THREE MISTRESS MAY COMING UP!

Hello My Readers, 

May 2023 is going to be a bit different than most months here at Mistress Manifesto. 

For the first few days of the month - and then the last few - I'm going to post on two women who have been Mistress of the Month... I bet you can guess at least one of them!  The other?  That Mistress of the Month is back in the news because of a special documentary, her own project!

In between, please continue with me as we explore the Alternative Lifestyle of the famous reporter and "What's My Life" television celebrity, Dorothy Kilgallen, whose life may have been ended in murder - the modern version of poison - an overdose.  Was her husband a suspect? Had she managed to shame him with her long term love affair with bisexual pop singer Johnnie Ray? Or, perhaps was it that she was so close to the truth about who had assassinated President John F. Kennedy and someone wanted to stop the truth from coming out?  Mark Shaw, the author who wants to get justice for Dorothy, has worked hard at it.  I feel I can do my part here and, who knows, maybe YOU have information for him that can make a difference.

If you've just hit on this post, or this blog, first, we began the famous Dorothy Killgallen saga in May 2022, so you may want to go back a little to start.

As well, I encourage you to read back a few months. Perhaps you'll find the story of someone who was just like YOU!

Missy

EVERY WOMAN NEEDS A GAY MALE PAL BUT DON'T GET USED AS COVER : OPINION BY MISSY

A while back I met a man who told me that he was - well - not transgender - but born with female DNA and male characteristics. When he told me this, he said that the friends he grew up with knew about it and accepted him.  I did to - or so I thought - when I didn't know he had an agenda. Now he was in a new city and social situation and trying to make friends.. He told me he had been in love with a woman years back but his DNA problem required that he break the relationship and that everyone felt sorry for him but also understood. 

He dressed and conducted himself as a man, and as a man, he seemed to be rather sexist.

He asked me along to a lunch where he said we would be meeting up with one of his friends and be talking about literary books. I'm well qualified to be part of such a discussion. The friend is heterosexual and married and I have no idea what all he knew about the man who'd invited me. We got there and these two talked literary books, without including me in. They were putting on a performance. I was supposed to be the gal simply astounded by their knowledge. The audience. They were obnoxious. I couldn't have intruded with any commentary about any author or book.

I got it. The man with the female DNA was trying to show me off as his girlfriend to his heterosexual friend, like he was scoring points with this man for even having a woman along. I got it that I was supposed to be providing cover or proof that he was all male. Who knows what he had told this heterosexual man about me before this lunch or after. It was the last for me.

I sat there wishing I had not wasted my time. Such situations are hard for me, because my politeness kicks in, even when others are not being polite to me. Luckily the lunch place was busy, the waitress came by numerous times to give us a clue it was time for her to turn the table over to other waiting diners. We left and I determined that I would not be receptive to this man any further.

One day flowers were sent by a mystery person. There was a mystery card in the flowers and the person who had received them must have taken a bribe to keep the secret. I was not comfortable at all with this. I gave them to the person who had received them, saying there must have been a mistake made. Later, I heard her saying how "cute" and 'romantic' this gesture of his was. I realized this woman was part of the problem. 

The unwelcome flowers could have been from anyone and a man posing as a 'friend' while actually having a secret agenda was not someone I wanted in my life at al.

Not long after this, I ran into the man in a public place. I was in a hurry but could not ignore him. He used this moment to ask after the flowers and plant a kiss on my cheek, thus revealing himself. Then he pointed to his own cheek expecting a kiss there from me.  I did not. Where was this going? Clearly, because he was in a fantasy about me, he had not even bothered to ever ask me if I was available. When he next asked me to lunch, I told him that I was not available. 

Not that this man was "gay." This was before the discussion on sexuality and gender became what it is today, with so very many labels to define oneself, should you want to put one on, or out yourself.  (I do not believe anyone should be outing anyone else.) If technically he was female, but not transgender, but had a crush on me, what was he imagining?  How confusing!

Whatever it was, I didn't want or need it.  

There men who are not confused and have known they are gay - not sexually attracted to females - for a long time. The pressure on them now is to be 'out and proud' but not so long ago the pressure on them was to be 'in the closet' for their own safety and protection. I  think this is still the case in some places. I live in a big city where there is a significant gay population and areas of that city where homosexuals dominate and it's safer for them to be out. 

I have gay friends but 'm not willing to be any gay man's pretend girlfriend for the sake of his relationship with his parents or his heterosexual, perhaps gay-hating boss, or perhaps his not-tolerant heterosexual friends. Is there a real friendship there?  That's what you have to ask yourself.

Over the years I've known of a number of women who were sympathetic to a gay man's difficult situation with his parents or boss who did, willingly, act as a girlfriend, but I thought some of them were being used. I especially hated to hear gay men talking about some of those women as "fag hags."

Pre-Covid, I went with a gay friend to see him play soccer with his team. These men get right to their game, sometimes lingering afterwards for beer and some conversation. Most do not bring along family, wives, or girlfriends. I got the impression though that my friend, showing up with a woman, tweaked their curiosity, and sure enough more than one came over to ask him who I was. He said, "I will tell you. She is my friend."  I was so glad he handled this honestly.

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FOR THE TAKING

Dorothy Kilgallen's favorite flower was the rose of lavender color.

Johnnie Ray said he thought they were imported from Holland.

JOHNNIE RAY in HOLLAND CONCERT 1958

22 March 1958 at Avro Studio, Hilversum, Holland.  He was a unique talent and this performance is terrific.  Imagine Dorothy sitting in the audience, so prim but ready to jump out of her skin. Ray's popularity continued to be strong in Britain, even as it dimmed in the United States.

  

Ray was an actor in one film, "There's No Business Like Show Business.  The cast included Marilyn Monroe.  Dorothy Kilgallen was friendly with Marilyn.

DOROTHY KILGALLEN's AFFAIR IS ALL THE GOSSIP IN NEW YORK : EXALTED LOVE OR JUST ONE MORE FOR JOHNNIE?

More notes and excerpts:
 
"Their relationship, whether locked away in Johnnie's bedroom or sharing a table at The Colony or the Plaza, was extremely physical. One evening at El Morocco, Johnnie was seen to remove Dorothy's shoe and his her foot..." (page 226)

"When Johnnie turned 30 in 1957, Dorothy spent days arranging a "Progressive Party," with reservations for dozens of guests at seven different clubs and restaurants... (page 226)

"She had the bus decorated, and everyone was served cocktails between stops.  The first course was served at the Colony, the second at Le Pavillon, and then the St. Regis, only the best...  "And at every spot, there were place cards that she had gone over and arranged that day, so you would be sitting next to a different person at every place we went to... (page 227)

"The delicacy of carrying on the affair was a complex matter of masquerade and reliance on high society's basically hypocritical amoralism and strictly nominal discretion.  The only aspect of the subterfuge that bothered Dorothy was reconciling it with her faith's restrictive dogma. No problem, with Johnnie in on it.  "We came to terms with the Catholic problem, he said, "Once we decided to ahve some kind of commitment, it resolved itself, though it didn't resolve itself in terms of her mother finding out." 

(page 227)

Sadly, while continuing to perform at the hottest clubs in the country, Johnnie also had surgery to repair his long-damaged hearing.  The surgery was a total failure, making him even more deaf, but was promoted as a success, and he went on without a hearing aid and fooled the public. (But what a horror that had to be!)  Johnnie persevered.

The couple did have friends who acted to keep the affair discreet but as the two of them drank to excess, they began to be less careful.  Was it an unashamed display of love and passion or the alcohol? One friend said he saw them both passed out in a doorway...  Yet, Dorothy Kilgallen was also known for her professionalism, for showing up ready to work and doing a great job. So, one wonders, did she work with terrible hang-overs or were the stories of their drinking exaggerated?

As Johnnie aged, his management sought to find ways to invest and preserve his money, Johnnie also honored his professional commitments. His relationship with Dorothy may have been what preserved him in his personal life.

"This chicanery was primarily wool to mask Kollmar's bloodshot eyes.  The situation, however, was not that simple -- Dorothy did her fair share of looking the other , and ignoring Johnnie's "With Love From Your Little Man" ID bracelet was the least of her worries. Throughout their affair, Johnnie had several concurrent male lovers, a number of whom actually shared the 63rd Street apartment (his place) with him. (page 246)

Dorothy's heath began to fail, it is supposed because of the alcohol, and she was hospitalized or had to take time out of her work more than once. These hospitalizations may have been rehabs or nervous breakdowns. Johnnie's physical and mental health were also jeopardized and he began to look a bit skeletal.  He was being pulled in several directions.

She had thought Johnnie needed new management and had a number of suggestions that were meant to be helpful. New management came with Bill Franklin, who then became Johnnie's lover.

"They fell for each other hard, initiating what became the most intense and long-lived relationship with another man Johnnie ever undertook.  The situation was strange.  Slipping around behind Dorothy's back was not so extraordinary; doing so as she recovered from a breakdown caused by Johnnie's refusal to commit was rather unsavory," (page 291-292)

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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

 

JOHNNIE RAY ABOUT DOROTHY KILGALLEN : SHE WAS THE SOFTEST...

THE DOROTHY KILLGALLEN STORY ORG (Mark Shaw's Site)  

Mark Shaw asks that an investigation be opened regarding Dorothy's death.  Lots of great information on Dorothy and photos too!  (In one of the interviews I listened to on YouTube, he admitted he does feel a connection to Dorothy, and that she may be, in so many words, working with him from the Beyond. (Hearing that just makes me like him more.)

From the quote page:

"People who did not know her totally misunderstood her.  They thought she was a cold-hearted newspaper woman who would stop at nothing.  That was cynical - attack, attack, attack. But Dorothy wasn't any of those things. She was the softest, tenderest, most thoughtful, most lovable woman I have ever known."

                                                                                                - Johnnie Ray

JOHNNIE RAY and DOROTHY KILGALLEN : SHE SAVES HIS CAREER and THE COUPLE OPENLY FROLICK - EVEN THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES KNOWSA BOUT THEM

From my notes:

In 1959 pop singer Johnnie Ray almost ruined his career when he got arrested for soliciting homosexual sex with an undercover cop in Detroit. Dorothy Kilgallen, his lover of a few years by then, and a powerful  newspaperwoman fourteen years older than he and What's My Line celebrity, was sure he had been set up by the police.  According to author Mark Shaw, Dorothy worked behind the scenes to proclaim his innocence.  (I can imagine if Johnnie and Dorothy frolicked openly that there were those who may have thought of Johnnie as heterosexual. I think back in the day people were not as acquainted with bisexuality.)  There was a jury trail and all the people on the jury were women.  He was acquitted.

(Notes from Page 68)

In January of 1961, President Kennedy's inauguration was covered by Dorothy, who had previously taken her son to the White House and visited the President. She showed up in a silver Rolls Royce for transportation and later attended the "Rat Pack" gala that featured Frank Sinatra and his singer pals. (I note from previous research that at the J.F.K. inauguration there were several balls and the new President showed up at all of them but his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy when home before the night was through, fatigued.) Frank Sinatra and she had a feud in which they threw barbs at each other, with Frank criticizing her facial features, in particular her chin. But they were polite with each other at this event.

Dorothy flaunted her romance with Johnnie and thee "frolicked" at various New York hotspots including the Copacabana and the Stork Club. Her husband Richard still attended some social events with her but was in the grip of alcoholism and was probably embittered at this point. (Richard was never a real suspect in her death, though some thought he had the motivation to kill his wife because she was so openly involved with another man. The question of Dorothy being a drinker comes up, and there are reports that Johnnie also had a drinking problem. Dorothy did drink but not to the point where it interfered in her television appearances, her work as a reporter on trials, and so on.  It would seem she separated her work obligations and duty and her personal life.)

Interested in Frank Sinatra's Mistress who became his wife, Barbara Marx Sinatra?  She's here at Mistress Manifesto! Check Pages to find out what subjects I've covered and when so you can find them in my archives!  BARBARA BLAKELEY MARX - SINATRA : TWICE A MISTRESS - THRICE A WIFE appears in October 2018

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