The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  SEX LIFE: The intensity and brutality of Villa’s military exploits carried over to his affairs with women. A self-described “son of a bitch with the ladies,” Villa was never a gentle lover. When the pretty Petra Espinosa spurned the young Villa’s advances, he raped her. On occasion Villa and his soldiers overtook a town not to rob its citizens but to rape its women. In one instance, Villa had a father tied to a chair while—in full view of the man—he raped his young daughter. A Juárez pawnshop owner was bound and compelled to watch while his wife was raped repeatedly by Villa and his men. Then the man was shot numerous times, and when he died his wife was ordered to clean up the bloody mess.

  But countless other women happily submitted to the overtures of this stocky, 5-ft. 10-in. bandido with wavy hair and a smile cemented beneath his black mustache. (He had an adenoidal condition that prevented his lips from completely closing.) He was “married,” in spurious ceremonies, perhaps as many as 75 times. Asked how he managed to find an official to oversee these rituals, Villa offered this explanation: “Just threaten to put a bullet through his head. You’ll see how fast he comes around.”

  Villa frequently married women within hours of meeting them. His first wife, Luz Corral (who claimed, “I was the only woman that Pancho really loved”), met Villa when she was doling out provisions to his men. They talked briefly, and the next day he impulsively returned to ask for her hand in marriage.

  Six more women, at the least, legally became his wife, despite Mexican laws prohibiting bigamy. When Villa tired of a woman—even if she had borne him a child, as many of his wives and mistresses did—he simply mounted his white horse and rode away. But Villa’s wives did not, in their husband’s eyes, enjoy the same liberty. Villa abandoned his third wife, Pilar Escalona, when he stumbled upon a bundle of old photographs and letters to her from a former lover. He banished from his sight his sixth wife, Maria Amalia Baca, when—after an absence of several years—he returned to find she had married another man. While she escaped with her life, Villa never forgave what he considered treachery on her part.

  Villa observed his own version of morality. While he was romancing a woman named Adelita, her fiancé—one of Villa’s soldiers—walked in on the couple. The shocked soldier promptly drew his pistol and shot himself through the head. Chagrined, Villa banished Adelita. And throughout his wandering life, Villa did manifest a curious devotion to his first wife, Luz, who steadfastly remained faithful to him. Villa sporadically returned to her for a night or two of lovemaking.

  Ironically, just as sex played an immense part in Villa’s life, so it proved instrumental in his death. After his retirement Villa regularly—and predictably—appeased his lusty romantic appetite during trysts in Parral with his mistress, Manuela Casas. Those appointments were inviolable, a fact his assassins used to their advantage in masterminding the scheme that saw Villa fatally sprayed with 13 bullets as he began the drive home after an afternoon with Manuela.

  HIS THOUGHTS: “It is a natural law of man to go after women—even married women. Of course it may be true that he has little respect for them after. But why bother your head about that? There’s something else: women who are unfaithful should be shot.”

  —R.M.

  The Angriest Black Man In America

  MALCOLM X (May 19, 1925-Feb. 21, 1965)

  HIS FAME: One of the greatest activists and black leaders of the twentieth century, Malcolm X rose from a small-time pimp, drug dealer and burglar to becoming a leader of the Nation of Islam and Pan-African spokesman. Famous as “the angriest black man in America” at the time of his assassination in 1965, he is now remembered as perhaps the most enduring symbol of black nationalism.

  HIS PERSON: Characterized by the massive shifts and identity overhauls, Malcolm X ’s life was a study in extremes. Born Malcolm Little to a Baptist preacher and follower of Marcus Garvey, he survived the murder of his father by whites and the subsequent insanity of his mother, fostering an extreme hatred of white society. In order to survive, Malcolm Little became “Detroit Red,” a street hustler, drug dealer and racketeer. The “Red” moniker came from Malcolm’s hair, which carried a reddish tinge—his maternal grandfather was white, which meant that Malcolm also had a light-skinned complexion, a fact that he was initially proud of but later grew to passionately resent. Sent to Massachusetts State Prison in 1946 for burglary, he subsequently converted to the Nation of Islam and found a surrogate father in the movement’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. After prison he changed his name to Malcolm X and by the sixties had become the most prominent leader of the movement after his mentor. In 1964, when it was revealed that Elijah Muhammad indulged in multiple extramarital affairs, despite the fact that such affairs were expressly forbidden by the Nation of Islam, Malcolm left the movement and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., emphasizing black nationalism instead of the Islamic unity preferred by the Nation of Islam. During and after pilgrimages to both Mecca and Africa, Malcolm laid the groundwork for international pan-African connections, founding the Organization for Afro-American Unity. Always a fiery, vitriolic speaker, Malcolm was tagged early by the FBI as a radical and classified as mentally ill. After his split with the Nation of Islam, he also made violent enemies within the movement. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was shot 16 times in the chest at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan; three men were charged and convicted.

  SEX LIFE: Malcolm’s iconic autobiography was written as object lesson of how he learned from hard life lessons; how he overcame a lowly street life consorting with pimps, living with prostitutes, selling drugs and numbers and other mob rackets. After having a lengthy affair with a married white woman, Malcolm came to believe it was the result of self-hatred of his own black skin, and transformed himself into an advocate of Islam as a result.

  Malcolm married Betty Sanders (who subsequently took his last name of X) in Lansing, Michigan, in 1958. The marriage produced six daughters, including twins who were born after Malcolm’s death. According to a biography published in 1991, Bruce Perry’s Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, Malcolm worked as a male prostitute from the age of 20, and at one point was employed as a butler for William Paul Lennon, a rich bachelor in Boston, who he was also paid to sprinkle with talcum powder and then service, giving him hand relief until orgasm. Friends have related many stories of Malcolm’s youthful sexual encounters, including with a local boy he discovered masturbating and then ordered to give him a handjob before performing oral sex on him, as well as a transvestite named Willie Mae with whom he had an affair in Flint, Michigan. Biographer Bruce Perry surmises that his homosexual activities may have functioned as a release valve, without the risk of becoming overly entangled with women, which the young man may have viewed as making him that much less effective. It is this discomfort with his desires which would find its apotheosis in radical Islam and black nationalism; his religious conversion in particular may have been motivated to some extent by a need to burn out and purify his natural inclinations. Malcolm spoke of his shame at his criminal background in his autobiography and the pride he felt at his conversion; his urge to “become a man” on all levels speaks to some modicum of sexual self-suppression. Whether by inclination or design, apparently his homosexual liaisons, if not impulses, ceased after he joined the Nation of Islam. The Qu’ran itself is somewhat confused on the subject of homosexuality—Mohammed prohibits sodomy in practice (“If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both”—Qu’ran 4:16) but then goes on to say that Muslims will be able to enjoy it in paradise (“Round about them will serve boys of perpetual freshness”—Qu’ran 56:17). However, the Nation of Islam is hardly so conflicted, expressly forbidding homosexuality as the work of Satan (and, at times, the Jewish people).

  —J.L.

  XII

  Getting Down to Business

  Contradictory Car-Maker

  HENRY FORD (July 30, 1863-Apr. 7, 1947)

  HIS FAME: A pioneer in automotive design and mass-production methods, Ford revolutionize
d industry and transformed the world. He epitomized a traditional American hero—the self-made man. Born on a farm near Dearborn, Mich., he left school at 16 and died a billionaire at 83. His life abounds in contradiction. An enlightened employer who doubled the minimum wage and shortened the workday, he devised the five-day week to speed up production, hired informers to spy on workers, and fought unions with terror tactics. Inherently magnanimous, he

  Henry and Clara Ford

  often treated people with contempt and alienated his friends. A philanthropist, he published virulent anti-Semitic articles and in 1938 was awarded a medal by Adolf Hitler.

  SEX LIFE: Contradiction extends to Ford’s love life. He was a straitlaced guardian of sexual morals, yet evidence suggests the possibility that he fathered a son whose mother was another man’s wife.

  Ford’s marriage seemed ideal. It had been love at first sight when he met pretty Clara Jane Bryant, a farmer’s daughter, at a village ball. They wed when he was 24 and she 22. One child, Edsel, was born after four years. Smart, even-tempered, unselfish, Clara would go along with her husband’s enthusiasms even if it meant letting him run a gasoline motor in her sink or serving meals composed mainly of soybean products. He called her “the Believer” because of her complete faith in him. (However, in domestic matters her word was law.) When in one rare instance she “interfered” in his business affairs, begging him to end his resistance to unions and avert bloodshed, he followed her advice.

  Spending millions in charitable undertakings, Clara detested waste. She mended her petticoats and underdrawers and continued to darn Ford’s socks after he was a millionaire. The Fords enjoyed simple pleasures together: family gatherings, picnics, bird-watching, dancing, or just listening to the radio. Clara died in 1950, three years after Ford.

  A different picture emerges from John Dahlinger’s The Secret Life of Henry Ford (1978). Dahlinger asserts that he is Ford’s son, born in 1923. According to Dahlinger, his mother, beautiful Evangeline Côté (a cousin of Tyrone Power), caught Ford’s eye when, still in her teens, she began working in an office at his plant. Clara’s polar opposite, Evangeline charmed Ford, 30 years her senior, with her headstrong and vivacious ways. (She later became a licensed pilot and harness-racing champion.) Ford arranged her marriage to one of his executives, Ray Dahlinger. He built the Dahlingers a magnificent home adjoining his, with a secret stairway leading to Evangeline’s bedroom. Ford shocked nurses by visiting her new baby at the hospital. Little Dahlinger was showered with gifts and attentions by Ford and encouraged to play with Ford’s grandchildren. Once when an artist needed a model for the tycoon as a boy, Ford asked young Dahlinger, not one of his own grandsons, to pose for the portrait.

  John Dahlinger (center) with Ray Dahlinger and the man he claims was his real father, Henry Ford

  Both Evangeline and her husband held important positions with the Ford company until Mrs. Ford’s death. The new regime headed by grandson Henry Ford II, Dahlinger says, aware of gossip concerning the Dahlingers, tried to suppress all traces of Ford’s association with them.

  —M.B.T.

  The Sugar Daddy And The Show girl

  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST (Apr. 29, 1863-Aug. 14, 1951)

  HIS FAME: Hearst was a publishing titan whose empire at its peak included a chain of 28 newspapers, 13 magazines, 8 radio stations, and 2 movie companies. He pioneered a brusque, sensationalized form of journalism stressing concise writing, bold headlines, lurid sex and crime stories, and constant public-service crusades. One of America’s most powerful and controversial men, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1903- 1907) and at his death left behind a combined personal and publishing estate of $220 million.

  HIS PERSON: An only child, Hearst was breast-fed by a wet nurse until he was 14 months old. Although a shy, spoiled youngster, he concocted some original and mischievous antics. In his junior year, he was expelled from Harvard after presenting his professors with a bedpan adorned with each instructor’s name and photograph.

  Hearst with his good friend Marion Davies

  In 1887 Hearst persuaded his father, Sen. George Hearst (a man who amassed his fortune from gold, silver, and copper mines), to put him in charge of the faltering San Francisco Examiner. Within two years young Hearst had raised the paper’s circulation and turned it into a profit maker.

  He fashioned a newspaper style known as “yellow journalism,” a lurid editorial stance aimed at boosting circulation. Most Hearst city rooms carried placards bearing the motto “Make ‘Em Say, ‘Gee Whiz.”’ Hearst reportedly goaded President McKinley into entering the Spanish-American War by running a series of front-page articles (not all of them accurate) in the New York Journal describing atrocities committed by the reigning Spanish government on the citizens of Cuba, and by exploiting the battleship Maine disaster in his papers. Likewise, Hearst was blamed for the 1901 assassination of President McKinley because of his anti-McKinley cartoons, articles, and editorials—particularly one editorial published five months before the shooting, approving political assassination under extreme circumstances.

  As powerful as his news empire made him, Hearst did not always get what he wanted. He had been disappointed at age 10 when his mother would not buy the Louvre in Paris for him. And his disappointments continued; he lost several political races, including the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904. Still, Hearst had other dreams. He wanted to be a movie mogul and build castles. He succeeded at the first; during the early years of filmmaking, he was one of the most powerful men in the industry. He started producing newsreels in 1913, and later used his Cosmopolitan Pictures company (and favorable publicity in his newspapers) to promote his mistress, actress Marion Davies. His other dream was never completed; in fact, he believed that if he ever finished building his 146-room castle at San Simeon, Calif., he would die. And so for 30 years architect Julia Morgan redesigned his “living museum” and redecorated it with ancient tapestries, rare objets d’art, and even ceilings taken from centuries-old monasteries. But Hearst couldn’t buy immortality; his 88-year-old heart gave out in 1951.

  LOVE LIFE: He was extremely devoted to his mother, who called him “Sonny” or “Billy Buster.” Phoebe Hearst even became involved in her son’s romances. In 1884, when Hearst announced his engagement to aspiring actress Eleanor Calhoun, Phoebe first convinced the couple not to marry and then supposedly paid for the girl to study drama—in Europe. It might also have been Phoebe’s money that influenced her son to terminate a relationship of several years’ duration with Tessie Powers, a Cambridge waitress Hearst had met while at Harvard. He flaunted the affair, taking Tessie with him to Europe and Egypt and buying her a house in New York. But at a crucial point in his career in the 1890s, when he was entering politics and trying to borrow millions from his mother for his enterprises, he stopped seeing Tessie.

  In spite of his political career, Hearst could not stay away from show girls. In 1897 he began courting two—sisters Millicent and Anita Willson, who were dancers in a current Broadway musical. Theatergoers were amazed to see 34-year-old Hearst escorting the young ladies, one of whom (Millicent) was only 16. This time Phoebe didn’t get involved in her son’s love life. On April 28, 1903, the day before his 40th birthday, Hearst married 22-year-old Millicent Willson.

  The stocky, 6-ft. 2-in. Hearst fathered five children but grew bored with his wife, who had put her fun-loving past behind her for the sake of her social position. Though the marriage officially lasted their lifetimes, Hearst saw little of Millicent during his final 30 years. Instead, he returned to dating show girls (who called him “the Wolf ”) and became involved with a number of them. But it was the gorgeous Marion Davies who stole his heart.

  Born in Brooklyn on Jan. 1, 1897, Marion Davies (née Douras) was educated in a Hastings, N.Y., convent. She followed her three older sisters onto the stage and pursued a dancing career. While she was performing as a chorus girl in Stop! Look! Listen! in 1915, her affair with Hearst began.

  Hearst, 34 y
ears her senior, installed Marion as his protégée and mistress. She entertained his guests at San Simeon (except when presidents or royalty visited, on which occasions Millicent was flown in to preside as hostess). Marion starred in a slew of Hearst-funded films, including The Cardboard Lover (1928), Show People (1928), and Blondie of the Follies (1932). Hearst never allowed her to play any roles that would tarnish his virginal image of her. It was for this reason, not particularly for her lack of talent, that he lost $7 million on her films.

  Throughout their relationship there was widespread belief that Hearst was “keeping” other women and had fathered a number of children born out of wedlock. And there were rumors that perhaps Hearst’s twin sons by Millicent were really Marion’s. Marion once even recommended to a friend, whose girl friend was in need of an abortion, the name of a doctor who, she said, “took care of all mine.” Though she enjoyed their early sexual encounters, Marion and Hearst slept in separate bedrooms and she referred to him as “Pops.” Marion often formed a “crush” on her leading men, and Hearst, aware that he couldn’t always satisfy her sexually, “allowed her an occasional truancy from fidelity,” according to Marion’s biographer Fred Guiles. Sex, for Marion, was just another pleasurable pastime, “less exhilarating than a fast Charleston or even a particularly gamey joke.” An irrepressible romantic, she always tried to be discreet in her affairs. Marion, who called herself “just another dumb blonde,” shared her intimate love with actor Dick Powell and had a brief romance with actor Leslie Howard, but it was her fling with Charlie Chaplin that aroused the most interest.