The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (15 page)

HER THOUGHTS:
Shortly before WWI, author Octave Mirbeau asked Sarah Bernhardt when she intended to give up love. She responded, “When I draw my last breath. I hope to live as I have always lived. The strength of my energy and vitality lies entirely in their subservience to my destiny as a woman.”

—The Eds.

Love’s Victim

ELEONORA DUSE (Oct. 3, 1859–Apr. 21, 1924)

HER FAME:
In a career rivaled only by

that of the legendary Sarah Bernhardt,

Duse established herself as one of the

greatest, most versatile, most powerful

actresses in the history of the theater.

HER PERSON:
Duse’s story is a classic

tale of rags to riches, of anonymity to

world renown. She was born in a small

hotel in Vigevano, Italy, the child of

poor, itinerant theatrical parents. During the course of the next half century

the tiny, dynamic woman, with her dark

hair and enormous eyes, electrified

audiences in Europe and America in a

wide variety of roles. She was highly

acclaimed for her performance in the

title role of Zola’s
Thérèse Raquin
and for her portrayals of Ophelia and Elec-tra. She was also praised for her interpretations of the difficult roles provided by Ibsen, including Nora in
A Doll’s House
. Of her uncanny power, the famous critic James Huneker said: “Duse’s art borders on the clairvoyant … her silences are terrifying.” Unlike other great actresses of her time, she played
older roles as she herself aged. “No

wigs,” she said, “they must accept me

with my white hair.” She even refused

to wear makeup.

Disillusioned with her acting career

and troubled by fragile health, Duse

retired from the theater in 1909, but

when WWI broke out she gave unstintingly of her energy and money to help

wounded soldiers and their families. Her

fortune depleted, she returned to the

theater in 1921. In 1923 she appeared at

the Metropolitan Opera House to

launch a triumphant tour of the U.S.

While in Pittsburgh, Pa., she caught a

severe chill and died there in 1924.

Flavio Andò, “beautiful but dumb”

LOVE LIFE:
Duse suffered the loss of both parents when she was a teenager.

When Eleonora’s mother died, a cruel fellow actress suggested that the young girl sell herself to obtain money for a mourning dress. Indeed, for a young actress alone and unprotected in the rough-and-tumble world of the 19th-century Italian theater, it must have been very difficult to preserve her virginity.

But preserve it she did, although she was a passionate young woman. When she was ready to be initiated into the joys of sensuality, she sought a clever, experienced man of taste, a man who could teach her not only about sex but about art, literature, and music. Martino Cafiero, a well-known writer considerably older than Duse, was, she decided, the right man. Their relationship set a pattern that would last her whole lifetime. A passionate affair—not only of the heart and the senses but of the mind as well—would begin happily, inevitably run its course, and almost always end in heartbreak and disaster, only to be followed by another such affair.

Duse never lacked fascinating men to pay court to her dramatic sensuality.

“Her power of attraction,” said the actor-producer Aurélien Marie Lugné-Poë,

“was unimaginable, for the very reason, perhaps, that it was satanic.”

SEX PARTNERS:
Martino Cafiero was the first in a long, carefully selected parade of witty, handsome, exciting lovers. Their affair ended after their son died and Cafiero deserted her. Duse then married her leading man, Tebaldo Checchi, a considerate, thoughtful, consoling man who provided a welcome stability in this first (but certainly not last) period of heartbreak in Duse’s life.

She loved Checchi in her way—he was the only man she ever married and was the father of her daughter—but she was soon attracted to another actor, the strikingly beautiful, romantic Flavio Andò. Her affair with him broke up her marriage, but she quickly tired even of the dashing Andò. “He was beautiful but dumb,” was her verdict.

Her next noteworthy affair, which many believe provided the most profound emotional experience of her life, was with Arrigo Boito. He was a composer and a novelist, a man of wide-ranging taste and sensitivity who opened Duse’s mind to new levels of metaphysical and sensual beauty. Even after their affair ended, she continued to love him. When he died in 1918, she couldn’t sleep or eat for days.

In 1895 the poetic genius Gabriele D’Annunzio stormed backstage in Rome, threw himself at her feet, kissed the hem of her dress, and cried out, “
O

grande amatrice!
” [“O great love!”] (Years earlier, as a teenager, he had frightened her when he approached her with the proposal that they become lovers.) D’Annunzio was the quintessence of the romantic lover that her whole life seemed to cry out for. It was rumored that D’Annunzio would leap naked onto his sorrel stallion, race from their villa to the sea, and plunge into the surf. Duse would wait for him on the shore, ready to wrap a magnificent purple mantle about her hero. It was also said that they drank strange brews from the skull of a virgin in the light of the full moon. He had, one contemporary said, “the cold, steely gaze of a man who knows his goal, and will reach it regardless of cost, perhaps also of suffering.” However, as usual, it was Duse who was to suffer. Her apparent pursuit of misery reinforced one critic’s description of her as “the actress for all unhappy women.”

D’Annunzio was an artistic vampire who sucked the life’s blood from those close to him in order to provide material for his art. In 1900 he exploited his passionate affair with Duse in a novel called
The Flame of Life
. His description of a handsome, romantic younger man’s affair with a fading older woman caused a public scandal and broke Duse’s heart. Years after their affair had ended they met, and D’Annunzio, ever the flatterer, took her hand in his, gazed into her eyes, and murmured, “Not even you can imagine how much I loved you.” Duse replied, “And now not even you can imagine how much I have forgotten you!”

After her disastrous affair with D’Annunzio, the middle-aged Duse found temporary solace with a 23-year-old lesbian who wrote one play for her and promised more. When they visited author Mabel Dodge Luhan in her Italian villa, Duse and her protégée (known only as Signorina R.) created such a commotion in their bedroom that Mabel’s husband was forced to move from the adjoining room in order to obtain a decent night’s sleep. The young playwright was bursting with ideas for new vehicles for Duse, but she explained to Mabel that she required a “release” in order to accomplish her creative work. Mabel shunned her sexual advances and later learned that the girl had gone insane after she and Duse had left for London.

HER ADVICE:
To women who sought advice on love, Duse preached independence. “Work; don’t ask support from any man but only love; then your life will have the meaning you are looking for.”

—R.W.S.

The Jersey Lily

LILLIE LANGTRY, née Emilie Charlotte Le Breton

(Oct. 13, 1853–Feb. 12, 1929)

HER FAME:
The most celebrated “professional beauty” of Queen Victoria’s

London, Lillie was a pinup girl, an artist’s

model, an actress, and the mistress of

princes and millionaires. Her beauty and

wit were praised by Oscar Wilde, Mark

Twain, and George Bernard Shaw, among

others. Gilbert and Sullivan put her to

lyrics and music: “Oh, never, never, never

since we joined the human race / Saw we

so exquisitely fair a face.”

HER PERSON:
Lillie was born on the

British Isle of Jersey, the daughter of a

clergyman. As a child she was something

of a tomboy, but by the time she was 16

her father had been obliged to repulse

several suitors. To console the girl, he allowed her a trip to London. Dazzled by city life, she vowed to live there one day. Her escape from Jersey came in the form of Edward Langtry, a moderately well-to-do yachtsman whom she married when she was 21. Edward provided her with a passport into London society.

The statuesque Lillie was 5 ft. 8 in. and had masses of red-gold hair. She had a flawless complexion and at the height of her fame appeared in advertisements for Pears soap. One of the first celebrities to endorse a commercial product, Lillie was paid £132, a sum equal to her weight. Her figure, regularly compared to that of a goddess, was maintained through jogging.

Lillie posed for the most famous artists of her day, among them James Whistler, John Millais, and Edward Burne-Jones. Her image—reproduced on postcards—was displayed on the walls of army barracks, student dormitories, and ships’ cabins, thus beginning the pinup picture vogue. When she was 24, all manner of men desired her. The famous 78-year-old French author Victor Hugo once toasted her, “Madam, I can celebrate your beauty in only one way—by wishing I were three years younger.”

She made her theatrical debut in 1881, and although her acting talents were uneven, she nevertheless became the toast of both England and America, playing opposite such leading men as Lionel Atwill and the young Alfred Lunt. In Texas, the infamous Judge Roy Bean renamed his saloon the Jersey Lily and moved it to the town of Langtry. After the judge’s death, Lillie was bequeathed his revolver, which had reputedly been used several times to defend her honor.

In 1897, while Lillie was enjoying international acclaim, her hapless husband died broke in an insane asylum. Two years later she married Hugo de Bathe, who succeeded to a baronetcy in 1907, making Lillie Lady de Bathe. Using £55,000

of her own money, she remodeled a derelict London playhouse, the Imperial Theatre, and spent the next two decades amusing herself with acting, baccarat, and occasional visits to her friend Queen Mary. When she was 64 and a grandmother, most of her admirers had fallen away. On a visit to New York, she was seen visiting public dance halls where she paid gigolos 50¢ to dance with her. Yet, some vestige of her beauty remained. Oscar Wilde had predicted she would “be a beauty still at 85,” and she was certainly a beauty still upon her death at 74.

Hugo de Bathe was useful to her as an official escort after her retirement to Monaco in 1918, but for the most part he occupied himself with chorus girls and debutantes in Nice. Lillie died, wealthy and alone, in Monaco in 1929.

SEX LIFE:
Lillie enjoyed sex, but not nearly so much as she enjoyed her own glamour and notoriety. Sex was the serious business of her life, her ladder to the top. She believed that scandal was the best form of publicity and provided ample fodder for Victorian gossips.

In Lillie’s heyday, London’s most ambitious hostesses entered her name as a matter of course on any guest list that included her obese lover, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII). She was also romantically linked with Yankee millionaire Freddie Gebhard and George Alexander Baird, one of the wealthiest men in England. The mercenary Lillie parlayed these relationships into a fortune in diamonds, townhouses, a racing stable, and plenty of ready cash.

For the most part, Lillie’s men tended to be rich, ineffectual, and easily dominated. “Men are born to be slaves,” she once remarked. Edward Langtry was a sexual dud and a drunkard, and when his fortune dwindled he was of no use to her at all. Freddie Gebhard catered to her every whim, while tolerating her peccadilloes with doglike loyalty. George Baird delighted in beating Lillie, but every time he did so she made him pay her £5,000. She could also be haughty with her lovers. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary once gave her an emerald ring. Angered by an argument with him, she yanked off the ring and threw it into the fireplace. The crown prince fell to his knees, desperate to retrieve the emerald from the burning coals. Disgusted, Lillie told her friends, “I couldn’t love him after that.”