Free The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People by Sylvia Wallace, Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky Page B

lost his virginity to his stepmother, who seduced him. After that he was to make love to countless women, but he could never really trust any of them. His first romantic scandal solidified this feeling. He had been sleeping with 16-year-old show girl Evelyn Nesbit, the girl friend of society architect Stanford White. Evelyn’s parents discovered the affair and hastily married her off to Harry K. Thaw, a psychotic millionaire. Thaw publicly murdered White out of jealousy, and Barrymore was forced to hide out for months until the case blew over.
    In 1910 Jack married a debutante named Katherine Harris. Blond, shapely, cultured, and intelligent, Katherine married the actor against her parents’ wishes, yet she was the envy of her peers. However, Jack’s accelerating career, coupled with his impromptu drinking binges, brought their marriage to an end in 1917.
    On the rebound, he met and married Blanche Thomas, who led suffragette marches and wrote poetry under the pen name Michael Strange. The couple startled New Yorkers of the day with their unisex attire—matching outfits of black velvet. His time with Michael Strange was marked with slugfests and sonnets and the birth of a daughter, Diana. When he divorced the poet in 1928, he renounced all rights to their infant daughter and headed west.
    In Hollywood his lust seemed insatiable. Although most starlets succumbed to his charm, he struck out with a young Southern actress named Tallulah Bankhead. One afternoon he invited her to his backstage dressing room and, as Tallulah recalled, started making “little animal noises” as he led her to his casting couch. She refused to have sex with him and escaped intact. He was far more successful with 17-year-old Mary Astor, who would appear in his suite on Sundays, accompanied by her mother. After sending the mother outside onto the veranda to enjoy the sun, he would take Mary into his bedroom.
    Soon the golden-haired bit player Dolores Costello caught his eye, and he chose her as his leading lady in The Sea Beast . When Michael Strange saw the love scenes in the film, she said bitterly, “That’s not acting. He’s in love with the girl.”
    She was right. Barrymore dropped Michael flat for Dolores and conceded, “I’m just a son of a bitch.” He made Dolores his protégée and married her, but he was
    insecure in the relationship. In a rage of jealousy, he snatched her away from a party when he saw her dancing with David O. Selznick, took her home, and lectured her until daybreak. He accused her of plotting an affair with Selznick and insisted that all married women were constantly unfaithful. On another occasion he physically ejected her obstetrician from the house, claiming she was infatuated with the man. Maybe she was; after divorcing Jack, she married the doctor.
    In later years Barrymore was drawn to exotic prostitutes. When he took a trip to India in search of a guru, he wound up in a Calcutta whorehouse, which he described as a “pelvic palace.” He was delighted by the “gentle music that went directly to the scrotum and cuddled there,” and he stayed on for a month.
    “And so I never met my saint,” he explained. “I met only dancing girls and singing girls, all of them devout students of the Kamasutra , which teaches that there are 39 different postures for the worship of Dingledangle—the god of love.” His sojourn in Calcutta was followed by a visit to a brothel in Madras, where he enjoyed himself so much that he rented the establishment exclusively for himself for an entire week.
    His last wife, Elaine Barrie, married the wreckage of the once great actor in 1936. She met him when she was a sophomore at Hunter College and spent the next year chasing him across the country. The day before their wedding he told his cronies, “Gentlemen, you are talking to a man who is about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.” On their wedding night he was insanely jealous because she was such a good lover. He demanded