The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (14 page)

photo of all the studio’s female stars, Gable exclaimed admiringly, “What a wonderful display of beautiful women, and I’ve had every one of them!” Gable’s name was linked romantically with nearly all his co-stars, from Grace Kelly to Ava Gardner to Jean Harlow, whether there was substance to the rumors or not.

The King not only played the role of quintessential male, he was one. More than one actress was to remark, “I think every woman he ever met was in love with him.” Marilyn Monroe said she “got goose bumps all over” when he accidentally touched her breast. Or as Joan Blondell put it, “He affected all females, unless they were dead.”

—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

Laughton and Elsa Lanchester

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.

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

Bernhardt at age 35

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.

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.”