thirteen-room house that Joe had rented in Riverdale, just outside of New York City, overlooking the expansive Hudson River. Rose was heavy with child and alone in a new community in which she knew no one, but she understood that thiswas all women’s business, something with which Joe must not be distracted. Joe left his family there and headed off into his other life.
J oe considered life a banquet at which he could feast on whatever and whomever he pleased. He had taken a liking to the sun and sociability of Palm Beach when Rose introduced him to the Florida resort a few years before. Now, in January 1928, instead of spending time in the frigid North with his pregnant wife, he was down in Palm Beach, setting off on a daring new romantic adventure.
Joe’s choice for his newest dalliance was twenty-eight-year-old Gloria Swanson, a celebrated Hollywood star. Greta Garbo was more classically beautiful, Mae West was more voluptuous, but no other contemporary actress had Gloria’s mysterious, exotic aura. She was a thrice-married egotist, now saddled to a fawning gentleman whose most notable feature was his name, the Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye. Gloria fancied herself a woman of her time, not a silly flapper but a spirited, independent, passionate woman who thought that eroticism was her natural due. While Rose perused her Catholic missives, Gloria read such up-to-the-minute works as Sex and the Love Light and The Art of Love.
Seduction comes in many forms, and Joe began by offering Gloria’s husband a position at Pathé Studios in Paris, far away from his wife. Each day he huddled with Gloria or worked alone, straightening out her tangled finances. Evening after evening he escorted the couple to the most splendid of parties and balls, always deferring to the marquis. Then one afternoon, when he was convinced that the apple would fall from the tree on its own accord, he had his associate Eddie Moore take the grateful marquis deep-sea fishing. While the nobleman was far out on the Atlantic, Joe knocked on the door to Gloria’s suite at the Royal Poinciana Hotel.
Joe left no memoir of the events of that afternoon, and we have only Gloria’s autobiography to tell us what transpired. As she recalled, he stood in the doorway, a perfect study of the Palm Beach bon vivant in his white flannel pants, sweater, and two-colored shoes. “He moved so quickly that his mouth was on mine before either of us could speak,” the actress recalled. “With one hand he held the back of my head, with the other he stroked my body and pulled at my kimono. He kept insisting in a drawn-out moan, ‘No longer, no longer, now.’ He was like a roped horse, rough, arduous, racing to be free. After a hasty climax he lay beside me, stroking my hair. Apart from his guilty, passionate mutterings, he had still said nothing cogent.”
Joe’s mutterings may have been passionate, but they were surely not guilty. Millions of American men watched Gloria on the screen, but she wasa siren they caressed only in their fantasies. Joe had seen those movies too, and he had moved to this front with the same calculation and cunning that he used on Wall Street. Joe was not a man who liked risk, be it in war, business, or romance. He was, however, in love with Gloria, or at least in love with the idea of Gloria, and love was always a danger. He was passionately attracted to this daring, sensual, perfumed being so different from staid and proper Rose, from whose mouth came axioms and homilies and to whom sex was largely one of the obligatory rituals of marriage.
Joe considered giving birth a wife’s work. He saw no reason to be with Rose to observe the messy, painful business. So his pregnant wife traveled without him to Boston. She would have preferred to deliver at her home, but instead she went to St. Margaret’s Hospital, where she gave birth to Jean Ann, February 20, 1928, with Dr. Good and his team at her side.
As Rose lay in bed, she received a
J oe considered life a banquet at which he could feast on whatever and whomever he pleased. He had taken a liking to the sun and sociability of Palm Beach when Rose introduced him to the Florida resort a few years before. Now, in January 1928, instead of spending time in the frigid North with his pregnant wife, he was down in Palm Beach, setting off on a daring new romantic adventure.
Joe’s choice for his newest dalliance was twenty-eight-year-old Gloria Swanson, a celebrated Hollywood star. Greta Garbo was more classically beautiful, Mae West was more voluptuous, but no other contemporary actress had Gloria’s mysterious, exotic aura. She was a thrice-married egotist, now saddled to a fawning gentleman whose most notable feature was his name, the Marquis de la Falaise de la Coudraye. Gloria fancied herself a woman of her time, not a silly flapper but a spirited, independent, passionate woman who thought that eroticism was her natural due. While Rose perused her Catholic missives, Gloria read such up-to-the-minute works as Sex and the Love Light and The Art of Love.
Seduction comes in many forms, and Joe began by offering Gloria’s husband a position at Pathé Studios in Paris, far away from his wife. Each day he huddled with Gloria or worked alone, straightening out her tangled finances. Evening after evening he escorted the couple to the most splendid of parties and balls, always deferring to the marquis. Then one afternoon, when he was convinced that the apple would fall from the tree on its own accord, he had his associate Eddie Moore take the grateful marquis deep-sea fishing. While the nobleman was far out on the Atlantic, Joe knocked on the door to Gloria’s suite at the Royal Poinciana Hotel.
Joe left no memoir of the events of that afternoon, and we have only Gloria’s autobiography to tell us what transpired. As she recalled, he stood in the doorway, a perfect study of the Palm Beach bon vivant in his white flannel pants, sweater, and two-colored shoes. “He moved so quickly that his mouth was on mine before either of us could speak,” the actress recalled. “With one hand he held the back of my head, with the other he stroked my body and pulled at my kimono. He kept insisting in a drawn-out moan, ‘No longer, no longer, now.’ He was like a roped horse, rough, arduous, racing to be free. After a hasty climax he lay beside me, stroking my hair. Apart from his guilty, passionate mutterings, he had still said nothing cogent.”
Joe’s mutterings may have been passionate, but they were surely not guilty. Millions of American men watched Gloria on the screen, but she wasa siren they caressed only in their fantasies. Joe had seen those movies too, and he had moved to this front with the same calculation and cunning that he used on Wall Street. Joe was not a man who liked risk, be it in war, business, or romance. He was, however, in love with Gloria, or at least in love with the idea of Gloria, and love was always a danger. He was passionately attracted to this daring, sensual, perfumed being so different from staid and proper Rose, from whose mouth came axioms and homilies and to whom sex was largely one of the obligatory rituals of marriage.
Joe considered giving birth a wife’s work. He saw no reason to be with Rose to observe the messy, painful business. So his pregnant wife traveled without him to Boston. She would have preferred to deliver at her home, but instead she went to St. Margaret’s Hospital, where she gave birth to Jean Ann, February 20, 1928, with Dr. Good and his team at her side.
As Rose lay in bed, she received a
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