MAY FUNG YEE PANG ON HER NEW DOCUMENTARY

The word Mistress seems to bring fantasies of riches and great beauty, women in their youth, and with much older men. But as we learn more about the real lives of women who have been in relationships other than traditional marriage, we also learn that being a Mistress rarely lasts an entire lifetime, and that Mistresses too get older.

May Fung Yee Pang was born in 1950 and John Lennon, the famous ex-Beatle, was born in 1940, ten years earlier. He was married to Yoko Ono at the time.  She was born in 1933.  Does age matter?

My feeling is often it does, but not always. Sometimes experiencing life means a person gains wisdom, sometimes not. What strikes me is that Yoko was raised in a Japanese upper class culture in which women thought a man having a mistress was not such a big deal.  I tend to think that attitude is also because marriages were arranged or at least highly encouraged and there was not and still is not much support for a woman or a man remaining unmarried.

As May Pang says, Yoko might have been a Japanese wife but she herself was not, she was a Chinese-American woman.  (And while John was a decade older than May, Yoko was seventeen years older.)

Through her documentary, which is respected, May's place in Rock and Roll History remains.  In recent weeks a concert called The Lost Weekend took place at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, one of the clubs most associated with Rock and Roll.  May was there to celebrate the music of John Lennon.  As she says, during their time together he was especially productive writing and recording songs.

In this YouTube video, May, now officially a senior, talks about those days in her life in which she was in love with John.  In keeping with my policy not to embed videos that have commercials, I'll just give you the link.

YAHOO Inteview of MAY PANG DETAILS LOST WEEKEND

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MAY PANG : LOVING JOHN and INSTAMATIC KARMA

May Pang's memoir, Loving John, came out in 1983.  The story goes that her 500 page manuscript was edited down to 300 pages, to focus on the more sensational aspects of her relationship with John.

Editors for publishers have been known to do that but perhaps this also lead to her wish to do a documentary.

Excerpt from an article in Daily Mail, 2008, 

'My lost weekend with Lennon': May Pang breaks her silence over their relationship

By MAY PANG

Last updated at 23:44 09 February 2008

Most people have come to know the time that John Lennon and I spent together as The Lost Weekend. I am always surprised by how many people are under the impression that our time together lasted only a single weekend.

John and I were together "officially" for 18 months, but our relationship actually spanned ten years - from December 1970 to December 1980.

***

May also published this book Instamatic Karma full of photographs she took of John during their relationship.  She says he encouraged her to take photos and also talked to her about how fame might effect her life.

MAY FUNG YEE PANG REVISTED! JOHN LENNON'S MISTRESS FINALLY DOES A DOCUMENTARY ON THEIR RELATIONSHIP

Back in April 2012 I elevated May Fung Yee Pang to the Mistress of the Month pantheon here at Mistress Manifesto. And I posted when her Lost Weekend documentary was premiered in June 2022.  That film is now in theaters.  If you're a Beatles fan or a John Lennon fan or you want to hear the story from an ex-Mistress's side, make an effort to see this film. 

 VIDEO EXPIRED  TAKEN DOWN JULY 18 2023  (Check YouTube!)

May, a Chinese-American born and residing in New York, worked as a very young woman for a manager who was in the music business.  From there she was enlisted to work as a personal assistant to ex-Beatle John Lennon, who had moved into a solo music career, and was married to the artist Yoko Ono. Yoko, from an elite Japanese banking family, was a seven years older than John, had been married before, and had a daughter who was with her father and had been, shall we say, kept from her, for some time. John had started his relationship with Yoko while still married to his first wife, Cynthia, with whom he had a son, Julian. I recall reading in another book, though I can't remember the title, that John and Yoko had been nasty to Cynthia, letting her come home from a trip to find the two together in her marital home.

John Lennon's father had been missing from his life, and he was raised by an aunt, his mother's older sister. He was not much of a father to Julian. His absence from his marriage and fatherhood to Julian was, in part, because of the Beatle's traveling for performing and that career. Maybe John had moved on from this marital life and love of Cynthia, who has been married to him for about a decade but he sure didn't handle it right.  John seems to have come under a spell.

According to May, Yoko was controlling the phone messages and keeping John from Julian, as she was instructed not to tell him about calls that came in. It was not until she and John were in their relationship, living together in a smaller apartment while Yoko continued to live in the marital home, that John was reunited with his son. 

Frankly, although it may not be fair, one of the reasons that relationships in which older women get together with younger men is criticized, is the assumption that the older woman will be controlling.

May was not silent about her relationship with John or the circumstances of their breakup when she was still young and hot. It had been Yoko's wish that she have an affair with John, her husband, and May says John was her first boyfriend.  May says that at first she protested. She was an employee and one who worked extreme hours without complaint, even taking calls in the middle of the night.  (And she was never paid for the many hours she put in even before the job description got blurred by becoming John's mistress.)

As part of my research into May that is more recent, I found a video on YouTube in which Geraldo Rivera, who had his own show at the time, had May on and lambasted her for being a Mistress with his questions and moralizing tone. Thinking of what I know of Geraldo and his inability to be a faithful husband himself, his womanizing in general, it struck me as how sexist this really was, implying that May should have known better...  Well, John should have known better?  Yoko should have?

It was complicated.

Over time I've come to realize that any person who expects an employee to have disrupted sleep on their behalf is abusive.  

I want to mention this because I have believed that Yoko was entirely controlling the situation, that Yoko was entirely controlling the relationship May had with John. That Yoko was playing him like a yoyo, letting him out on a string, reeling him back in. May says Yoko was not entirely controlling of John and also that some of her reason for the documentary was that she wanted to set the record straight, so to speak, to counter things people were saying about her that was untrue.

Since Yoko suggested May and John go out, thinking it would be a better option for her if John was going to have extra-marital sex, it may as well be someone she knew, she quite possibly ended it too. May says that through the entire eighteen months - which has been trivialized as a "lost weekend"  -that Yoko called many times a day.

Because she was finally ready to do this documentary, May has gotten on various social media to promote it and has her own web site: MAY PANG OFFICIAL SITE THE LOST WEEKEND

FRESHLY PLUCKED

MARK SHAW BOOKS : READ MORE FROM THIS ACCOMPLISHED INVESTIGATIVE AUTHOR : TRUTH and JUSTICE FOR DOROTHY KILGALLEN

MARK SHAW BOOKS - OFFICIAL    https://markshawbooks.com/

Connect to Mark's books, speaking engagements, and so on. I hope I have given him - and the subject of Dorothy Kilgallen - my best in this month's posts.  On one of the broadcasts I listened to he said that because of his public speaking he gets new information often.

I listened to YouTube interviews and speeches by Mark in which he talks about this book and I do hope that an investigation of her death will be reopened. I hope that posting about this fascinating woman this month will help the cause of truth and justice.

This is one of the best and shortest interviews that expands upon all her accomplishments, which may dazzle you.  He believes she was the most credible investigative reporter of her time. She had respect for her reportage, her Broadway column, and so much else.

I read the books I feature here at Mistress Manifesto from cover to cover. I also listened to a number of YouTube videos which were of Mark delivering lectures, and so, not only did I feel well situated in my understanding of his theories and research, but also felt I had to promote his desire for Justice for Dorothy. The man Shaw thinks poisoned her with a drug overdose, or set her up to be poisoned, has died.  But Shaw is open to hearing from anyone who has more information.

Missy

I'LL NEVER FALL IN LOVE AGAIN : JOHNNIE RAY

Johnnie Ray composed this song, as he had some others.  Said to be his last hit, the singing sensation almost always had a song on the charts in the 1950's. Had he and his music gone out of style because the era of rock and roll was coming in, with Elvis Presley?  Or had he dodged many a controversy because of his sexuality?  Or was it a combination of all these things, and his drinking?  

JOHNNIE RAY IS SHOCKED BY DOROTHY'S DEATH : HE MUST GO ON - THE ROAD, IN LIFE

Once Johnnie Ray and Bill Franklin were a couple and in a star-manager relationship, and Johnnie's health began to restore, the two of them went to live in Torremelios, Spain,  not yet a resort, and lived a simple and affordable life. Johnnie had wanted to quit the show business treadmill he was on.  At this point he was 38 years old and had given up drinking knowing the cirrhosis could kill him. Actually most people would have died as much as he drank.

"That he was still unable to sleep even after this average daily elbow bending and pill popping regimen is an ugly insight to the myriad tensions, pressures, anxieties and mental snares that assailed him.  Johnnie's life was an exercise in extremes, unimaginable emotional zeniths, the rise and plunge of glorious rapture and shattering torture.  His anguish, like his capacity for intoxicants, was beyond comprehension. (page 313).

"Like New York, Dorothy Kilgallen had also changed.  Johnnie was shocked when they met face to face.  Dorothy was obviously deteriorating - her face was puffy, her figure was shot.  She had gained quite a bit of weight and seemed weak; her bearing and gait were stilted, her speech was no longer the tuneful silvery voice of Broadway, but closer to labored, thick-tongued voice of the Bowery.  Dorothy's passion and principals ranj as high, true and clear as ever, but her mental clarity and standards of practice were also degenerating.  (Page 318) 

She had also taken up with a new lover, the one that author Mark Shaw thinks may have cooperated with the Mafia to murder Dorothy.

Johnnie was trying to make a return (ie. not called a comeback) changing his show song list.  When he restarted his return with a show at The Latin Quarter in 1965, Dorothy was back stage for every show. After this success, bookers will calling from all over, and Johnnie agreed to perform in Las Vegas at the Tropicana. He was now mod in his appearance, upgrading to the 1960's with tossled hair and the picture of health.

Dorothy and her husband were also experiencing financial problems like never before.  So she took a paid "press junket" to Vegas in order to see Johnnie perform there.  It was important to Johnnie that she be there to show her support.  At the same time she was, as an investigative journalist, independently investigating the President John F. Kennedy assassination.

Bill Franklin took her calls and said she was using a "Little Girl Lost" voice.  He thought drugs were taking over her life. (Page 423-324)  Still, she arrived dressed beautifully to hear him sing and show her support.

"Dorothy spent four days in Las Vegas.  Between her boundless passion and limited time, Bill felt even more uncomfortable that he had as part of a trio in New York. "We all saw a lot of each other, and there were times when Johnnie and she went out alone.  She would come out to the house one night, Johnnie would go to her hotel the next," he said.  "I kind of felt in the middle there... a lot in the middle.  That happened a lot with her anyway, but it seemed she was feeling like maybe Johnnie didn't love her like she thought he should."  (page 326)

After the success of The Tropicana, Bill still had to search out more bookings for Johnnie.  On the night that Dorothy died, Johnnie wanted to watch "To Tell The Truth," another television game show on which there were mystery guests. Dorothy was one of the mystery guests and the show had been taped previously.

"We had lunch on the Sunset strip," Jimmy Campbell recalled.  "And John picked up the newspaper, opened it up and there was the headline: 'Dorothy Kilgallen Dies In Her Sleep.'  Jesus Christ -- he almost fainted on the spot.

He said, 'Wait a minute now ... and started crying like a baby.  He cried for real. She was a good lady, man.  Good to him, good to me, good to all of us," Campbell's voice tapered to near silence with the recollection.  "We got back up to the house, we're both crying now, and John says, 'Give me a drink.' We got drunk.  They were close, man, really tight.  She was one of the best friends he had.

"After he got done crying about it, he got pissed off." Campbell said, "John didn't believe she died of natural causes.  He said, 'I ain't gonna tell you everything that I know about what Dorothy knows, but I don't believe she just laid down and went to sleep like that.' He didn't tell me the whole story though.  Never would.  I asked him that day and he just said, 'It's dangerous to know what Dorothy knows." (pages 332-333)

Dorothy's funeral in New York in 1965 took place at St. Vincent Ferrer, the same Roman Catholic church she had been married in. A couple thousand New Yorkers showed up. Johnnie watched the news coverage on television and cried.

"John went berserk when Dorothy died," Jim Low said. "That just tore him apart.  I''' never forget it.  He was always very high on her, thought the world of her." The loss was a brutal, devastating blow that smashed Johnnie's life apart." (page 347)

Missy here!  This is the only reference to Johnnie's reaction to his lover's death I could find and I'm glad to know that his feelings for her were genuine.

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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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