The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People by Sylvia Wallace, Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky
Tags: General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Rich & Famous, Human Sexuality, Popular Culture
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increasingly eccentric and unpredictable. She started drinking heavily and often greeted her dates wearing little more than lingerie.
She went out with numerous men, including young actors like Rock Hudson and George Nader, and was named as the “other woman” in two divorce suits.
Although her emotional life was a mess, she continued to keep her body in excellent condition. Before filming Torch Song , the 52-year-old actress showed
up at director Charles Walters’ home wearing nothing but a housecoat. Flinging it open, she told him, “I think you should see what you have to work with.”
Walters was impressed.
Joan’s final marriage took place in May, 1955. Her fourth husband, Alfred Steele, was the dynamic, square-faced president of Pepsi-Cola. Until he died of a heart attack in 1959, they circled the globe together promoting Pepsi. Despite her happiness in the role of corporate wife, Joan’s feelings for Steele often have been called into question. Six months after they had married, Joan described her 54-year-old bespectacled husband as being too fat and hard of hearing. Yet it appears that, for the first time, she actually felt loved. Toward the end of her life she confided to interviewer Roy Newquist in Conversations with Joan Crawford : “A pillow is a lousy substitute for someone who really cares. And when it comes right down to it, aside from Alfred and the twins, I don’t think I came across anyone who really cared.”
QUIRKS: After achieving stardom, Crawford refused to go in front of the movie cameras during her menstrual period, complaining that she didn’t photograph well then. There was a time, however, when she was willing to go to any extreme to appear on the screen. During her peak in popularity, stories began surfacing that years before, while still known as Lucille LeSueur, Joan Crawford had made a series of stag movies bearing such exploitative titles as Velvet Lips and The Casting Couch . Joan allegedly spent $100,000 buying up every copy of these films in order to destroy them. She learned later that one collector still harbored some prints, and shortly thereafter a mysterious fire swept through this collector’s home, burning to a crisp not only the sex flicks but the sleeping collector.
Years after, rumor had it that a complete set of Crawford’s stag films had turned up in the private collection of a Prague munitions king.
—A.K.
Little Boy Lost
JAMES DEAN (Feb. 8, 1931–Sept. 30, 1955)
HIS FAME: Few movie actors, in life or death, have been worshiped the way James Dean was after he died at the age of 24, having had major roles in only three films. These were East of Eden , Rebel Without a Cause , and Giant .
Humphrey Bogart said of him: “Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he had lived, he’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.”
Andy Warhol called him “the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.” And an entire generation of teenagers saw themselves in Dean as they’d seen themselves in no other star. One publicist summed it up when he said, “I thought Dean was a legend, but I was wrong … He’s a religion.”
HIS PERSON: Dean’s happy, healthy childhood in Fairmont, Ind., and in Los Angeles,
was cruelly marred when his mother died of
cancer. He was nine years old, and his father
sent him back to Indiana, where he was
raised on a farm by his kindly aunt and
uncle. Despite his blond, boyish good looks,
the sex-symbol-to-be was small and nearsighted and spoke haltingly. Growing up, he
embarked on an acting career, bouncing
back and forth between New York and Hollywood. Dean’s personality was so intense
that he made an unforgettable impression on
almost everyone he met—and often for the
worst. He seesawed wildly from clowning
and joking to morbid, sullen depressions.
Jimmy threw his powerful energy into one
activity after another. He studied dance,
played the bongos, learned to sculpt, wrote
poetry,
She went out with numerous men, including young actors like Rock Hudson and George Nader, and was named as the “other woman” in two divorce suits.
Although her emotional life was a mess, she continued to keep her body in excellent condition. Before filming Torch Song , the 52-year-old actress showed
up at director Charles Walters’ home wearing nothing but a housecoat. Flinging it open, she told him, “I think you should see what you have to work with.”
Walters was impressed.
Joan’s final marriage took place in May, 1955. Her fourth husband, Alfred Steele, was the dynamic, square-faced president of Pepsi-Cola. Until he died of a heart attack in 1959, they circled the globe together promoting Pepsi. Despite her happiness in the role of corporate wife, Joan’s feelings for Steele often have been called into question. Six months after they had married, Joan described her 54-year-old bespectacled husband as being too fat and hard of hearing. Yet it appears that, for the first time, she actually felt loved. Toward the end of her life she confided to interviewer Roy Newquist in Conversations with Joan Crawford : “A pillow is a lousy substitute for someone who really cares. And when it comes right down to it, aside from Alfred and the twins, I don’t think I came across anyone who really cared.”
QUIRKS: After achieving stardom, Crawford refused to go in front of the movie cameras during her menstrual period, complaining that she didn’t photograph well then. There was a time, however, when she was willing to go to any extreme to appear on the screen. During her peak in popularity, stories began surfacing that years before, while still known as Lucille LeSueur, Joan Crawford had made a series of stag movies bearing such exploitative titles as Velvet Lips and The Casting Couch . Joan allegedly spent $100,000 buying up every copy of these films in order to destroy them. She learned later that one collector still harbored some prints, and shortly thereafter a mysterious fire swept through this collector’s home, burning to a crisp not only the sex flicks but the sleeping collector.
Years after, rumor had it that a complete set of Crawford’s stag films had turned up in the private collection of a Prague munitions king.
—A.K.
Little Boy Lost
JAMES DEAN (Feb. 8, 1931–Sept. 30, 1955)
HIS FAME: Few movie actors, in life or death, have been worshiped the way James Dean was after he died at the age of 24, having had major roles in only three films. These were East of Eden , Rebel Without a Cause , and Giant .
Humphrey Bogart said of him: “Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he had lived, he’d never have been able to live up to his publicity.”
Andy Warhol called him “the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.” And an entire generation of teenagers saw themselves in Dean as they’d seen themselves in no other star. One publicist summed it up when he said, “I thought Dean was a legend, but I was wrong … He’s a religion.”
HIS PERSON: Dean’s happy, healthy childhood in Fairmont, Ind., and in Los Angeles,
was cruelly marred when his mother died of
cancer. He was nine years old, and his father
sent him back to Indiana, where he was
raised on a farm by his kindly aunt and
uncle. Despite his blond, boyish good looks,
the sex-symbol-to-be was small and nearsighted and spoke haltingly. Growing up, he
embarked on an acting career, bouncing
back and forth between New York and Hollywood. Dean’s personality was so intense
that he made an unforgettable impression on
almost everyone he met—and often for the
worst. He seesawed wildly from clowning
and joking to morbid, sullen depressions.
Jimmy threw his powerful energy into one
activity after another. He studied dance,
played the bongos, learned to sculpt, wrote
poetry,
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