Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (20 page)

“I came to the hospital to see him,” Gore said. “I encountered his doctor in the hall. I saw on his face that it was hopeless.”

“There is nothing else that any of us can do for Mr. Vidal,” the doctor said. “I advised him to have a double martini. That was my way of saying, ‘It’s all over, so you might as well get drunk.’”

In 1935, after Nina divorced Eugene, she married a wealthy second husband, the stockbroker Hugh D. Auchincloss, the marriage lasting until 1941. The year after he divorced Nina, Auchincloss, nicknamed “Hughdie,” married Janet Lee Bouvier, mother of Jackie and Lee Bouvier.

Gore was never that close to his stepfather, although he made him the model for the tedious general in his play,
Visit to a Small Planet
.

“One of my most vivid memories is that Hughdie knew the original Jewish name of every movie star who changed his name—for example, Jacob Julius Garfinkle for John Garfield; Issur Danielovitch for Kirk Douglas; and Asa Yoelson for Al Jolson.

Nina spoke very frankly to her son about sex. “Hughdie has a real problem: a complete inability to maintain an erection. His doctor says it’s because of excessive masturbation when he was a boy. Let that be a lesson to you, young man.”

“My greatest sex education as a teenager was when I discovered Hughdie’s collection of pornography,” Gore said. “He had the most complete set of pornographic books, slides, films, and manuals I would ever see—pederasty (obviously his favorite subject), sado-masochism, bondage, dominance, submission, homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, bestiality, and a great interest in scatology, a subject unfamiliar to me at the time.”

“He was a bit absent minded at times,” Gore said. “Once, he took me swimming. It was a mixed crowd of about fifty people. He walked out completely nude. He’d forgotten to put on his bathing suit.”

Gore claimed that Nina married Hughdie strictly for financial reasons. “He wanted her to bring glamor into his life. She told him that she didn’t care for him
that way
, so it would be a
mariage blanc
. He agreed to those terms, signing a prenuptial agreement that provided her a fixed income for life.”

Gore did not care for Hughdie, writing that he was “large, cumbersome, stammering—simply neither plausible nor decorative. I would much have preferred Jock Whitney’s money instead.”

Nina had met her third and final husband, Major General Robert Olds, on the set of
Test Pilot
, where he was a technical advisor.
[Released in 1938 and directed by Victor Fleming, it starred Clark Gable as a daredevil pilot, his wife, as played by Myrna Loy, and his best friend, as played by Spencer Tracy. It also featured Lionel Barrymore and some of the most cutting-edge racing aircraft of its day.]
But Nina was too busy to pay Olds any attention at the time, because of her aggressive pursuit of Clark Gable.

Unlike Hughdie, Olds was rather handsome and an Air Force brigadier general, having achieved fame as a Flying Fortress pilot. When he married Nina, he was in charge of the Ferry Command, a large air transportation network, whose assignment involved the delivery of bombers to Britain.

The forty-four year old military man already had four grown sons.

When Nina married Olds in June of 1942, she did not invite Gore to the wedding. The marriage lasted only ten months before Olds died of a heart attack.

Gore would remember Olds and his military friends. “He denounced President Jew Franklin D. Rosenfeld who got us into the war on the wrong side.”

“We ought to be fighting the Commies, not a man like Adolf Hitler,” Olds told Gore. “FDR is not only a kike, but sick in the head—and not just from polio, but from syphilis. Eleanor has moved her lesbian lover into the White House.”

After she buried Olds, Nina told Gore, “Of my three husbands, I loved Robert the most. But I’ve had more passionate sex with my extramarital affairs.”

“Of my three husbands, the first had three balls, the second had two balls, and the third had one ball,” she said. “I dare not take a chance on a fourth husband.”

On MGM’s set, during pre-production of
Test Pilot
, Fleming spoke to Eugene Vidal, asking him to contact a group of skilled pilots he knew who might serve as technical advisers and also perform some daring feats in the sky for his cameras.

Eugene agreed to contact some pilots, especially recommending Paul Mantz, a noted air-racing pilot.

Mantz and Eugene had become close friends in 1937 when he had tutored Amelia Earhart in long distance flying and navigation. He had accompanied her as co-pilot on her aborted first attempt at an around-the-world flight.

At that point, Eugene was still engaged in a sporadic romantic liaison with Earhart. She would later disappear on July 2 of that year during her ill-fated attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in a Lockheed Model 10 Electra whose costs were paid for, in part, by Purdue University.

Earhart had wanted Mantz to be her co-pilot, but he had bowed out. Eventually, the aviatrix selected Fred Noonan. Earhart and Noonan disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean during the final leg of their attempted around-the world flight. As Mantz told Eugene, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Initially, Eugene had invested his private money to defray some of the costs that Earhart incurred during her preparations for this historic flight.

Howard Hughes, who had directed and produced the classic aviation film,
Hell’s Angels
(1930), was among Mantz’s first clients. He also worked on the 1932 film
Air Mail
. He had been financially involved in the formation of Paul Mantz’s Air Services, a charter company jokingly christened “The Honeymoon Express,” because it carried so many lovers aboard chartered flights to secret rendezvous points. Mantz had developed a number of friends among the stars of Hollywood, notably Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn.

Mantz was eventually hired by Fleming as pilot for some of the avant-garde flight scenes filmed during the making of
Test Pilot
, and Mantz called Eugene to thank him. He had a favor to ask, explaining that he was trying to interest his son, Gore, in becoming a pilot. “Could you let him visit the set on a few occasions? I would appreciate it very much.”

Mantz arrived to retrieve Gore, where he was staying with Nina in a bungalow in back of the Beverly Hills Hotel. At the bungalow, the pilot found not only Eugene’s son but a beautifully dressed and made up Nina, who wanted to go along too. She was very frank in her reason for wanting to visit the set:

“Ever since 1930, I’d had this crazed ambition to meet Clark Gable and to see for myself if he is as handsome on the screen as off.”

Mantz agreed that she could accompany him to the set, but warned both Gore and Nina that they had to stay in the background and not interfere with production.

When Gable was resting between takes, Nina approached him and introduced herself. He invited her to take the chair beside him, even thought it was clearly marked for Myrna Loy, then the unofficial “Queen of Hollywood.” Nina had heard that Loy had a reputation as a lesbian, so she didn’t think she’d present any competition for Gable’s attention.

Nina had been made aware that Gable’s marriage to socialite Ria Langham existed in name only. To judge from her photographs, Langham “was old enough to be Clark’s mother.”

Nina’s closest friend in Hollywood was Dolores Stein, the beautiful wife of Jules Stein, the reigning talent scout and casting entrepreneur. “Dolores was up on all the gossip, real inside stuff,” Nina told her son. She’d become aware that Gable had seduced practically every female star at MGM, including Marion Davies, Mary Astor, Loretta Young (she’d given birth to his child), Lupe Velez, Norma Shearer, and especially Joan Crawford. Early in his career, as a young actor trying to break into pictures, he’d also “serviced” some of the gay set, including director George Cukor and actors William Haines, Rod LaRocque, and among others, Johnny Mack Brown.

Gable was once defined as “Jack Dempsey in a tuxedo.” Crawford claimed that being near him gave her “twinges of a sexual urge beyond belief.” Nina echoed Crawford’s enthusiasm, and so did Gore himself, even at his young age. “I wanted Clark to be my daddy, and all gay men will know what I mean by that.”

Nina had not been completely informed. Unknown to her, Gable was having an affair with a beautiful actress, Virginia Grey, who had been cast in the minor role of Sarah in
Test Pilot
.

With Grey, Gable would become involved in his longest-running relationship, which lasted between marriages and during marriages. Grey never married. As she once told a reporter, “If I couldn’t have Gable, I didn’t want any other man.”

Nina was also unaware of a major development occurring in Gable’s love life. Unknown to most of Hollywood, he had begun an affair with Carole Lombard at the time. Ironically, Gable had first met Lombard at a party hosted by Jock Whitney.

Although swearing that Lombard was the great love of his life, Gable continued to cheat on her. In fact, when she died in 1942 in an airplane crash, she was rushing back to Hollywood after a tour selling War Bonds to rescue her man from the arms of Lana Turner, who had been his co-star in
Honky Tonk
(1941) and
Somewhere I’ll Find You
(1942).

On the set of
Test Pilot
, Nina met veteran actor Lionel Barrymore. Again, Stein hadn’t filled her in on yet another secret in Gable’s promiscuous life. As a young actor, he had let Barrymore perform fellatio on him in his dressing room during Gable’s early days at the studio. After Gable became a star (and consequently refused Barrymore’s request for more sex), a friendship between the two men had survived.

Nina flirted with Gable, but according to Gore, she had to wait three days before he invited her for an afternoon session in his dressing room. Her big chance with Gable came when he invited Nina, along with Gore, to drive with him to the Air Corps Base at March Field in Riverside.

It was during that time that both Nina and Gore got to know Gable a lot better. In the back seat during the 65-mile eastward drive from Los Angeles, Gore was “all ears” as to what was being said in the front.