The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (79 page)

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 protection of a pseudonym because, legend

Villa and Luz Corral

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.

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.

SEX LIFE:
The intensity and brutality of Villa’s military exploits carried over to his affairs with women. A self-described “son of a bitch with the ladies,”

Villa was never a gentle lover. When the pretty Petra Espinosa spurned the young Villa’s advances, he raped her. On occasion Villa and his soldiers over-took a town not to rob its citizens but to rape its women. In one instance, Villa had a father tied to a chair while—in full view of the man—he raped his young daughter. A Juárez pawnshop owner was bound and compelled to watch while his wife was raped repeatedly by Villa and his men. Then the man was shot numerous times, and when he died his wife was ordered to clean up the bloody mess.

But countless other women happily submitted to the overtures of this stocky, 5-ft. 10-in.
bandido
with wavy hair and a smile cemented beneath his black mustache. (He had an adenoidal condition that prevented his lips from completely closing.) He was “married,” in spurious ceremonies, perhaps as many as 75 times. Asked how he managed to find an official to oversee these rituals, Villa offered this explanation: “Just threaten to put a bullet through his head. You’ll see how fast he comes around.”

Villa frequently married women within hours of meeting them. His first wife, Luz Corral (who claimed, “I was the only woman that Pancho really loved”), met Villa when she was doling out provisions to his men. They talked briefly, and the next day he impulsively returned to ask for her hand in marriage.

Six more women, at the least,
legally
became his wife, despite Mexican laws prohibiting bigamy. When Villa tired of a woman—even if she had borne him a child, as many of his wives and mistresses did—he simply mounted his white horse and rode away. But Villa’s wives did not, in their husband’s eyes, enjoy the same liberty. Villa abandoned his third wife, Pilar Escalona, when he stumbled upon a bundle of old photographs and letters to her from a former lover. He banished from his sight his sixth wife, Maria Amalia Baca, when— after an absence of several years—he returned to find she had married another man. While she escaped with her life, Villa never forgave what he considered treachery on her part.

Villa observed his own version of morality. While he was romancing a woman named Adelita, her fiancé—one of Villa’s soldiers—walked in on the couple. The shocked soldier promptly drew his pistol and shot himself through the head. Chagrined, Villa banished Adelita. And throughout his wandering life, Villa did manifest a curious devotion to his first wife, Luz, who steadfastly remained faithful to him. Villa sporadically returned to her for a night or two of lovemaking.

Ironically, just as sex played an immense part in Villa’s life, so it proved instrumental in his death. After his retirement Villa regularly—and predictably—appeased his lusty romantic appetite during trysts in Parral with his mistress, Manuela Casas. Those appointments were inviolable, a fact his assassins used to their advantage in masterminding the scheme that saw Villa fatally sprayed with 13 bullets as he began the drive home after an afternoon with Manuela.

HIS THOUGHTS:
“It is a natural law of man to go after women—even married women. Of course it may be true that he has little respect for them after.

But why bother your head about that? There’s something else: women who are unfaithful should be shot.”

—R.M.

The Angriest Black Man In America

MALCOLM X (May 19, 1925–Feb. 21, 1965)

HIS FAME:
One of the greatest

activists and black leaders of the twenti—

eth century, Malcolm X rose from a

small-time pimp, drug dealer and burglar to becoming a leader of the Nation

of Islam and Pan-African spokesman.

Famous as “the angriest black man in

America” at the time of his assassination

in 1965, he is now remembered as perhaps the most enduring symbol of black

nationalism.

HIS PERSON:
Characterized by the

massive shifts and identity overhauls,

Malcolm X’s life was a study in

extremes. Born Malcolm Little to a

Baptist preacher and follower of Marcus

Garvey, he survived the murder of his father by whites and the subsequent insanity of his mother, fostering an extreme hatred of white society. In order to survive, Malcolm Little became “Detroit Red,” a street hustler, drug dealer and racketeer. The “Red” moniker came from Malcolm’s hair, which carried a reddish tinge—his maternal grandfather was white, which meant that Malcolm also had a light-skinned complexion, a fact that he was initially proud of but later grew to passionately resent. Sent to Massachusetts State Prison in 1946 for burglary, he subsequently converted to the Nation of Islam and found a surrogate father in the movement’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. After prison he changed his name to Malcolm X and by the sixties had become the most prominent leader of the movement after his mentor. In 1964, when it was revealed that Elijah Muhammad indulged in multiple extramarital affairs, despite the fact that such affairs were expressly forbidden by the Nation of Islam, Malcolm left the movement and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., emphasizing black nationalism instead of the Islamic unity preferred by the Nation of Islam. During and after pilgrimages to both Mecca and Africa, Malcolm laid the groundwork for international pan-African connections, founding the Organization for Afro-American Unity. Always a fiery, vitriolic speaker, Malcolm was tagged early by the FBI as a radical and classified as mentally ill. After his split with the Nation of Islam, he also made violent enemies within the movement. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was shot 16