The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (82 page)

At least one of these operations at seduction backfired. A 16-year-old blond with a 40-in. bust was brought to Hollywood from North Carolina.

Her mother, who had also gone west, suggested a trip to Palm Springs, Calif., for her daughter, herself, and Hughes. He readily agreed and once there took the girl to bed. In the middle of their lovemaking, the mother burst into the room, claiming her daughter had been ruined. To avoid statutory rape charges, Hughes was forced to settle out of court for $250,000.

In 1957, at the age of 51, Hughes married 31-year-old movie star Jean Peters, whom he had dated off and on for 11 years. He would not allow her to shave her body hair, because he liked hair on women. (When Peters posed in bathing suits for fan magazines, her legs and thighs had to be retouched.) Why the couple married remains a mystery. Hughes was already mentally unbalanced, and Peters had to give up her career and live in seclusion with him. Sometime during the early 1960s, Hughes’ sex life ended when his overwhelming fear of germs precluded physical contact with another person. Sex was replaced by drugs and his around-the-clock viewing of movies and television. Finally, in 1970, Jean filed for divorce, not having seen Hughes for over three years.

MEDICAL REPORT:
In the early 1940s Hughes had a big chow named Chang. One morning Chang got into a fight with another dog. When Hughes tried to separate them, the other dog bit him on the penis. It took six stitches to sew up the wound. Although he was temporarily disabled, the injury didn’t seem to have any lasting effect. However, Hughes never owned another pet.

—R.J.F.

The Golden Greek

ARISTOTLE ONASSIS (Jan. 20, 1906–Mar. 15, 1975)

HIS FAME:
Upon his controversial marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy, Aristotle

Socrates Onassis—the richest and most

flamboyant of the “golden” Greek shipowners—became one of the most publicized

figures of the 20th century. A friend of

such eminent men as Winston Churchill,

he mingled smoothly with world leaders,

royalty, and the very well-to-do.

HIS PERSON:
Onassis was the son of a

prosperous Greek tobacco merchant in

Smyrna, Turkey. A likable but rebellious

youth, he was suspended from several

schools, once for administering a firm pinch

to the backside of a woman teacher. In

Onassis with his wife, Jacqueline

attacks on the resident Greek population,

the 16-year-old Onassis and members of his family fied to Athens. Although he hoped to immigrate to the U.S., he was discouraged by a potential wait of several years and instead set sail for Argentina. He arrived in Buenos Aires with only a few hundred dollars in his pockets. By means of personal daring and astute business acumen, he first established himself in the tobacco business and then branched out to his real love, shipping. He became a millionaire by age 25, and through investments in shipping—especially oil tankers—he amassed one of the great personal fortunes of the postwar era, if not of all time.

LOVE LIFE:
As a youngster Onassis was sexually precocious. He had to be restrained from seducing the family laundress at the age of 11. A few years later he received his initiation from his 25-year-old French teacher, whose scanty dress, owing to the scorching weather, fired his lust. “Mademoiselle, you are arousing me against my will … nothing can stop me from violating you!” was his winning approach. Needless to say Onassis proved to be a most ardent student. The women of Argentina found him, with his astonishingly intense black eyes, irresistible. Later, as a young man-about-town, he savored New York City nightlife during the 1940s in the company of his tall blond mistress, Ingeborg Dedichen. Ingeborg was an aristocrat who helped advance Onassis’ career as well as smooth his rough social edges. Of this period Ingeborg has written: “He would lick me between the toes…. He would embrace every part of my body and cover me with kisses.” Yet as passionate as it was, this affair descended into a series of beatings administered by the jealous Onassis and an attempted suicide by Ingeborg.

Following a brief Hollywood fling with a number of screen stars, Onassis finally married for the first time at 40. Tina Livanos, the petite 17-year-old daughter of a rival shipowner, was to bear his two children, Alexander and Christina. But this idyllic existence was shattered by the appearance of the greatest love of his life, opera singer Maria Callas. For Callas and Onassis, it was love at first sight. Their affair was conducted openly, and they understood each other emotionally, intellectually, and sexually. Although opera bored him, Onassis deeply enjoyed the worldwide success and fame of his fiery theatrical lover. Their relationship never led to marriage, but they remained close until the day of Onassis’ death.

On Oct. 20, 1968, Onassis (who had been divorced from Tina for some years) stunned the world by wedding the beautiful widow of a beloved, slain president of the U.S. That widow, of course, was Jacqueline Kennedy. Onassis had known her casually for some time, but Kennedy-watchers around the world thought he was

“too short, too old, too dark, and too coarse” to be a suitable successor to John F.

Kennedy. The eyes of the world were focused on the isle of Skorpios, the site of the wedding, and from that moment on, this May-December couple (Jackie was a generation younger than Ari) found itself bathed in an unending glare of publicity. One portion of the marriage that particularly intrigued everyone was the famous prenuptial contract, which quickly became one of the most discussed and speculated-about financial and legal documents of our time. The text allegedly contained over 100 clauses and covered everything from money to sleeping arrangements. Christian Cafarakis, a steward formerly employed by Onassis, claimed that the contract provided for separate bedrooms for the couple at all times and released Jackie from any obligation to bear Onassis’ children.

Onassis offered affection and the protection of wealth to a woman who had been shattered by the violent death not only of her husband but of her brother-in-law, Sen. Robert Kennedy, as well. In return, Jackie offered Ari warmth and the companionship of one of the most glamorous of women. But their carefully constructed relationship was soon shattered by the death of Onassis’ only son.

Thrown into a deep depression, Onassis grew irritated by Jackie’s extravagant and capricious ways. He turned to Callas for comfort and contemplated a divorce.

However, death in the form of myasthenia gravis put an end to his plans.

QUIRKS:
Onassis could be described as a “roaring” heterosexual. His boudoir humor tended toward the explicit. Once he asked Ingeborg Dedichen to examine him for piles. As she investigated, Onassis wafted a not so gentle breeze in her startled face. On another occasion, when harassed by a photographer, Onassis took him into the washroom, where he said he would show him the secret of his success. Unzipping his fly, he revealed an asset that may best be described as physical rather than fiscal.

HIS THOUGHTS:
“I’ve always been attracted to tall, statuesque women. I guess I should have been a sculptor.”

—J.M.M.

XIII

Bed Sports

The Other Don Juan

JUAN BELMONTE (Apr. 14, 1892–Apr. 8, 1962)

HIS FAME:
More than 45 years after his

death, Spanish-born Juan Belmonte is

still considered one of the two greatest

bullfighters who ever lived.

HIS PERSON:
The eldest of 11 children,

he was raised in abject poverty in a Seville

slum. He grew up scrambling in the

streets, and at the age of 11 he joined a

gang of “guttersnipes,” whose members

taught him “to smoke, to drink … , to

play cards, and to go with women.” Small,

ugly, virtually a cripple, and a stammerer,

Belmonte resolved at the age of 16 to

become the world’s greatest matador. His

early attempts were met with jeers and

laughter; during his first professional fight, an exhausted Belmonte begged the bull to kill him. Because of his physical limitations, he revolutionized bullfighting techniques; since he could not jump out of the way of a 1,200-lb. charging bull, he used his fantastic control of the cape to make the bull swerve away from him.

Belmonte was an enormous success, and soon nearly every matador was trying to imitate this new style. Many were killed in the attempt. Even the great

“Joselito,” who learned and perfected Belmonte’s innovations well enough to become his rival, was killed by a bull in 1920 at the age of 25.

But Belmonte went on and on; his stamina was unbelievable. He fought 109 times in 180 days one season, and soon was earning $10,000 for each performance. He figured prominently in many books, including Ernest Hemingway’s
Death in the Afternoon
and
The Sun Also Rises
. Fame did not come without sacrifice, however. Fear was his constant companion, and when Belmonte was asked how many times he had been gored, he replied, “Say 50

times, including three times where a man appreciates it least.”

LOVE LIFE:
His first love was a married woman who was “adept in the arts of pleasure.” Convinced he would be fatally gored in Valencia during his second professional fight, Belmonte gallantly burned the lady’s letters (written in red ink, which she swore was “her own heart’s blood”) to spare her reputation after his death.

As his fame as a bullfighter grew, Belmonte was delighted to observe a dramatic increase in his appeal to women. Once a woman named Chivita (which translates as “nanny goat”) “suddenly started to make love” to him in a tavern. Her date, an aficionado, didn’t mind relinquishing her to the great bullfighter, but Belmonte, probably put off by her aggressiveness and the accompanying public attention, considered the incident “one of the most unfortunate things that ever happened to me.”

He first saw Julia Cossio at a bullfight in Lima, Peru. His love for the socialite grew, but the shy Belmonte dreaded participating in a wedding ceremony. Finally, he discovered that a proxy marriage could be performed while he was fighting bulls in Venezuela, so his standin married Julia in 1918.

They had two daughters before they were estranged.

Belmonte was a womanizer, and females of every social level were his great joy after—and even before—his almost daily encounters with bulls. By a servant girl he had a son, whom he ultimately acknowledged. Juan Belmonte, Jr., became a good matador, but he lived in the shadow of his father’s legend until he gave up bullfighting.

A millionaire, Belmonte owned a great estate in Spain and made up for his limited schooling (which had lasted only four years) by undertaking his own education. He had affairs constantly with wealthy women from the international jet set. One famous and beautiful actress who lives in California recently recalled, “Even the sound of the footsteps of that ugly-beautiful, bandy-legged little man coming down the hotel hall to my bedroom would set me aquiver!” She went on to explain: “The same energy that went into his conquering a bull also went into his conquering a woman, and he was the greatest lover I ever had.”

Although Belmonte retired from bullfighting in 1935, he kept returning to the ring, and was performing in exhibitions well into his 60s. One of his favorite companions during these later years was an exquisite Chinese woman who wanted to be a matador.

In the spring of 1962, a depressed Belmonte told his friends: “My doctor has forbidden me to do the three things I love most in the world—fight bulls, ride horses, and mount women. It’s time to go.” So one Sunday, six days before his 70th birthday, he drove to his ranch near Seville, rode his horse, Maravilla, out into the fields, and proceeded to cape seven fierce bulls. Then, after attending mass, he spent two hours of pleasure with his mistress of 12

years. Finally, exhausted, he returned to his luxurious home and shot himself to death.