish image that had made her "America's Sweetheart" to full screen womanhood, Gloria Swanson was the most popular  female celebrity in the movie-crazed mid 1920's. When, in September 1924, she sailed to Europe to make Madame Sans Gene, she was twenty-five, had starred in thirty movies - six in a row with *De Mille - and her leading men had included the great heartthrobs from Wallace Reid to Rudolph Valentino.

When Gloria Swanson wanted out of her marriage with Herbert Somborn, he and his attorney threatened her for $150,000: According to author Axel Madsen, De Mille was panicking too.  The Hays Office, as it was called, had instituted morality clauses in movie star's contracts with their studios, and a nasty divorce with rumors flying about her infidelity could end her career.  As a result, De Mille called a meeting and insisted that the divorce would have to be settled secretly as, though she could have charged her husband with desertion a year earlier, now her circumstances could threaten the entire industry! (pages 86-87)

Excerpt Page 87:  When the divorce papers were presented to her, she was tempted to sign it all without seeing her own humiliation spelled out in black and white.  She steeled herself, however, and began to read. Paramount was indeed picking provisions that awarded Herbert $70,000 because he ha "assisted in procuring" her much-improved contract. He was paid $35,000 in cash and another $35,000 in installments, deducted from her salary at the rate of $500 a week. There was more. To keep her job, she had to sign a morals clause waiver. Should she in the future "be charged with adulterous conduct or immoral relations with men other than her husband, and such charges or any of them were published in the public press," her contract would be null and void.  Angry and embarrassed, she signed and went back to work.

During her marriage to Somborn, from 1919-to 1922, Gloria gave birth to a daughter and adopted a son. She remarried to French nobleman Henry de La Falaise in 1925. She had her relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy during that marriage. She and Henry divorced in 1931.

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* Demille : Cecil B. DeMille - a movie producer and actor
** Herbert K. Somborn (m. 1919; div. 1922): President of Equity Pictures Corporation.

GLORIA SWANSON IN THE 1923 SILENT FILM "ZAZA"

Gloria Swanson was one of those few actors who was able to go from the acting - later considered exaggerated expressions to convey the emotions and story - necessary in silent films to the talkies, both speaking and singing as well as acting more naturally. Her career was roaring in the 1920's, the era of the flapper, and the New Woman. She married six times and had three children as well as being engaged in political and humanitarian causes in which she used her fame.

From 1914 to 1974 she appeared in films and on some television programs.

IMDb GLORIA SWANSON's FILM CAREER A long list.  Click here!

Gloria Swanson was the top movie actress in the United States for many years, unless you considered Mary Pickford. Pickford was not successful past the silent film era.

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GLORIA SWANSON and HER RED CARNATIONS

Gloria Swanson was known to carry a red carnation when she was out in public or appeared on a television talk show, so that flower became an associated icon. She would give them as little gifts. In 1981 during an interview with Barbara Walters, she said she had first started doing so in order to have something to do with her hands instead of smoking a cigarette. She exercised, limited her diet to health foods, and credited taking care of her health for maintaining her beauty without cosmetic surgeries or procedures.

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GLORIA SWANSON - THE PATRIOT and HUMANITARIAN

In the late 1930's and early 1940's, the World War II era, Gloria Swanson put at least $25,000 into establishing a company called "Multiprises," with the mission to help Jewish and anti-Nazi scientists and inventors to escape from Europe and set up in the United States. They were working to develop new technologies that would be useful to the United States military.

The actress would be considered a conservative today. She was a Republican who supported the presidential campaigns and of Wendell Willkie (1940, 1944), Thomas E. Dewey, and Barry Goldwater (1964). In 1964, she also spoke at a "Project Prayer" rally in Los Angeles, advocating for school prayer in public schools. In 1980 she activated for the Reagan-Bush presidential election. I speculate her attraction to the Republican party - as it was in those days - was because she was a self made business woman.

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This post is the result of Internet research. 

"MRS. SMITH" ON MICKEY ROONEY'S LETTERS TO HER : HE WAS OPEN AND HONEST : SHE MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE ONLY WOMAN IN HIS LIFE HE COULD TRUST LIKE THAT

Excerpt:  Mickey was very open in his letters to Smith, who read us some passages from his correspondence with her.  Not love letters per se, they were filled with recollections and sometimes anger, but always Mickey in his own, heretofore unpublished words:

March 1950: She (Martha Vickers) could hardly stand up when I came home.  After I'm at the studio all day, and the kid is there, I don't need to be a nanny.
 

June 1958: referring to Barbara Ann and specifically to her attempted suicide by an overdose of pills; "Thanks for your concern.  She is all right. I just don't want to get trapped again.  They use my house as if it's their house to party.

February 1966: "I appreciate both of your calls and help.  I appreciate 'Mr. Smith's kind of assistance...  This has been the biggest nightmare and it never seems to end... I'd like to meet sometime soon... Please call me... I miss being close to you - I can still smell your scent.

"I think I saw a side of Mickey that he revealed to no one else," Smith said. "He was very romantic, kind; he had a very nostalgic sense; and I was able to experiment sexually with him that I couldn't with my husband.  He was very athletic.  Very.  He was quite inventive..."

She continued; "Also, we lent him money over the years, and much of it was never repaid.  We just chalked it up to Mickey.  He did give Mr. Smith his start."

The years wore on, but Mickey continued to regard Mrs. Smith as his close confidant, revealing to her his disappointment that the life he had enjoyed when they first met in the 1940's was gone and that age had caught up with him.  They stopped seeing each other when he was in his nineties, even though they were still writing.  She told us that she attempted to contact Mickey just before his death.

"While we were in some communication, I was virtually locked out of his life after all the problems," she said.  "It was as if the family crying for him had put a wall up between Mickey and the outside world. I tried several times but was thwarted each time.  Just before his death, I attempted to send a car for him to bring him back to our house.  I believe it was his daughter-in-law that said that he was not interested.  I cannot believe that for one minute.  At no time had MIck ever told me about abuse or anything like that.  I learned about that on the news.  He always told me how content he was.:

In one letter to Smith, Mickey wrote, "As always, I miss you my dear.  As we get older, I begin to forget this or that. But don't think for a minute that I ever forget about us...."

Mrs, Smith heard about Mickey Rooney's death on the news.

"I was crestfallen.  My heart broke.  I remember all of our good times, our closeness, our being intimate for over sixty years.  I felt I lost a piece of myself with his death."

Notes: These excerpts are found in pages 480 and 481.  Rooney died in 2014 and for all his drama he was ninety-four years old.  He was buried in Hollywood Forever cemetery.

MICKEY ROONEY IN TROUBLE WITH THE MOB AND MARRIED TO A WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN MARRIED TO A MOBSTER

Of all the wives Mickey Rooney had, perhaps the one that Mrs. Smith thought to be the user was Elaine Mahnken, who had started modeling as a teenager and had first been married to a man who went to prison for armed robbery.  Divorced, and a young woman, she went home to live with her mother, a neighbor of Rooney. She grew up seeing him on the Andy Hardy series he starred in, and also admired him as a musician. (He played piano and drums.) But what was in it for her?

Excerpt:  "For thirty days, Mickey proposed to Elaine every night (reminiscent of his courtship of Ava.) For thirty days, Elaine politely told Mickey that she wasn't in love with him...."  (page 325)

It was 1952. He was thirty-two and she was twenty-three. She claimed he was already in financial upheaval. Her ex-husband was in similar trouble with the mob.

Excerpt: (Elaine speaking) "I handled the finances for two and a half years.  Finally, the government was paid, all our bills were paid.  And I took the envelope that contained all of our unpaid bills.  And I said, 'Look Mickey, no more debts.' And what was the thanks I got? Two weeks later Mickey went up to Vegas to play a nightclub date.  He went to the tables and lost fifty grand, just like that. We were back in the hole again.  When I heard that I threw up my hands and said, 'No more.  From now on he could take care of his own finances."  (Page 326)

 

Excerpt: .... " Mickey found out that Elaine was "meeting" her ex-husband.  She claimed he owed money to the mob in Vegas and needed cash to replay them, and he needed it right away because they were putting the heat on him.  She pleaded with Mickey to lend him the money, "as one human being to another," which he refused....  (page 326)

Elaine's ex also put pressure on Mickey for money. The man was murdered with two shots to the back of his head by men working for Mickey Cohen, the mobster.

Excerpt:  "The pseudonymous Mrs. Smith told us, "She (Elaine) didn't give a shit about Mick. She saw him as a sugar daddy who might be able to get her in the movies... Mickey tried to keep her happy... He bought her a vacation home in Lake Arrowhead, a new house in Studio City, and all kinds of toys, like a speedboat, clothes, servants.  She lived like a queen.  But Mickey gets bored easily," his longtime mistress admitted.  "They lived separate lives, and Micky was on to new girls, gambling and living ... well, living like Mickey.  She was living in Lake Arrowhead and partying... I'm also pretty sure she was f***ing her ex-husband who was a hood and e-con, and (she) was giving him money before he was killed.  Mickey was constantly whining to me about her.  He just dreaded another divorce.  (Pages 326-327)

Missy here!

As I read these passages, and the rest of the book, it seems to me that Mickey Rooney was a man who makes decisions on a whim, or as dictated by his sexual drive, and doesn't stop to think much.  He's always running from one situation to another.  Mrs. Smith is the stalwart one in his life who maintains her own marriage while being the consistency in his life.

So I ask you if today we would consider Mrs. Smith to be a "co-dependent" who, because he has her, helps him continue to maintain a chaotic way of living.  It seems to me that she accepted him as he was, giving him an unconditional kind of love that did not depend on him performing as a Hollywood star, as a husband, as a father to her children (if she had any), and so on.

 

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"MRS. SMITH" WAS HOLLYWOOD-CLOSE TO MICKEY ROONEY and KNEW HE'D BEEN ADDICTED : MISSY ASKS YOU

Mrs. Smith, who was in a relationship with Hollywood star Mickey Rooney, was clearly "in the know" when it came to Mickey and the actresses he worked with.  She says she got involved with him 1940ish.

She says that the studio got both Judy Garland (the star of Wizard of Oz) and Mickey Rooney hooked on drugs, sleeping pills (downers) and amphetamines (uppers) and that is how the studio controlled and managed their child stars.  Mickey and Ava Gardner, in their first marriages to each other, went out to clubs and drank heavily.  According to the authors Ava new he was screwing around but when she got word that he had gone off with a fifteen year old girl, she knew she was on the way out of that marriage.  It seems to me that Mickey Rooney may have been addicted to booze and sex and gambling. He was debt with the bookies and as a result there was always debt as well as his ability to earn more because, at least for some time, he was a top earning star.  The studio knew all this about him but they didn't stop casting him.  He was addicted to Ava, even after their divorce he wanted her back.

  

Missy asks you!  Are you an addict?  What of?  

When in your life did your addiction begin?

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HOW DID "MRS. SMITH KEEP A RELATIONSHIP WITH MICKEY FOR SIXTY-FIVE YEARS?

Mrs. Smith spoke to the authors of The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney.

..."I became sexually involved with Mickey between his divorce of B.J. and his marriage to Mart.  Mickey is a very caring and passionate lover.  While we never considered a relationship beyond clandestine meetings and coorespondence, it also was a friendship like no other.  We were able to tell each other our deepest secrets and confidences, which we have done for over sixty years.  We never had a scheduled time or meeting setup; it just happened...well, when it happened.  Whenever we could sneak away. While the sexual aspect eventually was not the focus, we remained almost soul mates.  I heard about the travails with his flavor of the years, and I was able to unload my problems. We both listened and commented.  It was actually better than being in psychoanalysis.  ...  We sometimes talked on the phone, and many times we corresponded  We never sent any letters to our homes; we were very careful... (page 478)

The two led their own lives but Mrs. Smith was in attendance at parties where Mickey, the life of the party, clearly went into another room to have sex with someone (other than her) or left with a woman.

Mrs. Smith also had strong opinions of his various wives.  She thought Martha was a drinker who humiliated him.  Elaine took money from him to help pay off her first husband's gambling debts but seem to be into him for the money.  Barbara, whom Mickey had children with, was murdered and Mrs. Smith reported this terribly traumatized  Mickey.  Soon after he married Barbara's best friend, Marge, who became mother to the four children he'd had with Barbara.  Carolyn, Mrs. Smith reported, was temporarily of interest to Mickey, at a time when he wanted to give up Hollywood and hide out.  Jan was possessive but willing to settle down with Mickey.

So we know that in some way Mrs. Smith and her husband were film-business or Hollywood connected, because there was some socialization with Mickey.  Also, they were close enough that the couple loaned money to Mickey that he never repaid....

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"MRS. SMITH " : THE MISTRESS WHO LASTED 65 YEARS THROUGH OLD HOLLYWOOD ACTOR MICKEY ROONEY'S EIGHT MARRIAGES

This won't be the first time here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO that I've elected a name-unknown woman to the pantheon of Mistress of the Month. I did so back in June of 2017 when I elected "Evey" the once-upon-a-time mistress of singer-songwriter James Taylor. We saw that relationship through the eyes of his then wife, singer-songwriter Carly Simon.  

This month we learn about "Mrs. Smith" who was in an unconventional relationship with Rooney for sixty five years. The book was published in 2015 and she was alive to be interviewed at the time.

The book "The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney" is the primary source for this month's posts.  It's considered to be a definitive biography by authors WIlliam J. Birnes and Richard Lertzman.

MRS. SMITH

Born in 1920, an actor, singer, and dancer with roots in vaudeville stage entertainment, Mickey Rooney started out as a baby and made his first film in 1926. Born Joe Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, New York, he became a famous Hollywood star young and was the top earning Hollywood star in the late 1930's. He's most known today for staring with Elizabeth Taylor in the equestrian film National Velvet in 1944.  A child actor who retained his youthful looks into his thirties, Rooney would go on to take roles in several other equestrian films but by age 40 the height of his career was in the past, yet he soldiered on. Rooney lived to be 93 years old and by then had worked in three hundred films. He was never a hands-on father but most of his children were proud to be his and loved him. In real life he lived to bet on the horses and was an investor in the Santa Anita horse-racing park.

The five-foot-two actor was an unlikely lothario because - I hate to say this - he was not physically the most handsome of men. Yet, he had attractive energy and charisma and according to Mrs. Smith he was an energetic and inventive lover. His chaotic life was fueled and fired by gambling - betting on the horse races, drinking, and womanizing, though he married eight time, fathered ten children, and had unknown numbers of other lovers. He himself said in his own memoir that he could have just about anyone. (He liked women who were taller than he was.) So it was entirely intriguing to me that he had a mistress, a married woman who socialized in some of the same Hollywood circles that he did. It's evidence that the mistress can play an entirely different role than a wife and that a mistress can be a mistress for a lifetime. There is no evidence that he Kept Mrs. Smith financially but she says he gave her husband his start in the business and that they lent him some money that was never paid back.

A married woman herself, Mrs.

Smith, the name used by the authors to hide her identity, comes at us in chapter 26 of the book, a chapter called Time May Lie Heavy Between.

"We were both at a party, a little tipsy and ... well, it happened."  So begins the story of a former actress  - her long-term spouse is still unaware of her unconventional sixty-five year love affair with Mickey Rooney, which lasted from the 1940's until his death.  She was also his confidant, pen pal, friend, and possibly the only person to whom Mickey unlocked his deepest secrets, desires, and fears."  (page 477) 

Mrs. Smith had taken a vow of silence - self imposed - and was finally ready to speak!

She may have been the only person on earth that he could trust to be his confidant and though they got together here and there, when possible. He wrote to her, so she clearly had some way to receive his letters and keep them without risking her marriage. She knew of his affairs and his marriages, the intense drama of his life, especially when one of his wives with whom he had four children was murdered, and his addictions of which there were a few, and perhaps there was no one who got to know the human being that Mickey was better.

Stick with us this month as we learn more!

Missy

You may also be interested in these posts that are in my archives:

June 2017

EVEY – Singer-Songwriter James Taylor’s Japanese New York Mistress and His Wife, Singer-Songwriter Carly Simon

August 2015

BOB HOPE

So Many Women So Little Time - Who Was The Long Married Comedian – Actor and Patriot’s Mistress? Sandy Vinger For One

September 2017

PAUL NOVAK – 27 Years as Mae West’s Much Younger Live-In Companion: Protective and Loving Till The Day She Died

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Notes: IMDb : Micky Rooney also provided some of the information for this post.

The beautiful actress Ava Gardner was his first of eight wives, and Mickey Rooney's other seven wives were not well known individuials.

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA -THE FILM

IMBd BEHIND THE CANDELABRA FILM (2013) 

Saw this film - saw it again. I liked it.  I thought Michael Douglas, as Liberace and Matt Damon as Scott Thorson, acted wonderfully.

But the story is also of a relationship that was hidden from Liberace's adoring fans, and that began when a much older man took advantage of another not-yet-legal one.  There is always a question of maturity and a question of choice. 

Have you had a relationship with a much older adult that began when you were underage?

How do you feel about it?  Leave me a comment!

Missy

SONDRA LOCKE : THE UGLY END : CLINT HAS MOVED ON AND FINANCIAL MACHINATIONS BEGIN

After Clint Eastwood bought Sondra Locke the house, following her second abortion and the a sterilization, he bought a house for her husband, Gordon.  However, she was presented what appeared to be a lease agreement for that house, which was explained to her as a business maneuver to his benefit. She had been paid less than market rate salaries for her work in the films she appeared in with Clint - the Dirty Harry films.  Finally for Sudden Impact she got a substantial raise for her acting. Wishing to improve her career, Sondra took a directorial position for another film that would not be a collaboration with Clint.  Clint seemed to resent it in some way.  When he was elected mayor of Carmel, California, the town he considered home, his responsibilities put a further distance in their relationship. For Sondra and Clint's relationship might have been a well kept secret when it came to the public, even as they had as a couple many friendships and associations with Hollywood's biggest names.  In 1987 the tabloids were catching up with them.  It was reported that Clint had given Sondra a big engagement ring.  The ring was a gift from a friend. By the Christmas - New Years season 1988, Clint was behaving as if Sondra was no longer his "bestest of the westest." Her women friends felt he was treating her badly and suggested she get a lawyer.  She talked to one, just in case.

Excerpt: page 248 :

"I hesitated to bring it up while you were shooting this film," he began, " but I was .... uh... thinking, it's come to my attention that you... uh... and Gordon are sitting on my only real estate in Los Angeles."

Sitting on his real estate!  Gordon and I? Incredible!

"Your real estate?  Your real estate! That's outrageous, Clint." He actualy looked caught.

"Well,... uh...well... uh, I was thinking maybe you could go stay with Gordon for a while."

He said it as if it were a casual and normal request. 

****

Page 250  Gordon called:

"Listen to me carefully. Stay calm, do you understand? Gordon said. With that my pulse quickened.

"What is it? Just tell me quick,: I almost screamed.

"Clint has locked you out of your house. The sissy waited until you were safely at work, then he changed the locks."

(A letter followed telling her not to return to the house where she had been allowed to stay rent free by Mr. Eastwood.... This was the house that he had supposedly gifted to Sondra. Next boxes were delivered with her personal effects including her clothes - in effect moving her out of that house. Gordon refused the boxes.  By not accepting these boxes Gordon knew they would have to go back to the house she had lived in or be put in storage. But perhaps the worst of it was learning that Clint had two children in Carmel.)

Page 270

My mind was still searching to get all his actions lined up. For at least the last four years, Clint had been living this double lie, going between me and this other woman, and having children with her. Two babies had been born in the last three years of our relationship, and they were't mine. More pain was heaped onto my pain about my own abortions and subsequent tubal ligation.

(In court hearings Sondra learned that she was not in Clint's will but the other woman with children was.)

To this point I will conclude my excerpting of Sondra's book.  What she went through would devastate anyone.

WHAT OPINION DO YOU HAVE OF WHAT YOU'VE READ?

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SONDRA LOCKE : ABORTIONS and STERILIZATION : CLINT WAS NOT GOING TO CHANGE HIS NATURE OR HIS LIFESTYLE

Sondra Locke and Clint Eastwood didn't just go from hotel to old house he owned with his wife in Sherman Oaks. From 1977 through the 1980's she says they acquired most of their homes.  These included Sun Valley, Idaho.  Then a house in Carmel, near the ocean.  He considered it "home" while she thought of Los Angeles as 'home." Because she traveled with him as well, it does seem as that he was mostly living with her. It was the ranch near Mount Shasta that they had the conversation in which to decide on a second abortion...

These passages from ages 170-171

"What are we gonna do? I asked, gently approaching the subject we'd been postponing.

"Well, baby, you know how I feel," Clint said.

I had learned that I was pregnant.

It was not my first pregnancy. The previous year in the summer of 1978, we had to face the same dilemma, and I had reluctantly agreed to an abortion. IT was a hard and painful decision, but Clint had convinced me that it was the only reasonable answer.  It was difficult for me to argue the point, because Maggie had only just learned about us then, and Kyle and Alison (Clint Eastwood's children with his wife Maggie) had had no time adjust.  However, the concept of abortion was not something I had ever even turned over in my mid: I had never been pregnant, no close friend of mine had been pregnant,  Even Gordon, with whom I naturally talked about everything, only said, "It's something only you and Clint should decide."

"In truth, I had never contemplated having a family or not.  But "abortion," despite my pro-choice" politics, was a horrible word and, if I had allowed myself to think about it, a horrible deed.  But denial can be a short term savior, so I flipped a switch somewhere in my head and heart and had taken denial's hand.  After all, Clint had been a clear and unmovable on what he wanted me to do. I abstracted it all. Through a reliable reference, Clint had arranged for a doctor at UCLA to perform the abortion for me.  A woman.  I liked her immediately; she was sensitive and thoughtful and before I knew it, it was all over.  And I tried to forget.

But now in 1979, we had to face the same decision again.... Before I had met Clint my gynecologist had suggested and fitted for me an IUD. Because my sex life was not very active, he did not think I should be constantly taking birth control polls. Clint complained of the IUD - it was uncomfortable for him, he said.  And he too was not in favor of birth control pills, so he suggested a special clinic at Cedars Hospital where they taught a 'natural' method of birth control.  It was the same rhythm' system that historically has been used to determine the fertile days for those who are attempting to achieve pregnancy......

"Well, you know I feel the same way I did before, sweetie.  I don't really want more children." Clint told me softly.  I'm concerned about you're having another abortion, though."

***

Clint convinced Sondra that it would be best to avoid the pill and prevent any further abortions through sterilization on the basis that this was the healthiest option.

***

I could feel my heart in my throat.  It was not that Clint was taking something away from me that I had absolutely counted on or had consciously planned on... it was just that any decision from which there is no going back is a scary one. (page 171-172)

***

Clint asked Sondra if she wanted to spend her life with him or not.  He reasoned that he was a lot older than she and that the sterilization would be the best thing for their life together.  Her husband Gordon and another friend took her to the hospital; Clint was not going to make an appearance and have the press figure things out.  Then he made a show of giving Sondra the Sherman Oaks house, which she did not want. so he told her to go find herself that she could love and decorate and he would buy it for her.  In 1980 she found her house In Los Angeles - Bel Air. It cost $1.1 million - a deal at the time. Gordon, her husband, helped her design it and renovate it. The Warners Brothers studio also helped.

DO YOU THINK SONDRA SHOULD HAVE LEFT CLIFF A THIS POINT?

C 2024 Mistress Manifesto   Selections

SONDRA LOCKE : THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF BEING A MARRIED WOMAN HE CALLED SNOW WHITE - INVOLVED WITH A MARRIED MAN SHE CALLED DADDY : CLINT EASTWOOD

In these passages Sondra Locke's memoir, she describes the good and bad, the benefits and the accommodations, of accepting life with him unmarried, as his mistress. This is the second time I've read the book from cover to cover and I'm sensitive to two things; One that Sondra had no intention of divorcing her husband who she thought of as her only family and that husband, Gordon, was accepting of his wife, Sondra, being another man's mistress. 

It seems that Clint Eastwood was also happy that Sondra stayed married to Gordon. Two, that Sondra was into the relationship for the long haul, even though Clint remained married and she had two abortions and a tubal ligation, giving up any future children with him or another man, at his insistence. In the mid 1970's Gordon was having a romance with another man.

1975 : "Although Clint was clearly Daddy in the dynamics of our relationship, I seemed to bring out the little boy in him. And although he loved me for my childlike nature, he brought out the woman in me. Clint seemed astonished at his need for me, even admitting that he'd never been faithful to one woman - because he'd never been in love before," he confided.  He even made up a song about it: " She made me monogamous."  That flattered and delighted me. I would never doubt his faithfulness and his love for me. (page 145)

In the beginning when we were in Los Angeles, Clint and I stayed in his private  apartment adjacent to his office on the Warners lot. Soon we moved into his small house in Sherman Oaks, which he and Maggie's (Clint's wife) had acquired during his Rawhide success...... (Sondra hated the architecture and interiors but it was a respite from hotel rooms.)

***

1978 : Almost as if it were a nonevent, he answered, "Maggie wants to go to Hawaii."  I stood there dumbstruck.

"What do you mean a vacation? You didn't mention anything  to me." With Clint everything usually came out in little tiny snippets, but this one really threw me.

"Maggie asked about you and I told her," said Clint.

"What do you mean?  What did she say?"......

"She wants us to go there with the kids to see if we can 'work things out,' save our marriage, I guess," he replied.  (page 151)

(Clint said that he told his wife it was not just an affair and that he loved Sondra. This wife filed for a legal separation but not a divorce and did not actually divorce him till 1984.)

***

...  In retrospect it's interesting how the whole 'marriage or not" issue evolved for me with Clint.  In the beginning, I guess I wanted Clint to be divorced and marry me.  ...  Then, as the years went by somehow it did not seem to matter.  I truly believed that Clint and I did not need papers to validate the commitments we had made to each other.... And Clint knew the nature of Gordon's and my relationship, and was unconcerned that legally we were still married. In my conscious mind then, my marriage with Gordon was financial protection for him.  If something happened to me, he would be saved from unnecessary taxes on any assets I would leave behind. ... 

DO YOU THINK SONDRA's MARRIAGE TO A GAY MAN THAT SHE WOULD NOT GIVE UP MADE HER MORE VULNERABLE TO CLINT?

SONDRA LOCKE : MEETING CLINT EASTWOOD and THEN SOME! THEIR INSTANTANEOUS CONNECTION

Sondra Locke had an acting career before she and her husband, Gordon, came to Los Angeles - Hollywood. Gordon was reportedly homosexual and Sondra stayed married to him. They were living in the city when, in 1975, her agent called her to meet with Clint Eastwood, for consideration for a part in the film The Outlaw Josie Wales, which became a hit. Upon meeting him on the set, Sondra experienced an attraction and Clint began to court her right away.

Excerpt pages 138 - 139:  The next night Clint sat across from me at a table for two in a cozy restaurant only a shot drive from the Wahweap Lodge. We both ordered steak and baked potatoes. It was that kind of place.

His gray-green eyes studied me again.  "I find it hard to think of what to say when I'm with someone I really like," he confided.

My pulse quickened. "Me too." Then my eyes returned to my plate for another long silence.  I wanted to fill the empty space with words.  But what words? I told him how happy I was that Kaufman wanted me to be in this film, ad how much I was looking forward to the experience, ad how much I loved the location and how - and how -

"I was the one who wanted you in the film" he interrupted....

"Really?"

"I'll never forgot meeting you for Breezy, Sondra."

"But you didn't hire me for that film, did you," I teased.

"No, I didn't. Big Mistake." He smiled.  I hadn't noticed how long his eyelashes were, how aquiline his nose. "But I've hired you ow."

"I'm glad," I genuinely blushed.

Even though our instant rapport was completely different from out office meetings, it was still just as real, just as natural. I could almost forget that he was Clint Eastwood, could almost believe he was some handsome stranger that I had happened to meet while on vacation in Arizona.  But after dinner as we walked to the car, I was quickly reminded of exactly who he was when I glanced back toward the restaurant.  There, with their noses glued to the window was every waitress and customer, straining to get a last glimpse.

We were both completely silent as we began that twenty minute drive back to the hotel, where this dram of an evening would end.  Then suddenly, but easily, I felt his large hand touch mine.  My fingers involuntarily responded, instantly wrapping themselves around his - a perfect fit.  He turned and looked at me, and squeezing my hand a little tighter, pressed down on the accelerator, making our car surge forward, faster and faster, back toward the Wahweap Lodge.

Once at my door all that was necessary was another look at each other.  There was no conservation, no maneuvering, it was all as natural as if it were happening for the thousandth time, but as exciting as any first time could be.  He pulled me into his arms and kissed me gently, delicately.  Then lifting me up, like some knight bearing his maiden, he carried me across the room to the bed.  Physically I thought he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen - his heroic face, his tall, tithe, muscular body. And in spite of his size and power, he was a gentle, affectionate, thoughtful, and yet intensely ardent lover.  I thought of nothing except the moment.  There was nothing in his past I wanted to know about, and nothing I wanted to tell, and certainly nothing I wanted to address about my future reality.  We made love that night, not once, but several times.  It was truly magic. Together, it seemed that, through we were two bodies, two hearts... in perfect accord we were one.

The next morning I awoke and found myself alone.  Perhaps it had been a dram.  But there on my pillow was a little scrawled reminder; "Miss you, duck." And I smiled.

From that moment on, Clint and I were inseparable.  Even on the set, working together, we couldn't take our eyes off each together.  He wanted me constantly with him, to go every place with him, even just to watch him play tennis with a friend.  "I've never known anyone that I wanted to be around me all the time,' he said seriously. "I guess I'm usually trying to get away."

C Sondra Locke

C 2024 commentary and selection  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

THE HISTORIC MAX FACTOR MUSEUM IN HOLLYWOOD : AN ACCLAIMED MAKE UP ARTIST TO THE STARS CREATED THEIR IMAGES

THE HOLLYWOOD MAX FACTOR MUSEUM  Max Factor is considered "The Father of Modern Make-Up."  Restored to it's original gilded decor, this is where Factor created the looks for many a starlet and star.  This is where Marilyn Monroe became a blonde and Lucille Ball became a redhead!  The museum contains a vast collection of Marilyn Monroe costumes and artifacts.

BARBARA LODEN : TALENTED ACTOR AND DIRECTOR : MISTRESS, THEN WIFE OF CONTROVERSIAL HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR ELIA KAZAN

BARBARA LODEN

Image from Found A Grave

1932-1980

Who says a man never marries his Mistress? Or that a woman can't accomplish something great just because she had a disadvantaged childhood? The story of our Mistress of the Month, actress Barbara Loden, begins in North Carolina, where she was raised by her grandparents, and ends in Manhattan, with lots of Hollywood in between. 

An actor who studied at the famous Actor's Studio, where James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe also studied, and which was founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, in New York City, Loden became an accomplished actor. The Actor's Studio is famous for an acting technique called "The Method," an emotion-based performance in which the actor embodies the character. Though her study there she was noted by Elia Kazan, who thought her range was limited but that when she was good she was very good. At some point they began an affair which endured.

Barbara Loden, though not a household name, was a working actress on stage, in film and on television. According to the IMBd, a film database, "A one time pin-up beauty and magazine story model, Barbara Loden studied acting in New York in the early 50's and was on the Broadway boards within the decade. She was discovered for films by legendary producer/director Elia Kazan, who was impressed with what she did in a small roll as Montgomery' Clift's secretary in Wild River (1960). He moved her up to feature status with her next tole as Warren Beatty's wanton sister in is classic Splendor in the Grass (1961). As Kazan's protégé she appeared as part of Kazan's stage company in the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater's [production of After the Fall (1964), winning the Tony and Outer Critic's Circle awards for that dazzling performance..." 

As a contemporary of actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood, Barbara was most compared to Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow - blonde sex goddesses. She played a version of Marilyn in "After the Fall" which had been written by Marilyn Monroe's real life ex husband, Arthur Miller and a character that most people - including Marilyn - assumed to be based on Marilyn. Yet, unlike these other actresses, she became a feminist icon after her film Wanda. Was she a feminist?  Probably not, in my opinion, but certainly she was influenced by the 1970's feminist movement.

Though she was in plays and in films, early on she appeared on television as a comedic sexy sidekick as a regular on the Ernie Kovacs Television Show. Her first husband, Larry Joachim, to whom she was married from 1954 to1967, was a TV producer and film distributor and acted as her manager and promoter and got her the audition. Together they had one son but Barbara, while still married to Larry, also had a son with Elia Kazan, with whom she had an on and off again relationship and.  After the death of his long time wife, Molly, married Kazan.

Elia Kazan was married to Molly and had children with her from 1932 to 1963.  Molly died, and that freed Elia to marry Barbara, who Molly did know of as an actor.  

Elia married Barbara in 1967, after she'd been his mistress for several years. Sadly, while they were still married at the time of her early death because of breast cancer, at the age of 48,  Kazan was rumored to be involved with another Mistress at the time. In fact, in his autobiography he admitted to having bedded the wives of a number of men who had funded his films and while the book was published in 1988, years after Barbara's death, he is not very complimentary to her. He called her a "hillbilly" for instance, because she was raised in the Appalachian Mountains in rural poverty. He, however, could be called a Turkish refugee.  As I see it, that she got out of there and attempted a career at all is more important. Barbara had risked moving to New York while still a teenager, and like many young women of her generation, took work she could get in which she relied on her beauty.

Kazan (1909 - 2003) is considered to be of one if the greatest film directors in Hollywood with numerous Oscar nominations for his films which you may have seen such as Streetcar of Desire. His films won eight. In 1999 he was given an honorary Oscar as a director, which was controversial because during the hunt for Communists in the McCarthy era, he had named names and testified against others. Many people in the film industry who were labeled as Communists were blacklisted and could no longer find work. As a result, protestors appeared outside the event. Some speculated that he had a habit of turning against people who had helped him.

About Wanda. This film was a remarkable accomplishment for any woman at the time.  Film schools have been full of women in recent decades but it was the first ever film in which a woman wrote, directed, and starred.  Wanda came out in 1970. This crime drama was filmed on a low budget of about $115,000 and had a crew of four - just one other actor. It's gritty realism was notable and no doubt the character Wanda was inspired by Barbara's childhood, the woman she might have become if she had not moved to New York. It's been reported that for all his accomplishments, Kazan attempted to take credit for her film. 

Barbara discovered she had breast cancer when she was about forty-six. She attempted holistic treatment but it didn't work. Eventually she accepted radiation and then chemotherapy. At the time Kazan wanted a divorce but didn't file because of her illness. In his autobiography, he says that their relationship after the success of Wanda had changed as Barbara became more self assured and less dependent and that they were no longer intimate. However, as she first fought the disease with less traditional or "medical establishment" methods and then in desperation took radiation and chemotherapy, he didn't abandon her. It is said that she had agreed to divorce and that he had another Mistress. 

Though she never approached the celebrity of her peers such as Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, or Marilyn Monroe, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (United States) considered the film Wild River (1960), which Barbara acted in, to be significant.  The film Wanda is also noted by the National Film Registry and has been preserved and refurbished by UCLA.

This month I will link to much more information about Wanda, the film, and Barbara and Elia. Stick with me, won't you, and learn much more about this fascinating woman.

C 2021

References for this months posts include a wide variety or resources, some which we will link to, including Wikis, the IMBd database, YouTube videos, and Elia Kazan's autobiography. A few years ago when I wanted to write about Barbara Loden not so much was available.  Today there is great interest in her. 

You might want to search for Hollywood in my archives.