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

C 2023  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

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.

CAMILLA DUCHESS OF CORNWALL : THE MOST FAMOUS MISTRESS OF THE LAST HALF CENTURY - SHE GOT HER PRINCE! WILL SHE BECOME QUEEN SOMEDAY?

CAMILLA SHAND

CAMILLA PARKER-BOWLES

CAMILLA, DUCHESS OF CORNWALL

FUTURE PRINCESS CONSORT TO KING CHARLES or QUEEN ?

This picture appears on

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall Wikipedia

Born 17 July 1947
Married Andrew Parker Bowles 1973-1995
Married Prince Charles 2005

This down to earth country girl, once a debutant in London with a small inheritance just north of a million, was thought of as very pretty and much fun, but never an outstanding beauty.  Camilla was involved with Andrew Parker-Bowles, the man she eventually married and had children with, for seven years before she did, and intended to stick with it, but there were problems. First her husband had affairs. Second, she and Prince Charles became as close as two people can come on this earth to being soul mates. In fact, she was probably his first real love.  They ran in the same circles. Andrew once had a hot romance with Charles' sister, Princess Ann, and Charles stood as godfather to her son. But you may know the story: Charles went into military service, and when they did date, before marriages, he seemed an impossibility - after all she was considered a commoner. Then he became desperately so unhappy (too) in his arranged marriage to the incompatible Princes Diana, Charles and Camilla resumed an affair that had been on pause for some time.

When Camilla married Prince Charles in 2005, 11 years ago this month, it was a well-earned marriage.  Her down to earth personality, affectionate nature, solid family upbringing, and good motherhood, cannot be doubted.  But the tabloids, and many authors, had their way with her for years, even inventing stories that she'd been pelted with bread rolls outside a grocer by Haters who preferred Princess Diana.

Charles, who will be King, no doubt so long as he outlives his mother the Queen and there is still such a thing as a Kingship, someday, was often introduced to women by those around him thought might be of interest as lovers and as potential brides. Camilla won out over all of them because she's a compatible lover, has an aggressive sporting style when riding to the hounds that he appreciates, is loyal, faithful, and reliable - and very very good for him.  Both of them would much rather be sporting in the country and dressed down, so maybe she isn't seen as "Queenly," but here is a man who works so much she considers him a "workaholic."  He has long been spot-on about nature and the environment at a time when the world, Britain in particular, has suffered changes in weather patterns, an organic farmer, a major landowner, and behind significant impactful charities. He needed such a woman to be his companion.

And that story, often repeated, that she approached Charles and offered to be his Mistress, like her ancestor Alice Keppel once had been for King Edward VII was a lot of hooey.

Back in May 2010, I elected Camilla Parker-Bowles as Mistress of the Month.  Six years later, for the first time since I began this blog, I'm electing her MISTRESS OF THE MONTH again.  That's because the woman born simply as Camilla Shand** is the most famous Once-Upon-A-Time Mistress now.  I feel this intriguing woman, who has certainly taken a lot of criticism and had a very long wait between her divorce and remarriage, is due more coverage and an update.  Her enduring love affair with PRINCE CHARLES has resulted in enduring marriage, and some day she will be Princess Consort, if not Queen.

And Charles, in my very American opinion, is overdue to be King.  None of us wants to wake up to a morning radio program that announces that Queen Elizabeth II has passed away, and the Queen has wisely been, as she slows down into her old age, incorporating Charles, and he, his sons Princes William and "Harry," into the charity work and the business of being Royal for some time.  But Queen Elizabeth II, a tremendously dynamic historical figure, and one of the world's wealthiest, should take a hint from Pope Benedict, realize there is no shame in admitting that it's all getting to be too much, and allow Charles his long-awaited Kingship, while he is as vital as he is.

Author Catherine Mayer also has a book called

Charles - Heart of a King

which has come out in Great Britain

 This book is a primary reference for this month's posts

Shall we get on with it?  Read this month's posts for more information about Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, from this book and an older one:

from Google Images





Missy

**Camilla Shand had not been given a middle name at birth.  She added Rosemary, which was her great- grand mother Alice Keppel's, a mistress of King Edward VII, as a middle name, later in her life.)

C 2016 mistressmanifesto.blogspot.com / Missy Rapport

All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.

VICKI MORGAN : MONEY MAD MISTRESS OF ALFRED BLOOMINGDALE : WAS SHE REALLY SO "BAD" WHEN SHE STUCK BY HIM ON HIS DEATHBED?

 

VICKI LYNN MORGAN

August 9, 1952 - July 7, 1983

Murdered in Los Angeles

 

BEAUTIFUL BAD GIRL by Gordon Basichis

This book is the primary reference for this month's posts about VICKI MORGAN.

There should have been a companion book called Ugly Bad Guy about her keeper,

 ALFRED BLOOMINGDALE. 

 It would have only been fair. 

After all, what makes Vicki Morgan, more than most women, "bad?"

 

  

Like many Classic Mistresses, Vicki Morgan had a disadvantaged childhood, a lack of education tied into having become an unwed mother as a teenager after a years long relationship, and, it could be argued, had only beauty as an asset, so what hope did she have to escape her past, especially because she spoke with a lisp? She'd entered into a marriage with a much older man who wasn't interested in having her child around, a man who was sexually adventurous despite his marriage to her.  She bumped along, relying on a not-so-great mother to care for her son, not happy, not fulfilled, not focused or ambitious enough to give her all to modeling or acting, but too young to not believe that things would get better for her. If she was raised up in a world that called women who had sex and got pregnant as teenagers BAD, then she was no longer GOOD. 

 

Alfred Bloomingdale, whose fortune began with inherited money, but who made a fortune with, in particular, Diner's Club,  was a member of the department store family of the same name,  and socially a friend of President Ronald Reagan and some of his political cronies.  He saw Vicki, pursued her, and competed with her husband to get her. She was 18 and he was 53 when their relationship began in 1970.  He saw her in a restaurant, pressed a check for $8000 in her hand, which she cashed despite her husband's protests, started a telephone blitz, and broke her marriage.

 

Bloomingdale had wealth and used it, within a month of first setting eyes upon her, to make her a deal.  He was forthright that he wanted her as his Mistress, but perhaps he was more manipulative about the Sadio-Masochistic sex that he groomed this barely legal woman, who was sometimes bisexual, to participate in.

 

Alfred, according to this book, which was interestingly based on interviews and conversations with Vicki Morgan while she was still alive, quickly inducted her into his S and M sex with prostitutes, and that went on for years, a few times a week, in a house he rented for that purpose, separate of where he lived or the houses he rented for Vicki.  It was a feature of her Mistresshood, as was a considerable sum of money spent on clothing, rent, interior décor, travel,  jewelry, and much else.  But they did have a relationship, one in which they both said they loved each other. 

 

He called her obsessively and she was on call, waiting around for him a lot.  When she opted out of the sick sex, in a sense renegotiating their relationship, he continued to whip women without her there...  Maybe the truth came at the very end when he was desperately ill and in the hospital for months while his wife mostly attended to their social life.  Vicki, disguised as a nurse, snuck into the hospital day after day, and lovingly tended him, sponge bathing the man who had cancer and a whole lot else killing him.  She did this even though Betsy, Alfred Bloomingdale's wife, Betsy, a feature in Women's Wear Daily for her conservative fashion sense, and who made the rounds of High Society, had cut Vicki off a couple months before her husband died of cancer.

 

The relationship between Alfred and Vicki lasted about twelve years.

 

Vicki needed money and was in pursuit of a memoir before she was murdered by Marvin Pancoast, a mentally ill room mate that she took in after Bloomingdale died, because she had been left with no house to call her own, no car to call her own, no inheritance, nothing, and her funds were dwindling rapidly.  She had hired the famous inventor of the Palimony Concept, Marvin Mitchelson, to sue for FIVE MILLION, but Betsy fought, the sum was doubled to TEN MILLION, and then the case got thrown out of court.  Why?  Because Palimony was about people who actually lived together and the rest, the judge considered to be sexual services - near illegal.

 

Vicki had been taught to act and speak as a young wealthy woman, but she was just as happy to live in jeans as designer clothes.  She moved from a great address to an apartment in the San Fernando Valley taking her maid, and then again into a smaller place with a room mate, the man who would soon confess to her murder. 

 

Vicki Morgan didn't deserve to be murdered, when she was 30, ever, by anyone.  The murder, if it was really performed by room mate Pancoast, who confessed, but whose fingerprints were not found - and there were a lot of discrepancies - was not a murder of revenge or punishment because of her involvement with a rich, important, married man.  It's just that so many of Alfred's business associates and friends had known about his relationship with Vicki, even if his wife was maybe late in catching on, and then only because of forensic accounting, and these were powerful men, as were his political associations.  And most people associate violent sex with violent people, people who might go way over the line and actually kill, people who are psycho.  So maybe it's not easy to fully accept that Pancoast was the killer.  But, as in the case of Nicole Brown Simpson's murder, there was no other suspect.

 

Vicki had tried leaving the relationship, but she found herself being baited into another Mistress - Keeper relationship with another wealthy man, Bernie Cornfeld.

(You may have heard of his name before, as associated with Heidi Fleiss, the young woman who was once the Hollywood Madam to the stars.)  Incase you think that during her mistresshood Vicki was completely tied up with Alfred, think again.  She had two more marriages (three total), and several affairs including with the unmarried actor Cary Grant, and a year with the very married King Hassan II of Morocco.  She seems to have been an expert at playing two competing men against each other, and one of those men was always Alfred, who also usually won.

 

Leaving Alfred, who was addicted to her, proved to be more difficult than she thought, especially when she considered her son and his education, and the man pursued her again, full of promises, even as he became sickly. She just didn't have what it took to make the break.  Vicki over used valium, and illegal drugs, and she started drinking too.  She ended up in a mental clinic for several months, trying to stave off a mental breakdown.  And guess who came there to be with her and help her through, Alfred and another man who wanted to marry her.

 

Alfred died and she learned that his promises to take care of her for her life, even if he was no longer in it, were untrue. She was able to supply documentation, letters in which he directed one of his financial people, to take certain percentages and pay her with them. She told the author, she had taken care of others, but not herself.

 

Was it all about sex?  Was it all about greed?

 

Vicki Morgan, as a young woman, had moved to Hollywood, where she took a humble job at a tourist spot, the theatre called Grauman's Chinese, where stars had left handprints and shoe prints out front in the concrete. 

 

Meanwhile Betsy Bloomingdale, who grew up in wealthy Southern California, had a husband who was often busy elsewhere, and when her women friends, including the First Lady, warned her that they had witnessed Alfred with a Mistress, when she and their daughter even saw Alfred and Vicki together, openly shopping and smootching in Beverly Hills, she continued to act as if it were not true.  She wanted for nothing, and she soldiered on, her head held high, concerned about her personal reputation and upholding the Bloomingdales.

 

A bit of compare and contrast here:

 

ISADORA DUNCAN, a Mother of Modern Dance, who was the Mistress of Singer Sewing Machine heir Paris Singer, was our Mistress of the Month last month.  (Check out the posts for last month to learn more about her.)

Unlike Isadora Duncan, who it could be said was so uninterested or incompetent about money, who spent much of it on whims, pleasure, or gave it away or gifted others, because she was so not materialistic,  Vicki Morgan, sometimes called "Vicki Bloomingdale," had a reputation for loving money and spending whatever Alfred Bloomindale gave her, rapidly, but without championing a vocation or avocation, as Duncan did with her ambition to have a dancing school for disadvantaged children. 

Isadora Duncan decreed that marriage was a ridiculous proposal for any woman who read the contract.  When life had torn her to shreds and she was just barely continuing on, and as age and alcoholism claimed her, she married stupidly.  But though she experienced abandonment and heartbreak by the men who fathered her children and who she seems to have dedicated herself to, perhaps obsessively in her younger years, at some point, possibly as she increased her drinking, she started sleeping around.  She offered no apologies.  The word Prostitute wasn't hung on her.

Isadora, thought of sex as natural enough and over a life time she took many lovers, especially after the tragic death of her children and after her days of being a mistress of Paris Singer were over, but her promiscuity was a feminist refusal to accept the terms and conditions of being married and a protest against the double standard in which men got to sleep around but women didn't.  Isadora, when she finally witnessed prostitution and sex theatre in her travels of Argentina, was made deeply upset.  She associated sex with romance and love and feeling good and pleasure.

Vicki Morgan also had a few affairs, but also early abandonment, the marriage of someone who wanted to escape home, and clearly willingly indulged in sexuality not usually associated by most people with love, feeling good, and pleasure.  The word Prostitute was hung on her.  It is probably true that she was naturally bi-sexual.

Vicki, and some of her friends, seemed to be engaged in sex for, shall we say, purposes a lot closer to prostitution, when other men, Alfred and his friends, some of Ronald Reagan's Republican friends, were involved in orgies.

Between Black and White, in these matters there is a lot of Gray in defining who is a Mistress, and who is a Prostitute.  If a man has a woman on call for sex with him, and not much more, but he provides her a nice place to live and thousands of dollars, is that the ONLY reason he has her in his life?  Not for twelve years.  And if a man needs to whip women to find sexual fulfillment, it's my guess that man is unlikely to have a wife who "understands" him.  Then again, there's the stereotype that many men love, the Hooker with the Heart of Gold.

However difficult it is to understand Vicki Morgan for people outside her lifestyle, there are those who think Alfred Bloomingdale took a young woman just out of her teens, ruined her for other men, used her young life, and who owned her much more than she got.

This month I'll excerpt certain passages of this book that are about Defining Mistress.

PS.  The author unprofessionally had an affair with Vicki while they worked on her memoir.  He inserted himself in her life and inserted a lot of his opinion into this book.  If you're interested in reading about another high profile murdered Mistress, use the Google search feature embedded in the side bar to read about NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON, O.J. Simpson's mistress for years before he married her.  You may also want to search for the word PALIMONY to bring up more information and Mistresses!

C 2016  All Rights Reserved.  Internet and International Rights included.

Missy Rapport/ MistressManifesto.BlogSpot.com