This month I'll be posting about the love affair between hot-shot pro journalist and "What's My Line" game show panelist, Dorothy Kilgallen, and the extremely popular and talented singer, Johnnie Ray, whose heydey was in the 1950's, as part of the mystery as to who killed Dorothy. For like her friend, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy's suspicious death of overdose was called suicide. If she was murdered by drug overdose, it wasn't administered by Johnnie.
A little background:
I have to confess that a couple years ago I became obsessed with the work of lawyer-turned-investigative writer/ author Mark Shaw. I heard him being interviewed on the radio and at this point I've listened to at least twelve hours of other interviews he's done which appear on YouTube. However, none of those interviews, which focused on the mysteries of the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination in 1963, and the tie in with actress Marilyn Monroe's murder and her affair with then Attorney General, and President's younger brother Robert Francis Kennedy, mentioned singer Johnnie Ray, who was in his career prime in the 1950's. Then, I decided to read the book Denial of Justice, and reading it I learned that Dorothy's marriage was broken or Open and that she'd had this affair and likely had an extra-marital child with the singer, her youngest born years after her first two children. Johnnie, who was fourteen years younger than Dorothy, was actively bisexual. And so while Dorothy was thought to be a conservative Catholic, prim and proper and white-glove posh, she was in fact living an alternative lifestyle decades ago. It seems her and her husband intended to stay married but had let go of convention. Because of their high profiles and the attention Dorothy received as a journalist, though she generally avoided commentaries about who might be a Communist in the 1950's era of McCarthyism, this was outrageous behavior.
DOROTHY MAE KILGALLEN (1913 -1965)
JOHNNIE RAY born JOHN ALVIN RAY (1927 - 1990)
Dorothy Kilgallen rose up in the world through hard work and enterprise. Her story is one that many modern women can relate to, but she was an ambitious trail blazer in those days before feminism. Her father a journalist, growing up with advantage, Dorothy decided college would only delay her entrance into the exciting world of reportage. As an 18 year old, she became a newspaperwoman. In 1936, she packed up a battered manual typewriter in a hat box and entered into a contest with two men to see who could travel to the most places in a race around the world in 24 days. She came in second and published a book about it called Girl Around The World and became famous. She proceeded to write a column called 'Voice of Broadway' which was syndicated and appeared in all Hearst newspapers. Kilgallen covered events such as the wedding of Grace Kelly to the Prince of Monaco and the coronation of King George VI. Her American competition were newspapermen like Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan.
In New York, she mixed socially with celebrities and society figures as well as mobsters and their cronies because they all hung out at clubs she frequented as a New Yorker. She did, despite what she learned about them through observation, research, interviews, attending trials, and honing informants, care about what she wrote and published and was not one for conjecture. However, her remarks in columns did sometimes upset people and she likely made enemies.
She began to cover murder trials and to find her voice and to advocate for those she thought had been done wrong. After J.F.K. was assassinated in 1963, Dorothy began to investigate and interviewed Jack Ruby, who had murdered Oswald, the man the assassination was pinned on, in plain view and which was was shockingly televised. It was her intention to publish the truth about that assassination. In the last weeks of her life, despite her dogged determination, she admitted to being afraid for herself and her family. She even told a friend that if certain people knew what she knew, she could be killed. So when she was found, in a room she never slept in, make-up still on, wearing something she would not usually to bed, just hours after appearing on What's My Life, all of it was suspicious. Her research files were missing. Who had them? At the time, though she and Johnnie Ray were still friends, the passionate affair they had was over. She was left craving company and that vulnerability may have been exploited.
What if she had the whole truth and nothing but the truth about J.F.K., R.F.K. their father Patriot Joseph P. Kennedy, the Mafia - Oswald - the man the J.F.K. assassination has been pinned on, Jack Ruby - the man who assassinated Oswald, and Marilyn Monroe? Who wanted to stop her? Was it the CIA. the mob, or perhaps someone else? Author Mark Shaw has the story, though not that final answer.
Dorothy Kilgallen, of Irish Catholic heritage, was a woman with drive, intelligence, and courage. Like many a career oriented woman today, she wanted it all. She had married actor, singer, and Broadway producer, Richard Kollmar, at 27, when he was 30, on a winter day in April of 1940 with 800 guests in attendance. She kept her own name. He had proposed after a few weeks of dating and in marrying him she may have desired his American Blue-Blood connections. I can just imagine her thinking at 27 that it was time to marry someone if she intended to have children. She came from a conventional first-comes-marriage heritage and, like many, she probably intended to go forth and have a loving, forever marriage. After two children who came in the first few years of the marriage, the couple began to live separate lives. This could be blamed on having shared and separate careers. They kept up appearances. According to Lee Israel, who wrote a biography called 'Kilgallen,' Dorothy went out most nights with an escort, loathing the idea of being seen out alone anywhere and thought of as undesirable.
Richard was a womanizer and alcoholic, who kept his own apartment for flings and may have paid off a few women he got pregnant to have abortions. Just how much Dorothy knew is speculation. There's a possibility that her husband was also bisexual, as Johnnie Ray was.
She had an outstanding career - for a woman of her times. She became a celebrity and earned an excellent living, but her husband, whose work in theater was less reliable, never achieved her level of success in the world. Few women had her power. While Richard Kollmar had his lifestyle before they married, the speculation is that he resented his wife's achievements. With the double-standard of their day, he may have even hated that his wife had decided it was only fair that she have an affair if he was doing so. At some point Dorothy must have felt entitled to have a love of her own after the sparkle of her early marital days had diminished. But there was a difference: That love turned out to be Johnnie Ray ,who she was deeply in love with, and who traveled the world as an entertainer, who was considered to be the link between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. Perhaps the Kept Man in this story was not Johnnie but her husband, Richard.
Dorothy and Richard had partnership in a radio show in New York from 1946 to about 1956, a morning show that gave the audience the impression they were over-hearing the married couple in their domestic morning chat. They moved to a five story New York city brownstone that was professionally decorated and showed their acquired wealth. Implied is it was the money she earned who allowed them to live so well. On the fifth floor of the Brownstone, Kilgallen had a private office space, which also had a bed in it, and which she called the The Cloop. No one was allowed in there, not even her children. Johnnie Ray had the private number and was allowed in. And at the end of her life? Perhaps one other man. An even younger than she journalist who denies their was more than a platonic friendship.
What about Johnnie Ray?
Ray was fourteen years younger than Dorothy and had a kinetic and youthful quality. He toured extensively and was hyped up. He used speed to keep going, as well as being a drinker. Most of his after-show antics were playful, silly by today's standards. However, he went cruising for other men and got arrested for soliciting and almost ruined his career at a time when homosexual entertainers stayed in the closet. The first time he was arrested he wasn't famous enough for the arrest to make the papers. The second time it did, there was a trial. Dorothy campaigned using her column to help and he was acquitted by an all woman jury.
Ray was a good looking Oregon country boy, who had lost some of his hearing as child, yet managed to sing beautifully. In videos I've watched of his interviews, he comes off not as simple but simply nice. Dorothy was capable of upgrading his life. With his own career a success he may not have needed her financial help but help she tried. She bought him a crystal chandelier and advised him on art, album covers, and career moves. There is no doubt this relationship included sex and that their affair was known to very many people, including J.F.K!
In about 1954, Dorothy had her third child, a son whose father was likely Johnnie Ray. (After her death, Richard disowned this son, according to a Wiki I read.)
So, like many having affairs who live(d) in the public eye, Dorothy and her friends were careful not to let her alternative lifestyle be known to the American Public, and considering that she was in the world of reportage and had made enemies, many people had to be relied on to keep the open secret. Careful to hone their images and professional reputations, they also accommodated their desires and needs. And like a professional journalist, Dorothy also set some boundaries about what she would publish, even as because of her associations and friendships, she did know about the affair Marilyn was having with the President's brother, Robert Kennedy. She hinted that Marilyn was on the upswing and involved with a man more famous than Joe DiMaggio in a column that was published shortly before Marilyn's suspicious death.
I hope I've tantalized you enough that you will continue reading as I post throughout this month on Dorothy Kilgallen and Johnny Ray, while advocating also for the work of Mark Shaw, whose intention is to have Dorothy's death investigated again.
I will also be using as a reference two other books:
Please join me in learning more about Dorothy and Johnnie here at Mistress Manifest.
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Interested in my archived blog posts?
Marilyn Monroe was our Mistress of the Month in May 2016.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, Jacqueline "Jackie" Bouvier Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy and his mistresses, even Jackie's cousin, Little Edie Bouvier, have all appeared here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. And so have a number of other people who show up in the books I've read to prepare this month's posts!
