—L.K.S.
Captain Bligh In Love
CHARLES LAUGHTON (July 1, 1899-Dec. 15, 1962)
HIS FAME: Laughton was respected as one of the most powerful and versatile character actors in both British and American films and in the theater. He won an Academy Award in 1933 for his performance in The Private Life of Henry VIII.
HIS PERSON: “I have got a face like an elephant’s behind,” said Laughton, and his large girth and less than handsome appearance made his desire to go on the stage seem strange to his hotel-keeping British parents. After serving in WWI, during which he was a front-line soldier and was gassed, he returned home to take up his apprenticeship in the respectable family business. Finally, at age 26, he convinced his parents to subsidize his training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Before long he was a well-known and much-sought-after character actor. He is best remembered by American audiences for his major film roles—King Henry VIII, Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and Sir Wilfrid Robarts in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), all of which won him Oscar nominations. Laughton died in Los Angeles in 1962 of bone cancer.
Laughton and Elsa Lanchester
SEX LIFE: Laughton made love with only one woman in his entire lifetime—actress Elsa Lanchester, his wife of 33 years—and with countless and mostly nameless young men. He met Lanchester at a rehearsal in 1927. Her initial response to him was not romantic: “He was plump, well, fat really, and pale.” But they hit it off, they could talk, they amused each other, and they shared an interest in art and flowers. They fell in love, a love that would be sorely tested over the years, and were married in 1929.
The first two years of their marriage were happy ones, and apparently nothing happened to give the young bride a hint that her husband was homosexual. Then, as the result of a very ugly row with a boy-prostitute who insisted that he hadn’t been paid, Laughton was forced to admit to his wife that he had long been a practicing homosexual, mostly with young hired companions. Upon hearing Laughton’s confession, Elsa was dazed. She could only say, “It’s perfectly all right. It doesn’t matter. I understand.” But it did matter. For the next week Elsa was stricken with deafness. As she told biographer Charles Higham: “I suppose I shut my ears off. I have since realized, or was told, that it was probably a sort of reaction to some news I really didn’t want to hear.” Finally, she was able to discuss the incident with Laughton. “Later on, I asked Charles what had happened. And he told me he was with this fellow on our sofa. The only thing I could say was, ‘Fine. OK. But let’s get rid of the sofa.’” After that, she would not consider having children. Although Elsa claimed that she simply was not fond of children, Laughton believed that she could not stand the idea of bearing a child whose father was a homosexual.
Yet their marriage continued, even though their sex life dwindled rapidly to nothing. They remained in love and continued to live together as close companions. Sexually, they both satisfied themselves with outside partners. Elsa had occasional affairs with other men over the years, and Laughton resumed his search for young males—the younger and, in most cases, the more anonymous, the better.
Laughton went through a short period of therapy to try to alter his sexual tastes, but soon gave it up. Although he would be sporadically troubled by guilt and fears of scandal (in those years homosexuality was against the law), the pattern was set. His wife kept her distance from most of his handsome young men, but in a few cases she got to know them quite well. “When he was with one in particular,” she once said, “I used to go to the market every day and get two peach pies for them. I didn’t mind. I don’t mind a bit of peach pie myself.”
Over the years there were apparently only two men who held Laughton’s interest. One of them was a lean, handsome young actor whom Laughton met while in his 40s. He was involved with the young man off and on for over 20 years. When Laughton died, the young actor was a pallbearer. When in his 60s, Laughton found his other male love, a tall, good-looking member of the show-business community. The two traveled widely together until the end of Laughton’s life.
—R.W.S.
STAGE
The Divine Sarah
SARAH BERNHARDT (Oct. 22 or 23, 1844-Mar. 26, 1923)
HER FAME: One of the best-loved actresses of the modern theater, Sarah Bernhardt gained international acclaim with her performances in Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, Racine’s Phèdre, and the younger Dumas’ La Dame aux Camélias. Her acting was characterized by an emotional intensity and inner fire which inspired poets and critics alike to sing her praises. Fellow actress Ellen Terry described her as “a miracle.”
HER PERSON: The daughter of a beautiful, unmarried milliner turned courtesan, Sarah was ignored by her mother. A sickly child, she suffered from tuberculosis and was not expected to live to adulthood. At 16 she hoped to become a nun. However, her mother’s current lover, the Duc de Morny, half brother of Napoleon III, decided that Sarah should be trained as an actress. He used his influence to enroll her first in the Conservatoire, the French government’s acting school, and two years later in the prestigious Comédie Française. She was forced to leave the Comédie in 1863 after she slapped another actress in a fit of anger.
Bernhardt at age 35
Emotionally unpredictable, extremely thin, with a head of unruly, fair, curly hair, the distinctive young woman scored her first major triumph at the Odéon Theater in Kean, a play by Dumas père. Success followed success for the “nicely polished skeleton,” and in 1880 she formed her own company and toured the world with her productions. Despite her increasing fame, Sarah continued to be plagued with stage fright. Her nervous agitation, combined with the emotional demands of her performance, would often cause her to faint after the last curtain call. Nor was she ever free of her tubercular problem, and she frequently was afflicted with spells during which she coughed up blood. Although her body was frail, her force of will was inexhaustible. She required little sleep and was said to have the energy of 10 people. Even after her leg was amputated in 1915, she kept to her demanding schedule until shortly before her death at age 78 in her Paris home.
LOVE LIFE: Reputed to have had over 1,000 affairs, the “Divine Sarah” herself proclaimed, “I have been one of the great lovers of my century.” (Originally her mother had considered grooming Sarah as a courtesan, but the brash and independent girl was not temperamentally suited for that “lucrative form of slavery.”) Her initial affair, at age 18, was with the Count de Kératry, but the first man who truly won her heart was Henri, Prince de Ligne. By Henri, the 20-year-old Sarah had a son, Maurice, whom many considered the real love of her life. While still in her 20s she became the toast of the Continent, and her devoted admirers included Gustave Doré, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, Oscar Wilde, and Émile Zola. She was always attracted to men of talent, and she fully expected them to pay tribute to her in their art.
Although Sarah flung herself into her affairs with curiosity and passion, she rarely abandoned herself to them. Perhaps her childhood environment partly accounted for her caution. She once recalled, “My mother’s house was always full of men, and the more I saw of them, the less I liked them.” Nonetheless, the actress who moved in “a halo of glory” had a magnetic effect on both men and women, and she was adored by royalty.
In a pamphlet entitled “The Loves of Sarah Bernhardt,” the farfetched allegation was made that she had seduced all the European heads of state, including the pope himself. There is evidence that she did indeed have “special relationships” with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and Prince Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I, to whom she had been introduced by George Sand. As for the other leaders of Europe, although she may not have occupied their beds, it is clear that she won their hearts. Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, King Alfonso of Spain, and King Umberto of Italy showered her with gifts; King Christian IX of Denmark lent her his yacht; and the Archduke Frederick allowed her to use his château.
In the theater, her emotional sparks gained intensity by
the fact that her leading men usually became her lovers, the affairs often lasting only as long as the show ran. Once captivated by the Bernhardt charm, however, her conquests stayed on as friends. As she grew older, she continued the practice of having affairs with her leading men. At age 66, while on tour in the U.S., Sarah established a four-year liaison with Dutch-born Lou Tellegen, an untalented blond Hercules at least 35 years her junior. In his autobiography, Women Have Been Kind, he acknowledged that the time he had spent as her leading man had been “the most glorious four years of my life.”
Her only marriage, in 1882, was to the outrageously handsome but dissolute Aristides Jacques Damala, a Greek diplomat-playboy-actor 11 years her junior. Described as a cross between Casanova and the Marquis de Sade, he flaunted his infidelities and seemed to take particular pleasure in humiliating Sarah in public. They separated within a year, but during the last months of his life she served as his devoted nurse. He died in 1889, ravaged by addictions to morphine and cocaine.
QUIRKS: Among Sarah Bernhardt’s many eccentricities was her well-publicized satin-lined rosewood coffin. Given the doctors’ verdict that she did not have long to live, the teenage Sarah entreated her mother to buy her this coffin so that she would not be consigned to “an ugly bier.” She sometimes slept in it, and she had herself photographed in it more than once. In her book The Memoirs of Sarah Barnum, a thinly disguised, obscene “biography” of Sarah Bernhardt, actress Marie Colombier claimed Sarah “demanded that her intimate friends should keep her company in the narrow box. Some of them hesitated, because this funereal furniture killed their desires.”
HER THOUGHTS: Shortly before WWI, author Octave Mirbeau asked Sarah Bernhardt when she intended to give up love. She responded, “When I draw my last breath. I hope to live as I have always lived. The strength of my energy and vitality lies entirely in their subservience to my destiny as a woman.”
—The Eds.
Love’s Victim
ELEONORA DUSE (Oct. 3, 1859-Apr. 21, 1924)
HER FAME: In a career rivaled only by that of the legendary Sarah Bernhardt, Duse established herself as one of the greatest, most versatile, most powerful actresses in the history of the theater.
HER PERSON: Duse’s story is a classic tale of rags to riches, of anonymity to world renown. She was born in a small hotel in Vigevano, Italy, the child of poor, itinerant theatrical parents. During the course of the next half century the tiny, dynamic woman, with her dark hair and enormous eyes, electrified audiences in Europe and America in a wide variety of roles. She was highly acclaimed for her performance in the title role of Zola’s Thérèse Raquin and for her portrayals of Ophelia and Electra. She was also praised for her interpretations of the difficult roles provided by Ibsen, including Nora in A Doll’s House. Of her uncanny power, the famous critic James Huneker said: “Duse’s art borders on the clairvoyant … her silences are terrifying.” Unlike other great actresses of her time, she played older roles as she herself aged. “No wigs,” she said, “they must accept me with my white hair.” She even refused to wear makeup.
Disillusioned with her acting career and troubled by fragile health, Duse retired from the theater in 1909, but when WWI broke out she gave unstintingly of her energy and money to help wounded soldiers and their families. Her fortune depleted, she returned to the theater in 1921. In 1923 she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera House to launch a triumphant tour of the U.S. While in Pittsburgh, Pa., she caught a severe chill and died there in 1924.
Flavio Andò, “beautiful but dumb”
LOVE LIFE: Duse suffered the loss of both parents when she was a teenager. When Eleonora’s mother died, a cruel fellow actress suggested that the young girl sell herself to obtain money for a mourning dress. Indeed, for a young actress alone and unprotected in the rough-and-tumble world of the 19th-century Italian theater, it must have been very difficult to preserve her virginity. But preserve it she did, although she was a passionate young woman. When she was ready to be initiated into the joys of sensuality, she sought a clever, experienced man of taste, a man who could teach her not only about sex but about art, literature, and music. Martino Cafiero, a well-known writer considerably older than Duse, was, she decided, the right man. Their relationship set a pattern that would last her whole lifetime. A passionate affair—not only of the heart and the senses but of the mind as well—would begin happily, inevitably run its course, and almost always end in heartbreak and disaster, only to be followed by another such affair.
Duse never lacked fascinating men to pay court to her dramatic sensuality. “Her power of attraction,” said the actor-producer Aurélien Marie Lugné-Poë, “was unimaginable, for the very reason, perhaps, that it was satanic.”
SEX PARTNERS: Martino Cafiero was the first in a long, carefully selected parade of witty, handsome, exciting lovers. Their affair ended after their son died and Cafiero deserted her. Duse then married her leading man, Tebaldo Checchi, a considerate, thoughtful, consoling man who provided a welcome stability in this first (but certainly not last) period of heartbreak in Duse’s life.
She loved Checchi in her way—he was the only man she ever married and was the father of her daughter—but she was soon attracted to another actor, the strikingly beautiful, romantic Flavio Andò. Her affair with him broke up her marriage, but she quickly tired even of the dashing Andò. “He was beautiful but dumb,” was her verdict.
Her next noteworthy affair, which many believe provided the most profound emotional experience of her life, was with Arrigo Boito. He was a composer and a novelist, a man of wide-ranging taste and sensitivity who opened Duse’s mind to new levels of metaphysical and sensual beauty. Even after their affair ended, she continued to love him. When he died in 1918, she couldn’t sleep or eat for days.
In 1895 the poetic genius Gabriele D’Annunzio stormed backstage in Rome, threw himself at her feet, kissed the hem of her dress, and cried out, “O grande amatrice! ” [“O great love!”] (Years earlier, as a teenager, he had frightened her when he approached her with the proposal that they become lovers.) D’Annunzio was the quintessence of the romantic lover that her whole life seemed to cry out for. It was rumored that D’Annunzio would leap naked onto his sorrel stallion, race from their villa to the sea, and plunge into the surf. Duse would wait for him on the shore, ready to wrap a magnificent purple mantle about her hero. It was also said that they drank strange brews from the skull of a virgin in the light of the full moon. He had, one contemporary said, “the cold, steely gaze of a man who knows his goal, and will reach it regardless of cost, perhaps also of suffering.” However, as usual, it was Duse who was to suffer. Her apparent pursuit of misery reinforced one critic’s description of her as “the actress for all unhappy women.”
D’Annunzio was an artistic vampire who sucked the life’s blood from those close to him in order to provide material for his art. In 1900 he exploited his passionate affair with Duse in a novel called The Flame of Life. His description of a handsome, romantic younger man’s affair with a fading older woman caused a public scandal and broke Duse’s heart. Years after their affair had ended they met, and D’Annunzio, ever the flatterer, took her hand in his, gazed into her eyes, and murmured, “Not even you can imagine how much I loved you.” Duse replied, “And now not even you can imagine how much I have forgotten you!”
After her disastrous affair with D’Annunzio, the middle-aged Duse found temporary solace with a 23-year-old lesbian who wrote one play for her and promised more. When they visited author Mabel Dodge Luhan in her Italian villa, Duse and her protégée (known only as Signorina R.) created such a commotion in their bedroom that Mabel’s husband was forced to move from the adjoining room in order to obtain a decent night’s sleep. The young playwright was bursting with ideas for new vehicles for Duse, but she explained to Mabel that she required a “release” in order to accomplish her creative work. Mabel shunned her sexual advances and later learned that the girl had gone insane after she and Duse had left for London.
HER ADVICE: To women who sought advice on love, Duse preached independence. “Work; don’t ask support from any man but only love; then your life will have the meaning you are looking for.”
—R.W.S.
The Jersey Lily
LILLIE LANGTRY, née Emilie Charlotte Le Breton (Oct. 13, 1853-Feb. 12, 1929)
HER FAME: The most celebrated “professional beauty” of Queen Victoria’s London, Lillie was a pinup girl, an artist’s model, an actress, and the mistress of princes and millionaires. Her beauty and wit were praised by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw, among others. Gilbert and Sullivan put her to lyrics and music: “Oh, never, never, never since we joined the human race / Saw we so exquisitely fair a face.”
HER PERSON: Lillie was born on the British Isle of Jersey, the daughter of a clergyman. As a child she was something of a tomboy, but by the time she was 16 her father had been obliged to repulse several suitors. To console the girl, he allowed her a trip to London. Dazzled by city life, she vowed to live there one day. Her escape from Jersey came in the form of Edward Langtry, a moderately well-to-do yachtsman whom she married when she was 21. Edward provided her with a passport into London society.
The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People Page 10