The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (85 page)

Young Tilden moved in with two maiden relatives and was sent to school for the first time. Starting at Germantown Academy, he moved on to the University of Pennsylvania. During his freshman year in college, news of his mother’s death affected him so severely that he withdrew from Penn U. and returned to Germantown Academy as a tennis coach. There his two lifetime passions merged: the need to excel at tennis and the desire to cultivate the affection and playing skills of young boys. His own game remained unspectacular until he broke through at 27. For the next six years he never lost a championship match. When he was 29, an operation that amputated the tip of a middle finger seemed only to improve his game. In 1920 he became the first American to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon, England. Between 1920 and 1930, he led the U.S. Davis Cup team to victory in seven consecutive years.

Success transformed him into an egocentric prima donna. Dubbed “Big Bill” although he was no more than 6 ft. 1 1/2 in. tall, he became arrogant, opinionated, and belligerent. He was also messy, unwashed, and frequently smelly. After sweaty matches he would return to the locker room but refuse to disrobe and shower in the presence of his teammates. Not one of them ever saw his naked body. He chainsmoked, drank strong black coffee, and ate almost nothing but steak and ice cream. With growing fame, he affected a British accent as he consorted with the world’s notables, including four U.S.

presidents. In Hollywood he was partnered with Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, and Montgomery Clift on Charlie Chaplin’s tennis court. At Clifton Webb’s he coached Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Tallulah Bankhead.

After his first arrest on Nov. 23, 1946, and subsequent detention in a California honor farm for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” most of Tilden’s acquaintances fell away. Despite his considerable professional earnings and two inheritances, this tormented man died alone in a Hollywood side-street apartment with $10 in his pocket. His money had long since been dissipated on a pashalike lifestyle, ungrateful little boys, and disastrous investments, most notably a brief stage career wherein he financed and played the lead in Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
.

SEX LIFE:
In his autobiography,
My Story
, Tilden spoke of boyhood crushes on pretty girls. He claimed that upon reaching manhood he considered marriage, and later suffered from unrequited love at the hands of some of Hollywood’s most famous women—all a pathetic fabrication. Actually, he recognized early on that he was “different.” At age 10, somehow escaping Selina, he embarked on a five-year fondling affair with another boy. Traumatized by his mother’s preachings, living as he did at a time when words like
pregnancy
and
menstruation
hid behind such euphemisms as “with child” and “the curse” and homosexuality was an absolute taboo, he fought to sublimate his sexual urges in tennis. Sadly, he never enjoyed a fulfilling homosexual love affair, and it is unlikely he ever had complete physical contact with another human body, male or female. Mostly he fondled his boys and masturbated privately, increasing this activity as his career faded. Although he minced onto the tennis court before launching into his powerful game, very few knew his secret. Ty Cobb called him “that fruit,” and in
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov’s nymphet takes tennis lessons from Ned Litam (“Ma Tilden” spelled backwards), but no one openly exposed his problem.

Describing the incident that led to his downfall, Tilden wrote: “I met one lad on the court who showed unusual promise…. Somehow we drifted into a foolishly schoolboyish relationship…. Coming home from a movie … we

indulged in horseplay…. We were stopped by the police in Beverly Hills.” As a consequence, Tilden spent almost eight months at a California honor farm, polishing kitchen pots, setting the table, and serving other inmates. Arrested a second time after he violated a five-year parole by consorting with a minor, Tilden protested, but to no avail. The youth he had pursued identified Tilden unhesitatingly, using that missing fingertip as a clincher. He also testified that Tilden “was playing with my privates.” This time Tilden was sent to a road camp. Released in time for Christmas, he returned alone and abandoned to his apartment, where six lonely months later, fully dressed, he stretched out on his bed to rest, and quietly died. In his sensitive, definitive biography,
Big Bill
Tilden
, Frank Deford wrote of Tilden’s Philadelphia funeral: “He was placed

… at the feet of his mother, so that at last he could be her child again, for good, at peace.”

—S.W.

XIV

HolierThan Thou

The Papal Bull

POPE ALEXANDER VI (Jan. 1, 1431–Aug. 18, 1503)

HIS FAME:
Pope Alexander VI’s corrupt, worldly, and ambitious papacy

contributed to the decline of the

Catholic Church’s prestige and paved the

way for the Protestant Reformation.

HIS PERSON:
The scion of Spain’s

powerful Borgia family, Rodrigo was the

protégé of his uncle, Alfonso Borgia,

Bishop of Valencia. Uncle Alfonso supervised Rodrigo’s education, and after

becoming Pope Calixtus III, he wangled

his 25-year-old nephew into the College

of Cardinals. Young Rodrigo so exuberantly enjoyed the trappings of wealth

and power that he greatly scandalized the

Church and embarrassed his uncle, not an easy thing to do in those freewheeling days. Rodrigo himself was never embarrassed by anything, least of all the vast number of children that he sired during his career as a churchman. A fully accurate roster of his offspring cannot be compiled.

Rodrigo’s own bought-and-paid-for tenure as Pope Alexander VI began in 1492.

Once installed, he and his son Cesare commenced a campaign of diplomacy, assassination, strategic marriage, and treachery that brought the whole of northern Italy under Borgia control. Rodrigo and Cesare outflanked and routed the powerful Orsini and Colonna families and successfully resisted the reform movement of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, whom they burned at the stake as a heretic.

Folklore has made much of the Borgias’ reliance upon poison as a political tool, painting Rodrigo’s daughter Lucrezia as a specialist in its use. Actually, there is no evidence that she ever poisoned anybody. Her duty was to marry anyone Rodrigo told her to, whether she felt like it or not. As for the poison, the Borgias used it sparingly, preferring instead a straightforward strangling or bludgeoning carried out by hired thugs.

Although intrigue was Rodrigo’s lifeblood, he was given to spasms of repentance. But these were usually shortlived, thanks to the many temptations that accompany great wealth. Most of Rodrigo’s riches stemmed from his efforts to put Catholicism on a cash-and-carry basis. He was a foremost practitioner of simony, the buying and selling of religious favors. For 24,000 gold pieces Rodrigo, with the help of a bishop and a secretary, once sold a nobleman permission to commit incest with his sister.

Rodrigo was a great patron of the arts. He coaxed Michelangelo to undertake the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica and supported many other Renaissance artists in projects that were intended to glorify his reign. Still, toward the end of his life, it was popularly thought that he had made a pact with the devil, a notion which the manner of his death did little to dispel. Rodrigo fell ill following a banquet and died shortly thereafter. In death, his corpse immediately grew bloated and blackened, as if to underscore his corruption in life.

SEX LIFE:
As a young cardinal, Rodrigo did his best to emulate the virility of the bull featured on the Borgia family escutcheon. He is said to have been a handsome youth, tall and robust, with penetrating bedroom eyes. His contemporaries called him an irresistible conqueror. But then, who would have dared resist? One of his mistresses, Giulia Farnese, was 16 and already married when he became her lover. The Romans sarcastically called her the “bride of Christ.”

Another woman, Vannozza dei Cattanei, bore Rodrigo four (some say five) children before he became pope. Three of those—Lucrezia, Cesare, and Giovanni—followed in their father’s footsteps. Lucrezia may have been sexually available to both Rodrigo and Cesare, among others, and to this day historians debate whether her child was the issue of her father or her brother. Probably she couldn’t have said herself. The family’s notorious preference for sexy entertainments kept the clan’s blood boiling, and tended to obscure trifles such as questions of parentage.

At the age of 29 Rodrigo was rebuked by Pope Pius II for appearing at an orgy in his cardinal’s robes, although he probably retained only his red hat as the evening wore on. This pattern of behavior continued until his death. Rodrigo had the instincts of a Florenz Ziegfeld, and he delighted in sponsoring entertainments featuring lots of nude and nubile dancers.

It was not unusual for him to obstruct the solemn high mass. During one mass he brought giggling women up to the altar, and on another occasion he carelessly trampled the sacred host underfoot. He would celebrate at any excuse, bringing a rowdy crew of prostitutes into the papal apartments. During festivals, an average of 25 courtesans a night was provided for the pope’s entertainment.

Discretion was never one of Rodrigo’s strong points, and he used to scandalize Christendom with his traveling arrangements, which often included a coterie of scantily clad dancing girls.

One of the pope’s banquets was chronicled by his master of ceremonies, Johannes Burchard, Bishop of Ostia, who wrote in his
Diarium Romanum
: “…

50 reputable whores, not common but the kind called courtesans, supped [at the Vatican], … and after supper they danced about with the servants and others in that place, first in their clothes and then nude … candelabra with lighted candles were set on the floor and chestnuts were strewn about and the naked courtesans on hands and feet gathered them up, wriggling in and out among the candelabra…. Then all those present in the hall were carnally treated in public….” The pope, Cesare, and Lucrezia gave prizes to the men who copulated the most times with the prostitutes.

On the eve of one of Lucrezia’s marriages, Rodrigo arranged a demonstration of the facts of life for her. The pope’s men-at-arms commandeered several mares belonging to some passing merchants. The mares were brought into the papal compound, along with some of the pontiff ’s stallions. While the stallions fought among themselves for the mares, the pope and his favorite daughter stood on a balcony and laughed uproariously.

Unlike a previous pope, Sixtus IV, Rodrigo was a heterosexual. But legend persists that Rodrigo and Cesare imprisoned and raped the most beautiful young man in Italy. Proof, however, is lacking, since the victim was found in the Tiber with a stone around his neck before he could talk. Such evidence as there is seems to indicate that Rodrigo preferred women. In addition to the army of courtesans constantly at his command, he maintained a private harem, and his sons Giovanni and Cesare vied with each other for the pope’s favor by sending him exotic beauties for his collection. At one point Giovanni scored a coup over his brother by scouting up a Rubenesque Spanish beauty who moved Rodrigo to ecstasy. Cesare, jealous of his brother’s secular glory, had Giovanni stabbed and thrown in the Tiber. The murder of his favorite son caused the pope such distress that he briefly reformed. But this reformation turned into more of a rest period, and soon he was back to his decadent ways.

—M.J.T.

Hymn To Pan

ALEISTER CROWLEY (Oct. 12, 1875–Dec. 1, 1947)

HIS FAME:
Dubbed by the British

tabloid press “the wickedest man in the

world,” Aleister Crowley used his inherited fortune to blaze trails in every form

of consciousness expansion available to a

repressed Edwardian gentleman, making

headways in mountain-climbing, drugs,

the occult, sex and all-around perversity.