DOROTHY KILGALLEN'S AFFAIR WITH JOHNNIE RAY: SHE BIRTHS A THIRD CHILD AND THE FATHER IS NOT LIKELY HER HUSBAND :

 Notes and Excerpts:

Dorothy was competitive by nature and liked to win, so when she became a panelist on the television game show What's My Line, she was respected, if not enjoying a camaraderie with her fellow panelists; their various personalities made the show, which involved guessing the profession (i.e. line of work) of a guest. Her career in reportage continued. In 1953 she covered the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II wearing 'a voluminous gown with more than fourteen thousand embroidered jewels and pearls that were encrusted at the scalloped neckline.  She placed a tiara on her head, put on her white mink cape lined in silver lame, grabbed some pencils, and was off to Westminster Abbey. ... Dorothy's apparent fragility continued to bring out the chivalric in the male animal... (page 238)

(With her husband Richard Kollmar's endeavers in the theater and a restaurant called The Left Bank, he was rarely around. She was tremendously busy too. However, she did not want to be seen socially without a male escort and usually found one.  As for Richard, as he hit middle age, he was rarely totally sober and began to bloat while Dorothy was healthy and energetic. She found other men attractive and had lost respect for her husband. Never the less, the couple bought a five story town house right off Park Avenue, a another upgrade in housing, this one taking most of their income. They had been married fourteen years.)

Excerpt: 'The union that produced their third child was suspiciously identifiable. They were late for a dinner party at the Boscowitzes, offering a flushed and clearly bogus excuse.  Hubie and Lillian giggled at their embarrassment and could pinpoint, years later, the evening Dorothy had conceived. ... He was named Kerry after a county seat in Ireland and Ardan for an Irish warrior who, Dorothy wrote, "was said to have the most beautiful singing voice in all Erin.' (page 253)

'In the early part of 1956, Johnnie Ray appeared on 'What's My Line? as a guest celebrity.  The twenty-nine year old singer, sandy-haired and boyishly lanky, was still headlining in clubs, though the hysteria of the early 1950's had cooled. He remained, however, one of Dorothy's pet-pailletted crushes.  Endsville!' (page 278) 

(After this evening, the two saw each other socially and she started being nice to him in her columns. She was 44 and this was her first affair. They even went to The Left Bank restaurant together but she never joined him when he went on the road to tour.)

'Johnnie did not possess the polish and panache to which Dorothy had gravitated all her life.  He was tender, guileless, show-biz smart but essentially neither intellectual nor verbal... (page 279)

'Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie lit up the life she had.  She mentioned him so often and so effusively in the column that he had to tel her to cool it. (page 280)

'She came to Johnnie with staggering emotional and physical appetites  She had not had any sexual relations with Richard for years... (page 283)

'Johnnie was fond of Dorothy and attracted to her, and a bit in awe.  He did not have the macho peer problem that turned so many men off. That she was not regarded by the community as beautiful did not affect his feeling for her or his pride in being seen with her... "She was probably the most feminine woman I've ever known, " Johnny said. "And I always thought she was a pretty lady - the softest thing you ever touched...' (page 283)

'She bought him gifts from Bergdorf's and Cartier including a pair of cuff links with diamonds and sapphires, which he was afraid to wear because of their value.  He sent her lavender roses when he could get them from his little corner florist. "They were almost steel-blue and gorgeous,  I think they were brought in from Holland...  She was as sentimental as a pop tune.  Johnnie was constantly receiving surprise packages... (pages 286-287)

(Some of her friends didn't like him and some dumped her. After some time Dorothy and Johnnie became less discreet. They were excessively together and sometimes openly affectionate.  People thought Dorothy had radically changed.  Johnnie considered himself heterosexual and Dorothy thought of homosexuals as feminine men, which Johnnie was not.)

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DOROTHY KILGALLEN THE AMERICAN 'PRINCESS' WHO COVERED CORONATIONS AND QUEEN ELIZABETH'S ROYAL WEDDING GETS MARRIED TO AN BLUE BLOOD

 

Notes and Excerpts from Kilgallen by Lee Israel

(This is about Dorothy as someone who wanted to be with the rich.)

'Dorothy knew the rich were different. She liked the difference. And she genuinely liked the rich... There was a gauzy, ethereal quality about her...' (page 101)

'Single-handedly, she covered the coronation of George VI for the Journal, filling the entire front page of the paper for days with background stories, profiles, hard news of the coronation and all related social functions. On the Queen Mary and in London, she learned about keno, plover's eggs, curtsies, the proper response to royalty, and the significance of royal ribbons... '

(page 102)

'It is well within the realm of possibility that in Dorothy's perplexing psyche, dusty with moonbeams and communion wafers, she was actually seeing these professional events as a kind of social baptism...' (page 103)

'Dorothy had never been ashamed of her family or her household. Brooklyn was another matter. When she became The Voice of Broadway, she persuaded the family to move into Manhattan...' (page 108)

(Dorothy began to socialize with debutantes younger than she.)

'It was easy to like Dorothy socially.  She was a generous friend and a pleasant companion.  Her manners were impeccable.  She never gossiped or bad-mouthed anyone.  She liked her new life.  She loved her job.  She was proud of the columns she was turning out, though never boastful. She had an innocence that the worldly found amusing, a flight, gesticulating insecurity that the more sensitive of her friends found poignant... (pages 112-113)

(And as for the man she did marry, RIchard Kollmar...)

'He proposed on their sixth date, the courtship having been interrupted while he left town with the show. Dorothy told him that she wanted very much to be his wife, but that the problem of religion had first to be solved. Richard was an Episcopalian, and she would not consider marrying outside the Church. He would have to convert... (pages 116-117)

(His mother objected strongly, his father was softer. He did convert. RIchard then formally asked Dorothy's father for permission to marry her.)

'She wanted "Cholly Knickerbocker" to break the news of her engagement on the Society page.  He did, stressing Richard's generational high marks..." (page 124)  (Cholly was a famous society and goings-on-around-town columnist based in New York City.)

(Dorothy went on to brag about Richard's heritage.)

'The simplest conclusion about the relationship between Dorothy and RIchard is drawn often and harshly by many who knew both of them. RIchard, a striving actor, saw Dorothy, a powerful columnist and thought "That will get me where I want to go," and pursued her. It is a view that appears to redound most negatively upon him, but, in fact, makes a pitiable, foolish, and desperately vulnerable woman of Dorothy.  It is a view held by many who loved her, but nonetheless perceived her as an extraordinarily unattractive woman for whom a noticeable attractive man could not conceivably have had genuine feeling. To hold that view of their relationship is to fail to recognize that power can be as vitally aphrodisiacal when it is held by a woman as when it is held by a man.  Even if Richard did perceive  Dorothy as a kind of powerhouse, it is quite likely that he was aroused by that power.  

 (pages 124-125)

(Dorothy and Richard had a wedding with 800 guests, some of them Hollywood celebrities, many of them rather new to her life. They had a reception at the Viennese Room at the Saint Regis Hotel and then went on a honeymoon to Cuba.)

...'the bride and groom left to honeymoon in Varadero, Cuba.  The entire honeymoon package was a diplomatically wrapped gift presented to Dorothy from the North American gambling syndicate that supported General Gulgencio Batista.' (page 130)

(Cuba at the time was not ruled by Fidel Castro and was in fact a popular resort.)

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