JEWELL DIANNE "LADY" WALKER
1940 - 1991
She was beautiful, vivacious, greedy and lusty and a lot of fun. She made her way up from exotic dancer to a personality on the Houston, Texas social scene where showing off isn't thought of the way it is in say, Puritanical Old Money New England.Before there was Anna Nicole Smith, there was Jewell Dianne Walker, called "Lady," in the life of billionaire James Howard Marshall II.
We might not have known that this influential business man, who came from an illustrious background, who had not only an elite Yale Law School education, but was a member of high society, and who achieved his extreme riches in the petroleum business, had another mistress in his life for near a decade, if it were not for her daughter, Cerece Walker. She wrote a book "Before Anna Nicole": A Mother, a Mistress, A Millionaire & Me : A Lady's Story from Rags to True Riches. That, and that Marshall sued her estate to get money back when, ironically, he found out though her will that she'd had another lover.
The end of the story is that before she died - of a face lift - though her daughter thinks that's mysterious - Lady became a Christian, as did her daughter. They were involved in the Lakewood Church, the massive congregation of John Osteen, also based in Houston. (As it's said, everything is biggest in Texas!) Thus in the end she moved from a personal relationship with a flesh and blood man to a personal relationship with Jesus. This was a great relief to many.
Because of her belief at the end of her life, it's assumed that despite being a Mistress, Lady was saved, forgiven for her indulgent lifestyle with someone else's husband because she recanted and was sorry.
The title of the book also says something that we all need to remember. A Mistress is never "just" a Mistress. She has other experiences, other relationships. In her life she probably experienced all the archetypes of femininity. The Maiden. The Mother. The Lover. The Old Woman. She experiences innocence, seduction, motherhood or nurturing, and perhaps wisdom.
There is much to the story "in between." Born in the World War II era of 1940, Dianne, as her friends called her in her Houston high school, went from rags to riches. But not overnight. She got the clothes, the furs, the jewelry, the cars, the objects of art and exquisite accommodations - once J. Howard Marshall was in her life. Before that she went from relationship to relationship and lived an unstable life, one that dragged Cerece through upheaval. She had several marriages and divorces.
It is said that she was married to one man and living with another when she met J. Howard.
For Dianne, being a Mistress to a rich man was the most stable experience of her life, a total upgrade. The upgrade is one of the reasons why so many are vulnerable to being Kept. She was 42ish when she met the man in his late 70's. By then she had lived through quite a bit. Lady Walker had been a topless dancer and had once been known for a mother-daughter (that's Cerece) stripper act. The billionaire met her in a strip club.
Marshall was a fascinating man, an Alpha Male of the highest order. Images of him in a wheelchair marrying Smith a couple years after Lady's death don't give you that impression, but he was, and he was also most of his life very handsome. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he could have. His namesake son, however, suggested that by the 1980's his dad had started going bonkers about strippers and went from careful with his money to overly, unwisely generous.
How generous was the man with his Mistress Jewell? He gifted her an estimated $15 million in jewelry and other things. He called the gifts consulting fees. Like the courtesans of the Belle Epoch in Paris, Lady bought furniture and art, quality items that were investments but showed off her acquired riches and eventually much of this would be auctioned after her death.
J. Howard Marshall II was born in 1905. He first married Eleanor Pierce in 1931, had two sons, and divorced in 1961. So far his life seemed conventional and what was expected of him. He married again, to Bettye Bohannon, in 1961, and stayed married to her until 1991 though he was with Lady many years at that point. This wife succumbed to Alzheimer's. So when he met Lady, reportedly in 1982, and began a relationship with her, supposedly he said he would marry her if and when Bettye died. What ended their relationship was Lady's own death in 1991.
Likely both grieving and lonely, the billionaire then met the far younger Anna Nicole Smith. He died in 1995 and that would set off legal action between his then wife, Smith, and his family.
This month we'll look into the life of Jewell Dianne "Lady" Walker, who is not the first stripper (or exotic dancer) who became a Mistress of the Month featured here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.
C 2022
References for this post, include the book above, Find - a - Grave, numerous reviews of the book, Cerese Walker's Facebook, Wikis, articles such as Lawyer : Billionaire Wracked With Guilt in the Houston Chronicle - March 1, 2001, by writer Bill Murphy Future posts will contain references and links where needed.
In September 2018 our Mistress of the Month was Gypsy Rose Lee, Stripper Mistress of Waxy Gordon in the Speakeasy Era.
