GLORIA SWANSON and JOE KENNEDY : THE WAY THEY WERE

 He was married with many children, she was married with two.

Excerpt page 194 : Gloria was very much one of Hollywood's own, and honored player of the movie colony's most popular pastime, a party-giving and party-goi9ng, but Joe was not.  His Catholicism and Boston sense of propriety prevented him from a too ostentatious display of his double existence  Though many in Hollywood would later make the comparison, Gloria and Joe were no Marion Davies - William Randolph Hearst twosome who flaunted their liaison.

For one thing, Gloria and Joe were both married with children. She was no starlet looking for  a sugar daddy; he, no elderly tycoon hopelessly in love with a chorus girl. She saw in him someone who was plainly going far, and she fell in love with his business savvy and can-do openness. He was the one man in her life she trusted when it came to money. To him, she was one of the most desirable women, one of the symbols he had grappled with all the way up from East Boston  He fell in love with a woman who was everything Rose was not.  Gloria was, first of all, fame --- a woman whose public personality spoke to people of golden youth and glitter.  To discover that she was also a creature of shadows was part of his lover's ecstasy. She was a woman of her own means, self-confident and elusive, possessed of a dignity that was both paralyzing and magnificent. In their intimacy, she was almost tomboyish --- terse and disarming.  Fun, too.

Excerpt pages 194-195 :

Smitten with her from the first meeting at the Savoy Plaza (Palm Beach - Florida) two months earlier --- with the idea of her as well as the fact --- he was not only giving her advice but smothering her with attention.  He loved uncovering the Gloria Swanson millions would never know --- the quiet, slightly weary person with soft hair and a dark, husky voice so different from the screen image, the woman who boasted that she'd never been kept.  None of her homes, he happily discovered, was a place into which friends casually dripped.....

They made love at his place. Here, he was in control of comings and goings of staff and underlings. On Crescent Drive (Beverly Hills), her waking hours were a series of disturbances by butler and maids, secretaries and assistants, and her moods ran in channels dammed up by her staff.  On Rodeo Drive (Beverly Hills - his place) order flowed effortless from the master.

Excerpt page 209 :

...When he had a moment alone with Gloria, he called her the most desirable woman, held her gaze with his electric blue stare, and said he couldn't wait to take her out that evening. She told him they had to be reasonable; they couldn't be seen together.  "We're business associates," he grinned.

"Business is done in the daytime if both associates are married," she said.

If you want to know the slightly more scintillating details - not pornographic but - certainly get yourself a copy of this book.|

In this passage, we note that Gloria Swanson had never been kept and was proud of that, as a woman who had earned her own for years. All Mistresses are not Kept, and all adulterers are not Mistresses, and so here we go again trying to define Mistress. It is the nature of the relationship that defines it, I believe, but in popular thought it's all about money and sex, as if love doesn't count.

Gloria Swanson's husband Henri moved into an affair with actress Constance Bennet.

Missy

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JOSEPH P. KENNEDY - THE PATRIARCH : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

 JOSEPH P. KENNEDY - THE PATRIARCH : 

The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw. 

MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

first posted February 26, 2018

This is a fine work, well researched with permission of the Kennedy Family who allowed sealed documents at the Kennedy Library to be open to the author, and can be read just for the historical content.  Joseph. P. Kennedy was the self made man who fathered U.S. President John F. Kennedy and left his many children millions.  We Americans seem to know a lot about them, and this vast family still has some illustrious members. Of surprise to me (and I've read so many books about the Kennedys and Jackie and Marilyn) is that Joseph P. Kennedy had quite the relationship with Franklin Roosevelt before and after he became President of the United States and was no stranger to visits to the White House, but also that he socialized with William Randolph Hearst and his Mistress Marion Davies.  Author David Nasaw's focus is entirely on Joseph P. Kennedy so the relationships of all other's named, including his wife Rose, are not detailed, and if you've read a lot of books or seem a lot of films around the Kennedy's much of the information you read here may seem repetitive.  However, I'm reviewing this book for MISTRESS MANIFESTO because of the many characters in it that you have read about here (and can easily summon up using the Google Search feature embedded in the side bar to bring up past posts about!)

These include: 

Joseph P. Kennedy's Mistress Gloria Swanson

William Randolph Hearst and his Mistress Marion Davies

Missy Lehand, said to be the in-Whitehouse Mistress of President Franklin Roosevelt,

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, daughter of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy.

Clare Boothe Luce (Who I owe a month to.)

And of course Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who I think would have made a better Mistress than a Wife.

I came away with an understanding that Joseph, though frequently not home due to business, and the fact that he and Rose seemingly lived separate lives though united by their children. wrote loving letters to his children and had not abandoned his fatherhood.

C 2018 -2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Here's where you can find posts in my archive:

November 2019

MARGUERITE "MISSY" LEHAND :OFFICE WIFE AND WARM SPRINGS MISTRESS OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

July 2013
MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

March

KATHLEEN “KICK” KENNEDY ; Sister of J.F.K., Widow of Billy Hartington, Mistress of Peter Wentworth Fitzwilliam When They Died in A Plane Crash

FLORODORA GIRLS : MANY MARRIED MILLIONAIRES

According to the book, The Curse of Beauty by James Bone, which is about the career and life of Audrey Muson, Marion Davies had appeared in the 1930 movie The Floradora Girl but in real life she had been a Ziegfeld Follies girl.  (The costumes these girls wore left a lot to the imagination compared to the clothing actresses wear on the Red Carpet today.)

Evelyn Nesbit had also been picked out of Floradora Chorus line....

You know I've dedicated a month to these women in the past!

You may be interested in:

February 2017 Archives find:

EVELYN NESBIT : Teenage Beauty and Mistress of Architect Stanford White: Before It Was All Over There Was A Murder

July 2013 Archives find"

MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

THE DOROTHY KILGALLEN - JOHNNIE RAY WHIRLWIND AFFAIR - TRUE LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME?

It's difficult to gauge how much having to hid his sexuality with other men effected Johnnie Ray but when Confidential magazine, a celebrity-driven popular magazine known for outing stars, revealed that he was, it was a serious problem circa the early 1950's.  The story also quoted a psychiatrist who said he was a success because his stage antics were abnormal and that he had a "toxic" effect on teenagers. (pages 161-163)

Johnnie's people worked to save his reputation and career. These were not the days to become a Gay Icon. (I have wondered who cut out pages and made remarks on the copy of the book I got as they must have wanted to censor it.) The Johnnie Ray Foundation for Hard of Hearing was set up to change the focus on the man, to acknowledge his hearing loss, and set him up to be more of a hero.  No doubt about it, Johnnie Ray was a trooper and would always be.  Twentieth Century Fox movie studio signed him up and put him in a movie, There's No Business Like Show Business, that included in its cast, Marilyn Monroe.

"Johnnie was friendlier with Monroe than anyone else in the cast.  He first met her during his Ciro's engagement. "she had problems getting a date," Johnnie said. "Because for most men, the fear of being rejected by Marilyn Monroe was just too much for the male ego.  So they didn't ask.  ...   "Women see reflected in me all of the emotion and tenderness that, unfortunately, the American male doesn't have time for today."  (pages 178-179)

Though divorced, ex wife Marilyn Morrison, perhaps never out of love or obsessed with Johnnie, accompanied him to the premier of the film. There was even talk of a re-marriage.

Johnnie's team emphasized his talent, mentioning that he had written over a hundred songs and also was a short story writer who hoped to write a TV show for himself. They also pitched untruths and misinformation aimed at making friends with some of the singers who were considered peers - or maybe competitors - not revealing his love of jazz and blues music.  Scandal magazines continued to take aim at him. He also made television appearances on variety type shows and some of the top comedians took a funnier spin on his performances.  Then in the spring of 1956 he was the mystery guest on the game show, "What's My Line?"  Though in the four years since she first saw him perform in 1952 had included a number of articles in which she was critical of him, Dorothy Kilgallen swooned over Johnnie. She'd lead a glamorous life since 1938 and had been married since 1940. Her marriage was not good. Now Dorothy's columns were pro-Johnnie.

..."No less frequent were surprise gifts, a series of deliveries from the likes of Cartier (a pair of diamond and sapphire encrusted cuff links( and Steuben (crystal decanters engraved "Johnnie's vodka" and "Just Gin." ...  Johnnie reciprocated with bunches of her favorite flowers, the exotic lavender rose. "They were steel blue and gorgeous... (page 212)

"Johnnie's life suddenly gained the context and security it had lacked. With Dorothy at his side, the treat of scandal and opprobrium melted away, as did her own long-stifled yearnings.  Together they walked on air. Even more surprising, to her friends, they walked in Central Park. Dorothy actually went so far as to don slacks for these rambles, a supreme concession.  No stranger to the best-dressed lists..  her staunch high fashion/little lady wardrobe aesthetic was well known as it was influential."  (page 213)

... 'When Dorothy let her hair down, the reversal was positive.  She remained a first-rate journalist, but also became a round-heeled libertine of the highest order.  ... When Johnnie became her lover, the climaxes shared were explosively, incalculably nurturing.  It was an ecstacy which shattered the psychic walls Dorothy had laboriously erected in an attempt to mask her own, beautiful running dog self - the very same moon howling, careless primitive Johnnie had released long before, and built his career on.  Together, Johnnie and Dorothy crashed out of reality and into their personal dimension.  Given the Star Psychology's fantastically presumptuous, narrow-channeled thought process, they indulged themselves in a display of splendid excess." (page 215)

Jonny Whiteside's writing in his book Cry is so creative, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. When it comes to focusing on Dorothy's strange death that silenced her when her dogged determination may have been to reveal the truth of the J.F.K. assassination, however, it is Mark Shaw's book that takes the big prizes.

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NEW STAR JOHNNIE RAY, BISEXUAL, MARRIED MARILYN MORRISON and A FANTASTIC MARION DAVIES PARTY WELCOMES THEM TO HOLLYWOOD

Notes and Excerpts (and my thoughts as I go)!

I was so surprised to learn what I did from reading this book, which I found missing pages and written on: someone who borrowed it before me must have objected to content. 

I learned that, while I'd heard of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley and knew their music, there had been a singer as popular for a decade, who is thought to be the bridge to rock and roll; Johnnie Ray!  It was then my ambition to understand this man and Dorothy Kilgallen as a couple. 

Dorothy and her husband, Richard Kollmar, remained married, not just because of their Catholicism, but for the sake of public reputation and career, for the sake of their children, despite the fact that he was a womanizer and her affair with Johnnie Ray was marriage threatening.

She was a career women with power, a social woman who mixed with people from various walks of life, a woman who had sexual desires as much as she needed companionship, but also a woman who had ambitions and took risks, some which might have ended in being murdered.

According to author Johnny Whiteside, in his book Cry - The Johnnie Ray Story, Ray was promiscuous, bisexual, alcoholic, and endangered his career picking up men while on the road. (This was happening well before Gay Pride, and decades later other stars endangered their careers by similar behavior.) His sexual life included a long affair with Dorothy when in New York.

Johnnie Ray, fourteen years younger than Dorothy - more importantly from a younger, more adventurous generation - had grown up in a loving and supportive family. From a young age, he nurtured his singing talent though an injury had caused him to partially loose his hearing. Considered by some to be a rube from the country because of his down-home heritage, this friendly, handsome man traveled the world giving concerts. He worked hard. 

"The demands of being Johnnie Ray grew ever more intense.  With Bernie's avid encouragements, he began and would maintain for the next decade an average booking schedule of forty-fifty weeks out of the year.  Being Johnnie Ray was akin to riding a carnival tilt - a- whirl for three hundred and fifty consecutive days  The momentous spin, sweeping revolutions, twists, dips, leaps and dives of motion, the blur of colored lights and distorted crowd noise, the blood-churning repetition were a course of action demanding both total relaxation and complete concentration to survive." (page 131)

Even when his fame waned in the U.S., he remained a favorite in Great Britain and Australia. He could "move his audience to tantrums." At a performance at the Copacabana, a sort of variety show, in New York City, on April 1952, the audience included his peers such as Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, but also important media people like Dorothy Kilgallen and Walter Winchell. (Page 111)

"Then he sang "The Little White Cloud That Cried." Johnnie turned on, shifting instantaneously from bashful by to a man scouring the deepest truth from his lyric, one that represented his essential self's totality of emotional understanding. The audience was, as he counted on, completely unprepared. ... His performance, coming after such a mild opener, shocked the house. He flexed, vibrated, shivered.  Every broad, frantic gesture and dramatic pose emphasized the lyric with physical spontaneity that was electrifying. His voice exhilarated them. It filled the collective ear and struck sparks.  When he finished the crowd was "torn from its 'show me attitude' into wild enthusiasm.  When he rose from the piano and dashed onto the floor, pencil mike in hand, they gasped. (Page 112)

Johnnie soon was accepted by Cafe Society in New York, the blue-blood elite, and made the newspapers. He was also earning what would be millions today, traveling and doing shows in major cities and seaside resorts in America and Europe. He was mobbed by female fans, broke attendance records for concerts, and was given exclusive contracts. He was being managed and he was drinking. Drinking tended to bring out a child-like playful side, such as games with water-pistols. 

Dorothy had held back on approval in her columns but then she saw him perform. She had to confess that she had been wrong.

"Dorothy Kilgallen's Voice of Broadway column described Johnnie as "Endsville." (Page 114.) She would continue to give him mentions in a favorable way from that point on.)

However (surprise!) Johnnie had women after him  Mainly one. Her name was Marilyn Morrison and her father was in the entertainment business. Marilyn was determined to marry Johnnie. She knew he had sex with men and thought she could handle that or convert him. Their engagement was announced by a gossip columnist Louella Parsons. (Johnnie may have been advised he should marry - to hone a public heterosexual reputation. Was he actually in love with her? It's said that there was a sense of some acting, some staging, on both their parts. He may have been torn up about being true to himself. Marilyn managed to miss her period, and that is what, perhaps, actually made up his mind. She actually held a press conference to state that he had asked her to marry him several weeks earlier and in May of 1952 they did in fact marry!  (Later in the media it would be announced that she had miscarried. How much was true?) The relationship didn't last a year but they agreed not to file for divorce until 1954.  

Yet there was someone who wanted to see that unconventional relationship work and who wanted to introduce the couple to every celebrity in Hollywood, and that person, was none other than Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst's mistress of many years...

MARION DAVIES THROWS JOHNNIE RAY and NEW WIFE MARILYN AN OUTLANDISHLY SUMPTUOUS HOLLYWOOD PARTY

Marion Davies was close to Marilyn Morrison's father and thought of Marilyn as a honorary niece and so now that Marilyn was married to Johnnie Ray... After years as the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, who, with him, had thrown many a party at San Simeon (Heart's Castle) and her Santa Monica beach house, Marion was ready to throw a party on her own, for Hearst had died in recent months. Her intention was to introduce Johnnie and Marilyn to everyone important in Hollywood, to help his star soar even higher!  Rather than hold this Hollywood/West Coast party at a club, she decided to turn her house in Beverly Hills into a world-class party venue.

"The three-story pink Mediterranean mansion's exterior front wall was torn open and tented, the driveway re-routed and extended so that arriving guests drover their limousines directly into a huge front room where a battery of valets awaited.  In this reception area was a long bar, a scattering of tables and an ancient Roman sarcophagus, freighted down from San Simeon, scrubbed, re-lined and filled with magnums, jeroboams and Methuselahs of champagne.

From that auspicious entry, guests passed through a series of rooms done up as replicas of New York's top night spots, authentic in every detail -- the tableware was flown in from El Morocco, the Stork Club and 21.  These rooms opened onto a sweeping terrace with a one-hundred-foot-long three-tiered pool running through a formal garden. The affair spilled out onto the grounds, where a circus tent was erected near a fish pond.  Even the garden paths were decorated with synthetic grass.

Three orchestras, the Eddie Oliver, Freddy Karger and Harold Stern oganizations, played.  Parisian florists were hired to create centerpieces for the fifty tables; each consisted of seventy-two American Beauty roses.  Eight uniformed Beverly Hills Police provided security, there were a dozen parking attendants and sixty caterers serving fifty pounds of caviar, four hundred pounds of filet mignon, seventy-five turkeys, three hundred and fifty chickens, and fifteen hams The guest list was reported variously as being five hundred, seven hundred and fifty and one thousand celebrities strong, who polished off fifty cases of imported liquor.  (page 138)

Many guests who were used to being spoiled said it was the most fantastic, even over-the-top, party they had ever been to, and then there was their hostess...

"Davies entrance was a moment of high drama; She appeared at the top of a grand staircase, clad in a velvet and lace Don Loper creation, supplemented by over a half million dollars worth of jewels. ... " (page 139)

Johnnie Ray and wife Marilyn then greeted Debbie Reynolds, Joan Crawford, Charleton Heston, Gary Cooper, Lena Horne, Jack Benny, Merle Oberon, Clark Gable... (These were the luminaries of their era in Hollywood but also significantly older than Johnnie and Marilyn. Marion Davies remained connected. Johnnie had been a star for about a year at this time and proceeded to stun audiences at Ciro's and the Hollywood equivalent of the New York clubs.)

The marriage did not work:

"Johnnie and Marilyn's marriage had been a complex construction based on fame and power, desire and fear, put over in all earnestness through the era's typical Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil fashion. It's final stages were played under the same rules of conduct. (page 151)

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My Readers, as time blogging here at Mistress Manifesto goes on, I find that so many of the people I've chosen to write about, people who've had books written about them mostly, cross over in some way.  Marion Davies is one of the most known mistresses and I featured her in July 2013   Go into my archives to read about her! MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST is the title of the main page for that month.

Missy

 

MANK FILM INCLUDES W.R. HEARST's MISTRESS MARION DAVIES

NETFLIX : MANK FILM OFFICIAL SITE 

The Old Hollywood actor Marion Davies, the long time Mistress of William Randolph Hearst, our Mistress of the Month in July 2013 here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, is portrayed by actor Amanda Seyfried, in MANK.  Mank is the nickname for a screenwriter named Herman J. Mankiewicz, talented and alcoholic, who was the screenwriter for Orson Well's film Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was supposed to be a bit of a parody of the lifestyle that Marion and W.R. had at their California "ranch," where they often entertained Hollywood friends. Originally planned as La Cuesta Encantada (Enchanted Hill) it was referred to as San Simeon,  Today it's a tourist spot called "Hearst Castle" and is about half way up the coast of California.

HEARST CASTLE ORG - Informative Site! I'm so glad that Marion's role in Hearst's life is included in the list of bio's at this site. 

EXCERPT: By the end of her career she had starred in a total of 46 films, including 16 talkies.  In the early twenties, she and Hearst moved their company, Cosmopolitan Productions, to California and joined forces with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.  All of her major films were produced by Cosmopolitan Productions and filmed at Paramount, MGM, and Warner Brothers studios.

Shortly after meeting Heart she became his constant companion and confidante. She was Hollywood's foremost hostess, throwing lavish parties at both Hearst Castle and at a extraordinary mansion on the beach in Santa Monica.  Dignitaries, Hollywood stars and famous athletes eagerly accepted invitations to her parties.  She followed the recommendations of Hearst's financial advisors, avoided debt, and invested wisely in real estate.

During the late thirties, hard times hit Hearst Corporation, and Marion gave Hearst a check for one million dollars to save the company from collapse. According to those who knew her, this selfless act was just one example of Marion's character.

***

But what of the Davies character in Mank, a film that recieved 10 Oscar nominations, and Amanda Seyfried's portrayal of Marion? Seyfried was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

This NPR article praises the actress: NPR ORG : AMANSA SEYFRIED SHINES AS MARION DAVIES in MANK  This article is about how the actress was turned into a Marion, wardrobe, hair, the works, for the film and is worth the read - or you can listen to the audio instead.

EXCEPT: (Amanda speaking)

"Marion was a really talented actor, she had incredible range, she was really funny, and she was able to lighten any scene that she was in,: says Seyfriend,"She was very unfiltered like I am, and she was very allergic to being dishonest, which I am absolutely, You know, the Brooklynese was kind of, just, at the end of the day, when she took her shoes off and she grabbed her bottle of gin.  She was exactly who seh was and you know, she hd no shame from where she came from."

If interested in Marion, please use the search feature embedded in this blog, or go into the archives to read the whole month!

Missy

ANN RORK : J. PAUL GETTY'S MISTRESS TURNED INTO 4th WIFE

According to Russel Miller's book, The House of Getty, Paul Getty was 31 and living with his parents when he announced that he had married. The lucky first bride was Jeanette Dumond, an 18 year old of Polish Catholic heritage who he married in October of 1923 in Ventura, California (which is just north of Los Angeles). Within weeks of the marriage Jeanette was pregnant and Paul was back to proving to his father that he could make it in the oil business without working for him.  He kept an extreme work schedule, again hands-on, and was barely home which was the pattern that would fail his personal life.  His son George Franklin Getty II was born, and Jeanette left Paul soon after.  Their divorce was granted in February of 1925.  (Marriage #1)

Then he befriended two rich girls he met in Mexico, Allene and Belene Ashby, who were studying at the National University in Mexico City. From the looks of things it seemed he was romancing both, or friends guessed he'd marry Belene.  His summer romance ended with a marriage to Allene there but within weeks he went back to Los Angeles and she went home to Texas. They agreed to keep the marriage and divorce a secret from family but Paul's dad George had already decided to put most of his estate and control of the business into his wife, Sarah's, hands, and this is important because it is Sarah Getty's trust that endured and became the key to the family's enduring wealth.  (Marriage #2)


In 1928 in Vienna, Paul met Adolphine Helmle, called Fini, and just 18 years old.  Her father was a doctor and her family from Germany was vacationing.  Paul was 38.  Once again he charmed and there was a sneaky element to the relationship.  His divorce from Allene wasn't done and he said nothing to Fini about it.  She found out he was a divorced man in December 1928 when she was about to marry him.  They moved in 1929 to Los Angeles and he moved her with his parents,  The idea was for Sarah to introduce her around and keep her company and Sara truly liked Fini. The pattern included a pregnancy, the birth of a son, Paul's workaholism preventing him from actually having a relationship, the wife feeling neglected and abandoned.  In this case it was also Fini's father, always opposed to the marriage, that wanted his daughter home.  (Marriage #3)

Paul had become a shareholder in his father's company, which had been performing poorly, and hoped he could prove himself by turning it around.  By 1926 he was also the general manager of his father's oil companies, the original Minnehoma, and the Getty. 

Fini took their son, Ronnie, and went back to Germany, allowing her father to negotiate a divorce with Paul. When Paul Getty finally admitted to his mother that he was divorcing Fini and marrying Ann, she wept. 

In the chapter called, "He Should Dress You In Sable," after his father's death, Paul finds out that he was left a half million dollars but his mother has 90% of the estate and control over the companies.  Author Russel Miller tells us that while Paul was still not done with Fini, it was well known in Los Angeles that Paul was in a relationship with an actress named ANN RORK.  Rork's father was the manager of "It Girl" Clara Bow, who was our Mistress of the Month previously, as well as a film producer, and Paul had met the father and daughter when Ann was fourteen.  At 17 Ann was doing small parts in the new Hollywood films with sound, the "talkies."   Paul escorted her around town and the couple were photographed, so it wasn't just a secret kept by close personal friends.  (And Fini may have known too...)

In New York City, while still negotiating with Fini's father, Paul Getty and ANN RORK made vows to each other in a ceremony so simple there was no minister.  (If there had been, Paul Getty would've been a bigamist.)  They pledged to each other that they were married in a hotel room. Then he started calling her "Mrs. Getty," when he introduced her around.  She was already pregnant when they got married, having waited out the divorce from Fini.  They married when Paul was 40, Ann was 20, and Eugene Paul Getty was born soon after.

Once again Getty went back to work leaving a wife alone.  Ann lived in Santa Monica near the beach in a twelve room house full of visiting friends (a bit like Hearst's Mistress Marion Davies did, though her "cottage" was massive in comparison).  Ann became pregnant a second time, giving birth to son Gordon Peter Getty.  Then she too wanted out of her lonely existence.  (Marriage #4)

Using the e-book version, and read on Overdrive,  on pages 60 and 61 of this chapter, I'm excerpting this telling passage:

"The fourth Mrs. Getty was privy to none of these negotiations (business), but did not care. Abandoned at the beach house in Santa Monica while Paul devoted himself to business, Ann began to despair of ever making her marriage work.  She hated playing second fiddle to Getty, Inc, hated everything to do with the oil industry.  She often compared herself to the long suffering heroine of J.M. Barrie's play, "The Twelve Pound Look," about the neglected wife of an overworked businessman who decides to pull out all the stops to save her marriage."

Paul came home late, as usual, she insisted he sit down while she played (acted) the climatic scene...A few days later Ann told him she was suffocating in her "gilded cage" and wanted a divorce.  Paul raised no objection..."

Reading to this point, I was aware that Paul Getty was getting more unconventional about relationships with women, especially for his times, as he got older.  Perhaps the pressure to marry was some of that.  Perhaps if he had been born later he might have had affairs with women rather than marry them.  Certainly he was aware that promising a woman marriage was seduction too, for if he had not been able to divorce Fini, he would have found himself in a society scandal.

In the chapter called "My First Thought Was This is THE girl," we learn that NEXT DOOR to Paul and Ann's Santa Monica beach house was the comparatively massive "cottage" that Hearst had built for his Mistress Marion Davies. The cottage had at least a hundred rooms.  Paul was friendly with the couple and in my opinion was inspired by their collections.

In 1934 Ann Rork filed for divorce and said that Paul's interest in her began when she was 15.  Then they went through "a form of marriage" in a rented apartment in New York.
To me this emphasizes Ann's mistresshood.

Reading pages 38- 39 of this chapter on e-book, "In court Ann painted an extraordinary picture of life with Getty. She complained of being "forced" to live in a "dismal apartment" in Paris; her husband refused to take her out because she was pregnant and her "only companion: was a little scotch terrier called Sophie." 

Her complaints included being "forced" to pay $200 a month rent out of her $600 allowance, being called a "gold-digger," and other allegations of Paul's cheapness and other women.  She eventually settled for $2500 a month for herself and $1000 a month for their 2 sons.

After that, J. Paul Getty VOLUNTARILY increased payments to Jeanette and Fini.


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PIERCE ARROW POSTER

These days the cars are sleeker and the furs are sometimes faux if the mistress is a vegetarian, but many mistresses expect - and get - expensive presents.  Their keeper may not be wealthy and they may still be self supporting, but a little luxury is a lot.

WAS PATRICIA LAKE MARION DAVIES DAUGHTER?

Obituary Revives Rumor of Hearst Daughter : Hollywood: Gossips in the 1920s speculated that William Randolph Hearst and mistress Marion Davies had a child. Patricia Lake, long introduced as Davies' niece, asks on death bed that record be set straight. LA TIMES ARTICLE  link here!

Indeed, the skeptics have a point. All the proof Lake had to offer were countless stories and a suspiciously familiar nose and long face. Whatever the truth, Lake undeniably led a glamorous life at the center of one of Hollywood's most enduring rumors, at a time when the star system flourished, the incomes were fabulous and the lifestyles opulent and uninhibited.

"She lived her life on a satin pillow," Lake said fondly after his mother's death. "They took away her name, but they gave her everything else."

THE GREAT ZIEGFELD

Marion Davies was a Ziegfeld girl... a lot of the girls had "Stage Door Johnny's, Sugar Daddys... some became mistresses, some became wives.

MARION DAVIES ON W.R. HEARST

"I thought the least I could do for a man who had been so wonderful and great, one of the greatest men ever, was to be a companion to him."

-Marion Davies from her memoir "The Times We Had."

MARION DAVIES STAR : HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME

EXCERPT FROM MARION DAVIES' "THE TIMES WE HAD"

Page 18 hardback

"He used to call up my mother and ask if he could come for dinner.  And we'd sit around afterwards and listen to the radio or play cards or something silly like that.  It got to be a very friendly affiliation.

He told my father that he was in love with me, and my father said, "It's up to her.  She went on the stage of her own volition, and her life is in her own hands.  Her career, what she wants to do, whatever my daughter decides - it's all right with me."

And my mother felt the same way.

W.R. said he would try to get a divorce, and he did try.  He spent hundreds and thousands of dollars trying.  But there was the Catholic religion, and I think his wife felt that it said, "I will not accept a divorce,"  But instead it says, "If you are divorced, you cannot get married again in the Catholic church."

Page 20

"They were estranged before I met him - W.R. was fifty-eight when we me - and he was lonely.  That is why he would go to the shows, and the girls would think he was a wolf.  But he was not."

(Marion was about 14 or 15 when they met.

The Times We Had - Life with William Randolph Hearst by Marion Davies was published by the Indianapolis/New York publisher Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc. in 1975.

MARION DAVIES : 1928 THE PATSY : SILENT FILM

MARION WROTE "THE TIMES WE HAD - LIFE WITH WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST"

MARION DAVIES BEACH HOUSE : SANTA MONICA LANDMARKS ARTICLE

SANTA MONICA LANDMARKS on MARION DAVIES BEACH HOUSE and POOL  link here!

ANNENBERG COMMUNITY BEACH HOUSE link here!

MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

MARION DAVIES is one of the most known mistresses in the world.

That's because when his wife would not go through a divorce, William Randolph Hearst chose to live with her anyway and she him, in California.

According to her memoir, written in 1961, ten years after he died, and which was not published until 1975, more than ten years after she died in 1963, W.R. wanted to get a divorce but couldn't convince his wife to allow it.  So they gave up trying but he did not see or speak to his wife, though they had grown sons, for 25 years.

Marion and W.R. met when she was about 14 years old, maybe 16; she is known to have lied about her age as an adult taking about 7 years off the January 3rd 1897 date when she was born Marion Cecilia Douras, claiming to be born in 1905.  At the time they met she was on stage at the Ziegfield Follies in New York City where so many of the dancers had "Back Stage Johnnys, " Patrons," "Mentors," and became mistresses.  She and her sisters all had entertainment ambitions and the family together changed their surname to Davies.

The family was respectable and so was the early courtship of Marion and W.R.  He gave expensive presents to impress her. He came around the house, was friendly with her parents, who liked him, and Marion and W.R. were fast friends for some time before becoming more involved.

At the time they met W. R., as she called him, was a fifty eight year old mega-successful newspaper man who began building his personal fortune during the Spanish Civil War.  If there is any criticism of Marion's acting or movie success, it is that some say if it were not for Hearst's promotions and involvements in her career, she would not have made it so far. When Marion "retired" into mistresshood sometime before World War II, she was a movie star, a major star of the 1920's and 1930's, who had made 45 films in those early days of Silent Pictures and then Talkies. 

Their relationship is called "a 32 year affair." 

His pet name for her was "Rosebud."

He built her a "beach house" in Santa Monica that was a manor house.  Together they held lively parties at San Simeon, known today as Hearst Castle, because of all the parts of castles he bought in Europe and installed inside, but which he called "The Ranch."  (San Simeon is a major tourist attraction on the Central Coast of California today.) They flew Hollywood stars and supporting casts up the California Coast from Hollywood to be part of the weekend parties.  Charlie Chaplin was one of many regular visitors. Marion had a bubbly personality and kept things lively for their guests.

They sailed with their guests off the coast too.  There was one big scandal when a film producer was accidentally shot and killed on the boat, but generally their relationship was not considered scandalous. 

They lived across the country from W.R.'s wife, they traveled with an entourage to Europe every year for many years, and were accepted as a couple by many of the most elite. 

Marion was ambitious, though she hardly sounds it when you read her story as she wrote it.

She also used the money she earned to invest in real estate and is said to have turned her personal fortune into 20 million dollars.  She became a charitable giver and amassed a precious jewelry collection that was sold in 1963 after her death for about half a million dollars. (The beach house was sold at great loss.)

While Marion was not a secret mistress, there is a story that came out years later,  that she had a secret child. 

The rumor was leaked after the the death of  Marion's "niece" Patricia Van Cleve Lake, who was married to Arthur Lake, an actor, successfully, for her entire adult life.  The rumor was that Patricia was actually Marion's child with Hearst.  Patricia was raised by Marion sister and they spent many a summer and much of their European travel with Marion and W.R.  According to Patricia Lake herself, who made recordings on her death bed, at her wedding to Arthur at San Simeon, Hearst called her into his office and said "I'm your father." 

In her memoir Marion denied ever having had any children.

Missy

GOLD DIGGER : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : BOOK EXCERPT

About Peggy Hopkins Joyce

EXCERPT: 

"Unlike a wisecracking Mae West, whose sexuality was so exaggerated she became a caricature of herself, or Marion Davies, who insisted to the very end that she and William Randolph Hearst were simply good friends, there was nothing coy or ironic about her persona. Others may have called her a tramp and regarded her as a high-priced call girl, but Peggy fit more easily into another mold, that of a full-blown courtesan whose approach to the opposite sex was frankly strategic. The critic George Jean Nathan, who had discerned "a touch of the French eighteenth century about her," was right: had she lived in another time, in another land, she might have taken her place in a long and distinguished line of women for whom being a courtesan represented an honorable and prestigious way of life..."

"As author Cornelia Otis Skinner noted respectfully of the legendary courtesans not of the eighteenth century but of Belle Epoque France, those visions of loveliness wreathed in clouds of ylang-ylang who drifted from the races and the Polo matches to the Opera and Comdie Francaise and onward to late suppers at Maxim's : "The leading coquettes were in an upper echelon not to be spoken of in the same breath as the status of ordinary prostitute. They were celebrities as filmy established as the top starts of theatre. They were the talk of the smart set. Boulevardiers quoted their bon mots... Even the press rated them as important news."

C Constance Rosenblum

MAY 2021

Please note that both MAE WEST's man PAUL NOVAK  and MARION DAVIES have been featured here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.

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

MARION was featured in July 2013

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