She cried all the way to the altar

Today's birthday girl was a helluva woman, as the marvellous Tom Lehrer explains...

Tom Lehrer - Alma

"Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary that has ever been my pleasure to read. It was that of a lady name Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe, and, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which was what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry.

"One of the leading composers of the day: Gustav Mahler, composer of Das Lied von der Erde and other light classics. One of the leading architects: Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus school of design. And one of the leading writers: Franz Werfel, author of The Song of Bernadette and other masterpieces. It's people like that who make you realise how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age - he had been dead for two years.

"It seemed to me, I'm reading this obituary, that the story of Alma was the stuff of which ballads should be made - so here is one:"

The loveliest girl in Vienna
was Alma, the smartest as well.
Once you picked her up on your antenna,
you'd never be free of her spell.

Her lovers were many and varied,
from the day she begun her beguine.
There were three famous ones whom she married,
and god knows how many between.

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous,
which of your magical wands
got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?

The first one she married was Mahler,
whose buddies all knew him as Gustav,
and each time he saw her he'd holler:
Ach, that is the Fraulein I must have!

Their marriage however was murder.
He screamed to the heavens above:
I am writing "Das Lied von der Erde" -
and she only wants to make love!

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous,
you should have a statue in bronze
for bagging Gustav and Walter and Franz.

While married to Gus, she met Gropius,
and soon she was swinging with Walter.
Gus died and her teardrops were copious.
She cried all the way to the altar.

But he did work late at the Bauhaus,
and only came home now and then.
She said: "What am I running, a chow-house?"
It's time to change partners again!

Alma, tell us: all modern women are jealous!
Though you did not even use Ponds,
you got Gustav and Walter and Franz.

While married to Walt she met Werfel,
and he, too, was caught in her net.
He married her, but he was careful,
because Alma was no Bernadette.

And that is the story of Alma,
who knew how to receive and to give.
The body that reached her embalma
was one that had known how to live!

Alma, tell us: how can they help being jealous?
Ducks always envy the swans who get Gustav and Walter
- you never did falter -
with Gustav and Walter and Franz!

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler, 31st August 1879 – 11th December 1964)

He helped put the ‘wood’ in Hollywood

"Sex was a major industry during those lean and troubled years. It not only provided a welcome relief from the harsh reality of everyday life but was also a lifesaver for many young people who simply could not find legitimate work elsewhere. I wasn’t the only kid in town turning tricks."

"I became the go-to guy in town for arranging whatever people desired. And everybody’s needs were met. Whatever folks wanted, I had it. I could make all their fantasies come true. No matter how outrageous or offbeat people’s tastes, I was the one who knew how to get them exactly what they were after."



From The Guardian:

Scotty Bowers was a 23-year-old petrol station attendant on Hollywood Boulevard when the actor Walter Pidgeon pulled up to the pump and asked the dimpled blond to jump in his Lincoln. It would be the ride of his life. Pidgeon was gay, claims Bowers in his autobiography Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, and that afternoon they became lovers. Bowers himself transcended labels. Years later, he startled sexologist Dr Alfred Kinsey by checking off every sex act on his list (and took him to orgies to prove it). Guys, girls, spouses, kings, consorts – and a three-way with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Bowers had done it all.

So, farewell then, Scotty Bowers - the man (if his endless tales are all true) who bedded everyone from J Edgar Hoover to Bette Davis to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to George Cukor to Vivien Leigh to Spencer Tracy to Cecil Beaton to Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, and pimped found illicit liaisons for the likes of Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton, Cole Porter, Gore Vidal, and... Katharine Hepburn!



From an article by Michael Strangeways in Seattle Gay Scene:

Though Scotty Bowers has been backed up and verified by many, including authors Gore Vidal and Armistead Maupin and historian William Mann, there were still many who screamed “no proof!” and “Scotty Bowers is a liar!!!” and “NONE OF THIS COULD POSSIBLY BE TRUE!!!!”

Personally, I don’t know how the naysayers can prove that THEY are any more “correct” than Mr. Bowers. How do THEY know that Kate Hepburn wasn’t a lesbian? Because of her VERY carefully controlled image, which she worked very hard to maintain, for the duration of her professional life, promoting her and Tracy as THE Romantic Couple of the Golden Age of Hollywood…despite the fact the pair didn’t actually ever live together and spent YEARS apart from one another. Or the fact that Hepburn lived the majority of her adult life surrounded by lesbian women...

...There’s also those who poo poo the need for the rich and famous to hire some guy who worked at a Richfield gas station and as a part time bartender to service their needs, or hook them up with other sex workers. But, there weren’t very many options for anyone if they were seeking out gay or lesbian encounters in a pre-Stonewall world. Straight men could go to madames (and Hollywood has always had them; still does!) with great ease but if you were a female seeking a male or female bed mate, or a gay man, it wasn’t easy. Picking up people at work/on the street was very dangerous and any bar or club that identified as a queer business was prone to being raided with all the customers thrown in jail. Scotty Bowers, and others, provided a vital service to Hollywood professionals (as well as non famous names including behind-the-scenes people in the industry) seeking companionship and discretion.

I have not read the book, nor seen the film documentary of Mr Bowers' life story, but of course I knew of the man, his notoriety, his "hinted-at" contributions to Hollywood Babylon and numerous other "scandalous exposés" in the gossip columns. He straddled two worlds - the post-War era of moral paranoia and domestic idealism, and also its dark underbelly, where the most outwardly clean-living citizens and stars alike sought to satisfy their secret desires. A remnant of a naughty "hidden society", we mourn his passing - there are so few left to tell the tales any more...

...and speaking of those tales, and that film documentary:

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood trailer

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood - clip - Scotty Was an Urban Legend

RIP George Albert "Scotty" Bowers (1st July 1923 – 13th October 2019)

Someone really should make this story into an opera

With all its intrigues, unlikely relationships, financial and political shenanigans, deception, bitter revenge and wronged families, one could hardly imagine a more complicated, scheming, scandalous and decadent plot appearing in any of the masterworks of Puccini, Mozart, Donizetti, Giordano or Verdi.

I have long been fascinated by the saga of the "world's richest woman" in her dotage, her unlikely (gay) suitor upon whom she bestowed billions, her bitter and wronged daughter, the Machiavellian "advisors", the whiff of political scandal that threatened to bring down the French government, the sinister attorney, and the ingenious butler who exposed it all...

The Daily Beast:

The French have a colourful term - s’encanailler - which roughly means slumming, hanging out with rakish types from a different social milieu. That was undoubtedly part of the magnetism that drew [billionaire L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt] to [little-known gay photographer] François-Marie Banier...

“Liliane was rich, she was beautiful, and she was bored to death,” said her former lawyer Georges Kiejman... [but] "when Banier arrived on the scene, he immediately put some spice into her life."

Brash, provocative, iconoclastic, he had none of the kowtowing deference that she was accustomed to. He would criticize her clothes, her hairstyle, playfully call her names at times, even as he flattered her and praised her beauty, her intellect, her sensitivity. Banier also talked to her about books and philosophy and art, things that were not part of [her late husband] André’s dinnertime conversation. And he brought her out of her shell, introducing her to artists, writers, and actors, escorting her to art galleries, museums, theatres, auction houses. As Liliane put it, “he renovated me.”...

From National Public Radio (NPR):

Emotionally and fiscally, their interests dovetailed: Banier opened up the stimulating art world to Bettencourt by escorting her to galleries, introducing her to his bohemian friends, reading aloud to her from Stendhal's Charterhouse, and being thrillingly irreverent in denouncing the giant Monet in her mansion as "hideous." Entranced, she lavished him with money and gifts, including paintings by Picasso and Matisse, apartments, and millions in life-insurance policies. For 25 years, Bettencourt played the generous Galatea to Banier's Pygmalion, with the total of her largesse teetering to an incredible one billion euros.

In 2007, Bettencourt's only child, her daughter Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, filed a criminal suit against Banier for abus de faiblesse (abuse of weakness), claiming that this "Rasputin" had ruthlessly exploited her then 84-year-old mother's oncoming dementia. Meyers, a quiet woman described by a friend as "an austere Carmelite nun," says her hand was forced when an eavesdropping chambermaid told her she had heard Banier asking to be adopted by Bettencourt.

The scandal, which electrified France for a decade, came to be known as the Bettencourt Affair.

From Mediapart:

[Pascal Bonnefoy, the long-serving butler to Mme Bettencourt] produced damning testimony against François-Marie Banier, who he said "destroyed" the Bettencourt family, humiliated Liliane by calling her "a bitch", and whose "arrogant" behaviour included urinating over plants at the Bettencourt home.

He also launched a scathing attack on Patrice de Maistre, the billionaire's wealth manager, and others in her close entourage who he said "hide behind a tired and fragile woman" while leading her astray.

"I could not accept the unacceptable, and for me it was like the scene of a car accident and not stopping to help," he said in his statement to police detectives. "I could not continue without doing anything and still be able to look at myself in the mirror. I had served Monsieur and Madame Bettencourt during so many years, and I could not let all these people around Madame carry on without reacting."...

...The transcripts of the tapes, which were handed by Bonnefoy to Liliane's daughter Françoise and then to police, principally concerned conversations between Liliane Bettencourt and her wealth manager, her tax lawyer and solicitor, and François-Marie Banier. They were made between May 2009 and May 2010, recorded on a digital Dictaphone placed behind a chair in Bettencourt's private office in her town mansion home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just west of Paris.

Bonnefoy said he was prompted into making the recordings after he was subject to a campaign of ostracism led by Banier...

From The Guardian obituary today:

The saga resulted in not only a public family feud but a major political scandal and courtroom drama when the investigation was extended to look at whether Sarkozy and other figures in his party had also taken advantage of the elderly Bettencourt, asking for money from her after it was declared that she had dementia.

The money, alleged to have been given in brown envelopes, was said to have funded Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign.

The “Bettencourt affair” tarnished the latter half of Sarkozy’s presidency, and when he lost the 2012 election he was placed under formal investigation for illegal campaign financing and taking advantage of Bettencourt. But the charges against Sarkozy were dropped in October 2013 due to lack of evidence.

In 2015, the photographer Banier was convicted of exploiting Bettencourt and sentenced to three years in jail, fined €350,000 and ordered to pay €158m in damages. He appealed and last year received a suspended prison sentence and a fine but did not have to pay the vast damages.

..and The Guardian, again, from 2010:

[Georges Kiejman, speaking in court, commented:] "This is a family story; the daughter is trying to use this court to settle a psychological conflict with her mother. It's a 57-year-old little girl complaining 'my mummy doesn't love me. She loves him more than me'."

Kiejman added: "That Madame Bettencourt should have the misfortune of finding the brilliant Mr Banier more amusing that her own daughter – and between you and me that's no surprise – is not for this court to decide."

The court certainly did decide. Banier was shamed, but kept his fortune. Sarkozy survived, albeit with his reputation tarnished. Liliane was to remain in the care of her daughter, and the L'Oreal fortune was secured. No idea what happened to the butler.

I await the first production of this Machiavellian operatic masterpiece, opening at a concert hall near you...

RIP Liliane Henriette Charlotte Bettencourt (née Schueller, 21st October 1922 – 21st September 2017)

Miss Davis expects...

It is our Patron Saint Miss Bette Davis' birthday today! Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect...



To celebrate, here are a couple of choice extracts from The Devil in Miss Davis, a rather marvellous anecdotal article by veteran director William Frye that was published in Vanity Fair in 2010:

...when Bette Davis decided she wanted to go somewhere, you went. Naturally, we didn’t have a reservation, and [the club] Mocambo was jammed. There was a line of people standing behind a red rope waiting to get in. Bette was no more going to join that queue than fly to the moon. She marched up to the maître d’ and said, “We want a table for two.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Davis, there’s not an empty table in the room. Would you like to go to the bar and wait until one becomes available?”

“No,” she said haughtily. “Put one up.”

Moments later, we were escorted into the main room. Right next to the stage, where everyone could see us, they had put up a table about the size of a silver dollar. As Bette was being seated, she spotted two people at the door who were also having trouble getting in - Esther Williams and her husband, Ben Gage. “Esther! Ben!” she called across the room. “Come join us! There’s lots of room!”

They, too, jumped the line, and two more chairs were brought to our table. We danced and drank until the club closed.

And this [on the aftermath of Miss Davis being upstaged by Miss Crawford at The Oscars]:

Olivia de Havilland became very upset. She said it was terrible that Bette had lost, terrible that Joan Crawford had stolen the night, terrible, too, that the world would wake up the next morning to pictures of Crawford clutching an Oscar and assume she’d won it for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ...

At that moment I made the most inappropriate comment I’ve ever made in my life - the wrong thing at the wrong time in front of the wrong person. I still cringe to recall it. I suddenly said, “Well, you have to admit, when Crawford came out on that stage, with that dress and that array of diamonds, she did look like the movie star of all time.”

There was dead silence. Olivia stopped commiserating. Bette stopped slicing bread. I stopped rocking.

“What did you say?” Bette asked, looking up. When I didn’t reply, she came at me with the knife. Pressing it to my chest, she repeated, “What did you say?”

I sat frozen in the rocker, imagining blood dripping down my pleated evening shirt, and repeated the monumentally stupid - but accurate - thing I’d said a few seconds earlier. After another interminable silence, she took the knife away. “You make me sick” was all she said.

Then she went back to slicing bread, and the party resumed. After more drinks, everybody had scrambled eggs and toast. I got home at five a.m. The “evening” had started 12 hours earlier. Neither of us ever mentioned the knife incident again.

There was only one Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (5th April 1908 – 6th October 1989)

Scoop of the Day...

I must read it and find out...

Rantum-scantum - the Scandalous Lady W

From a review of the book Lady Worsley’s Whim by Hallie Rubenhold in The Spectator back in 2008:

There is a magnificent portrait by Reynolds at Harewood House in Yorkshire of Lady Worsley. She wears a sweeping red riding habit, she looks self-assured and alert, and she holds a riding crop as an allusion to her skill as a horsewoman. In reality... [she] was one of the most scandalous women of her day, the subject of the first squalid celebrity divorce.

Lady Worsley, who rejoiced in the odd first name of Seymour, was a massive heiress. She inherited a fortune of over £60 million in today’s money from her father, Sir John Fleming, who owned a farm in the London suburb of Brompton. Aged 18, she married a wealthy, socially ambitious baronet named Sir Richard Worsley. He set about advancing and advertising himself in the fashion of the day. He became a MP and made lavish improvements to his house, Appuldurcombe on the Isle of Wight.

However, their marriage was passionless, and the headstrong and wayward Seymour embarked upon an affair with the Worsleys' neighbour, Maurice George Bisset.

Seymour became pregnant by Bisset, but Sir Richard, far from stopping the relationship, seemed determined to encourage it. He invited Bisset to share a house with him and his wife when he went on manoeuvres with the militia at Maidstone and then Lewes.

One night Seymour and Bisset decided to elope. This... was an extraordinarily foolhardy thing to do. Seymour stood to lose not only her fortune, but also her reputation, her children and - what she minded more than anything - her clothes and jewels worth a staggering £15 million. The lovers dashed to London and went into hiding in a hotel. Seymour stayed in bed for days, but this was only partly due to passion: she had left all her clothes behind and her mean-minded husband refused to send any. Humiliated and dishonoured, Sir Richard plotted his revenge. He planned to ruin Bisset financially and shackle his wife to him for life. He sued Bisset for crim con or "criminal conversation" - in other words adultery - and claimed damages of £20,000 (£25 million today).

In a superb moment of courtroom drama, just as Sir Richard thought that he had won his case, the defence revealed that Seymour had taken as many as 24 lovers over the previous four years. One after another her lovers stood up in the witness box and told an extraordinary story. Whenever Sir Richard caught Seymour in bed with her lovers, he showed no anger. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy the intrigue. He had been caught looking through keyholes. Most damning of all was a story of how Sir Richard had made Bissset climb upon his shoulders to peep through the window of a bath house in Maidstone to watch the naked Seymour getting dressed.

The judge declared that Sir Richard had made no attempt to restrain his wife, but instead had prostituted her. Sir Richard lost his case against Bisset and was awarded a shilling in damages. Seymour had taken the extraordinary step of denouncing herself and destroying her reputation in order to save her lover. Sir Richard was exposed as a sexual voyeur and a pervert. His reputation was in ruins, and he left England for years of lonely foreign travel, amassing a collection of antiquities. Seymour joined the demi-monde of scandalous women, often aristocrats, and waged a vicious pamphlet war against Sir Richard. Cartoonists such as Gillray had a field day, with savage caricatures of Lady Worsley and her seraglio. At least Seymour had the satisfaction of outliving her cold, unyielding husband and getting some of her money back.

It's a fantastic story; a gossip-writer's dream. Understandably, in the estimable hands of the BBC's costume drama department, The Scandalous Lady W - starring (a believably headstrong) Natalie Dormer, (convincingly villainous) Shaun Evans and (milady's eye-candy) Aneurin Barnard - is a thoroughly enjoyable romp through the sordid goings-on and the “rantum-scantum” (sexual peccadillos) of the English upper-crust in an era (between the American and French Revolutions) when a wife was considered in law as no more than a chattel or possession of her husband.

Seymour Fleming, Lady Worsley challenged all that - and we raise a glass to her efforts!

...and Marion never looked lovelier

[Miss Hopper and Miss Parsons

From the Arcane Radio Blog:

"It's not fair to say that Louella Parsons hated everyone. She feuded with Orson Welles, Joan Crawford, Louis B. Mayer, Hedda Hopper, Frank Sinatra and even Ronald Reagan. But, like other Hollywood gossip shows she eventually wore out her welcome. Born in 1881 as Louella Rose Oettinger, she grew up in Dixon, Illinois. She attended Dixon College and then wrote for the Dixon Star newspaper. In her articles she gossiped about Dixon social circles, a harbinger of things to come. She married John Parsons in 1906, she kept the name but dropped the husband.

She ditched the small town life. She moved to Chicago, then new York. In 1914 she wrote another gossip column for the Chicago Record Herald, then one for the New York Morning Telegraph. William Hearst took note of her readership and by 1923 her name was under his masthead on the New York American newspaper. She gained increasing popularity and became a syndicated columnist for Hearst."

She went on to settle in California (for health reasons, apparently), landed a radio version of her column, and the rest, as they say, is history. Louella Parsons became the commanding force in Hollywood gossip circles - at least until the rise of her hated rival Hedda Hopper - and made herself feared, respected and loathed for her efforts to make and break careers.

Hedda Hopper (from her biography The Whole Truth and Nothing But) observed:

“With the Hearst newspaper empire behind her, Louella could wield power like Catherine of Russia. Hollywood read every word she wrote as though it was a revelation from San Simeon, if not Mount Sinai. Stars were terrified of her. If they crossed her, they were given the silent treatment; no mention of their names in her column.”

By the end, however, the proverbial chickens had come home to rest somewhat for Louella.

As Mamie Van Doren noted:

"Louella Parsons died on December 9, 1972. Almost no one noticed. By then Hollywood had changed a great deal. But when told about her death, many veterans of this industry town still breathed a sigh of relief and secretly hoped that someone had driven a wooden stake through her heart."

Here's a classic spoof of Louella's radio show - and her fawning over Hearst's mistress Marion Davies - by the late, great TC Jones [thanks NormaDesmond at "mittendrinnen" blog for this one]:

TC Jones - Louella from the Sunset Strip

Louella Parsons (6th August 1881 – 9th December 1972)

Dirty Gertie from Number 30

Gertrude Lawrence, photographed by Cecil Beaton, 1930

From an article in The Daily Mail [of all places!]:

Yes, it was a spectacle the star's daughter was never to forget. As Pamela Clatworthy opened the door of the Number One dressing room at New York's St James Theatre on an April afternoon in 1951, she encountered a scene that froze her in her tracks.

Her mother, the legendary musical star Gertrude Lawrence, was in flagrante.

Her oyster-pink hooped satin ball gown was over her head like an inverted circus tent. Burrowing beneath it with dedicated zeal was a man of whom Pamela could see only his bare feet and equally bare buttocks.

'When they noticed I was there, and he emerged, his head was as bald as his backside, and I realised it was Yul Brynner'.

That was the first intimation Pamela had that her mother was involved in a passionate affair with her co-star in the hit Broadway musical, The King And I, a married man 17 years Gertie's junior, who owed to her his ascent to stardom.

'It was a closely guarded secret,' says Pamela. So secret that it has eluded every biographer of Lawrence and Brynner.

'It makes me laugh when I keep hearing stories about my mother supposedly being a lesbian. She was the complete reverse. Her appetite for men verged on nymphomania.'

Gertrude Lawrence on Wikipedia