The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  Following his retreat from Russia, Jones returned to France, where he died a lonely man. A decade earlier, when asked if he’d ever been wounded, Jones had replied: “Never on the sea but on the land I have been bled by arrows which were never launched by the English.”

  HIS ADVICE: In his last years, in response to a letter from a woman who had concluded that he preferred “love to friendship,” Jones replied: “You may be right, for love frequently communicates divine qualities, and in that light may be considered as the cordial that Providence has bestowed on mortals to help them to digest the nauseous draught of life.”

  —G.A.M.

  Lawrence Of The Birches

  T. E. LAWRENCE (Aug. 15, 1888-May 19, 1935)

  HIS FAME: He was known to history as “Lawrence of Arabia—the uncrowned king of Damascus.” Originally a mapmaker for British Intelligence, Lawrence succeeded in rallying factious Arabian princes around his own personal banner to battle the German-allied Turks during WWI.

  Lawrence of Arabia in India

  HIS PERSON: Lawrence was short (5 ft. 5 1/2 in.) and born out of wedlock—both of which could have contributed to the overall quirkiness of his life. His Anglo-Irish father, Sir Thomas Chapman, had run off to Wales with Sarah Maden, the governess hired to care for his daughters. Known as “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence,” the couple had five sons, the second of whom was T.E. There has been speculation that Lawrence’s heroic drive was in part an attempt to redeem his mother’s name. In any case, he so impressed the Bedouins with his zest for their austere desert life—driving his camel hard, walking the hot sands in his bare feet, and facing violent desert storms head on—that they followed him on numerous guerrilla raids against the Turkish-controlled railroad and during the seizure of Aqaba. After the war he served as a technical adviser to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and lobbied strongly for Arab independence. Between 1919 and 1920 he wrote his war memoirs, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, twice, having burned the notes and lost the final draft of the first copy. His exploits and writings brought him to the attention of such men as Lowell Thomas, Winston Churchill, and George Bernard Shaw, all of whom lionized him and indirectly drove him back into the ranks of the military in a search for anonymity. He joined the Royal Air Force as Pvt. J. H. Ross in 1922, but was exposed by the press and had to leave. He then joined the Royal Tank Corps as T. E. Shaw (a name he assumed legally in 1927), and by 1925 had worked his way back into the RAF, where he remained as an aircraftman until his death. He died in a motorcycle accident near Bovington Military Camp in Dorset at age 46. The controversy surrounding his death was appropriate to the life he led. One story had him being run off the road by a black mystery car driven by British agents because the government feared his political views and ambitions. Another story had his death being faked by the British so that they could smuggle him into the Middle East to do espionage work.

  Dahoum, the donkey boy

  SEX LIFE: Fellow Oxford student Vyvyan Warren Richards first declared his love for Lawrence in 1905. But later Richards told biographers Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson that Lawrence “had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind…. He received my affection … my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire … I realize now that he was sexless—at least that he was unaware of sex.” Lawrence did, however, try to form a serious relationship with a woman while he was an undergraduate. Janet Hallsmith, his childhood friend, was surprised when he abruptly proposed to her. She laughed at him, for they had not even kissed or discussed their feelings and she had hoped to marry his brother. Lawrence was hurt, but they remained friends. How much more aware of sex Lawrence was six years later during an archaeological dig in Asia Minor (now in Turkey) is still uncertain. But he did enjoy the company of a teenage donkey boy named Dahoum, whom he took camping and hiking and later took home to England in the summer of 1913. And he did adorn his house in Carchemish with a statue he had carved of Dahoum in the nude. He most likely dedicated The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as well as his efforts in the Arabian campaign to Dahoum, who died of typhus in 1918. From the dedication:I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into

  my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars

  To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,

  that your eyes might be shining for me.

  The crucial sexual encounter of Lawrence’s life may or may not have happened as he described it in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He told many versions of the story, and he was an “infernal liar” according to Charlotte Shaw, wife of George Bernard and a mother figure to Lawrence. The crux of the story as it appears in the book is that Lawrence was captured by the Turks while on a reconnaissance mission in Deraa in 1917; then he was sexually molested by the Turkish bey and beaten by the bey’s guards. In a confessional letter to Charlotte Shaw, however, Lawrence admitted to having given away his “bodily integrity” in order to “earn five minutes’ respite from the pain.” And he told Col. R. Meinertzhagen that he allowed himself to be sodomized not only by the bey but by his servants as well. The factuality of the account seems almost secondary to the vivid, almost loving detail with which Lawrence described the incident in his book. Speaking of a Turkish corporal who had just kicked him “yellow” with a spiked boot, Lawrence wrote, “I remember smiling idly at him, for a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me.”

  QUIRKS: Lawrence liked to be beaten—spanked with a birch rod on his bare buttocks—to the point of seminal emission, according to one friend. Whether it was to “purify” himself after his degradation at Deraa or to atone for his parents’ scandalous relationship, he went to great, imaginative lengths to keep himself “birched.” He went to “beating parties” in Chelsea organized by an underworld figure named Bluebeard, and his arrangement with John Bruce, a young Scots bunkmate, is well documented. Lawrence told Bruce that a relative, whom he called “the Old Man,” was keeping him on a financial string and threatening to expose his bastardy if he didn’t do as he was told. In 1968 Bruce detailed the beatings:… before Lawrence left for India there had to be another beating … on the Old Man’s orders [it] was a ferocious one…. Twelve strokes. When Lawrence returned from India in 1929 it was another 12…. In September the same year he had a flogging at my house in Aberdeen … he came all the way from Cattewater, Plymouth, had breakfast and a flogging and caught the next train back. The worst beating of all was in 1930…. There was another beating in 1931 … and another in 1934…. On this last occasion the Old Man made him travel … on his motor bike.

  Bruce was also told to describe the birchings—and Lawrence’s reactions to them—in letters which Lawrence said he himself would deliver to the Old Man. As it turned out, the Old Man never existed. He was a figment of Lawrence’s imagination, and the letters’ only purpose was to excite Lawrence further.

  HIS THOUGHTS: “Marriage-contracts should have a clause terminating the engagement upon nine months’ notice by either party.”

  “The period of enjoyment, in sex, seems to be a very doubtful one. I’ve asked the fellows in this hut … they all say it’s all over in ten minutes: and the preliminaries—which I discounted—take up most of the ten minutes. For myself, I haven’t tried it, and hope not to.”

  —D.R.

  Big Mac

  GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (Jan. 26, 1880-Apr. 5, 1964)

  HIS FAME: A flamboyant leader, General MacArthur headed the Allied troops in the Southwest Pacific theater during WWII. He presided over the postwar occupation of Japan and commanded the U.N. Army at the outset of the Korean War in 1950.

  HIS PERSON: MacArthur was an imposing figure. Nearly 6 ft. tall with a spare build, his battered cap, sunglasses, and corncob pipe became his trademarks. Enemies considered him imperious, cold, calculating; friends regarded him as warm, understanding, brilliant. Everyone knew he was vain. Biographer William Manchester noted that General MacArthur, as Chief of S
taff, “sat at his desk wearing a Japanese ceremonial kimono, cooled himself with an Oriental fan, smoked cigarettes in a jeweled holder, increasingly spoke of himself in the third person … and had erected a 15-foot-high mirror behind his office chair to heighten his image.” When asked to explain his numerous successes, MacArthur said, “I believe it was destiny.”

  He was born in the armory building at Fort Dodge in Little Rock, Ark. His father had been a Civil War general. His dominating mother supported MacArthur’s military ambitions from the time he was a child. Inevitably, MacArthur went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated first in his class. Eventually he commanded the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division in France in WWI. Following this conflict, MacArthur served successively as President Herbert Hoover’s Army Chief of Staff for four years and as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Army Chief of Staff for one year.

  Retiring from the U.S. military in 1937, MacArthur accepted Philippine President Manuel Quezon’s appointment as field marshal of the Philippines, thereby becoming the highest-paid military officer in modern history. In 1942, with America’s entry into W.W. II, General MacArthur was made commander of all Allied forces in the Pacific arena. He accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945 and became virtual dictator of Japan during the postwar reconstruction period. In 1950 he was called upon to lead U.N. troops in defense of South Korea against North Korea and China. Eager to expand the war, MacArthur came into direct disagreement with President Harry Truman, who wanted to limit the conflict. In April, 1951, President Truman fired MacArthur and had him recalled to the U.S. Returning to a hero’s welcome, MacArthur briefly considered running for the U.S. presidency. However, he spent his final years in seclusion, living at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City.

  LOVE LIFE: General MacArthur was the most decorated man in U.S. military history, but in love he lost two major battles before achieving victory. As a West Point cadet, with his mother living nearby, MacArthur dated girls from colleges in the area. Credited with engagements to eight different young women, MacArthur often denied this, saying, “I do not remember being so heavily engaged by the enemy.”

  His first love was Louise Cromwell Brooks, a divorcée, socialite, heiress to millions, who liked parties, jazz., and bathtub gin during Prohibition. MacArthur met Louise at a party. He immediately proposed marriage, and she accepted. They had a large wedding on St. Valentine’s Day in 1922. MacArthur’s mother refused to attend. The couple settled down in Manila, where MacArthur liked to spend his leisure time with President Quezon and his Filipino circle. The high-society whites with whom Louise associated found MacArthur’s friends unacceptable. This led to a marital rift, and during the next five and a half rocky years Louise constantly tried to persuade MacArthur to leave the military. When he refused, she left him. In June of 1929 she sought a divorce. MacArthur agreed, on “any grounds that will not compromise my honor.” The heiress went to court in Reno and cited MacArthur’s “failure to provide.” Granted the divorce, Louise returned to her social set and eventually had two more marriages and two more divorces. In his memoirs, MacArthur summarized their union briefly. “In February, 1922, I entered into matrimony,” he wrote, “but it was not successful, and ended in divorce years later for mutual incompatibility.” He did not mention his wife’s name.

  The general’s next skirmish with the opposite sex was also unsuccessful. In Manila, five months before being transferred to Washington, D.C., MacArthur had quietly taken on a gorgeous young Eurasian mistress, Isabel Rosario Cooper. The daughter of a Chinese woman and a Scottish businessman, she had danced in a Shanghai chorus line and was calling herself an actress when MacArthur met her. In her chiffon tea gowns, she was exquisite. A lobbyist who met her recalled, “She looked as if she were carved from the most delicate opaline. She had her hair in braids down her back.” MacArthur moved her to Washington and installed her in a suite at the Hotel Chastelton on 16th Street. He supplied her with kimonos, black lace underthings, and a fur coat, but almost no street clothes. He did not want her to go out. He gave her a poodle to keep her company. He wrote her love letters, and while on state visits to Paris and Vienna he sent her postcards. Isabel complained, and at last MacArthur gave her a car and chauffeur and a large sum of money. When MacArthur was abroad, Isabel visited local nightclubs and seduced several men. She also went to Havana and blew all her money. MacArthur continued to keep her presence his secret.

  MacArthur made one mistake. He provoked the enmity of the country’s leading political gossip columnist, Drew Pearson, who with Robert S. Allen wrote the widely read national column Washington Merry-Go-Round. The two columnists had been particularly rough on MacArthur. In 1932, when 15,000 war veterans—the “Bonus Marchers”—converged on the capital and camped there with their families, MacArthur personally led the troops that drove them out by force. Pearson and Allen promptly described his tactics as “unwarranted … harsh, and brutal.” Later, learning of MacArthur’s vanity and arrogance, the columnists called him “dictatorial” and “disloyal.” Infuriated, MacArthur sued his attackers for $1,750,000.

  By then, tired of Isabel’s infidelity and extravagance, MacArthur had broken with her. However, Pearson, investigating MacArthur, uncovered the secret. Pearson located Isabel, who was in need of money. He “rented” six letters the general had written her. Several of them were love letters, dating back to late 1930, in which MacArthur pledged unlimited devotion. One letter was in response to Isabel’s request that the general secure a job for her brother, and it contained an enclosure from MacArthur of “Help Wanted” ads from a newspaper. The last letter from MacArthur, postmarked Sept. 11, 1934, carried a chilling dismissal and a plane ticket back to the Philippines. Isabel made it clear she had no intention of returning to her native land. Besides paying her to copy the letters, Drew Pearson bought her some new street clothes and found her a hiding place in Baltimore.

  After spending $16,000 in legal fees (a tidy sum in those Depression years), General MacArthur suddenly dropped the lawsuit against Drew Pearson. No further explanation was given. Obviously, a compromise had been reached. On Christmas Eve, 1934, MacArthur’s representative gave $15,000 in $100 bills to Drew Pearson’s agent, who acted on Isabel’s behalf. In return, MacArthur received his original letters back, although Pearson kept copies. With the $15,000 in hand, Isabel moved out of Washington and opened a beauty shop somewhere in the Midwest. Then she moved to Los Angeles, where in June, 1960, she committed suicide. Shortly after his tangle with Pearson, MacArthur was relieved of his post as Chief of Staff and transferred to the Philippines.

  General MacArthur’s mother died in 1935, but this period of heavy grief was alleviated by an encounter that brought the general the beginnings of happiness. On a ship bound for Shanghai, he met a petite, vivacious, cultured Southern belle named Jean Marie Faircloth. By the time the ship docked, MacArthur and Jean were in love. After a year and a half of courtship, the general won her. They had a small wedding in New York on April 30, 1937. Their honeymoon was cut short because the groom had to hurry back to Manila to oversee the graduation of his newest Filipino recruits. Jean understood and did not mind. She loved the military life. Jean bore the general a son, Arthur, in 1938. She was the best wife the general could hope for, and he knew it. After their wedding breakfast, MacArthur had told reporters, “This job is going to last a long time.”

  —J.M.

  The Salacious Soldier

  PANCHO VILLA (June 5, 1878-July 20, 1923)

  HIS FAME: A military genius and a bloodthirsty marauder, Villa won worldwide recognition as a courageous leader for his guerrilla activities during the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. Because he plundered the estates of the rich and often shared the spoils with the poor, he is sometimes described as a real-life Robin Hood.

  HIS PERSON: Christened Doroteo Arango by his peasant parents, the boy took the name “Francisco Villa” (and later “Pancho”) from a feared Mexican bandit chief of an earlier era. He needed the protect
ion of a pseudonym because, legend has it, he had to flee from his home in 1894 after killing the wealthy seducer of his sister Mariana. Straightaway, Villa turned to crime for his livelihood. He robbed hundreds of foreigners, particularly Chinese merchants living in Mexico; rustled cattle; looted trains and mines; and murdered scores of innocent people. Arrested in 1903, he avoided lengthy imprisonment by volunteering for the Mexican cavalry, where he found his calling.

  Villa and Luz Corral

  A bold military strategist, Villa aligned himself with Mexico’s revolutionaries. While distinguishing himself on the battlefield, he harbored a desire to be Mexico’s president. At times he could be brutal, reportedly killing 80 women and children living in his own camp because they slowed down his troop movement. In 1916, in revenge for U.S. support given one of his rivals, Villa invaded Columbus, N.M., and killed 17 Americans on U.S. soil. U.S. Gen. John J. Pershing, who was dispatched to punish the raider, ventured deep into Mexican territory, dispersed all but a handful of Villa loyalists, but nonetheless failed to capture Villa. Despite the loss to the better-equipped Pershing, Villa emerged a hero. His escape sealed his reputation as a wily guerrilla, and in 1920 he was retired as a general at full pay and with honors. But in 1923 Villa, whose ruthless exploits had also won him many enemies, was assassinated as he rode through Parral, Mexico, in his Dodge motor car.