ISABEL ROSARIO "DIMPELS" COOPER : FILIPINA ACTRESS and MISTRESS OF FAMOUS MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR,

General Douglas MacArthur is the American Military leader who was in the Army, and successful in what was called the Phillipine Campaign, an effort to keep the Japanese out of East Asia. He uttered the famous words "I shall return." (And he did.) But when he left the Phillipines in 1929 between World War I and World War II, he asked Isabel Rosario Cooper, his much younger Mistress to come back to the United States with him.

ISABEL ROSARIO COOPER

"Dimples Cooper"

1914* to 1960

In 1929 when the General was recalled to the United States, to San Francisco, and left Manila, he sent Elizabeth love letters. In 1930, MacArthur was asked to serve as as U.S. President Herbert Hoover's Chief of Staff. MacArthur asked Elizabeth to move to Washington, D.C. so they could continue their romance. She was a film actress and singer, who performed in vaudeville acts also as a dancer, and is sometimes called a showgirl. She first appeared on stage at the age of five.

Born to a Scottish father and Chinese-Filipina mother, called Eurasian, Isabel was young - about eighteen or twenty (she may have fibbed about her age a bit) and he, born in 1880, was fiftyish. They were introduced at a party where he is said to have fallen in love instantly at the sight of her beauty and femininity. Called "Dimples Cooper" she was famous for being the first actress in the Philippine films for performing on on-screen kiss in 1926, daring at the time but just a kiss. For her his invitation was a decision to leave her home country and a promising career. His love letters to her survive but hers to him do not. Actions speak louder than words.  She moved to D.C.  He set her up in a 'love nest' in the nation's capitol.

The General came from an American pioneer family and spent his life in the military; begining with a military school education and top of the class at West Point; World War I, World War II, and Korea. He married a woman named Louise Cromwell Brooks, called a socialite, in 1922, and divorced seven years later, childless. His military career was illustrious, however, it seems he had little time to be a husband.  And so he met Isabel Rosario Cooper at a time when he was leaving a marriage. Or was she the reason for the divorce?

According to author Vernadette VIcuna Gonzalez, Isabel has been erased from any recounting of Douglas MacArthur's life. I muse that perhaps this is because his international fame was so much greater than anything she achieved or perhaps it is because he himself did not openly admit to having had her in his life. He wrote a book about his life and did not include her. I went on numerous sites about him, and these sites detail his power and might in military actions, but it's true there's no mention of Isabel in them. Some do not even mention he was ever married.  Britannica, Wikipedia... Perhaps it's because he came from a culture, a time and place, in which only legal wives were honored with acknowledgements. Or he intended to always keep her hidden away. I did watch a number of YouTube videos that were uploaded after this book came out, and I'll be posting one that quotes from a few books about MacArthur that do include at least bits and pieces about Isabel. Sadly, it's suggested she was only in place for sexuality. It's even said that he only bought her clothes to wear indoors and in bed.

There is another aspect to this story and that is Isabel Rosario Cooper also only spent about ten percent of her life with this man, but her only claim to fame is because of her association with him. Make no mistake about it, she was with a national hero in the United States but also her native Phillipines. One wonders if or who knew about Isabel during their involvement and if there was a conspiracy or silence or his fellows just thought it was none of their business what he did when he was off work.  (If so, I agree with that. I don't believe we should take our personal lives much into our working life.)

I wonder if Douglas meant to shelter Isabel, to have a private life that was protected from media and fame for both of them, or if he was ashamed to have not married her. It could be said that she made a sacrifice to be with him. Certainly various authors have made their claims and assumptions about his sexuality or even his relationship with his mother.

Sadly, it seems that the General wanted to hide her away. Reading this story I was reminded of another Mistress that I profiled here at Mistress Manifesto Blogspot, Marita Lorenz, who as a young woman was involved with Cuba's military and political leader, Fidel Castro.  She too was left waiting for his visits, almost a captive. Well, Douglas was gone a lot, and so Isabel went out to night clubs and kept herself busy. She was a young vital woman and perhaps also the thirty years in age between them has become a problem.

Their relationship is estimated to have lasted five years. (However, I do think that is an estimate!) May of 1934 is marked as the time in which she finally moved out of the hotel and into a rooming house; this has to be a downgrade and perhaps suggests he's no longer keeping her.  Much of their relationship was spent entertaining herself, even traveling to Cuba for vacation, as he is gone, out of the country, in Europe, taking care of business and accepting accolades, without her by his side. He may also have been offended at her pleas to him to help certain of her family members. One article I read (not this book) suggested she had actually been evicted from the hotel and moved to New York City and into another hotel due to an enemy of MacArthur's who wanted to expose him for political reasons. Be it that she was angry with him or she needed money, according to this book, she showed her love letters and managed to get $15,000 from him which she was supposed to use to move back to the Philippines.

In 1937 MacArthur married Jean Faircloth, a marriage that brought an only child into the world a year later - in Manila!

After MacArthur, Isabel did not have an easy life. She didn't move back to the Philippines. She did not succeed to become an actress in American films though she had a number of minor background roles as a servant and minimal speaking parts after the end of their relationship. By coming to MacArthur, she left her entertainment career behind. She had two husbands and died of a sleeping pill overdose that was considered suicide at the age of forty-six.

Isabel's body rests in an unmarked grave in Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles (the burial ground for Hollywood greats such as Bing Crosby and Rita Hayworth) while MacArthur rests in a Norfolk, Virginia mausoleum which is a pilgrimage site.

As Vernadette Vicina Gonzalez brings Isabel back to us in her book, I will attempt to also honor her here as our Mistress of the Month.

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

You may also be interested in:

MARITA LORENZ : MISTRESS OF FIDEL CASTRO (and then GENERAL MARCOS PERES JIMENEZ) TURNED CIA COLLABORATOR - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH  appears here in the May 2015 archive

THE STRANGE CASE OF "BLOOD AND GUTS" GENERAL GEORGE PATTON and MISTRESS JEAN GORDON : DID HIS WIFE's CURSE PUSH HER TO SUICIDE? appears here in the  September 2022 archive.

COMING UP : TWO ACKNOWLEDGED MISTRESSES OF A SPANISH KING

In the English speaking world, and I hate to say this, even with so many Hispanic immigrants to the United States, even with some parts of what is now the United States having had Spanish or Mexican settlements before they were the states we know now, it's as if the Spanish world does not exist. We rarely seem to get news out of Central American or any of South America on main stream media other than the incoming illegal immigrants or a major crisis. I also find the information I need for MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT hard to get. 

One of the Spanish language publications I enjoy paging through when I go to the library is Hola Magazine where royals and aristocrats are the celebrities. In that publication they are often photographed in splendid clothing in their gorgeous houses. It would seem that in the Latin world there is still great interest in people of nobility and how they live. 

In May of 2015, our Mistress of the Month was Marita Lorenz who was the Mistress of Fidel Castro (Cuba) and then General Marcos Peres Jimenes; She was a European born daughter of a ship captain based in New York. She turned into a CIA collaborator after having a very difficult time with Castro in particular and men in general. Other than that I have barely touched on Latin culture or people living in it or coming from it. However, I've long wanted to include modern Spanish Mistresses (or Mistresses in Spain).

I'm aware of what's happened with more recent King Juan Carlos I, who abdicated so that his son Felipe VI could take over. Felipe's role has been extremely public. That story is all over the media. Alphonso XII de Bourbon of Spain was the father of  King Juan Carlos and the grandfather of King Felipe VI. It would seem that there has been a tradition of fathering extramatrimonial children for generations in the family.

Despite that, the Spanish macho culture seems to have higher expectations of women for loyalty and faithfulness than for the men. There has been a tradition of Mistresses in Spain despite the  influence of Catholic culture which emphasizes the family and women as the nurturers whose main job is to raise the children. Wives are expected to be faithful and loyal to their husbands and to be with only one man in a life time or the loss of their reputation could be devastating. I believe there is still an emphasis on virginity until marriage for women in Latin culture. Men - not so much. (What's happening in gangs here in the United States is an aberration but that's another story.) 

There has been a tradition of the Wife with the Big House and the Mistress with the Little House which is more civilized than abandoning a woman who might otherwise be put out. Of course we are talking about men who can afford to support two families. In macho culture women remain in traditional roles, though there have been rapid changes in recent years, that was not the case in the late 19th and early 20th century.  

Check back with me tomorrow when I'll begin with our Mistress of the Month!

Missy

SHERYL WEINSTEIN HAD A SWEET HOT EXTRA-MARITAL RELATIONSHIP WITH FINANCIAL WHIZ and PONZI SCHEMER BERNIE MADOFF

SHERYL WEINSTEIN

"I am probably the only person in the world

who was screwed twice by Bernie Madoff."

SHERYL WEINSTEIN was Chief Financial Officer for the esteemed Jewish Woman's Charity, Hadassah, when she met Bernie Madoff in 1988.  He was considered an investment wizard and was eventually busted for generating a massive Ponzi scheme involving billions of dollars.  The scheme negatively effected an estimated 3 million people. Her testimony in court, focusing on her and her husband's personal financial looses, helped the Judge decide on a sentence for Madoff of 150 years. That was on June 29, 2009 and that same year, Sheryl published her memoir. Since then other Madoff employees have also been convicted and sentenced and are serving time.

Sheryl and Bernie were both married when they tentatively and tenderly began a sweet hot extramarital relationship that took years of friendship, flirtation, and temptation to build. It was 1993 when they finally escalated their emotional bond to full sexuality. It seems Bernie was serious enough about Sheryl to not pressure her. He enjoyed her and respected her need for a very slow seduction.

At this point in my review here, I want to tell my readers that this is a bit of re-write being done on January 7, 2016.  The reason is that I lost my book and notes, but I decided to reread the book using an e-reader.  I've just started using an e-reader and it's a different experience than turning the pages of a good old fashioned paper published book. I have to wonder if that experience has altered my original opinion.  Later this month I will be quoting and excerpting from the e-reader version.

Throughout their relationship, Sheryl was, by professional position, responsible for Hadassah's investments.  It wasn't until after she put her life savings of $70,000 into her lover's hands, that their sexuality escalated, probably because of the reveal of trust, which would be exploited.  Sheryl's book is highly detailed about the slow seduction and her difficult marriage, but when it comes to the Ponzi scheme she says she was entirely innocent of the wrong doing going on. Though I tend to believe her, because after all so very many were fooled, her memoir seemed to establish that she was curiously able to have a deep emotional connection with a man later popularly thought to be a sociopath. 

Their mutual adultery involved lunches for business and dinners for love for five years before they actually had sex the way ex President William "Bill" Clinton would define it.  Even when it was over she considered Bernie to be a close friend.

Why was Sheryl so unhappy in her marriage that she had this adventure?  She explains that it took years for her husband to be diagnosed with adult attention deficit disorder. She says she endured years of emotional and psychological, verbal abuse. But she is still married to that man.

I'm going to level with you.  While I tended to believe her, I was annoyed with Sheryl Weinstein for much of this book.  I felt that by detailing the slow seduction she was trying to prove her innocence wasn't just about finances, but that she was "not that kind of girl."

I knew Sheryl wasn't a professional writer, anymore than Ginger Alden, once the young Mistress waiting for marriage to Elvis Presley was. Ginger, in her memoir titled "Elvis and Ginger" that we covered here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot in March 2015, told her story in a simple way, managing to give us a good idea the way she thought when she was a 20-something, summoned to the King's house in Memphis as if to be a member of his court. She had quickly moved in with the much older Elvis, and he was controlling and spoiling but even then, a beauty queen from the South, Ginger was not this innocent.

Sheryl, in her early 40's when she had her years long Extra-Marital Relationship with Bernie, had it all over the 20 something Ginger. I simply had difficulty believing that a woman with an excellent education, a high powered career that involved meeting with wealthy people all over the world, and very married for years, could be as sweetly unquestioning of her man as Ginger had been.

Sheryl's small town was Manhattan and the Upper East Side of New York City.  She was a career woman with a closet full of suits who dined in fine restaurants, and talked to people who were donating millions to Hadassah. (Her travels were never with Bernie though they both checked their busy schedules and got together a couple times when they happened to be in the same place.) Sheryl was ambitious for her own career.  Her only son went to expensive schools and summer camps that she afforded on her salary and when he grew up, she was more than ready for him to leave home.

She had plenty of time to bolt away from Madoff.  Their affair stretched about 7 years, including the first five in which it was more of a growing emotional bond sans sex. And, she was conflicted enough to be afraid to meet up with his wife in some social setting and found the sneaking around exciting.  He told her he cared for her. (I believe him.)  He told her that she was not just beautiful and sexy but "You're an accomplished businesswoman.  That's a knockout combination."*

 

So, you think, what was her problem?

Sheryl mentions having seen therapists for years, a number of them, admits to wondering to herself why she was staying in a marriage with her husband Ronnie, a difficult man who she clearly did not like, especially as the discontent came early.  She vaguely blames a not perfect childhood.  While some people have truly horrible childhoods, I don't know anyone who claims to have had a perfect childhood.  Childhood doesn't always define us for life.

I'm glad Sheryl didn't get too analytical or blaming, because it all sounds like garden variety angst to me. Nothing as horrendous as our Mistress of the Month of May 2015, Marita Lorenz, who suffered in Nazi Germany when she was raped as a child! 

But...You know women like her and may be one; ripe for an affair, just hanging off the tree ready for the picking, for years!   What I read here is that she was so neglected or unfulfilled in her marriage that she needed Madoff's admiration.  She needed to know a man found her beautiful and sexy.  And he needed that from her too.

So, I tried to adjust my snarky attitude.  When I got the book, I didn't suspect that Sheryl or her book would explain to me how Bernie managed to pull off his scheme that ultimately ripped off millions of people and charitable organizations in the United States, Israel, France... and it didn't. The book was best as a memoir of a seven years affair, which was kept entirely secret from both parties' spouses until this book was written and published not long after the scandal hit the press.

But I think this; if Bernie Madoff had not become a world-infamous financial fraudster, Sheryl would have taken the affair in stride, kept the friendship, kept in touch, kept it secret from the world, and maybe even her husband, because that's what mature people who have had their life enhanced, or even made livable, by meet ups in fine hotel rooms and restaurants with others gently do. 

Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, we look at how to define the word "Mistress", careful not to include just any person who has an affair as such, especially not those tell-all- to-the-tabloids-types who simply slept with a celebrity and want to brag about it.  Some of those people say they were lied to when really no one was asking too many questions when they were so new into it.  We know two legally married people such as Sheryl and Bernie are committing adultery, but that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot about the quality or endurance of the relationship.  I couldn't call her a Mistress on that basis, any more than I could call him her Master.

What makes Sheryl Weinstein the once-upon-a-time Mistress of Bernie Madoff is the emotionality and duration of their extra-marital relationship, the fact that they remained friends afterwards and had a deep hard-to-break-it off emotional connection, the fact that they could confide in each other when they apparently could not so much with their legal spouses, and that there was actually a lot of respect for each other there.  How many experienced adult men do you know that would be satisfied to meet a woman in hotel rooms just to talk, have dinner, tease, tempt, and pet, for years before finally getting to what ex President Bill Clinton would suppose counts as sex? 

Arguably, another Mistress quality Sheryl had was knowing from the beginning to the end, that he was never going to leave his wife.  (At times she felt ready to leave her husband.) 

So truthfully, while we the people have come to think of this man as a monster because he was committing a dangerous fraud that hurt so very many people, the man she portrays in this book, actually sounds like a nice man, even a good man!  He didn't lie to her about his personal life or feelings. He told her that they would never travel together, that he traveled alone or with his wife.

What was right about Bernie?

He was clean, neatly groomed, impeccable in his wardrobe and has a sense of style.  Maybe he was still a bit rough as a diamond, enough to make him feel a bit insecure when around his clients who were not self made, but he had acquired manners along with a taste and love of the good life. When it came to his luxury lifestyle, he put his wife and family first. He did start out legitimate and even esteemed, and supposedly at least one floor of his business remained legit.  Apparently, the authorities are still trying to figure it all out, but initially Madoff may have simply tried to please too many investors, figuring that at some point he'd make it all legal and right, lying to himself and deceiving himself that the scheme was workable.  He did not gamble (ironic?) and he did not drink.  They were sexually compatible.  He was gentle with her.

So you wonder, of course, what makes a person into a Ponzi schemer?

INVESTOPIA on PONZI SCHEMES  according to this site:

'The Ponzi scam is named after Charles Ponzi, a clerk in Boston who first orchestrated such a scheme in 1919.  A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors. This scam actually yields the promised returns to earlier investors, as long as there are more new investors. These schemes usually collapse on themselves when the new investments stop. 'You may have gotten yourself involved in a Ponzi -like scheme if you've ever sold a product that relied upon your constantly attracting sales people who would remain under you in a pyramid, as your income increased due to percentages you were getting from all the sales beneath you.  At some point there are only so many people who are not selling that product so it becomes difficult to attract yet more sales people and that's when the pyramid can grow no further.'

Have you ever been involved in a Ponzi sheme?  Many of you may not realize that you have been - sort of.

I've known a number of people who sold products like plastic containers, makeup, and vitamins, that relied on an ever bigger pyramid and a series of pay offs.  Rarely did someone get and stay at the top to where they could quit the job they hated and remain self supporting or achieve true wealth. 

Another example.  If you've ever participated in a chain letter, even if all that people were sending everyone on the list was a recipe, that is also a kind of Ponzi scheme.  (One of my friends got involved sending bikini underwear!  She got something like 300 pair in six weeks. Do you suppose the chain was started by the underwear manufacturers?) This is why chain letters, which often come with threats or warnings to those who break them through refusing to cooperate, are illegal in the U.S. Mail. 

Bernie Madoff had his strengths and weaknesses but Sheryl was flattered by him, attracted to him enough to make passes and advances, and he allowed her to pace their sexuality.  He tells her the truth about his marriage and his sons and his grandchildren.  Ruth and he were teenage sweethearts,  who met when she was 13 and he was 16. They were loyal to each other.  Ruth traveled with him considerably, maybe half of his time away was traveling with Ruth. When he told Sheryl that his secretary started feeling guilty making those hotel and restaurant reservations in person, so they wouldn't appear on Bernie's bills, Sheryl took over making the arrangement. Maybe if he was not so rich, Sheryl would not have been flattered by his attention.

Nowhere in this book is there any attempt made to say, "Well if Bernie Madoff was the kind of man to have an affair, or a Mistress, then that right there shows he has a flawed character and is capable of this multi- billon dollar Ponzi scheme."  If it had, then Sheryl's own character would be equally as monstrous, even if she was "Old Fashioned," enough to take it very slow sexually, or decided that on meds her ADD husband is a nice guy after all.  She was a full participant in the relationship.

 

In reading around this book on the Internet, I learned that after the scandal and the life sentence Bernie got, after the Madoffs had to give up most of their own wealth, Ruth was still sticking by him as a wife, until this book was published, about a year later.  Eventually though she did leave Bernie.

I've also read that none of the books on Madoff "Made A Killing!" 

Well, let's give Sheryl Weinstein her Mistress credentials but also Ruth Madoff's Wifely ones.  Is it wrong of me to think, "Ruth, you can't forgive the business man who screwed up like this, who has this karma now, but you can forgive the husband who had a Mistress!

 

C 2017  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.  To read more about Ginger Alden or Marita Lorenz please use the search feature of this blog!

Notes: Book published October 2009.  All further quotes and excerpts from the book will be from the e-book version. * Chapter 5ive pages 259-260.)

UPDATE MAY 2017
Check out this article about the life of Bernie Madoff's long time wife, Ruth, who negotiated herself 2.5 million to live on and does so in a small New England town.
NY POST: THE SAD LIFE OF EXILED RUTH MADOFF  She does not visit Bernie in prison.

UPDATE SPRING 2019
News is that Bernie is ill and wants to be let out of prison so he can die somewhere else.  CNN: FEB 2020 : BERNIE MADOFF WANTS OUT EARLY SINCE HES TERMINALLY ILL

THE MAN WHO KILLED KENNEDY : LBJ : A BOOK PACKED WITH MISTRESSES : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

THE MAN WHO KILLED KENNEDY is just packed with Mistresses!

  Back in November of 2011, I elected Madeleine Duncan Brown, mistress of Lyndon Baines Johnson, as Mistress of the Month.  In this book, recently published and with a big buzz following the author's revelations on talk radio, Madeleine is reported to have testified to a big meeting the night before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in Dallas, by those behind the conspiracy and the shooters.  There have been so many conspiracy theories about that assassination and this is not the first book that would tell you that LBJ knew beforehand or was the leader of the conspiracy which may have involved not only enemies of the Kennedy's, people who just didn't like liberals, but also the Mafia and the CIA and the FBI.  Did LBJ have so much power that he could count on various characters from all three organizations and more to get rid of not only JFK but also a great number of operatives and witnesses? 

Roger Stone and Mike Colapietro, the authors, write that Lyndon Johnson was a "psychopathic serial murderer" because they believe the killing included 70 unnatural deaths out of 1400 witnesses, which has been mathematically calculated to one chance in 715 million trillion trillions!

This is a very interesting book, one that has built upon other authors work while being suspicion of other authors who may have been part of a cover up, and part of what's interesting to me about it is that not only is Madeleine Duncan Brown quoted, but so is Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro's once upon a time mistress, who  also testified to having been part of a plot to kill Castro, and who under oath in a district court case in Florida, stated that she was a witness to E. Howard Hunt (later of Watergate infamy) paying off an assassination team the night before the Kennedy murder.   WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT WHO MISTRESSES TO IMPORTANT MEN WOULD BE AROUND TO WITNESS SUCH AS SECRET MEETING?

A number of people are named in this book as having been part of that team, including John Kennedy's "mistress" Mary Meyer's, husband Cord Meer.  Though I wonder at the use of the term for Mary, or really any of the women John Kennedy slept with, according to this book he was in love with Mary and said he would divorce Jackie to marry her!

Just to make THE MAN WHO KILLED KENNEDY an even more mistress-aware book, there is also a small passage that mentions George H.W. Bush's long time mistress Jennifer Fitzgerald!  (I'm avoiding the use of the term President in this case, even though that is the proper title of any person who has ever been President of the United States, and also in the the case of Lyndon Johnson because these mistresses were with these men before they became President.  I'm not sure how long the relationships went on after that.) 

Can we ever hear this story retold and not think about Judith Cambell Exner, who slept with both JFK and Mafioso Sam Giancanna?

Thought provoking!

Missy

C 2015 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

MARITA LORENZ on THE JFK ASSASSINATION CONSPIRACY

SOME EXCERPTS and SOME EXTRAPOLATIONS from Missy

page 128  Jimmy Hoffa wanted to destroy Bobby (Kennedy) but it was decided that killing JFK would solve that problem.... Carlos Marcello (Mafia) hated the Kennedys and felt betrayed by the failure to oust Castro and restore the casinos to his men in Cuba....

page 132 - 133 (With "Frank Sturgis" and some others, Marita went on a car ride to Dallas...  They didn't tell her who they had to kill, they just said "This is the BIG ONE!" They registered at a motel as a hunting party - all those weapons!  They also had a lot of disguises.  She was the only woman.)

page 135) "I had proven I could be a soldier where it mattered and now I was being called a broad by some fat mob guy who had probably ass-kissed other mob guys to become whatever the hell he was..."  (The mob guy turns out to be Jack Ruby.  Marita says she knew Lee Harvey Oswald as "Ozzie.")

BUT MARITA GOT OUT OF THERE.  She went instead to Florida to be with her daughter and her daughter's nanny and then flew on to Newark to visit her faithful and loyal mom, and heard of the assassination that had just occurred when the plane landed.

page 138)  "As I have testified, I believe we were all part of an assassination team, heavily armed, well-trained.  Ozzie was probably part decoy, part throw-away.  Undoubtedly he was a shooter, as has long been assumed.  However, the clandestine illegal activities taking place on home soil would shock even the most sophisticated and cynical American citizens."

MARITA AS OFFICIAL MISTRESS FOR GENERAL MARCOS PEREZ JIMENEZ

EXCERPTS From the book "MARITA"

ON BEING THE MISTRESS OF GENERAL MARCOS PEREZ JIMENEZ

page 114)

"I would be Marcos' official mistress, a not unpleasant thought.  I enjoyed his company.  He planned to spend most of his time with me, though it was obvious that he would not divorce his wife.  He had considered brining me into his home on Pine Tree Drive since his wife lived in Lima, Peru, most of the time, bust she visited hum often enough that he could not risk my being there.  Instead he would use my place and our relationship to relax in a way he had not been able to previously.  He also planned to change his life, enter, at least for the immediate future, into a relationship that as committed....

The relationship with his wife (and children) was similarly distant.  Sex with his wife was a duty in Latin America, a mistress is for physical pleasure, but enjoys the privileges of a wife.  Both are compatible so long as neither objects to the arrangement each knows to exist.

page 115)  For both religious and financial reasons Marcos would not divorce his wife.  In their world, it was natural for them to stay together.  She had wealth, servants, every luxury she might desire.  He did not flaunt his mistresses or embarrass her with his intimate activities.

page 116)  I was delighted with the house.  I agreed to the arrangement and Marcos arranged a celebration of our new status in our new home.  I thought it was a house warming.  He and his friends considered it a formal announcement of my becoming the General's mistress.  The only difference between the event and a wedding reception was that there would be no wedding ceremony preceding it.

It was a odd evening.  The happy couple was feted and toasted by almost fifty (50) men on Marcos birthday.  (He gave her a special ring to seal the deal.)  He slipped the ring from his finger and placed it on my own, a sign to all his followers that I was to be treated with greater respect than his wife.  It was also a final, visible sign that I was his possession.

page 124)  (December 1962 - Marcos was to be deported to Venezuela via Robert Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General based formally on the theft of $13 million he tried to smuggle out of that country on his last trip.  He waited in jail and lost 40 pounds.  He paid the guards $200 a day to use the phone to call her.

page 125)  (December 1963 Marcos had to leave and she arrived at the airport only to see an emaciated man being led up a ramp to the plane in handcuffs.  She ran down the runway with their daughter, Monica, in her arms crying but was led away in handcuffs...)

And a week after Marco's extradition, the rug was pulled out from under me.  I lost everything - my home, car, Monica's trust, everything.... I was broke.  I was homeless.

DEAR FIDEL : A FILM ABOUT MARITA LORENZ

THE ORIGINAL TITLE OF THIS POST WAS "DEAR FIDEL FILM - MARITA'S STORY"

Marita and Fidel's relationship lasted only 8 months. She has a son with Fidel, one of his many children.

English subtitles... Spanish... German...

Due to her multilingualism Marita applied and was accepted to be an airline stewardess for Pan American but being Kept by General Marcos Perez-Jimenez prevented her from taking the job.

This documentary that came out after her books has some new revelations, including a document on what happened to her when she was abducted and "aborted."  Marita says that when the CIA recruited her they showed her bloody pictures of a dead baby and also told her she was made sterile by the operation.

(As it turns out neither thing was true.) 

MARITA LORENZ - ONE WOMAN'S EXTRAORDINARY TALE OF LOVE AND ESPIONAGE FROM CASTRO TO KENNEDY : LOVE WON!

EXCERPTS

from page 49 upon being returned to New York after 8 months with Fidel.

"The enclosed world in which I was being nursed back to health (after the forced labor and delivery of a baby in Cuba) was designed to suck me into a bad dream where these red blooded, God-fearing, all American heroes had rescued me, a half dead, traumatized girl sent back from Cuba, from the clutches of Fidel Castro, Antichrist and butcher..."

from page 72 when she is in training to be a spy

"I was a woman desired by men, of special importance to my country.  And I was also a drugged girl who, between sleeping pills and stimulants, withdrew to play with a pet turtle, a pet cat, and a baby doll I had saved from my childhood... Not unstable by CIA standards or in the world of Cuban counterrevolutionaries...

from page 81 when she is back in Cuba to assassinate Fidel with poison pills...

"Fidel entered the room as though I had never left.  He paused only briefly, then hugged me, said he was exhausted, that he needed to sleep in order to give his talk that night.

"I want to know about the baby," I told him. "I want to know now."

He asked me if I came for him or to kill him.  I told him both.  But first I wanted to know about the baby.

"I know nothing," he frowned, looked concerned.  "I had no part of that."

I said, "You're going to get killed twice.  My father is going to kill you."  Then, loosing control, I began to cry.  "I want to know what happened, Fidel."

Fidel explained that he had given no order, that the doctor had not acted on his behalf.  He also said that the doctor had been executed for his actions.  Fidel became evasive about what happened to the baby.

"All boys born of Cuban fathers belong to Cuba," he told me.

MARITA LORENZ : MISTRESS OF FIDEL CASTRO (and then GENERAL MARCOS PERES JIMENEZ) TURNED CIA COLLABORATOR - MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

UPDATE NOVEMBER 29 2016 FIDEL CASTRO has DIED
NY TIMES= SHE NEARLY ASSASSINATED HIM - MOURNS DICTATORS DEATH


UPDATE JANUARY 2016 !  ACTRESS JENNIFER LAWRENCE WILL STAR AS MARITA LORENZ in a new biopic film! DAILY MAIL UK - JENNIFER LAWRENCE AS FIDEL CASTRO's TEENAGE LOVER ASSASSIN UPCOMING BIOPIC 

Excerpt:

According to THR.com, the film titled Marita will tell the story of how the German met Castro in 1959 and began a relationship with him when she was 19 years old.

She became pregnant with his child and later left Cuba for the U.S.

She was then recruited by the CIA and returned to Cuba in 1960 in a mission to assassinate Castro, but, legend has it, love won out.



The German Edition of Marita's memoir.
DEAR FIDEL link here
book is by Marita Lorenz and Ted Schwarz

MARITA LORENZ
( born August 18, 1939 in Bremen Germany )

 

As the United States attempts to thaw trade relations with Cuba, as Raul Castro, younger brother of Fidel, rules the small island country only 90 miles from the tip of Florida, my thoughts turned to MARITA LORENZ, who was Fidel Castro's Mistress very shortly after the Cuban Revolution that he lead in 1959 when he was 33.

MARITA LORENZ's book, published in 1993, is a love story and spy story as well.  For some reason, there have been a lot of notorious mistress-spies, but how many of them have been witness to key events in the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination plan and spoken out about it?

This month as you read the book excerpts I've selected and watch a video, you may, like me, think "but this woman isn't all that beautiful or all that charming really."  But then there are so many mythologies and stereotypes about mistresses to bust.

Reading her words and hearing her words and how she got involved in world events and characters from the CIA and the Mafia, I'm struck that Marita comes across as hard, less Mati Hari, and more Virginia Hill. (You can read more about these women who have been Mistress of the Month here using the Google search feature embedded in the sidebar of this blog or by going through my archives.)

So here is the short short story.

Marita was not Cuban or even Hispanic.  She was raised in Nazi Germany by an American mother with her much older German father, the captain of a pleasure cruise boat he owned, an absentee father. During World War II Marita was raped by a child predator who went to prison for 39 years for it.  Though not Jewish, she and her mother suffered in Germany during that era. Thoughout a turbulent adult life, it was her mother who advocated for her and tried to save her.

In her teenage and young adult years she traveled on the boat with her father.  At the time she met Fidel she was living in New York City between cruises and aimed at secretarial school.

Not long after the Cuban Revolution, on February 27, 1959, her father docked his boat as was usual at the Havana harbor.  It may have been the first boat to do so after what came down.  Fidel Castro and some of his revolutionary companions boarded and stayed for a beer.  Marita, a competent hostess and boatwoman at that point, reminded them that on the boat they were not on Cuban soil, served up the beers, and had an instant mutual attraction with Fidel.  A picture of her and Fidel at that meeting that circulates in the media has her father, who was sitting next to her, cut out of it though; he was there.

Back in New York, she got the call to come to Cuba at Fidel's expense while her father was out of town again.  She went, a virgin but for her childhood rape, found herself to be a hidden, almost locked away mistress to Fidel at the Havana Hilton, crazy in love but always waiting for a visit or a summons, not quite a sex slave but there for sex and whatever relationship they could develop during his visits.  The married Fidel professed to love her and she him, they had a mock wedding ceremony, but when she discovered pregnancy had resulted from their amorous trysts, it was a huge problem.  Before she could give birth naturally, she found herself drugged and taken to an unknown location where she was prematurely delivered of a baby, told it had died or had been aborted, and was soon removed back to New York, an emotional wreck. 

Of these events Fidel later denied any knowledge.

Understandably bitter and confused emotionally, Marita found herself recruited by persons associated with the CIA who wanted her to go back to Havana and Castro, to seduce him and poison him and kill him.  She made the trip but could not go through with the plot, which Castro suspected.  She couldn't go through with it.  She loved Fidel and she wanted to know what had happened to her baby.  Her trainers were livid with her for not killing him.

At this point, through all of this experience that was horrible and shocking, Marita must have found herself unable to think straight.  Another woman would have, at such a young age yet, found some way to redirect her life to more truly loving companions.  But chaos and turmoil continued to be attractive to Marita, and before it was all said and done, she would find herself doing clandestine work for others. Training to be a killer and spy at Camp Perry, Virginia, at age twenty, she had learned to fearlessly parachute from planes and did target practice with Fidel's picture the bulls eye.

She went on to become the mistress of another Hispanic dictator, Marcos Peres Jimenez, who was deposed from Venezuela, while he was living in Miami, and had a daughter by him also, a daughter who lives in the United States. At the time he was considered to be an enemy of Fidel Castro.  Unlike the experience with Fidel, who was committed to the poverty of Communism, she and Marcos lived the life of wealthy exiles - for a while.  She was recognized as his official mistress by his friends.  He refused to let her work.  After he was returned to Venezuela, she chased after him and found herself to be an inconvenient woman again. Sometimes penniless and on the run, she even found herself with a young daughter living in the jungle with a native tribe. 

During a return to Cuba many years later, in 1981, Marita Lorenz learned that the son she gave birth to is alive, a doctor, and was raised by a professor and his wife; Castro has known where he was. Fidel's invitation, that she could live in Cuba, was repeated. 

Perhaps most interesting is Marita's testimony in this book about the JFK assassination and the fact that it was a conspiracy, one she was to take part in. 

Cliffhanger!

I hope you will find the book excerpts I've selected this month illuminating!

Missy


C 2015  All Rights Reserved Mistressmanifesto.blogspot.com  Missy Rapport