The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People Read Online Free PDF Page B

good for about two years’ worth of pocket money.
    LOVERS (CONTINUED) Casanova’s other conquests included the mayoress of Cologne; a nun, a lock of whose pubic hair he kept for remembrance; a black woman, out of curiosity; an actress with two humps on her back and an erotically irregular vulva. Eager to explore all the combinations and permutations of sexual pleasure, he assembled more than one harem of nubile young seamstresses. Most of his women were of the demimonde or lower classes, with a few exceptions.
    Casanova’s most rewarding affair, according to biographer John Masters, was with a well-bred, well-educated Frenchwoman named Henriette, his equal in adventure and hedonism. They spent three months together before she returned to her home. Years later, Casanova found himself in the same hotel room in Geneva, on the window of which she had scratched with a diamond her fateful farewell message: “ Tu oublieras aussi Henriette ” (“You will also forget Henriette”).
    Exhausted by his prodigious endeavors, Casanova’s sexual potency began to flag before he reached 40. In London in 1763 he resorted to advertising for a companion, was driven to distraction by an unwilling beauty, and was drained of his cash by five mercenary Hanoverian sisters. He began to revisit the same cities, repeating his old conquests. Back in Venice there was an uneducated seamstress, Francesca Buschini, who remained faithful for years. Otherwise, he was forced to frequent the women who could be had by anyone, for a price.
    And during the 13 years as a librarian in Bohemia, there were probably no women at all. There were only the pleasures of eating (“since he could no longer be a god in the gardens,” a contemporary wrote, “he had become a wolf at the table”), of writing, and of reading, which prompted an aphorism on his favorite subject: “Woman is like a book which, be it good or bad, must begin to please with its title page.” Needless to say, even though he was impotent during his final years, Casanova was “always curious to read new ones.”
    HIS THOUGHTS: “My vices have never burdened anyone but myself, except the cases in which I have seduced; but seduction was never characteristic of me, for I have never seduced except unconsciously, being seduced myself.”
    —C.D.
    Blond Bombshell
    JEAN HARLOW (Mar. 3, 1911–June 7, 1937)
    HER FAME: The reigning sex queen of
    the 1930s, Jean Harlow played comedic
    movie roles in which she was the platinum-blond floozy with a heart of gold,
    a “combination good kid and slut.”
    Among her best-known films are Hell’s
    Angels , Dinner at Eight , Public Enemy , Bombshell , and Red Dust .
    HER PERSON: Jean was born Harlean
    Carpenter in Kansas City, Mo. Her
    mother divorced her dentist husband
    and two years later married Marino
    Bello, an Italian-American of uncertain
    profession with shady gangster connections. Marino and “Mama Jean,” as she
    Wedding photo of Jean Harlow, Paul Bern and friends was called, managed Jean’s career and
    leeched large sums of money from her. The family moved to Hollywood when Jean was a teenager, and her first important part was in Hell’s Angels , a fabulously expensive Howard Hughes production. Hughes coined the term
    “platinum blond” for Harlow (her almost white hair was to become her greatest trademark) and had his costumer design the lowest-cut evening gown ever photographed for the screen. Jean, wearing very little to begin with, caused a sensation when she uttered the immortal line “Do you mind if I slip into something more comfortable?” The next step was to superstardom, although Mama Jean, Marino, and Jean’s friends still called her by her childhood nickname: “the Baby.”
    SEX AND LOVE LIFE: Stories about her amorous life range from one extreme to another: that Harlow was sex-crazed and promiscuous; that Harlow hated sex; that Harlow was a normal, healthy girl who just had bad luck with men. Probably a little of each is