The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (11 page)

“delighted to be rescued from his career as a playboy.” The couple omitted the word
obey
from their wedding ceremony and allowed each other plenty of space thereafter, once even arriving at a ski resort separately, rooming separately, skiing briefly together, and then departing separately.

SEX PARTNERS:
The first lover of note in Coop’s life was Clara Bow, the star of
It
, in which he played a small part in 1927. Clara rated her lovers, and gave Coop rave reviews on his magnificent endowments, boasting to Hedda Hopper that he was “hung like a horse and could go all night.” They liked to make love outdoors, on beaches or in walnut groves. Clara told friends that Gary was so kind that he let her take her dog in the tub whenever he gave her a bath. The rumor had it that Cooper proposed marriage to Clara, which soured her feelings toward the relationship. In the end, Cooper blanched at being called the “It” boy to her “It” girl, and would dismiss their romance as a creation of the studio publicity department.

There was no denying his relationship with actress Lupe Velez, “the Mexican Spitfire.” She was the girl friend of singer Russ Columbo when she and Coop first met for
Wolf Song
in 1929. Twenty-four hours later she and Coop were in bed together. A friend told biographer Hector Arce of his embarrassment on being trapped in a naked Cooper’s dressing room while Coop and Lupe tantalized each other over the phone with talk of the forthcoming night’s activities and Coop developed an unabashed erection. The affair was often characterized by screaming, violent fights, which scarred Cooper physically and emotionally. Pressure from his mother and the studio finally broke up the relationship, leaving Coop with a nervous breakdown and only 148 lbs. on his 6-ft. frame.

During a “long walk” through Europe to clear his head, he met Contessa Dorothy di Frasso, an American who had married into Roman nobility. She helped Coop become a sophisticate and returned to Hollywood with him, where she became famous for throwing lavish parties and haunting movie sets on which he was filming. The younger, beautiful Veronica Balfe soon eclipsed her in Coop’s affections, and the contessa faded off to Palm Springs and an affair with gangster Buggsy Siegel.

Patricia Neal was 23 when Coop met her during the filming of
The Fountainhead
in 1949. They fell in love, and he sought a legal separation from Rocky in 1950. He took Miss Neal to Havana in hopes of having the relationship blessed by his friend Ernest Hemingway, but neither Papa nor anyone else was willing to sanction the breakup of his 17-year marriage. As for Rocky, her Catholicism wouldn’t permit her to consider divorce and her pedigree wouldn’t permit her to wallow in self-pity. She continued to live her life to the fullest, and before the separation became final in May, 1951, Cooper and Miss Neal had parted—she for an analyst and he for two more trivial liaisons before a reconciliation with Rocky and their daughter Maria.

—D.R.

The Four-Year Itch

JOAN CRAWFORD (Mar. 23, 1904–May 10, 1977)

HER FAME:
During her 40-year career as an actress, she appeared in over 80

films and was one of the screen’s longest-reigning stars. An emotional performance in
Mildred Pierce
earned her the 1945 Academy Award for best actress.

Besides appearing in such memorable movies as
The Women
,
Strange Cargo
,
Humoresque
, and
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
, she served on the board of directors of the Pepsi-Cola Company.

HER PERSON:
Crawford was permanently embittered by her battered,

poverty-stricken childhood. Her real

name was Lucille LeSueur, and she was

born in San Antonio, Tex. When

Lucille’s father deserted the family, her

mother found her jobs in Kansas City

boarding schools. In one, the 12-year-old

girl suffered severe beatings whenever she

failed to perform her duties. Pudgy,

buxom, and rather bland, she traveled to

New York in 1924 and took to the stage

as a dancer.

Described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as

“the best example of the flapper,” Lucille

was dancing on Broadway when MGM

discovered her there and signed her to a five-year contract. On New Year’s Day in 1925 she moved to Los Angeles. Through a combination of stringent dieting and extensive dental surgery, she created a new image and was transformed into

“Joan Crawford,” a screen name coined for her in a fan magazine contest sponsored by MGM.

By the end of 1927, the 5-ft. 4-in. starlet had become a flamboyant off-screen personality. She changed her hair color weekly, danced in revealing short skirts, and cavorted about town with a male harem of handsome escorts.

During her tumultuous Hollywood career, she was alternately labeled “First Queen of the Movies” and “Box-Office Poison.” Survival as a star was her para-mount aim; everything else—husbands, lovers, and children—was secondary.

She seemed to love her fans more than her family and kept in close touch with 1,500 of them right up to May 10, 1977, the day she succumbed to stomach cancer. Although she died alone, these loyal fans mourned her passing.

LOVE LIFE:
Joan was married four times, and each of her marriages lasted four years. Every time she changed husbands, she also changed the name of her Brentwood estate and installed all new toilet seats.

Her first groom was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the charming scion of the royal Fairbanks family of Hollywood. Popularly referred to as “the Prince and Cin-derella,” the couple was wed in June, 1929, despite strong opposition from Joan’s new in-laws. The senior Fairbanks and his then wife Mary Pickford boycotted the wedding, claiming that 25-year-old Joan was too old for 20-year-old Doug Junior.

The marriage, which for two years was ideal, ended in a shambles. Joan and

“Dodo,” as she called her husband, dreamed of having children. But the feisty Miss Pickford supposedly warned, “If you ever dare to make me a grandmother, I’ll kill you.” The marriage died shortly after Joan had a miscarriage, which she later admitted was really an abortion.

Prior to her 1933 divorce, Joan plunged into a love affair with actor Clark Gable. He too was married, but Joan enjoyed his company enough to carry on a series of love affairs with him until his death in 1960. Although she called Gable “a magnetic man with more sheer male magic than anyone in the world,”

she later confessed that he was an unsatisfactory lovemaker in spite of his screen image as a virile leading man. In fact, she was often faced with ploys which he devised to discourage sexual encounters between them.

Realizing that marriage to Gable was unlikely, Joan showered her affections on actor Franchot Tone, a wealthy, cultured easterner. And although she had claimed she’d never again marry, the 31-year-old Joan and 30-year-old Tone were wed on Oct. 11, 1935. This marriage was on shaky ground from the start, but Joan believed it might be saved if they had children. After suffering two miscarriages, she was informed that she could not bear children. When she caught Tone in bed with another actress, she decided that she had no further need for him anyway, and she divorced him in 1939.

While her relationship with Tone was disintegrating, she had a brief affair with Spencer Tracy. But his interest in her was fleeting. During a rehearsal, Joan betrayed her nervousness and flubbed her lines. Tracy lashed out at her: “For crissake, Joan, can’t you read the lines? I thought you were supposed to be a pro.”

The wounded Crawford fled in tears, and the affair was over.

Now Joan centered her efforts on adopting a child. Despite her status as a single parent, in 1939 she began adoption proceedings for a baby girl, whom she named Joan Crawford, Jr. Months later Joan changed the child’s name to Christina. But having a child around did not fill the void. Lonely and starving for love, the 38-year-old actress married handsome, muscular, 6-ft. 1-in. supporting actor Phillip Terry in 1942. She’d known him for only six weeks, and by her own admission she never loved Terry, who was three years her junior. Their marriage became so mechanical that the daily schedule Joan drew up for herself, and issued to staff members, always included a specific time allotted for sex—usually an hour and a half in the late afternoon earmarked as “time with Phillip.” During this period she adopted a second child—a boy—and named him Phillip Terry, Jr. Following her 1946 divorce from Terry, she renamed the boy Christopher Crawford.

With another failed marriage behind her, Joan made her children the focal point of her frustration. Stories of her abusive treatment of them were well known to horrified journalists, but anyone who dared to put them in print could count on his or her career being smashed by MGM’s publicity department. The rumors didn’t even prevent her from adopting infants Cathy and Cynthia in 1947. Joan always referred to the girls as being twins even though they came from different families, were born a month apart, and in no way looked alike.

Joan’s behavior became increasingly eccentric and unpredictable. She started drinking heavily and often greeted her dates wearing little more than lingerie.

She went out with numerous men, including young actors like Rock Hudson and George Nader, and was named as the “other woman” in two divorce suits.

Although her emotional life was a mess, she continued to keep her body in excellent condition. Before filming
Torch Song
, the 52-year-old actress showed

up at director Charles Walters’ home wearing nothing but a housecoat. Flinging it open, she told him, “I think you should see what you have to work with.”

Walters was impressed.

Joan’s final marriage took place in May, 1955. Her fourth husband, Alfred Steele, was the dynamic, square-faced president of Pepsi-Cola. Until he died of a heart attack in 1959, they circled the globe together promoting Pepsi. Despite her happiness in the role of corporate wife, Joan’s feelings for Steele often have been called into question. Six months after they had married, Joan described her 54-year-old bespectacled husband as being too fat and hard of hearing. Yet it appears that, for the first time, she actually felt loved. Toward the end of her life she confided to interviewer Roy Newquist in
Conversations with Joan Crawford
: “A pillow is a lousy substitute for someone who really cares. And when it comes right down to it, aside from Alfred and the twins, I don’t think I came across anyone who really cared.”

QUIRKS:
After achieving stardom, Crawford refused to go in front of the movie cameras during her menstrual period, complaining that she didn’t photograph well then. There was a time, however, when she was willing to go to any extreme to appear on the screen. During her peak in popularity, stories began surfacing that years before, while still known as Lucille LeSueur, Joan Crawford had made a series of stag movies bearing such exploitative titles as
Velvet Lips
and
The Casting Couch
. Joan allegedly spent $100,000 buying up every copy of these films in order to destroy them. She learned later that one collector still harbored some prints, and shortly thereafter a mysterious fire swept through this collector’s home, burning to a crisp not only the sex flicks but the sleeping collector.

Years after, rumor had it that a complete set of Crawford’s stag films had turned up in the private collection of a Prague munitions king.

—A.K.

Little Boy Lost

JAMES DEAN (Feb. 8, 1931–Sept. 30, 1955)

HIS FAME:
Few movie actors, in life or death, have been worshiped the way James Dean was after he died at the age of 24, having had major roles in only three films. These were
East of Eden
,
Rebel Without a Cause
, and
Giant
.

Humphrey Bogart said of him: “Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he had lived, he’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.”

Andy Warhol called him “the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.” And an entire generation of teenagers saw themselves in Dean as they’d seen themselves in no other star. One publicist summed it up when he said, “I thought Dean was a legend, but I was wrong … He’s a religion.”

HIS PERSON:
Dean’s happy, healthy childhood in Fairmont, Ind., and in Los Angeles,