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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CARRIE STERLING and GEORGE STERLING : AN UNHAPPY MARRIAGE ENDED BUT THEY BOTH COMMIT SUICIDE BY CYANIDE

Caroline “Carrie” Rand Sterling was in a bad marriage and her way out of her unhappy life was suicide. Nora May French commit suicide while staying as a guest in her home. I sought out some information of Carrie and George aside this book which has been the primary reference for this month's posts. See the link below for a good explanation of their suicides!

****

Nora May French commit suicide in 1907 by cyanide. She was unmarried.

Carrie Sterling commit suicide in 1918 by cyanide. 

George Sterling commit suicide in 1926 by cyanide. These two were husband and wife.

As I stated when I first began the review and selection of excerpts from this book, I felt the title implying a love triangle wasn't quite accurate. I stick by that. 

One of the problems of implying a Love Triangle is that all three persons are in love with each other, romantically and (usually) sexually involved as well, at the same time, which can also imply that one or all of them are bisexual. Rather it seems Carrie Sterling was a traditional wife with traditional expectations who was humiliated and disappointed in her husband. If she preferred not to be a divorced woman because she had to depend on George to support the two of them (no children!) well - He did try hard but his interest in being a poet and impressing his fellows at the Bohemian Club was more important as was what was likely alcoholism and sex addiction. George would turn down paying work to write a play instead. It got to where George had to go out hunting for wildlife to feed the two of them - and guests. Meanwhile his dream of turning Carmel into an artists and writers colony was never fulfilled by his attempts to market the town as such. He wanted the literary luminaries and got average people to buy or built or rent.

Excerpt pages 126-127: (Remarking on the Bohemian Club and other visitors to Carmel and the Sterlings where the emphasis was on nature.)

They could have just bought a can of abalone from the grocery store and saved themselves the trouble. The verses (of George's song about living on abalone) began to grate on Carrie's nerves. Midway through July she had seen one rich person too many sing about poverty while walloping a shellfish. She had always thought that her marriage had allowed her to escape her mother's fate of running a boardinghouse, but now, making up the spare room for every new guest, she realized how wrong she'd been. She was beginning to wonder if she couldn't kick them al out and take $50 for a decent, stable, nonartistic tenant.

Crass as charging rent for boarders might be, it would at least bring in some money Otherwise, what was she getting out of Carme's success? She had abandoned the notion that Carme would reform George. His halfhearted attempts at sobriety had all failed. At the age of forty, he was drinking as if he were still twenty years old. If anything, he was getting worse, while she scraped pots and pans till her knuckles were raw. Meanwhile, her sisters Mrs. Havens and Mrs. Maxwell, were wearing furs on their backs and diamonds around their wrists.

George went off to the Bohemian Club and spent two weeks camping with Jimmy Hopper and Harry Lafler.  All three of these men had some sort of affair with Nora May French. 

So, my readers, I cannot help but feel they passed her around.  

HATI and SKOLL GALLERY ; CARMEL and THE STERLINGS SUICIDES  This link has some photos. Portrait of Carrie Sterling! As well as some poetry George Sterling left.

Excerpt: 

But returning to Carrie, Carrie divorced George Sterling in 1914, after which she lived in Piedmont, California, her sister Lila Havens having found her a job as curator at the Piedmont Art Gallery, which contained Lila’s husband’s private art collection. It is said, that she and George Sterling regretted their separation and divorce. On November 17, 1918 in her Piedmont bedroom Carrie put on an elegant gown, put Chopin’s “Funeral March” on the Victrola, and drank a vial of cyanide.

Eight years later to the day, in the early morning hours of November 17, 1926, a despondent George Sterling locked himself in his room at the Bohemian Club and he too died by drinking potassium cyanide....

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BOHEMIAN POET NORA MAY FRENCH : AN EARLY 20th CENTURY LOVE GONE WRONG STORY OF MONTEREY CALIFORNIA : THE CYANIDE LOVE TRIANGLE

NORA MAY FRENCH

 1881-1907

photo from Wikipedia

identified as Nora May French as photographed by Arnold Genthe

The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast is a primary reference for this month's posts.

Was it actually a LOVE TRIANGLE? 

I think the subtitle of 'The Gilded Edge' which is 'Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America' is a bit unfair. 

The three persons were: Nora May French, a turn-of-the-century poet who was talented and esteemed, but who seems to have disappeared from American Literature, and a young woman though she had emerged as a brilliant poet before her death. Carrie Sterling, married to George Sterling, whose own ambitions were not literary but who, through her husband, met and tangled with some of those, such as writer Jack London, who the Literary Canon well knows, as well as their women. Carrie often played hostess and was the wife who would stick with a bad marriage for a long time since there was social status to be mindful of. George Sterling, who was instrumental in the establishment of Carmel as an artists colony through his role as real estate agent, but who would much rather have made his living as a poet himself; My take on George is that he was alcoholic and a womanizer and not all that well psychologically. But was Nora May French to blame? 

George went out of his way to try to convince people to move to Carmel, a small town in the Monterey Bay, south of San Francisco. He encouraged group photos that made some of these artists and writers look cozy and implied they were moving there or buying real estate as a marketing strategy but not the whole truth. The big names never bought in and he struggled for acceptance by them in part because his talent as a poet never equaled theirs. History may be a bit more fair to the struggling George than this author, for he was a founder of the Bohemian Club, which is now the notorious Bohemian Grove.

These three people were not in a triad and they did not commit suicide together, but I bet because of the title of the book you thought so. Although it's complicated, I wasn't convinced that the suicide of Nora or that of George's wife, Carrie, or the eventual suicide of George was entirely motivated by relationship frustration or loss of love. Rather it was also about money - the natural need for it in this material world - and especially so for women at a time when few could support themselves; imagine any poet at any time thinking their poetry would bring in money enough. George Sterling was a founder of the Bohemian Club which endures to this day as the Bohemian Grove, but he eventually went broke.

To her credit, author Catherine Prendergast, did some difficult investigative research to bring us Nora May French, who did indeed commit suicide by cyanide in 1907, and whose poetry - and very mood - inspired copycat suicides! We know that because some of those who commit suicide did so with copies of her poetic verses on them!

Nora's end at the age of twenty-six made her infamous. Headlines remarked on her talent and beauty, calling her witty, spirited, and talented. So the media as it existed decades ago implied there was not just a shame but a mystery. There was a lot of blaming among the men who had affairs with her and it seems Nora was pregnancy prone too.

Why is so little about Nora May French preserved?  Was it because of her sad end or because she was a woman? Prendergast sees the difficulty in this research a problem of sexism. 

As I read this book from cover to cover, I couldn't help but think about the way marriage was about the only way a woman could survive back in the day. Nora May French was not the first or last woman to ever have sex before marriage or an affair with a married man/men, but she needed marriage. Society was not set up for most women to be independent of men or to earn their own money and support themselves and Nora's experience with paid employment was unfulfilling and exhausting. What any woman with creative talent, such as a writer who needed to write, was a patron or a husband rich enough to support her so she would not have to work for income herself and could keep writing. He had to be the type who didn't want a conventional wife and be someone who loved the arts and might find some prestige in having a poet as a wife..

Was Nora so foolish to have sex without marriage and also not have used contraception?  Was that "Bohemian" of her? We don't know if she had access to contraception or not. This story includes abortion. At this time in the United States when abortion rights have been cut in some states, I think about how hard it is was to be a woman with no financial support when a having and raising a child born outside of marriage. The child would be as socially unacceptable as its mother.

Nora had two abortions unmarried, at a time when a woman might, with the right connections to the right doctor, have a "therapeutic" abortion at a hospital, or brew an herbal potion that would cause miscarriage, or understand that some over-the-counter women's remedies sold at the pharmacy were intended to do the same. One was a surgical horror and the other by pills. In both cases she risked not only the ruin of her reputation but that of her family. It seems she very well may have been pregnant again when she suicided.

Nora May French came from a "good" family with ties to some historical persons such as a founder of the Wells Fargo Bank on her mother's side. However, it seems that her father, the son of an Illinois governor, experienced some failures, possibly embezzling money while at a job at a college and, with drought and a stock market crash in 1893, the family fell into poverty quickly. Nora was sent to live with a relative (ironically named Uncle Cash) who might have led her to a good marriage. She lived with him in New York and he sent her to the Art Students League but she had a indiscretion with a man and was sent home. She became the black sheep of her family.

Though she might be on the marriage market without a dowry or any expectation of an inheritance, while working as a seamstress - a lowly profession - in a leather factory, she did promise to marry a young man. 

Excerpt page 54: " ... Working in a leather factory had taken its toll on her body and spirit, Her fingers had grown dull from working the needle into the leather, her eyes strained in the low light, and she found herself too tired at night to think of lifting a pen. Her mind began to slow down, sitting among women who had nothing better to talk about than when they would get married and leave. One morning she woke up and realized that she had become one of them. She couldn't wait to get married and leave.  (Note that she was sewing leather gloves.)

Then Lee proposed. At first, she hesitated She told him everything about herself, how she was happiest wandering in the woods, how she lived to write poems, and how she would never be just an ordinary girl, if that was what he wanted..."

The engagement brought her back into approval of Uncle Cash who sent a money present and her parents relaxed that she would have a husband. However, Lee soon complained of how much time she spent writing and reminded her to prepare to be a wife and mother such as learning to cook. Female relatives of his also pressured her to conform.

In 1904, a month before the wedding, she broke the engagement. At the age of twenty-three she decided she may as well be a spinster. She sent her work out and her poetry was published in newspapers and literary journals. Nora gained a literary reputation. 

Once on the West Coast, a little older but still in her twenties, and already a published poet, Nora was involved in the Bohemian lifestyle, perhaps an experimental lifestyle at best, in which artists, writers sought a break from convention. That said, she got involved with married men and doing so did not prevent her from having sex or heartbreaks.

There was also another man who was interested in marriage with her for a while - or so it was discussed when she became pregnant - retired British Army Captain Alan Hiley of Santa Cruz, California, who was married, and a muse.

She had to live with someone, if not her sister who did not like San Francisco, then a couple such as Carrie and George Sterling. George was connected to the Bohemian lifestyle of San Francisco and also the founding of the Bohemian Club, now called The Bohemian Grove. Instead of just staying  as a house guest of the Sterlings until she married, the end of another opportunity for marriage turned her into more of a permanent guest. It was there at their house that she took the poison.

While Nora did have an affair with George, and he mourned her, he was not her only man.  And while she did use pills to miscarry, she did not take her life immediately after that. Nor was Nora the womanizing George's only affair while married. Carrie Sterling had lost any expectation that her husband would be entirely devoted or satisfied with her. Carrie had thought her marriage to George was advantageous and had to have been disappointed in his character.

Nora commit suicide in 1907 by cyanide.

Carrie commit suicide in 1918 by cyanide.

George commit suicide in 1926 by cyanide.

These suicides were years apart. I just can't call this a love triangle and am not convinced Nora was the reason for the suicides of Carrie or George.

For me, the story of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, when estimates are that up to 80% of that city was destroyed, and the resulting influx of refugees into Monterey, and how that influenced the real estate sales was of interest too. People were, like today's homeless, living in tents with their families, sometimes in the backyards of relatives or friends. 

Which brings up my question about Carmel-By-The-Sea and just how "Bohemian" and unconventional it was. You don't have to be artistic or "Bohemian" to be unhappily married or to commit adultery or to have affairs these days. Rather I think the people in this book were stuck in their circumstances including class and status expectations that they be married. Then, there is always the issue of money.

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

AYN : MRS. FRANK O'CONNOR and FRANK O'CONNOR : MR. AYN RAND : FAME AND FINANCIAL SUCCESS LEAD TO A DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE

Missy here!

In 1926, Ayn Rand first sighted Frank O'Connor, born in Ohio in 1897, and then twenty-nine, when he was a background actor. He had two brothers settled in Hollywood before he came. He eventually moved into some speaking roles.  They were married in 1929, about the time that her Visa was to expire.

Excerpt pages 66-67: There is no doubt that Ayn Rand did stalk Frank O'Connor.... She ambled over to his side, stuck out her foot, and tripped him. He apologized for stepping on her toes, and they exchanged names... Later that day, she waited for him on the weekly parole line, and they spoke to each other again. And then he disappeared for nine long months...

Rand was heartbroken, and obsessed....

She saw him again in the Hollywood branch of the public library, in May 1927...  Ayn and Frank began to see each other in the evenings and on weekends... Perhaps for the first time in her life, Rand was transparently, completely happy....  O'Connor probably gave her her first kiss; he was her first and, for a long time, only lover...

***

After some financial success due to her screenplay and authorship, in particular her novel The Fountainhead, which kept selling briskly, and after living in a cramped apartment, the couple moved to a house in the San Fernando Valley - Chatsworth - thirteen acres of farmland. The house had been designed for director Josef von Sternberg and his mistress Marlene Dietrich in 1935, a then modern steel and glass design!  Frank became a gentleman farmer while they could afford a cook, maid, and handyman. However, despite this new lifestyle, despite having her own office on the studio lot at Paramount where she wrote screenplays, Ayn considered New York City to be her spiritual home, They traveled there on business trips. She was famous now and her confidence was at an all time high. She began to attract young men as friends, was socializing and entertaining politically conservative friends.

In 1951 she told friends they were moving to New York. Soon they were driving cross-country to the city, where a rental apartment had been arranged for them. Maybe Frank believed it was temporary when he left his beloved farm in the care of others - perhaps five years, or seven, but they would never live in California again. Nathaniel Branden and his wife, Barbara, lived in New York.

Excerpt  page 237:  No one who knew O'Connor believed that he willingly left the San Fernando Valley ranch.  "That property was his business and his world," said Hill. "Ayn knew it.  There was no way she didn't know how badly she was hurting Frank."

***

Frank began working at a florist and took up painting...  By 1957 Ayn and Nathaniel were neighbors, spending time with each other two to three times a week, holding hands and hugging good-bye, though they were both married.  They were telling others they were "soulmates."  It took a while, since these actions were often in front of their spouses, but Nathaniel's wife Barbara finally realized that Ayn was in love with her husband and said so.

Excerpt page 255: ...Now at the height of her mental and emotional power (he was twenty-four and she was forty-nine), she had been rehearsing just such a moment of triangulated passion for at least half her life.  Branden, as flattered and incautious as he may have been, was out of his depth.  For all his flirtatiousness, he had never really contemplated an actual affair with his literary and intellectual idol, he later said...

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LILLIES

 

UNHEALTHY LOVE TRIANGLE or HEALTHY TRIAD? ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES ARE NOT AUTOMATIC EVIDENCE OF 'LOW SELF ESTEEM'

Any time you want to explore or being in an ALTERNATIVE RELATIONSHIP, such as a Love Triangle or Triad,(notice I did not say Hate Triangle) you are bound to hear criticism. It seems to me that the Psychology Profession is as good as Fundamentalist Christianity in pushing for "normality,' that is heterosexual relationships in which there is one female with one male or sometimes homosexual ones that are one to on. Though stats show how many unions end in divorce, the goal is to be in this one plus one relationship forever. I dare say that because of the advice columns I read that are authored, usually by a woman therapist (since now a degree and profession license makes anyone an expert), who tells other women that the only reason they get into or accept being part of triad (such as being Kept or involved with a person married to someone else) is LOW SELF ESTEEM. (Can't we just call it Sin?)

I do not believe that. I would say that a person who is sharing a person with another person, who is being treated well, is better off than a person who has only one person to his or her self and is being abused in the relationship.  It would say it is better to be unmarried, single, alone- not lonely, and celibate, rather than be in a bad relationship for the sake of being in one. 

There IS such a thing as LOW SELF ESTEEM but it could be argued that STAYING IN DYSFUNCTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS such as staying married or at a job where someone abuses you would be as much evidence or more. Further, maybe it's because women are more apt to ask for advice than men, but the advice I read in such columns does seem to be aimed at women more so than men.

Some men get abused in the workplace and in marriages and other relationships too and don't up and leave. But staying in is thought of as honorable, even the role of a man, evidence of masculinity, appraised as he is 'soldiering' on, doing his duty. So maybe what's being said is that what is honorable for men is dishonorable for women?

It's worth mentioning here that throughout history there have been what we call ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES which were simply considered to be normality at the time. We may not find we'd want to recreate what it was for a woman to live in Ancient Rome, or China before Communism, or to be the member of certain African tribes where more than one wife was (and is) allowed and encouraged, but can we say that all those women had and have 'low self esteem?" We cannot.  

So is nonconformity 'low self esteem?'

One recent advice column I read suggested that a woman who is 'in love' with two men at the same time has a Personality Disorder and is only looking for grief. Excuse me? Human beings seem to be so capable of various forms of hatred as we observe man's inhumanity to man - war - violence - but not various forms of love?  

As for Personality Disorders, they do exist, but I happen to know a couple who have celebrated over 50 years of marriage together, getting the praise of their church and their community, who privately live an extremely screwed up life. Their children and grandchildren are the same. Neither of these people have any friends outside of the marriage, which must seem to be too threatening for them. There's always drama over there. It's difficult to even visit them for all the screaming and yelling, arguing, and emotional blackmail they can't even control while having a visitor. I go home to recoup after a visit with them. 

You can so love more than one person at a time.  I'll bet you already do. Consider the love of parents or other relatives, your best friends, your students or classmates, your children, people at your club, your pets (I do think they are persons, sentient beings) and the very many ways there are to love! 

Sometimes it is more difficult to CHOOSE because you feel such pressure to CHOOSE. The entire world is set up for two people to partner. Or someone in the Triad feels forced to so that imbalances things. No doubt about that pressure.  Which is why so many people choose also not to tell their boss, their parents, their relatives, their children, even their minister or priest.  They don't want to hear it. They should, however, be able to trust so they can confide in a therapist.

Now don't get me wrong, I KNOW THAT ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES are MINORITY LIFESTYLES. And like many a minority, living against the social conventions that dominate, you may need support. The support is supposed to come from a therapist who is NOT TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO LIVE, but HELPING YOU DECIDE WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU. (And if one of them is diagnosing you, billing an insurance company, and not telling YOU what the diagnosis is, well, would an MD do this? Is their professional opinion none of your business? That's disrespectful of you.)

Psychology is interesting. We know a whole lot more about it than we used to. Here's the thing about labels such as diagnosis. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they are just traps.  

Sometimes it's best to fire your therapist. And when they spew their PERSONAL OPINIONS or AGENDA based on the notion that they are trained as THERAPISTS and thus authorities in your life, well, something is amiss there.

It's my opinion that if you feel you need therapy because of an ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE, it may be best to seek someone who is practicing in the LGBTQ community, who has experience with Alternative Lifestyles.

Missy

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THE JEANETTE MACDONALD - NELSON EDDY 30 YEAR AFFAIR : THE SOPRANO AND THE BARITONE NEVER LET GO OF EACH OTHER WHILE MARRIED TO OTHERS

JEANETTE MACDONALD and NELSON EDDY

(1903-1965) and (1901-1967)

TRAGIC SWEETHEARTS 

The heartbreaking story of Golden Hollywood Era legends Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy is included here at Mistress Manifesto, not because Jeannette was Kept by Nelson or Nelson was Kept by Jeanette; who knows what, if any, financial arrangements in this convoluted plot were. It's because these two people, who had so much going on between them personally, also portrayed romantic couples on screen, married others and stayed married to them - as if everyone had to be married to someone - but were each other's real sweethearts for 30 (thirty!) years. 

While claiming platonic friendship and a good working relationship only, they both lived compromised lives in which everyone involved came to accept the limitations. No doubt about it, they committed adultery. How much choice did they have? Little is known about how Nelson and his wife got on but they never had children. However, the man Jeanette married, Gene Raymond, was not heterosexual and there is no reason to think they had sex - other than her many pregnancies - which are attributed to Nelson. Sadly, though pregnant eight times, each pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.

Author Sharon Rich, who headed a Jeanette MacDonald fan club, made it her life's work to learn everything she could about the singing comedic actress who she had such admiration for. Her book was meticulously researched and the intent was to bring us the whole truth. The title of the book could have been, in my opinion, "Jeanette MacDonald : Victim of Louis B. Mayer."

Their chemistry on screen was undeniable, the songs they sang together romantic and memorable, but the enduring love story of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy is actually a tragic tale, and the megalomaniac monster in the middle was the infamous Louis B. Mayer,  the producer of films and the co-founder, in 1924, of film studio MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). By his actions it is clear that he owned people and not just their labor. When a person signed a contract with his studio, they gave up control of their lives, personal and public. 

I wonder why there had not been more rebellion back in the day. I'm going to make a judgement call and say that back in the day people were raised to obey authority figures and that most everyone needs a job. But these two had amazing careers to consider.

Jeanette MacDonald appeared on Broadway and had signed with another studio and then switched again. In 1933 she signed her contract with MGM.

MacDonald and Eddy were at the height of their individual and coupled fame during the Great Depression, and made eight films together, between 1935 and 1942. Their films that made millions for MGM. Their fans would go to see their films repeatedly, taken with their beauty, their duets, their chemistry. Each of them had solo singing careers as well. Their concerts as well as their films were mega-hits. Jeanette was a soprano with an almost three octave range. Baritone Nelson Eddy was the highest paid singer in the world for a good decade.

So called 'morals clauses' in film studio contracts were about keeping the public from perceiving the reality of private lives. Discretion was strongly advised when it came to unconventional sexuality and relationships. The American public was church-going and did not approve of divorce so stars had to appear to be heterosexual and faithfully married. For those who signed the studio contract and who were disobedient, there was punishment, anything from from being forced to agree to abortions to being totally ruined. Not for nothing that phrase, "You'll never work in this town again." Mayer and people who worked for him or feared him stayed in line. Jeanette and Nelson settled into their relationship with many in the business in the know and protecting them - providing sympathy and understanding - except for Mayer. 

Yet, Jeanette and Nelson were compelled to be with each other, and perhaps being told no, the on and off again nature of their embroilment, created a mutual obsession.

We've probably all known - or been - people who got embroiled in a relationship that they seem to live for or that kept them living. That seems to be the case here.

The two operatic singer-actors met in 1933, and may have had some involvement before they met again to work together in 1935  It was love at first sight, at least for him. She was considered cold or prudish by many though she was not. He wooed her, with  jewelry, with flowers delivered on a daily basis, and intense flirtations.  

Nelson asked Jeanette to marry him before either of them were married to someone else but she referenced her career. He asked many times. She told friends that she did not want an Open marriage and did not trust what he might do when on long concert tours. She also said that she did not believe she could guarantee anyone that her love would last the years. Yet it apparently did.

It took a year for the relationship to go all the way sexually. Maybe longer. She had a past and was no virgin. Their first encounter may have been date rape. He apologized and did much better next time, gaining her forgiveness. There would come a point where she would say she had tired of his 'sex attacks.'  While there may have been times when they tried to reconfigure their relationship - to platonic friendship - to just lust - it endured for life and through eight miscarriages.  

She got pregnant that first time. He wanted to get married in Reno right away but she called Mayer. She had to ask his permission to marry, have a child, or divorce.  He was livid and demanded she abort and break up with Nelson.*  

The battle between Mayer and Eddy would go on for years. 

About half way through the book called, Sweethearts, which is the primary reference for this month's posts, when I was on the part about Jeanette's second pregnancy, I had to take a break. 

 

Was this what I was looking for in a subject for this blog? I had never heard of MacDonald or Nelson or knew nothing about them on screen or off. I did not know that she was once the most famous and successful star in Hollywood. I wanted to understand why someone so famous, who I imagine would have many men interested in her, stayed with men who were not right for her. If a woman with such beauty and talent and who has earned some very good money stays with a man who is wrong, what about all of those women who do not have those advantages?  Perhaps Jeanette wanted to be a role model to the public even if it meant living a lie. So I watched videos on YouTube. I listened to these talents singing, heard their impressive voices, did more research. 

As personalities, she and Nelson may have liked drama, high highs and low lows and she may have been provocative. I suspect she was addicted to being on an emotional roller-coaster, as was Eddy. But there is more to it. That more may just have been true love.

Still, no doubt in my mind, Jeanette MacDonald, for all her red-headed beauty, her verve, her talent as a singer and comedic actress, was an abused woman. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, and not by just one person. Though she projected happiness in public, that was sometimes good acting - even excellent acting.  She was considered a perfectionist on the set, demanding of herself and a total pro, yet she did not take care to control her fertility. Contraception was available.

Just to start their relationship with complications, Jeanette admitted to Nelson early on that she was having sex with Mayer. Her mother even thought that she was Mayer's mistress. It's claimed that Meyer actually loved her, though he expected sex from any woman who wanted to become a film star. We can say that he abused her personally by giving her little to no choice and she was not the first or last to experience such interference.  

What's more, the man that she married instead of Nelson was homosexual. There is a suggestion here that Jeanette was abused by Nelson Eddy before and after her marriage to this husband. Her husband was also abusive to her. Perhaps not every day or for years on end, but when the relationships were down.

In 1942, both stars were finally free of MGM contracts.  Times were changing. New talent emerged.  However, the two performed together on radio and eventually Jeanette returned to MGM and did two more films - but without Nelson. The couple spent more time than ever, with Nelson especially not caring who knew the truth. In 1946 he thought the honorable thing to do was to officially break with Jeanette. He threw himself into religion. Of course, they went back together again. This would be their pattern until Jeanette was too ill.

Jeanette MacDonald's health was precarious for years as a heart condition withered her away.  Nelson's sense that she was fragile from the beginning was right. Nelson was heartbroken when she died and everyone gave him sympathy but he was only a pall bearer. Her husband, for whom she had provided cover for his homosexuality for years, took charge and may have even kept Nelson from her in the end, claiming the husband's place in her last days.

Nelson didn't live a whole lot longer.

This month I'll explore the relationship between these two tragic sweethearts in more depth and perhaps we will all come to understand the nature of their thirty year romance. I've chosen some telling excerpts and will make commentary along the way.

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

***

Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot features a number of Hollywood personalities in these posts. You can search for the word Hollywood to bring them up. 

But as I read about opera singer Jeanette MacDonald, I thought about opera singer Maria Callas. MARIA CALLAS OPERA DIVA and MISTRESS OF ARI ONASSIS was featured here in August 2010

Another person who figures into the MGM - Louis B. Mayer story is MGM "Fixer" Mannix.  You can read about him in: GEORGE REEVES : Superman and Kept Man: So What? His Lady's Husband Had a Mistress Too!  in My 2013

HER WELL EARNED REPUTATION AS A SEDUCTRESS : AN OPEN MARRIAGE WITH A MUCH YOUNGER HUSBAND

It seems that Lady Idina Sackville well earned her reputation as a seductress and that she may've even sought out scandal.  If there was inner torment, she hid it well. But while her reputation was trashed, she looked immaculate, having clothing made for her by Molyneux, wearing a bosom-flattening androgynous style that was fashion in that moment, which we are familiar with as that of the Flapper, the liberated woman of the 1920's.  She even had furs she had been given as wedding presents redesigned.

Thirty years old, her wild life well known, Idina did find love again. This time one of Britain's most eligible bachelors was penniless but much younger, only twenty-one to her thirty. Josslyn Hay would one day inherit a Scottish earldom and climb socially by inheritance but until then he was out for fun. Idina called Joss "My Darling Lion." Charles Gordon, her second husband, wanted to marry someone else and easily gave a divorce so that Idina and Joss could marry. The new couple made it on the cover of the society tell-all magazine Tatler.

A small civil marriage again, no one from Joss's family attended. In fact, they were unaware of it for several months and were angry when they found out but Idina won them over. That done, Idina took her third husband to Africa, to Kenya, to that dream of a life there free of all expectations.

Here again she came under criticism. Society forgave affairs, not repeated marriage. She was committing treason to her class. Suspicion was that she was mothering her husband instead of mothering her own sons. Expecting an Open Marriage this time around, Joss began having affairs immediately. Idina claimed she did not mind. He had an affair with an American heiress, Alice de Janze, and the two women shared him. Eventually they became friends both awaiting his return from some other woman's bed.

Idina may have married Joss in an attempt to keep him or control him.  She was soon to learn that he was always on a hunt for sexual adventures with other women.

Not to be outdone by a husband, Idina set the stage for a home to host wild parties. In Nairobi she managed to fill a house she had built with beautiful antiques and carpets brought from England and defied the African heat and soil by planting a green lawn and English flower beds. British settlers attempted to ranch but imported cattle and sheep that did not do well in the sun. These settlers remained as British as they could considering. They protected themselves from the sun with hats. Some of them thought Idina, who shockingly got sunburned and pragmatically wore pants, had "gone native." (Native Kenyans often had several wives.)

But where to find sex party participants?  The Muthaiga Club was where the newly landed gentry went for time off.  Many of these African adventurers were the second sons who had no birthright inheritance. All regarded extramarital sex as normal. The settlers lived miles apart, trying to establish their own working farms and ranches. Their opportunities to meet and socialize with one another and beat the isolation and boredom were limited to livestock auctions and horse races and the club. During Race Week in Nairobi, evening balls gave women the opportunity to look their best, dress in the latest fashions, and show off their expensive jewelry. They had not entirely left their Britishness or their class attitudes behind. While not every party was thrown with the intention to swing, Idina's invitations were sought after. Invitees were willing to drive hours to spend a "weekend" at her home. There they were attended to by servants, took hot baths, put on silk pajamas, and started drinking and entertaining themselves with talk about farming and books, pulling 'stunts' and revving up for Idina's swinger games.

But then Idina got pregnant. Concerned that she'd loose Joss over her pregnancy, she asked  Alice de Janze to move in.  Married for four years and the mother of two, Alice and her husband arrived in December 1925. Alice immediately started an affair with Joss. Asked if she minded, Idina replied that Alice was her best friend.

She gave birth to a daughter who was clearly Joss's.  This was her second chance to be a mother. He had no need for a male heir. 

Her efforts to keep Joss ultimately failed. 

Joss qualified as a man who preferred to be Kept by a woman - at least until he inherited. While out and about he met the second wife of Cyril Ramsey-Hill, Molly, born Mary Maude in London in 1893.  Like Idina, she had also given up a child in another marriage to marry Cyril. Molly was less than a year younger than Idina, so still an older woman for Joss. However, Molly had a private income that outshone Idina's. 

Joss knew Idina and he were drained financially and sexually. As a man after a fortune, he deliberately befriended Molly's husband so that he could be invited to spend time with Molly at their much more impressive house. Then, while Cyril was out of the country taking care of business, Joss moved in on Molly, and despite almost dying of malaria, abandoned Idina.  

Joss' parents became the new Earl and Countess of Errol and Joss and Idina became Lord and Lady Kilmarnock, he got a small but decent amount of money, which gave him independence rather than the opportunity to pay back some of the bills he and Idina had, and all their hard work was for naught.  The bank foreclosed on their property. 

Idina Sackville's third marriage was over and soon she would deposit her daughter with relatives in England. It was the spring of 1928, and she was thirty-five years old. Back in London her designer friend Molyneux let her earn some income by being a showroom model.  Her willingness to work was portrayed as her displaying her body to earn a living by The Express and she sued - and won.  This time around Idina also was the one to ask for and win a divorce.  She got it on the grounds that Joss had cheated on her with Mrs. Ramsey-Hill.

C 2022 Mistress Manfiesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

Excerpts are from The Bolter, a book by Frances Osborne

TO MY DEVOTED MISTRESS MANIFESTO READERS!

I'll be publishing posts for November 2018 starting tomorrow.  I'll be splitting the month by first revisiting one of the Kept Men I covered a few years ago and then move into FASHION oriented six weeks into the New Year with an Honorary Mistress of the Month for December! 

What a fast paced year this 2018 has been, and as has happened before, just when I wonder if I'm going to run out of Mistresses and Mantresses to cover, I hear about more!   Do you know of a Kept Man or Woman I should be covering?  Are you a Kept Man or Woman? Please leave a comment with that information!  Books, links, etc. would be appreciated.

I encourage you to go through my archives to find so very many Kept people who have been covered over the years; I reworked the GUIDE in PAGES so it should be easy for you to scan through!

THANK YOU FOR READING MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT!

JOHNNY WINTER : I'M YOURS and I'M HERS

THE SHOWDOWN BETWEEN MISTRESS EVEY and CARLY SIMON (part two)

From CARLY SIMON'S memoir BOYS IN THE TREES. 


NOTES: Carly Simon decided it was time to meet the woman that her husband was keeping in an apartment she had never been to, one that he used for rehearsals. After walking the streets of New York City in the dark, stopping at 2 am at a Cuban restaurant, where the waiter tells her that JAMES TAYLOR and his Mistress also come in there.  He advises her to Love her husband. She arrives at the building in the middle of the night.  When she lets herself in with the key she secretly had copied, she hears a woman wailing and one of James' favorite pieces of music being played on a stereo from the 4th floor apartment.  Before she can use the key again, the apartment door opens. 

There stands Evey, who at first mesmerizes Carly with her beauty but also physical difference.  Carly can't help put compare her hands and feet.  The woman invites her inside.  No doubt tipped off that his wife is on the way, this encounter which Carly is determined will be civilized, not a cat fight, proves that her husband has betrayed her beyond the physical.  Evey is angry with her for James and ready to tell her off.

Seeing a razor blade, the notion of suicide passes through Carly's mind for a moment until she remembers she has the responsibility of her children.  It is clear, after hearing all the lies that James has told against Carly, lies that Evey wholeheartedly believes, that the Mistress is not the problem.  As I read this excerpt, I had to feel so sad for both women.  Read by e-book in Overdrive, I've referenced the pages.

EXCERPT: 
"She stood there, hair in her eyes, which were wide with what I interpreted as terror and angst.  The woman before me, Evey, was tiny and muscular.  She wore a black leotard, dance pants, and small "dance slippers - size four, I guessed.  Her torso was beautifully molded and her hands were white, perfect, not a single mark on them, only a band on the fourth finger.... 1719-1720 e-book (Missy here: What hand? Is this a wedding type band from Jamie?)

EXCERPTS from 1721-1722-1723-1724 e-book :
"I'm trying hard here," I said.... "I want us to be the best we can both be."

"No you're not," she replied in her broken English.  "Jamie doesn't love you.  Don't you know that?  He calls you a JAP - and he told me you buy big Mercedes Convertible, and drive around California trying to be a movie star, but you're not pretty enough." She continued in this vein, "Jamie had told her that I built a swimming pool because I couldn't bear to step on any seaweed or any rocks beneath my feet, where real people go swimming.
Jamie had also told her I disliked the feeling of sand and that if any got in the house, I would take a bottle of spray cleaner out from under the sink and spray out all the sand as if it was some dangerous fungus.  Hmm... not a bad idea. ...

EXCERPTS 1725-1726 e-book
"He says you spend all day shopping and buying fur coats and that you are dressing up your children just like you.  He tells me you nurse your little boy still and that he will grow up to be a fairy." Evey's voice rose, "And don't thick I don't know the difference between "fairy tale" and "Fairy."

EXCERPTS 1727-1728
"He says you don't really sing well and that you spend all day getting bikini waxes so you look good for all your rich boyfriends who spend planes for you all over the world...He says you won't even notice when he is out of the house because you're so in love with your diamonds and fancy shoes and you try them on in front of your mirror.  You are a party girl.  You are a bitch.  A city girl, a lazy playgirl.  What did he call you?  Yes - a swashbuckler - that's it."

JOHN C. HOLMES and DAWN SCHILLER BECOME DRUG ADDICTS and HE TURNS HER INTO A PROSTITUTE

THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND - Surviving John Holmes
By DAWN SCHILLER, C  2010,  is published by Medallion Press

MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW and EXCERPTS

After we have come to understand the slow seduction that Dawn Schiller began to experience as an underage teen, and the way she, John C. Holmes, and Sharon, his wife, moved into living together, and we wonder how much Sharon did or didn't know, we next wonder how it is that the relationship between John and Dawn, which had it's romantic moments no doubt, turned very ugly.  The answer seems to be easy.  They smoked pot recreationally, but John started using cocaine and he knew that many a person had lost everything they had before he started using.  His drug addiction came rapidly upon him and with it he began to steal from his own household.  He sold the very rings that he had given Dawn as tokens of his love.  He stole from other people too.  He looked for cars that were unlocked and stole out of them. 
In her book Dawn says that Sharon doesn't know about the pot.  The problem I have reading that in the hear and now is that the pot was being smoked in the cottages in the court that the Holmes' managed, including, very much so, in the cottage that John's brother David and wife lived in down the way. Don't know about you, but medical marijuana is legal now where I live, and the smell of neighbors smoking it is very tell tale.

Within a few months, the weekend cocaine high turned into twice and then three times a week. Sharon may not have recognize the smell of pot wafting in the courts, but she did know that John was calling Dawn to meet him over at his brother's cottage a lot at this point.
(Page 239)

Soon John was dealing, mixing powdered baby laxative in with the cocaine powder and Dawn and his brother were helping him.  About the same time Sharon offers Dawn the job of managing the cottages full time so she can quit her nursing assistant job and be free to start taking classes.  (Pages 230 and 233)

The fun outings, camping and day trips end because they need to be home so they can use.  The other tenants notice the unusual behavior and are no longer trusting. They are watching their property and complaining to Sharon.  (Page 235)

John promises that he will quit the drug but can't. 

There's a difficult visit of John's mother at Christmas to deal with in which she senses something amiss and deliberately ignores Dawn and says that she feels she should have no place in the family.  John's mother even calls Dawn a "devil." Sharon tells her, "Dawn is in this family by choice - our decision."  (Page 244)

As John becomes holed up in the bathroom for hours doing the drug, he and Sharon stop communicating.  (Page 248) and then John accuses Dawn, whose been taking a typing class, of seeing a young stud at school. (Page 249)  Soon he is beating her, even cracking her jaw, jealous and threatening to kill her (nonexistent boyfriend.)  (Page 259)

He now takes her to sit in the car while he makes his deals on Wonderland at Eddie Nash's, and lets her know that he is engaging with very dangerous people.  (Page 265)  He becomes an angry man, tearing up a garden, scaring the other tenants, and, one day...

"Sharon sees me crumpled on the porch holding my gut and crying.  She steps back into the shadow of the house, emotionless."  (Page 266)

Sharon uses her nursing skills to patch Dawn up sometimes but when Dawn threatens suicide, Sharon writes her a letter and says that she has to change or will be kicked out.  (Page 277) 

This is when John and Dawn leave to live in seedy motels and in a van, basically homeless.  Before the day that Dawn makes her break from John, he will witness people being murdered at Nash's, be arrested, go on trial, be freed, and the couple will go on the run to Florida, where they feel safer and resume a more stable life - for a while. 

Missy here.  Cliffhanger!  I want to encourage you to get and read this devastating book.  (I hope you'll be inspired to read many of the books that I read first and use as research here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.)

PORN ACTOR JOHN C. HOLMES and WIFE SHARON GEBENINI and MISTRESS DAWN SCHILLER LOVE TRIANGLE - PLAYED OUT THROUGH THE WONDERLAND MURDERS

UPDATE APRIL 2022 : Still a very popular post!  HERE IS A CURRENT LINK TO DAWN's WEBSITE:  She is highly involved in ending sex trafficking in Los Angeles County:

DAWN SCHILLER COM : BIO

UPDATE JULY 2018 :  This post has gotten a huge amount of hits lately and maybe that's just because the title has the word "porn" in it. I hope you'll be interested in linking to DAWN SCHILLER's non profit after you've read it and will donate.  And while you're here, I invite you to go through my Archives to learn about a great number of other Mistresses, for there are very many reasons why, including real love!  Also the GUIDE to ALL TOPICS by MONTH is in PAGES. Missy

Porn star John C. Holmes, his first, long term wife, Sharon Ann Gebenini, and his underage Mistress Dawn Schiller, make for a truly bizarre "Love Triangle."  No matter how philosophical you might try to be, their relationships were rife with abuse, especially because the violent drug addict this actor became got tied up in a murder of four people so brutal it was compared to the Manson Murders. Unlike the Manson Murders, also in a canyon in the Santa Monica mountains of Los Angeles, this case goes unresolved. But, before it was all over years ago, Holmes was one of the suspects tried and acquitted. Many people, especially those involved with drugs and dealing in the Los Angeles/Sunset Strip/Laurel Canyon area, were afraid for their lives.

I promised my readers long ago that this blog would be "no porn," and so I'll keep to the relationship of these three people who took, in my opinion, their mutual relationship into a truly mentally, psychologically, and physically punishing zone. 

I had no pre-knowledge of any of the players in this romance and tragedy. I've seen about one minute of film porn in my lifetime and didn't like it.  But one night I brought home a few films on DVD to watch, one called WONDERLAND, because Val Kilmer, an actor I like, stars as John C. Holmes. 

JOHN C. HOLMES  "WADD" DVD cover

Google Images

When the film proved too violent for me, I decided not to watch any more of it and I tried the companion disk called "WADD, The Life and Times of John C. Holmes", a documentary. There were Sharon and Dawn, testifying to their experiences, sitting in the dark, hiding their faces, while many other people associated with John C. Holmes; producers, directors, fellow actors in that business, as well as his second wife Laurie Holmes, spoke openly in the light. Dawn said she had been moved into their spare bedroom to be "the Mistress," her term, while John and Sharon continued to share a bed in their room.

John Holmes was known for his unusually large manhood, about twice the size of an average man, which was all it took to get his start in this industry when he was in his early twenties, back when vice squads chased people involved in "smut" around town to arrest them.  (The San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is said to be a porn capital of the United States today.)  Holmes wasn't one to do the strutting stud routine.  He was a tall, lanky, every-man, a man other men could relate to as they watched the films and fantasized that they too could get the girl.  He was thought of as a gentle giant for a long time.

Holmes had left a crazy-filled childhood home, escaped into the military underage but with the signed permission of his mother, and got out an uneducated and average young man with no clear idea about what it was he could do for a living or with his life. He was clean living, willing to work, willing to try whatever employment he could get.  When he was driving an ambulance he met an educated pediatric nurse, Sharon Gebenini, whom he married in the summer of 1965. Sharon suffered three miscarriages.  What is unstated is that maybe her acceptance of Dawn into her marital home with John was satisfying her nurturing self. 

When John decided to get into pornography as an actor, he did so proudly, not even working under a fake name to start. (He did make some films under theatrical names, including Johnny Wadd, during his career. As a result no one is sure exactly how many he did make and estimates go into the thousands.)

Sharon didn't put up any strong objections to her husbands new found career. She would stick with him as his wife for years, their divorce not final until 1983, even as his sex career killed their relationship and they shared that marital bed as - you guess - friends?

In those days most women expected the man to be the breadwinner, especially if they wanted to have a family and stay at home and raise their children. Sharon was reportedly a devoted and excellent nurse then and for many years on, yet it's clear to me that she failed to protect herself from torment. 

Maybe she just didn't believe in divorce. She would never remarry or have children.

Sharon testifies in the film that she has never in her life seen a porn film, but it's difficult for me to imagine that she was so compartmentalized that she could shield herself from the realities of her husband's fame. John Holmes did so very many films, most one day shoots that were out for sale within a week or two, his picture on the packaging.  He earned top pay, starting at $75 a day, and eventually possibly earning up to $3000 for a film before his druggie lifestyle started to effect his employment, not only because he wasn't always showing up but because he couldn't reliably perform. He did interviews and said that he believed that watching porn helped couples sexually. (Ironic!)  As time went by he also had affairs and relationships, started drinking, smoking grass, and then using cocaine, and was missing from home a whole lot.

Holmes took up with Dawn Shiller, then fifteen years old in 1976, about ten years after marrying Sharon. Dawn testifies that he began a slow seduction after they met that lead to sex in a van parked at the beach, romantic and loving, but still she was a teenager to his thirty-something years. (Her testimony in her own book is at odds with what is said in the documentary.  In her book the sex caused her pain and a bladder infection and she was barely able to walk.) As their use of cocaine broke him financially, Holmes and Dawn went homeless, living in a car and motel rooms, and when John's thieving didn't provide enough, he expected her to prostitute. In 1981 after the murders, they fled together to Florida to escape the law. Before she made her escape from him she would be beaten repeatedly and pimped out by him.

Clearly both women were accommodating this man and unwilling or unable to leave their relationship with him, at least not for some time. 

Where were Dawn's parents or family? 

Why was Sharon complicit in allowing her husband to have sex with an underage woman and in their own home?  Did she not know better?

Here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO we're most familiar with the wife who allows her husband a Mistress so long as she is kept separate from their home, family life, and friends, so that she is never embarrassed.  Or, we are familiar with everyone participating in a triad or love triangle of adult age and maturity and mutually in the know. 

Sharon says she didn't know the entirety of the relationship between her husband and Dawn and is credited with treating her as a daughter and taking her "under wing." 

Why didn't she get a divorce and try having the family she wanted with another man?

Thinking this through, I realize that forever marriage has meant that many a wife gets used to having a criminal husband, and that being with a criminal may mean also being afraid: Mafia wives, for instance. 

Still, it's a mind-bender for me, how Sharon, a smart woman, with possibly an IQ of 160, could be in such denial and not know that her 30 something husband was actually a criminal, especially with Dawn.  I think mainly she did not want to know.  When he ran to their home to tell her he had just witnessed four people being murdered in July of 1981, she gave him money to run without wanting to know any details she'd have to reveal to the police. When he ran he took Dawn with him. To me Sharon was an enabler.

Holmes became the worst of addicts, without Sharon's participation.  On drugs and desperate for them, he was out of control and angry, and he got closer to the big dealers, and a criminal named Eddie Nash, a man who may have owned more nightclubs than anyone else in town and clearly was a source of supply. Nash was also known to the police as a person behind arsons.  Nash had a house on Wonderland in the Hollywood Hills where the murders took place.

Holmes was beaten by Nash's thugs, a beating Scott Thorson**, witnessed, and was there again when the bloodbath took place.  Eventually, Holmes was tried for murder and acquitted. Then he tried to get back into the porn acting business and there was (still) interest!  He told Sharon he wanted to make their marriage work and would find some other work, which she says she refused.

John is credited in the porn industry with promoting HIV testing all those years ago.  First he tested negative but then, six months later, he tested positive.  Even so, he went to Italy and made the last of his porn films without informing anyone of his illness, instead wasting away while he claimed to have colon cancer. Instead of cleaning up his life so that he could live for years, he increased all his health defying activities and ended up dead.  By then he had a second wife, Laurie Holmes, who he'd married in 1987, to leave as a widow, one who refused Sharon and Dawn to come to his death bed.

In a few days, I'll be excerpting from the book Dawn Shiller wrote called THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND that came out in 2010 to detail the slow seduction and the fact that MANY adults suspected or knew that an disadvantaged and underage young woman was sexually involved with a porn star in his 30's. In media interviews separate of this documentary Dawn says that she did not get into how it was that she and Sharon made their peace and became life long friends in the book as the manuscript was already so long.

THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND - Surviving John Holmes

by DAWN SHILLER

But maybe what's most important in the end is what these two women made of their own relationship, and it may stun you.

Sharon Ann Gebinini, born in June 1943, died in Oregon in October 2012, where she'd retired after years of remaining working as a nurse in Glendale, Southern California, past the Wonderland Murders, the trial of John C. Holmes, and his death.  Her obituary uses her maiden name and there is no mention whatsoever that she had ever been married to John C. Holmes.  However, what is mentioned is that she had two life long friends, and one of them was Dawn Schiller!

Out of this sordid story, Dawn Schiller is the survivor.  She used alcoholism to deal with the emotional pain of the life she lead with John Holmes but she got sober and achieved clarity. Then she got busy advocating for women who have been abused. She serves on the board of a woman's shelter and she started her own non-profit called E.S.T.E.A.M.  Sharon's obituary mentions that in her honor donations could be made to it.

A BEAUTIFUL INTELLIGENT SURVIVOR,  DAWN SCHILLER

from publicity photos found on Google Images.  Later we'll link to her nonprofit.

We know she had it tough but we want to yell Hurray Dawn!

C 2016  MistressManifesto.BlogSpot.Com  / MIssy Rapport  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

** Scott Thorson, Mantress of the Month in October 2012 due to his relationship with Liberace was a witness to the beating of John Holmes at Eddie Nash's. Thorson went into a Witness Protection program for a time and this is why he changed his name.