The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  HIS THOUGHTS: “Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth, but it’s usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.”

  —J.L.

  I’ll Be Your Mirror

  NICO (Oct. 16, 1938-July 18, 1988)

  HER FAME: Singer, musician, fashion model, actress and Warhol icon Nico cast a long shadow over the New York artistic underground of the 1960s and, by proxy, the world art scene. Most famous for her appearance on the Velvet Underground’s first album at Andy Warhol’s request, Nico proceeded to quietly record several solo albums that are remembered as bleak masterpieces that predated or, more accurately, created Goth.

  HER PERSON: Born out of wedlock in Cologne in 1938, Christa Päffgen came into the world just in time to be conscious through the horrors of the fall of the Third Reich. She left school at the age of 13 to sell lingerie, and was soon discovered by the fashion industry, taking the name Nico while on shoot in Ibiza. Nico moved to Paris to model for the top fashion magazines of the 1950s, and made her way into commercials and films, most notably Federico Fellini’s 1959 film La Dolce Vita. Making her way to New York, her interest soon shifted to music, and a 1965 meeting with the Rolling Stones’ doomed psychedelic pioneer Brian Jones produced the inspiration for a single, “I’m Not Sayin’.” As a singer Nico was unearthly, almost flat, her voice carrying the alluring songline of a ghostly and mechanical deathmarch. Her disaffection was perfect for what would become her greatest role, that of a fixture at Andy Warhol’s Factory, one of the brightest superstars in the pop artist’s constellation. Nico was soon partnered with the freshly-minted Factory house band the Velvet Underground. She shared billing on their first album, but only sang three songs—“I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Femme Fatale”—all of which retain legendary status in the annals of pop music. It was also at this time that Nico began to develop the heroin addiction that would rule her life until her death. The Velvets went on to develop their often abrasive sound on several more albums and through several more lineup changes, and Nico went on to launch her solo career, although both Reed and Cale would continue to assist her. Her initial solo album Chelsea Girl was written almost totally by other songwriters of the day, incuding Reed, Cale, Dylan, Tim Hardin and Jackson Browne, who penned the best two songs on the album (“The Fairest of the Seasons” and “These Days”). With Cale’s assistance in fleshing out the music, Nico wrote and recorded three more albums in the next decade, as well as a portion of a live album. Nico staged her 1980 comeback at New York’s CBGB to critical raves; the following years produced two more albums, both highly experimental even by her standards. While riding her bicycle with her son Ari in Ibiza in 1988, Nico suffered a minor heart attack, falling and hitting her head hard enough to cause severe internal bleeding. She died shortly thereafter, at the age of 49, and was buried by her mother in Berlin.

  SEX LIFE: Just as her career was beginning in 1962, Nico had her son, Ari. By her own claim, the child was fathered by the legendary French actor Alain Delon. Delon disputed the claim, though the child was subsequently raised by his parents. Jean-Marc Billancourt, a French civil servant, later claimed paternity of the child, claiming that he was a perfect body double of Alain Delon and had seduced Nico under the pretense that he was, in fact, Delon, only telling her of his real identity after she announced that she was pregnant. Ari became the youngest of Warhol’s superstars when he appeared in Chelsea Girls in 1966; by the time of his adolescence he had grown into the mold of a perfect Factory superstar, having developed a heroin addiction just like his mother, who introduced him to the drug.

  Throughout the sixties, Nico shared her bed with many of the brightest musical talents of the decade. Her affair with Lou Reed ended when she entered a roomful of people and announced, “I cannot sleep with Jews anymore.” Other lovers were Brian Jones, Lou Reed, John Cale, Jackson Browne (only 17 at the time—Nico was 12 years his senior), Tim Buckley, Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison. It was Morrison that she was obsessed with over all others; the Lizard King allegedly tried to kill her during a sex magick ritual, which she claimed to have enjoyed immensely. It is also rumored (and backed up by Clinton Heylin in Behind the Shades, his biography of Bob Dylan) that Nico bagged Dylan for one night in 1964, after Dylan met her in Paris shortly after the beginning of her recording career. He demoed the song “It Ain’t Me Babe” for her, and then penned the song “I’ll Keep It With Mine” in tribute to her. Yet though Nico knew everybody, nobody truly knew her. In life, as in death, she was an enigmatic, ethereal, almost untouchable figure; despite her broad range of affairs, she despised sex, associating it with horror and madness.

  The Nico biography by James Young, The End, recounts Nico’s selfmythologizing story of her being raped by a black American sergeant when she worked as a young teenager for the American Air Force stationed in Germany. Nico also claimed the sergeant was shot for the offense, and that this episode destroyed her interest in sex for the remainder of her life. It is instructive that the subtitle of another Nico biography is The Life and Lies of an Icon. No American serviceman was ever shot for the crime of rape. It’s also doubtful that a 15-year-old German girl was employed by the Air Force.

  As Carlos Maldonaldo-Bostock remarked of her in the 1995 film Nico Icon, “No one loved Nico and Nico loved no one… she was just alone… she couldn’t bear for anyone to touch her… Nico had sex with no one.” Already distanced from herself and her reality by her rape, her experiences as a girl in the wreckage of Nazi Germany, and her shame at being an illegitimate child, Nico spent decades vanishing bit by bit into the heroin void while her physical beauty decayed and finally went completely. She had already grown to resent her looks by the mid-sixties, considering them more a liability than an asset; in the age of the “serious singer-songwriter” she felt her looks doomed her to remain seen as only a pretty face instead of a serious artist like, for instance, Janis Joplin. Her relationship to her body, and her life, was antagonistic to say the least. Had Nico passed from death directly into undeath, those around her would have in all likelihood have barely noticed, a fitting finale for the template from which every Goth that has ever existed has been drawn.

  HER THOUGHTS: “You are beautiful and you are alone.”

  —J.L.

  All Shook Up

  ELVIS PRESLEY (Jan. 8, 1935-Aug. 16, 1977)

  HIS FAME: Even in star heaven, Elvis is a special luminary. His importance extends way beyond his fame as the so-called “father of rock ‘n’ roll” or as a sex symbol. He is a god to his millions of fans the world over, his life an almost mythical rags-to-riches story.

  HIS PERSON: Born to a dirt-poor Mississippi family, Elvis received a guitar when he was 11 because his parents couldn’t afford to give him the bicycle he wanted; the guitar was also intended to keep him out of trouble. Wanting to be different, young Elvis began to embody a duality: the Rebel and the Good Boy. On the one hand, he wore sideburns and wild pink-and-black clothes and worshiped James Dean. On the other, he was deeply religious (and would remain so), going to church regularly with his parents. After high school, he got a job as a truckdriver. It cost him $4 to make his first record, which was a birthday present for his mother. When Sam Phillips of Sun Records heard Elvis, Phillips’ dream came true. He had often said, “If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.”

  It all began with Sun, and Elvis’ sexy, powerhouse performances. The curling lip, the sultry hooded eyes, the virile animal sexuality of the gyrating hips have been described by countless writers. Elvis Presley’s performances elicited from women of all ages what can only be described as erotomania—mass sexual frenzy. As the authors of Elvis: Portrait of a Friend put it: “He was genuine and honest in his appreciation of girls; there were no games, just an open, sincere, sexual attraction between one boy and millions of girls.” In 1955 “Colonel” Tom Parker became Elvis’ ad
roit manager; that same year Presley signed with RCA and bought his first Cadillac—pink—for his family.

  Elvis’ scandalous behavior outraged the world. Hedda Hopper called him “a menace to young girls.” (She later reversed her position and did the twist with him at a Hollywood party.) He was given such nicknames as “Elvis the Pelvis” and “Sir Swivel Hips”; and worst of all for Elvis, he was denounced from countless pulpits.

  Billy Graham said he wouldn’t want his daughter to meet Elvis. Elvis just didn’t understand it; gospel singing and revival meetings were his musical roots. Deeply hurt, he defended himself by saying, “I never tried to hurt teenagers. When I sing I start jumpin’. If I stand still I’m dead.” In a conversation with his mother, Elvis further explained, “I don’t feel sexy when I’m singin’. If that was true I’d be in some kind of institution as some kind of sex maniac.” In 1955 the Florida police forced him to perform without moving. By 1956 he had made his first million; by 1957 he had moved his parents and grandmother into a 23-room Memphis mansion called Graceland; by 1965 he was the highest-paid performer in the history of the music business. During his lifetime he grossed more than a billion dollars. Shown on the Ed Sullivan Show from the waist up, he was viewed by 54 million Americans, and his TV ratings were higher than President Eisenhower’s.

  Between 1961 and 1967 he gave no public performances. After finishing a two-year stint in the army in 1960, Elvis concentrated on making a stream of stunningly corny movies in Hollywood. Then in 1968 he reappeared on the musical scene with an NBC TV Christmas special before a live audience and began to perform in public again. But there was another side to this strange embodiment of the American Dream: flying a thousand miles with his entire entourage for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich; living by night (Elvis could never go out, ever—he’d have been mobbed); shooting out TV sets during his violent outbursts. He surrounded himself with up to 15 Southern buddies—dubbed the “Memphis Mafia”—who were employed as bodyguards, valets, and royal jesters to “the King.” Causing the King any slight displeasure could result in a terrifying fit of temper. Graceland became a weird prison and Elvis’ life grew increasingly bizarre.

  Elvis’ drug use—one of his employees called him “a walking drugstore”—had begun in the army with Dexedrine. He later took uppers, downers, and painkillers in pill form or as injections, and in his last years lived in a total narcotic haze. He developed a number of classic macho obsessions; he loved guns, motorcycles, badges, uniforms, and police paraphernalia. In addition, he had severe health problems and was unquestionably fat. Knowledge of these difficulties drove fans crazy; a god was not allowed to decay. Elvis had become a kind of one-man Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. At the age of 42 he was found dead of a heart attack in his Graceland bathroom. Technically, Elvis did not die from an overdose, although 10 different kinds of drugs were found in his bloodstream. President Carter eulogized him, saying, “He was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.” Mass hysteria followed Elvis’ death. Girls claimed to be making love to his ghost. The Graceland lawn was covered with fainting women who did not want to live in a world without Elvis. In a single anguished cry, millions mourned their lost youth and vowed to keep Elvis’ memory alive. The King is dead, long live the King.

  LOVE LIFE: Numerous biographers have insisted that Elvis’ greatest love was his mother, Gladys. She lived for her son and always told him that even though he came from poor country people, he was as good as anybody. When she died in 1958, Elvis was crushed.

  Apart from his mother, there was one great love in Elvis Presley’s life: Priscilla Beaulieu. While stationed in Germany as a soldier, Presley met a pretty little 14-year-old, the daughter of a U.S. Army officer. “Cilla,” as he called her, was feminine, unspoiled, and remarkably mature for her age—exactly suited for the pedestal upon which Elvis liked to place the women he loved best. He talked her father into allowing her to be shipped to Graceland, where Elvis installed her, sending her to Catholic school and then to finishing school. Before her arrival, Elvis had shown a snapshot of her to his stepmother and said, “I’ve been to bed with no less than 1,000 women in my life. This is the one, right here.”

  According to Elvis’ secretary, he started sleeping with the 15-year-old girl right away. Years later Priscilla made a discreet mention of their premarital relationship in a Ladies’ Home Journal interview. But Elvis had his cake and ate it too. He usually did not allow Priscilla to accompany him to Hollywood, where he had constant affairs. The list of stars with whom Elvis has been linked is virtually endless, and includes Ann-Margret, Juliet Prowse, and Tuesday Weld. Elvis’ amours were not always with the famous. One woman, Virginia Sullivan, a cashier in a movie theater, claimed to have been his lover for 14 years, from 1953 to 1967. They had what she described as “comfortable sex.”

  Elvis married Priscilla in 1967, when she was 21. Exactly nine months later their daughter, Lisa Marie, was born. While the marriage was good in the beginning, it was subject to increasing strains. Priscilla was tired of waking up to face the Memphis Mafia at her breakfast table; she was tired of living at Graceland and going weeks without seeing her husband. And he was still sleeping around, while the Memphis Mafia was expected to cover it up. Worst of all, when Elvis was home, he and Priscilla had no privacy; he even took his entourage along on their vacations.

  After five years of marriage Priscilla announced to Elvis that she had fallen in love with another man and was leaving. The rival was Mike Stone, her karate teacher. Elvis was shattered; he had lost his most valuable possession. The couple separated in 1972 and divorced in 1973. Priscilla’s final settlement was $2 million. Although the divorce was relatively amicable, Elvis was deeply wounded.

  He sought to balm his wounds with drugs, women, work, and food. The most important woman to come down the pike after Priscilla was the tall, willowy Miss Tennessee of 1972, Linda Thompson. She was model-beautiful and utterly devoted to the King. She was a virgin when she met Elvis, and a gracious, good-humored Southern belle. She moved into Graceland, and the relationship lasted several years. When Elvis started dating other women—and invited Linda along as a third—the affair petered out.

  In the last year of his life Elvis had an affair with 19-year-old Ginger Alden, Miss Memphis Traffic Safety of 1976. He gave her the customary Cadillac and an $85,000 ring. She was with him the night of his death.

  SEX LIFE: Elvis probably wasn’t lying when he told his stepmother that he had slept with more than 1,000 girls. And that was before he married Priscilla. In the beginning of his career he was shy, and more interested in succeeding for the sake of his mother than in busying himself with sex. But he soon got the hang of it. Elvis had access to countless women, all over the world, who were dying to make love to him. Between the ages of 20 and 30, when he was young and in good health, he frequently had two or three women a day. Toward the end of his life drugs dampened his desire for sex (“Bed,” he would say, “is for sleeping on”), and sometimes angry, unravished dates complained to the Memphis Mafia. However, it was strictly understood that the boys were not to fool around with a girl Elvis might still want, although their dates were fair game for Elvis.

  According to the authors of Elvis: What Happened?, a biography written by three of Elvis’ ex-bodyguards, the King had some distinctive sexual preferences. He was not a breast man and did not like a large bosom, but preferred shapely legs and buttocks. He liked his women petite and feminine (“girl-type girls”), and his biggest turnoff was big feet. He also detested male homosexuals. Another thing that turned him off sexually was the knowledge that a woman had been married or had had children. He once dropped a girl friend flat when he discovered she was a mother. He was also a passionate peeker. He had a one-way mirror in his bedroom so that he could secretly watch other couples; he had mirrored ceilings; and he liked to videotape his sex.