The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People by Sylvia Wallace, Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky Page B
Tags: General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Rich & Famous, Human Sexuality, Popular Culture
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began what was to be a longterm love affair with the thin, high-strung young actress Barbara Glenn, whom he affectionately referred to as “my neurotic little shit.” After he moved to California, Barbara finally told him she was marrying someone else. He took the news badly.
The great love of Dean’s life was the petite, demure Italian actress Pier Angeli. The main impediment to their union was Pier’s mother, who disapproved because of Jimmy’s tough punk image, and because he wasn’t a Catholic.
To please Pier, Jimmy got regular haircuts, wore suits occasionally, and even talked of becoming a Catholic. Pier and Jimmy considered marriage and quarreled about it. When an interviewer asked him whether “wedding bells would be heard,” he replied, “You mean with Miss Pizza? Look, I’m just too neurotic.”
Dean finally did ask her to marry him in New York, where he was going for a TV show. Pier said it would break her mother’s heart if they eloped. So she stayed behind, and while Dean was gone she announced her engagement to singer Vic Damone. It broke Jimmy’s heart.
Dean told a friend that he had beaten Pier up a few nights before her wedding, and there is a persistent story that he sat outside the church on his
motorcycle during the ceremony, gunning his motor. Some time later Pier visited Jimmy to tell him she was going to have a baby. He cried after she left, and two days later he was dead.
Pier Angeli’s marriage to Damone was a failure, as was her second marriage, and her life ended after a drug overdose. She never got over Jimmy Dean’s magic, likening the two of them to Romeo and Juliet and saying he was the only man she had ever loved. She said in an interview, “I never loved either of my husbands the way I loved Jimmy,” and admitted that when she lay in bed next to them she wished they were Dean.
Dean’s last important romance was with 19-year-old Ursula Andress, who had just been imported to America from Switzerland and was being billed as
“the female Marlon Brando.” At first she said, “He nice but only boy.” As their relationship developed, Dean discovered that she was one of the few girls who wouldn’t put up with his shenanigans. Dean even studied German “so Ursula and I can fight better.” When she finally got fed up with his moods and left him, he was shocked.
HIS THOUGHTS: “My mother died on me when I was nine years old. What does she expect me to do? Do it all by myself?”
—A.W.
The Juggler
W. C. FIELDS (Jan. 29, 1880–Dec. 25, 1946)
HIS FAME: William Claude Dukenfield
was the product of English working-class
parents who lived in Philadelphia, a city
he always spoke of with disgust. He left
home at the age of 11 to pursue a career
as a vaudeville juggler, adopting the stage
name W. C. Fields. In 1915 he settled in
New York and worked in various Broadway reviews, notably the Ziegfeld Follies .
He moved to Hollywood to break into
the movies, and people soon flocked to
their local theaters to see the man with
the bulbous nose, cigar, and top hat be
tormented by children and dogs in films
such as Tillie and Gus (1933), The Bank
Dick (1940), and Never Give a Sucker an
Even Break (1941).
LOVE LIFE: Much of Fields’ boyhood was spent in poverty, and as an adult he was constantly fearful of being broke. As a result, his girl friends found him a tight man with a dollar.
In 1900 Fields married Hattie Hughes, his vaudeville assistant, who bore him a son named Claude. Although Fields faithfully supported his wife and child for 40 years, he called them “vultures” who were always after his money, and he very rarely saw them. A typical Fields letter to Hattie in 1933 began, “I am in receipt of your complaint No. 68427.” Fields and Hattie never obtained a legal divorce.
For seven years during the 1920s, Fields shared an apartment with Ziegfeld show girl Bessie Poole, who also bore him a son. Although Fields never publicly acknowledged the child, he
The great love of Dean’s life was the petite, demure Italian actress Pier Angeli. The main impediment to their union was Pier’s mother, who disapproved because of Jimmy’s tough punk image, and because he wasn’t a Catholic.
To please Pier, Jimmy got regular haircuts, wore suits occasionally, and even talked of becoming a Catholic. Pier and Jimmy considered marriage and quarreled about it. When an interviewer asked him whether “wedding bells would be heard,” he replied, “You mean with Miss Pizza? Look, I’m just too neurotic.”
Dean finally did ask her to marry him in New York, where he was going for a TV show. Pier said it would break her mother’s heart if they eloped. So she stayed behind, and while Dean was gone she announced her engagement to singer Vic Damone. It broke Jimmy’s heart.
Dean told a friend that he had beaten Pier up a few nights before her wedding, and there is a persistent story that he sat outside the church on his
motorcycle during the ceremony, gunning his motor. Some time later Pier visited Jimmy to tell him she was going to have a baby. He cried after she left, and two days later he was dead.
Pier Angeli’s marriage to Damone was a failure, as was her second marriage, and her life ended after a drug overdose. She never got over Jimmy Dean’s magic, likening the two of them to Romeo and Juliet and saying he was the only man she had ever loved. She said in an interview, “I never loved either of my husbands the way I loved Jimmy,” and admitted that when she lay in bed next to them she wished they were Dean.
Dean’s last important romance was with 19-year-old Ursula Andress, who had just been imported to America from Switzerland and was being billed as
“the female Marlon Brando.” At first she said, “He nice but only boy.” As their relationship developed, Dean discovered that she was one of the few girls who wouldn’t put up with his shenanigans. Dean even studied German “so Ursula and I can fight better.” When she finally got fed up with his moods and left him, he was shocked.
HIS THOUGHTS: “My mother died on me when I was nine years old. What does she expect me to do? Do it all by myself?”
—A.W.
The Juggler
W. C. FIELDS (Jan. 29, 1880–Dec. 25, 1946)
HIS FAME: William Claude Dukenfield
was the product of English working-class
parents who lived in Philadelphia, a city
he always spoke of with disgust. He left
home at the age of 11 to pursue a career
as a vaudeville juggler, adopting the stage
name W. C. Fields. In 1915 he settled in
New York and worked in various Broadway reviews, notably the Ziegfeld Follies .
He moved to Hollywood to break into
the movies, and people soon flocked to
their local theaters to see the man with
the bulbous nose, cigar, and top hat be
tormented by children and dogs in films
such as Tillie and Gus (1933), The Bank
Dick (1940), and Never Give a Sucker an
Even Break (1941).
LOVE LIFE: Much of Fields’ boyhood was spent in poverty, and as an adult he was constantly fearful of being broke. As a result, his girl friends found him a tight man with a dollar.
In 1900 Fields married Hattie Hughes, his vaudeville assistant, who bore him a son named Claude. Although Fields faithfully supported his wife and child for 40 years, he called them “vultures” who were always after his money, and he very rarely saw them. A typical Fields letter to Hattie in 1933 began, “I am in receipt of your complaint No. 68427.” Fields and Hattie never obtained a legal divorce.
For seven years during the 1920s, Fields shared an apartment with Ziegfeld show girl Bessie Poole, who also bore him a son. Although Fields never publicly acknowledged the child, he
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