And the Rest Is History

by Marlene Wagman-Geller

  Another person who had misgivings over the wedding of the century was the bride, who called her nuptials the carnival of the century. On board the SS Constitution en route to Monaco, she recalled, “When I left New York our ship was surrounded in fog. What sort of world was awaiting me on the other side of that fog?” Grace was leaving her family, friends, and career for a world where she did not speak the language, protocol ruled, and the only person she knew was a man she had met less than a year before. In addition, the marriage clause stated that in the contingency of divorce, custody of any children would be granted to the father. Whatever scenario was to follow, Grace would do what she had always done: play her part to perfection.

  The church ceremony was conducted on April 19, 1956, at Saint Nicholas Cathedral; the bride wore an $8,000 wedding dress, designed by MGM. The six hundred guests included European blue bloods, the international jet set, and American movie stars. The die was cast when the couple stated, “Oui, je veux.” The service was viewed by an estimated 30 million television viewers. The prince and princess honeymooned on Rainier’s yacht, Deo Juvante II. Before boarding, the bride told her groom, “Thank you, darling, for such a sweet, intimate wedding.”

  As events unfolded, Princess Grace remarked, “The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale.” One of the things that caused her pain was abandoning the profession she loved. For comfort she would repeat to herself a quotation from her favorite poet, Kahlil Gibran: “When love beckons to you follow him ... though his voice may shatter your dreams.” The energy she had once given to her career was soon channeled into the royal offspring. Nine months and four days after their wedding, their first child, Princess Caroline, was born. Monaco, ecstatic that its municipality was now secure from French rule, rejoiced. Twenty-one guns heralded the event, a national holiday was declared, gambling ceased, and champagne flowed. A year later, 101 guns saluted the arrival of the male heir, Prince Albert. Their last born was Princess Stephanie.

  The family lived together for a quarter of a century in storybook splendor. But in September 1982, Grace and her seventeen-year-old daughter Stephanie were returning home from Roc Angel, their French estate. Grace had refused the services of her chauffeur; while driving, she suffered a minor stroke, which caused her car to crash down the mountainside. Stephanie survived; Grace never regained consciousness.

  Rainier went into the hospital room to bid his wife a final farewell; when he departed he walked slowly down the corridor, supported on one side by his son, Prince Albert, and on the other by his daughter, Princess Caroline. He kept repeating, “This can’t be true. Please, dear God. This can’t be true.”

  A few years after the tragic accident, biographer Jeffrey Robinson asked Rainier, once more Europe’s reigning bachelor, about remarrying. The response? “How could I? Everywhere I go, I see Grace.” With the passing of the princess, the fairy tale had lost its enchantment.

  Postscript

  An estimated worldwide television audience of 100 million watched as Grace Grimaldi was buried in the dynasty’s crypt. The four hundred guests in attendance were American movie stars and the crowned heads of Europe; Diana, Princess of Wales, represented the British royal family.

  Rainier passed away in 2005 after suffering a host of health problems. His service was attended by dignitaries from sixty countries; the service was private. During the Mass, “Adagio for Strings” echoed through a nineteenth-century cathedral that overlooks the sea. He was buried beside Princess Grace.

  27

  Johnny Cash and June Carter

  1956

  Fire is a two-edged sword; it can both burn and warm. In the case of a man with a preference for black and a woman with a preference for blue, it brought first damnation and then, through the force of love, redemption.

  Valerie June Carter was born in Virginia into a dynasty of music royalty. Her family became the first vocal group to become country stars, and their repertoire became Nashville’s bedrock with classics such as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” A natural beauty who possessed a razor-sharp wit, she achieved popularity by spicing up live performances with comedy routines and monologues.

  Life on the road for a teenage girl in a group was difficult. “The old circuits sometimes called for five shows a day. While everyone else was dating, I was busy riding everywhere in our old Cadillac, setting up the PA system, and taking money at the door. My body ached. Then I stopped a show with a routine, and I was hooked. There would be no turning back now. I would not go to college, would not marry Freddie Fugate back home and raise children, cook three meals a day and be an average American housewife.”

  At age twenty-three she married her first husband, honky-tonk singer Carl Smith, and had a daughter, Rebecca, before separating later in the decade. In 1961 the Carters were invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, where June would meet her man in black.

  June’s destiny, J. R. Cash (he was so christened because his parents could not agree on a name), was born in Arkansas, one of seven children of Southern Baptist sharecroppers. By age five he toiled in the cotton fields, where his mother led the children in singing gospel songs to lighten their Depression-era existence. Music also helped him survive the tragic death of his brother in an accident with a power saw as well as an acrimonious relationship with his father. To chase away the blues he listened to his uncle’s radio, especially the recordings of the Carter family. On a class trip to the Grand Ole Opry, he saw his idols in person and determined that one day he would obtain June’s autograph.

  After high school he enlisted and in Germany bought his first guitar, on which he composed “Folsom Prison Blues.” When he returned he married Vivian Liberto and held a number of dead-end jobs to support his growing family. His segue to fame began when he obtained a recording contract with Sam Phillips’s Sun label, which had clients Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley. His first hit was “Cry, Cry, Cry.” His signature color led to his nickname, “the Man in Black,” which was in contrast to the rhinestones sported by other country stars, and he began each of his concerts with, “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.” When “I Walk the Line” began storming up the charts, the Man in Black decided it was time to knock on the door of the mecca of country music.

  June was performing as an opening act for Presley when she saw Elvis on his knee, grasping his guitar and strumming the words, “Everyone knows where you go when the sun goes down. Ah-ummm.” When she asked him what was going on, he replied he was trying to tune his “blame guitar” and attempting to sing like Johnny Cash. When she said she didn’t know Cash, Elvis replied that she would, that the whole world would. Later, on tour throughout the South, while June tried to protect Elvis from women, Presley would endlessly play Cash songs on all the jukeboxes. She recalled hearing the mournful words “You’re gonna cry, cry, cry and you’ll cry alone,” and that Cash’s mournful voice penetrated her heart and spoke to her own loneliness.

  The first time June met Johnny was backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1956. She was tuning her guitar and humming “Ahumm,” when she heard the same voice that had emanated from the jukeboxes; however, this time it said, “Hello. My name is Johnny Cash. I’ve always wanted to meet you.” She was able to compose herself and replied, “I feel like I know you already. Elvis plays you on the jukebox all the time and he can’t tune his guitar without humming ‘Cry, Cry, Cry.’ Now he’s got me doing it.” Before they separated he told her, “I’m going to marry you someday.” She laughed and said, “Well, good. I can’t wait.” Her answer was flippant because at the time, he was a married man with four daughters. June said that his eyes looked like black agates and that she was afraid to do more than glance at him for fear that she would be drawn into his soul, unable to walk away. Before they parted, she requested some of his records, which he gave her the next Saturday night; in return she gave him her picture, with its long-awaited autograph.

  The years that followed were punches to Johnny’s soul, despite the wealth and gold records
. The competing demands of fame and family, and his ever-present feelings of alienation, made him sing the “Cocaine Blues”; he also was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs. Under the influence of his demons, he trashed hotel rooms, totaled cars, failed to show up for gigs, and committed random acts of adultery. On one memorable occasion, he became enraged when he fumbled with his microphone, and then he used it as a weapon to smash sixty footlights on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. For the price of their ticket, those in the front row were showered with glass. Restless, he was happy to always be on the move, and it would come as a relief to hear his band members ask, “Hey, John, how soon do you think you can leave?”

  In the early 1960s, June started touring with her mother and sisters as the Carter Family, and shortly afterward Cash began accompanying them; this led to June and Johnny performing duets such as “If I Were a Carpenter.” Soon the only thing rivaling their onstage chemistry was their offstage one. This caused a great deal of consternation for June, who was then remarried to Nashville police officer Rip Nix, with whom she had a daughter, Rosie. She was also against adultery, on both a moral and religious level. However, in 1965, in Las Vegas, at the Mint, Johnny and June gave in to their passion. June had fallen for the Man in Black, a complex soul, equal parts saint and sinner.

  In an emotional tsunami, June found herself afterward driving her car as fast as she could at four in the morning. When she asked herself what she was doing, her answer was that she was “falling in love with someone she had no right to fall in love with.” Not only were they both married and parents, but she was alarmed with becoming involved with a man whose lifestyle had ended the life of her friend Hank Williams. She likened her dilemma to a ring of fire, a metaphor born from her fundamentalist Christian faith. This phrase later became one of her most famous lyrics.

  June’s response to Johnny’s begging her to be with him was that until he was free from his chemical dependencies, their one-night stand would remain just that. Cash was unable to shake his drug habit or his love for June. However, ultimately for her he was able to “walk the line” of sobriety, at least as much as he was able. Cash wrote of the woman who had saved his life both physically and spiritually, “What June did for me was post signs along the way, lift me up when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged, and love me when I felt alone and unlovable. She’s the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close.”

  In one of the most romantic of all proposals, while performing live at a concert in London, Ontario, Johnny Cash asked June Carter to marry him. Her answer was to just get on with the show. However, when the crowd of seven thousand roared for her to say yes—she did. After eighteen years, multiple music awards, drug addiction, and three failed marriages between them, Johnny and June were married one week later on March 1, 1968, in Kentucky. The bride’s dress and the flowers in her hair were in her favorite color of light blue. A nonalcoholic reception followed at their lakeside estate in Tennessee, which they had christened Camelot. Their nuptials produced another Carter/Cash classic, “Jackson.”

  In 1970, June gave birth to their son, John Cash Carter, whom they idolized and took on stages throughout the world, even before he could walk. Of their marriage, which lasted for thirty-five years, Cash said he could not envision life without her. She was equally laudatory: “God puts his hand on some people and says, ‘You can be Johnny Cash.’”

  Unfortunately, Camelot had its dark side. Johnny at times lapsed into drug abuse (he once overdosed on pills he had smuggled into his hospital room), but for the most part, with June’s help, he was able to apply the brakes to his self-destructive behavior.

  The circle was broken when June passed away, holding Johnny’s hand. Through their unconditional devotion they had transformed the ring of fire from one of damnation to one of redemption.

  Postscript

  June was buried in a light blue coffin in Tennessee. At her funeral, her stepdaughter Rosanne Cash stated, “If being a wife were a corporation, June would have been a CEO. It was her most treasured role.” Singers Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, and others sang at her funeral.

  Cash succumbed to diabetes, and grief, four months later. The mourners sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

  28

  Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas

  1957

  The Olympians went into creative overdrive when meting out punishment: Prometheus, for daring to steal fire from the gods, was chained to a rock; every night a vulture would feast on his liver, only to have the organ grow back the following day. In similar fashion, when Onassis betrayed Callas, for his sin of hubris, the tycoon and the diva were cast as leading players in a twentieth-century tragedy.

  Sophia Cecelia Kalogeropoulos (who would achieve fame as Maria Callas), whose life emulated a Greek drama both on and off stage, was raised in Queens. As an adolescent she was overweight, with bad skin and thick glasses, which was especially painful in comparison with her attractive sister. However, for compensation she had a gift from the gods: an ethereal voice.

  In 1937, Maria’s parents divorced, and her mother, Evangelia, relocated her two children to Athens, where she hoped to launch Maria’s singing career. Two years later the swastika was flying over the Acropolis, and the Kalos family suffered severe starvation and terror. After the war Maria left Greece and the mother with whom she clashed. When she next stepped foot in Greece, it was as La Divina; it was also when she would fall in love with the man who would dominate her life.

  Maria’s destiny, Aristotle Sokratis Onassis, was born in Turkey; however, when the country turned on its ethnic population, members of his family were killed and he fled to Greece. In 1923 he left for Buenos Aires with $250 and limitless ambition. He started a tobacco import business with Turkey, and his road to his first million was helped along through smuggling and other illegal activities. His business ethics can be gleaned from his remark that he would never trust a person who did not accept a bribe. When he returned to Greece, it was as a self-made millionaire with an ego equivalent to his fortune. He married Athina Livanos, daughter of a shipping magnate, whose old money lent respectability to his new money. His son, Alexander, to whom he referred as his alpha and omega, was followed by daughter Christina. Onassis’s happiness and hubris were at their height.

  The first time Maria met Aristotle was on the evening of September 3, at an international jet-set ball held in the Hotel Danieli, overlooking a Venetian canal. The event, hosted by the grande dame of the gossip column, Elsa Maxwell, was in Maria’s honor to celebrate her opera performance in Anna Bolena. The hostess arranged Maria’s introduction to Aristotle, feeling that two of Greece’s most famous citizens (Callas had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1956) should make each other’s acquaintance. By this time, Maria, who had undergone a metamorphosis by shedding sixty-five pounds, was a beauty with the world of opera at her feet. There was an immediate rapport between the diva and the tycoon, and they began to converse in animated Greek. Soon they discovered they had far more in common than language: Hellenistic heritage, survival of the war, and self-made success. Moreover, there was a magnetic physical rapport.

  Onassis repeatedly invited Maria and her Italian manager husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, to his floating pleasure dome, The Christina; however, as they were focused solely on her career, they repeatedly declined. A year and a half later, Callas performed Medea in London, and her not-very-secret admirer flew in for the event, though he had little appreciation of opera, saying, “It sounds like a lot of Italian chefs shouting risotto recipes at each other.” Afterward he staged an elaborate reception for her at the Dorchester Hotel, decorating it with thousands of red roses and inviting world-renowned guests.

  A month later the Meneghinis finally agreed to a cruise, little imagining that the getaway would alter all of their destinies. Onassis gave a tour of the splendors of his ship; amid the opulence were bar stool cushions covered with the foreskins of whales killed by his whaling
fleet. This permitted Aristotle to deliver his bon mot: “Madame, you are sitting on the largest penis in the world.” Maria enjoyed Aristotle’s ribald humor; one can assume it was not for the ears of his other high-profile guests, Sir Winston and Lady Churchill, or their beloved green parakeet, Toby, who had accompanied them. On one evening Maria found her host so charming that she stayed up long after her husband had retired. After that, every night was a late one for Maria and Aristo, as she called him. She began to sense the possibility of freedom, both personal and sexual, that her marriage to her husband, thirty years her senior, had denied her. Before the fateful cruise ended, there was an evening when she never returned to her cabin; she had met her life’s grand passion. For his part, Aristotle did not resist his siren.

  Maria informed her husband that their marriage was over: “Aristo and I have been caught up in this twist of fate and we are unable to combat it.” Meneghini was never to recover, and for the rest of his life he mourned the loss of his wife. In their Italian villa he kept everything as she had left it, as her shrine. Onassis, however, was not willing to break up his family and empire and wanted to keep Maria as his mistress. Callas, madly in love, was willing to settle for this; she had never experienced love before. As she said, “It is wonderful to be happy and to know it right at the time you are.” However, with the gossip-friendly litany of money, celebrity, and adultery, the scandal became international gossip, and Athina (although she had her own lover) filed for divorce. Maria was jubilant, hoping the mistress could now become the wife, especially when, at age forty-two, she discovered she was pregnant.