JOHNNIE RAY HAS OTHER MEN and DOROTHY : HUSBAND RICHARD FINALLY CONFRONTS THE COUPLE : THE PASSIONATE LOVE AFFAIR ENDS

Notes and Excerpts:

It seems that Dorothy's understanding that Johnnie was bisexual may not have been any more sophisticated than his own understanding of it.  He had other men, some living with him at his home, while he had his passionate affair with Dorothy.  According to this book, she was jealous of other women but not these other men. She even went out with him and some of his men on the town. Perhaps she didn't know he was not sexually loyal to her. While some of these men might have been leeching off Johnnie and tagging along on their dates, Dorothy may have become clingy at this point in their affair. It's reported that Johnnie avoided some of her phone calls and did not want to have her over, creating a boundary there for his other personal life. She might not have thought him capable of sexuality with anyone else, because he spent so much time with her. 

Unlike with her husband, she was sexually fulfilled with Johnnie.  

As 1960 went on, Dorothy found that her celebrity had caused a curiosity about her that was resulting in media interest as well.  She found herself roasted in some media and took to having to defend herself.

While some people were horrified by her affair with Johnnie Ray, there were those who genuinely liked her and liked Johnnie, separately and as a couple. One man said, 'He is so kind, so innately generous... "  However, people who were in the know felt she was not being realistic about there being a future for her with the much younger singer. Johnnie might have lead her to believe he wanted a future with her too. There were those in his camp who thought she was not good for him. By 1962, the hard drinking with Johnnie had taken a toll on Dorothy's health as well and she may have been checking into hospitals to withdraw from not only alcohol but pills too! It's thought that her heath went downhill after this. (And the portrayal of Dorothy as in need of rehab in this book makes the idea that she could not have died of an overdose a bit more realistic.)

'One night in early 1963, Dorothy, Johnnie, Allen, and a large group of frolickers did the town in several limousines. They all drank heavily.  While the rest of the group returned to Johnnie's, the singer and the columnist went off on their own.

They stopped at the Left Bank (Richard's restaurant) and, with Richard present, they necked.  Richard attempted to ignore the situation. They were at a table and he was at the bar. His bartender watched the couple until he could tolerate it no longer and whispered to Richard, "Are you just going to stand here and let her humiliate you like that?"

Richard ordered another drink and said nothing.

Johnnie took Dorothy home to her town house. The two of them were fondling in the Black Room when Richard, bold with booze, burst in on them.

He screamed at Johnnie:  "I'll kill you if I ever see you with my wife again."

"That is entirely her decision," Johnnie said.

"I want you out of here and out of her life," Richard raged.

As Johnnie put on his jacket and prepared to leave, Dorothy, her entire face trembling, begged; "I want to go with you now. Please take me with you. I don't want to be in this house anymore."

Johnnie recalled the episode and all the reasons he marshaled against her desperate imploration: "I thought very fast. I knew that if she were to walk out - and she was ready - everything would collapse for her. I explained to her that she'd lose the column, the television show, everything she had worked a lifetime to achieve. She said she didn't care about any of it.  And I thought about Kerry. I told her, "I'm gonna have to walk out and leave you here.' (page 347)

And though she begged, Johnnie, aided by his friends, tried to make the final cut with Dorothy, who even threatened to kill herself. No doubt she was obsessed with him. Is obsession love? I wonder who hasn't had an experience like this. Dorothy ended up hospitalized and the Dorothy and Dick radio program ended after many years. This passage in Lee Israel's fine autobiography of Dorothy leaves me to think that the marriage was not an agreed-upon Open marriage and that she did have a serious drinking problem and was also psychologically unwell. By mid 1964 Johnnie had moved on and Dorothy had accepted the situation.  (That Richard threatened to kill Johnnie and the idea that he had cause, made Richard Killer a possible murder suspect when Dorothy was found dead, however this is not explored in Israel's book.)  Johnnie Ray became involved romantically with the younger man who came into his life to rescue or revive his career.  As it turned out, Dorothy flew to Las Vegas to see him perform shortly before she died, and this was the last she saw him.

 

Over the last few weeks we have learned so much about the woman Dorothy Kilgallen, who was willing to give it all up to be with her lover, Johnnie Ray, while the book by Mark Shaw is focused on her as an investigative reporter. What I want to know is if Johnnie Ray accepted that Kerry was his son and if he was at least a friend to him.

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DOROTHY KILGALLEN'S AFFAIR WITH JOHNNIE RAY: SHE BIRTHS A THIRD CHILD AND THE FATHER IS NOT LIKELY HER HUSBAND :

 Notes and Excerpts:

Dorothy was competitive by nature and liked to win, so when she became a panelist on the television game show What's My Line, she was respected, if not enjoying a camaraderie with her fellow panelists; their various personalities made the show, which involved guessing the profession (i.e. line of work) of a guest. Her career in reportage continued. In 1953 she covered the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II wearing 'a voluminous gown with more than fourteen thousand embroidered jewels and pearls that were encrusted at the scalloped neckline.  She placed a tiara on her head, put on her white mink cape lined in silver lame, grabbed some pencils, and was off to Westminster Abbey. ... Dorothy's apparent fragility continued to bring out the chivalric in the male animal... (page 238)

(With her husband Richard Kollmar's endeavers in the theater and a restaurant called The Left Bank, he was rarely around. She was tremendously busy too. However, she did not want to be seen socially without a male escort and usually found one.  As for Richard, as he hit middle age, he was rarely totally sober and began to bloat while Dorothy was healthy and energetic. She found other men attractive and had lost respect for her husband. Never the less, the couple bought a five story town house right off Park Avenue, a another upgrade in housing, this one taking most of their income. They had been married fourteen years.)

Excerpt: 'The union that produced their third child was suspiciously identifiable. They were late for a dinner party at the Boscowitzes, offering a flushed and clearly bogus excuse.  Hubie and Lillian giggled at their embarrassment and could pinpoint, years later, the evening Dorothy had conceived. ... He was named Kerry after a county seat in Ireland and Ardan for an Irish warrior who, Dorothy wrote, "was said to have the most beautiful singing voice in all Erin.' (page 253)

'In the early part of 1956, Johnnie Ray appeared on 'What's My Line? as a guest celebrity.  The twenty-nine year old singer, sandy-haired and boyishly lanky, was still headlining in clubs, though the hysteria of the early 1950's had cooled. He remained, however, one of Dorothy's pet-pailletted crushes.  Endsville!' (page 278) 

(After this evening, the two saw each other socially and she started being nice to him in her columns. She was 44 and this was her first affair. They even went to The Left Bank restaurant together but she never joined him when he went on the road to tour.)

'Johnnie did not possess the polish and panache to which Dorothy had gravitated all her life.  He was tender, guileless, show-biz smart but essentially neither intellectual nor verbal... (page 279)

'Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie lit up the life she had.  She mentioned him so often and so effusively in the column that he had to tel her to cool it. (page 280)

'She came to Johnnie with staggering emotional and physical appetites  She had not had any sexual relations with Richard for years... (page 283)

'Johnnie was fond of Dorothy and attracted to her, and a bit in awe.  He did not have the macho peer problem that turned so many men off. That she was not regarded by the community as beautiful did not affect his feeling for her or his pride in being seen with her... "She was probably the most feminine woman I've ever known, " Johnny said. "And I always thought she was a pretty lady - the softest thing you ever touched...' (page 283)

'She bought him gifts from Bergdorf's and Cartier including a pair of cuff links with diamonds and sapphires, which he was afraid to wear because of their value.  He sent her lavender roses when he could get them from his little corner florist. "They were almost steel-blue and gorgeous,  I think they were brought in from Holland...  She was as sentimental as a pop tune.  Johnnie was constantly receiving surprise packages... (pages 286-287)

(Some of her friends didn't like him and some dumped her. After some time Dorothy and Johnnie became less discreet. They were excessively together and sometimes openly affectionate.  People thought Dorothy had radically changed.  Johnnie considered himself heterosexual and Dorothy thought of homosexuals as feminine men, which Johnnie was not.)

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RICHARD'S WOMANIZING MADE DOROTHY VULNERABLE TO JOHNNIE RAY

Notes and Excerpts:

By 1950 Dorothy Kilgallen and husband Richard Kollmar were settled in the good life, a life that many could only dream of.  They had rich friends to visit and enjoy. They took vacations to Latin America, the islands of Greece, Rome and Paris. They went to church on Sunday and then to exclusive clubs like The Stork, bringing along the children. Their two children were enrolled in private schools and had a governess.

As a couple they were broadcasting a show together on the radio,  Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick, which brought in enough money for them to live in a sixteen room Park Avenue apartment with a lavish interior. They threw great parties, especially for New Years Eve and their wedding anniversaries, that included dancing to orchestras and costume balls. They appeared to be a perfect couple, still had a good time, still had so much in common. 

And as a Catholic, Dorothy believed in forever marriage.

However:

'Richard's whoring was common knowledge among the cognoscenti in New York - as commonly known as Dorothy's fidelity.  He brought his women to some parties given by Charlotte Manson, who was now a successful radio actress. "He would call me to tell me about his newest," Charlotte Manson recalled. "He would all of a sudden appear at my apartment with them.  It was unforgivable." (page 198)

"Edgar Hatfield arranged the financial settlements for his old school chum when pregnancies resulted.  A famous stripteaser was one of the several women whom Richard inconvenienced.  Hatfield thundered, "The least you can do is take some kind of precautions!"

"I can't be bothered," Richard replied...' (page 199)

(Though Dorothy is thought to have never complained, at least one old friend got a desperate call from her.  The couple began to live separate lives.)

Dorothy's journalism career was such that millions read her Voice of Broadway column as syndicated through the Hearst organization. She was not always kind to those she didn't like so a sometimes critical voice was apparent in what she wrote, and sometimes stars were nice to her just to maintain a good word. 

'...In 1952, however, emerged, at the dawning of the corseted Eisenhower years, a twenty-five year old farm boy named Johnnie Ray. Johnnie had been singing professionally for seven years when his record, "Cry," flip side "The Little White Cloud That Cried," jumped onto the charts and sold two million copies for Columbia, making it the second biggest hit in the company's history.  With a hearing aid protruding from one ear, the deafness resulting from an accident at a Boy Scout jamboree back in Oregon, he looked like a pale, anguished El Greco saint. There was a Kol Nidre choke in his voice, and a demented, revivalist abandon in his performance.  He jumped, wept, thumped, whispered, knelt, and contorted in a way that no white performer had done before.' (page 221-222)

'It was Dorothy, in fact, who was astonished by her own response to the young singer as she witnessed his performance for the first time. (At the Copacabana, New York City.) (page 222)

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Just an end note that on page 148 it's noted that Richard co-produced a Broadway play with his then partner Alfred Bloomingdale.  At the time Alfred, who's Mistress Vicki Morgan was the Mistress of the month in March 2016. VICKI MORGAN :  MONEY MAD MISTRESS OF ALFRED BLOOMINGDALE :  WAS SHE REALLY SO "BAD" WHEN SHE STUCK BY HIM ON HIS DEATHBED? was only twenty-eight grandson of the founder of the famous Bloomingdale's department store. However, the work on the show was actually the doing of RIchard, as Alfred seems to have been a passive partner or investor. I also want to mention that Richard was not a career failure overall, that he worked in a speculative business.  It's just that his wife, Dorothy Kilgallen's career was so outstanding comparatively. 

DOROTHY KILGALLEN THE AMERICAN 'PRINCESS' WHO COVERED CORONATIONS AND QUEEN ELIZABETH'S ROYAL WEDDING GETS MARRIED TO AN BLUE BLOOD

 

Notes and Excerpts from Kilgallen by Lee Israel

(This is about Dorothy as someone who wanted to be with the rich.)

'Dorothy knew the rich were different. She liked the difference. And she genuinely liked the rich... There was a gauzy, ethereal quality about her...' (page 101)

'Single-handedly, she covered the coronation of George VI for the Journal, filling the entire front page of the paper for days with background stories, profiles, hard news of the coronation and all related social functions. On the Queen Mary and in London, she learned about keno, plover's eggs, curtsies, the proper response to royalty, and the significance of royal ribbons... '

(page 102)

'It is well within the realm of possibility that in Dorothy's perplexing psyche, dusty with moonbeams and communion wafers, she was actually seeing these professional events as a kind of social baptism...' (page 103)

'Dorothy had never been ashamed of her family or her household. Brooklyn was another matter. When she became The Voice of Broadway, she persuaded the family to move into Manhattan...' (page 108)

(Dorothy began to socialize with debutantes younger than she.)

'It was easy to like Dorothy socially.  She was a generous friend and a pleasant companion.  Her manners were impeccable.  She never gossiped or bad-mouthed anyone.  She liked her new life.  She loved her job.  She was proud of the columns she was turning out, though never boastful. She had an innocence that the worldly found amusing, a flight, gesticulating insecurity that the more sensitive of her friends found poignant... (pages 112-113)

(And as for the man she did marry, RIchard Kollmar...)

'He proposed on their sixth date, the courtship having been interrupted while he left town with the show. Dorothy told him that she wanted very much to be his wife, but that the problem of religion had first to be solved. Richard was an Episcopalian, and she would not consider marrying outside the Church. He would have to convert... (pages 116-117)

(His mother objected strongly, his father was softer. He did convert. RIchard then formally asked Dorothy's father for permission to marry her.)

'She wanted "Cholly Knickerbocker" to break the news of her engagement on the Society page.  He did, stressing Richard's generational high marks..." (page 124)  (Cholly was a famous society and goings-on-around-town columnist based in New York City.)

(Dorothy went on to brag about Richard's heritage.)

'The simplest conclusion about the relationship between Dorothy and RIchard is drawn often and harshly by many who knew both of them. RIchard, a striving actor, saw Dorothy, a powerful columnist and thought "That will get me where I want to go," and pursued her. It is a view that appears to redound most negatively upon him, but, in fact, makes a pitiable, foolish, and desperately vulnerable woman of Dorothy.  It is a view held by many who loved her, but nonetheless perceived her as an extraordinarily unattractive woman for whom a noticeable attractive man could not conceivably have had genuine feeling. To hold that view of their relationship is to fail to recognize that power can be as vitally aphrodisiacal when it is held by a woman as when it is held by a man.  Even if Richard did perceive  Dorothy as a kind of powerhouse, it is quite likely that he was aroused by that power.  

 (pages 124-125)

(Dorothy and Richard had a wedding with 800 guests, some of them Hollywood celebrities, many of them rather new to her life. They had a reception at the Viennese Room at the Saint Regis Hotel and then went on a honeymoon to Cuba.)

...'the bride and groom left to honeymoon in Varadero, Cuba.  The entire honeymoon package was a diplomatically wrapped gift presented to Dorothy from the North American gambling syndicate that supported General Gulgencio Batista.' (page 130)

(Cuba at the time was not ruled by Fidel Castro and was in fact a popular resort.)

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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