This paper (with additions by Miles) is a continuation of my research and personal opinions about the “CIA-west theatrical division”originally posted on 11/12/16. This time around I will be focusing exclusively on female performers who were born prior to 1920.
West in 1932
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View full-sizeDownload Mary Jane "Mae" West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright whose career spanned over seven decades. Considered a sex symbol, she was known for her breezy sexual independence and her lighthearted bawdy double entendres, often delivered in a husky contralto voice. She was active in vaudeville and on stage in New York City before moving to Los Angeles to begin a career in the film industry.
Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American:
actress
singer
playwright
screenwriter
comedian
and sex symbol whose career spanned seven decades.
Her family history does not extend beyond her parents.
Mae’s father was a “bare knuckles prizefighter” known as “Battlin’ Jack West” who later worked as a “special policeman”. Since that probably means he was a spook it’s not surprising that his profile on Geni is managed by Erica “formerly the Disconnectrix” Howton. Mae West’s mother, Matilda Delker (sometimes spelled “Dilker”, “Decker”, or “Doelger”), emigrated with her parents from Germany in 1886.
On Matilda Delker’s Geni page, (also managed by Howton), we are told, Mae West's mother, "Tillie", was a former corset and fashion model, and frustrated actress, who had immigrated to America from Germany with her parents. Although Mae West always claimed that Tillie was Jewish, records show that the family listed their religion as Lutheran upon arrival in America. It was common practice for Jewish immigrants to claim Christianity as their religion. Hence the term crypto-Jew. And what incentive would Mae West have to “always claim” that her mother was Jewish unless it were true.
Children of Jack West and Tillie Delker/Doelger/Decker/Dilker
1. Katie (d. respiratory disease)
2. Mildred Katharina West ("Beverly", b. 1898, d. 1982)
3. Mary Jane AKA Mae West (1898-1980)
4. John Edwin West (b. 1900, d. 1964)
The presence of a deceased infant with no DOB points to a hidden twin and Miles has shown us that Intelligence loves twins (Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney).
Mae was officially born in 1893, so the “mistake” here may be a clue.
Miles:
As is the fact that Mae and her sister Mildred were both born in 1898 on this list. Mae West’s first appearance in a Broadway show was in a 1911 revue A La Broadway put on by her former dancing teacher, Edward Claudius Weyburn (born 3/3/74). Weyburn’s grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Weyburn, compiled the family genealogy and lists John Wyborn being married to Mary Hinckley, sister of Governor Thomas Hinckley (ancestor of Bush/Obama/John Hinckley). The show folded after eight performances, but West was singled out and discovered by the New York Times. In 1918, after exiting several high-profile revues, West finally got her big break in the Schubert Brothers revue Sometime, opposite Jewish comedian Ed Wynn (Isaiah Edwin Leopold 11/9/1886-6/19/1966).
The Shubert family was responsible for the establishment of the Broadway district as the hub of the theatre industry in the United States. The family’s American history began in 1882 with Duvvid Schubart and his wife Katrina Helwitz who left the Russian Empire with their seven children. In an apparent controlled-opposition operation, the Jewish “Shubert Organization” broke the monopoly on the theatre/management industry represented by the Jewish “Theatrical Syndicate”. The “Shubert Organization” had 86 theatres in the United States alone. In 1942 they owned, leased, or managed 20 of New York City’s approximately 40 legitimate theatres and controlled some 15 in other cities.
Mae West’s first starring role on Broadway was a 1926 play she entitled Sex, which she wrote, produced, and directed. The production did not go over well with city officials, and the theater was raided, with West arrested along with the cast. She was sentenced to 10 days for “corrupting the morals of youth”. While incarcerated she dined with the warden and his wife. West got great mileage from this jail stint [stunt], serving eight days with two days off for “good” behavior. By 1933, she was one of the biggest box office draws in the United States and, by 1935, was also the highest paid woman and the second highest-paid person in the United States [after master-hoaxer William Randolph Hearst].
Mae West was married on 4/11/11 to Frank Szalkus whom she first met in 1909. She was 17, he was 21. West kept the marriage a secret. Although legally wed, the couple never lived together as husband and wife. They divorced in 1943; Mae West never remarried and remained childless until her death in 1980. They were together 33 years. Movie beauty Raquel Welch still has her suspicions that Mae West was a male drag queen after getting up close and personal to the silver screen icon during one of her final films, Myra Breckinridge.
When I went over to say hello to her (one day) I said,
"Hi, it’s Raquel, remember?"
She extended her hand to me, and I went to kiss the ring, and one false fingernail painted silver fell to the floor. I looked at the hand and I thought,
"Oh, I’m getting a vibe I really think she’s a man! At this point in her life all bets are off and you’re not going to be able to doll it (appearance) up that much.
I would say it’s pretty accurate that she resembled a dock worker in drag.”
There are some who believe that the real Mae West died in the 1950s and that her brother took over the Mae West persona. Mae West wrote under the alias “Jane Mast” which is an obvious phallic reference. Her picture appears between Aleister Crowley and Lenny Bruce on the cover of The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s” album, so all bets are off.
Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American film and TV actress known for her versatility. Her long-running feud with her arch-enemy Bette Davis was publicized for “fake” effect. What wasn’t publicized is that it was a “family feud” since Hopkins and Davis were related through Poulter/Pope of England and Nelson/Lowell of Rowley, MA.
and Carole Lombard (Thomas Hastings & Margaret Cheney, Watertown MA).
Miles:
Also probably related to Anthony Hopkins. (Wikipedia) Thomas Hastings (c. 1605 – c. September 15, 1685) was a prominent English immigrant to New England. In Watertown, Massachusetts, where the American town meeting first took form, Thomas Hastings was repeatedly called to leadership positions inside and outside the church. At one time or another, he held virtually every office to include multiple stints as Selectman, Moderator, and Town Clerk. The descendants of Thomas & Margaret (nee Cheney) are numerous, and many have risen to positions of great importance or notoriety.
And then we are told:
The only major genealogy to treat the family, The Hastings Memorial (Boston, 1866), states that he was of noble birth by descent from the illustrious family that included the Earl of Huntingdon line. He is not known to have claimed such a connection in his lifetime and there is no record to substantiate this supposed connection and much to argue against it. The surname is generally habitational and may derive from the English town of Hastings, Sussex.
Miles:
So, the genealogy provided no record to substantiate this claim of noble birth? Isn't that what a genealogy is? Notice they say,
“There is much to argue against it”,
but give you no argument against it. Miriam Hopkins is also a descendant of Mayflower crew members John Alden and Priscilla Mullins (see Mile's paper “Eustace Mullins was an Anti”), well-known English Puritan preacher “Roaring” John Rogers (Miles examines the Rogers name extensively in his paper “What About Mark Twain?”), and the Gibsons.
Since Wikipedia is denying the Hastings royal bloodline, let’s take another avenue. Miriam Hopkins’ mother’s name was Ellen Cutter. The name “Cutter” comes from the occupation of cloth cutter and was Latinized as Cissor (Scissor). This could indicate a Jewish influence in her ancestry. Ellen Cutter’s maternal grandmother was a Middleton. Of course, the current Duchess of Cambridge is Kate Middleton. On Ellen Cutter’s paternal side, we can directly link her to the royal Gibson family of Scotland, including George Gibson, Lord of Parliament, and his father, Lord Alexander Gibson.
Alexander Gibson, Lord Durie I (died 1644) was a Scottish judge and legal writer. He graduated M.A. at the University of Edinburgh August 1588. From 11 July 1621, the day after his elevation to the bench, to 16 July 1642, Gibson preserved notes of decisions known as “Lord Durie’s Practicks”.
Gibson was allegedly kidnapped by the Earl of Traquair (John Stewart, married to a Carnegie), who thought him unfavorable in a cause before the court, and kept him for three months in a dark room in the country. After the case was decided, he was returned to the place where he had been seized. It forms the subject of Walter Scott’s ballad of Christie’s Will.
Although Sir Walter Scott did not take so intensive and extensive an interest in Freemasonry as did his senior countryman, Robert Burns, his connexion with the Craft was by no means negligible and may even be claimed as hereditary.
Miles has covered the name Scott extensively. See “From Daisy Ridley to Lord Byron, and everyone in between”. We also had a 2015 staged shooting victim named Walter Scott. In an out-of-court settlement, the city of North Charleston agreed to pay $6.5 million to Scott’s family.
Miriam Hopkins was married four times with the average length of her marriages being three years. She never had any children but adopted a son who was born on 3/29. Her third husband was Anatole Litvak, a Russian-born American filmmaker who grew up in a Lithuanian Jewish family. Miriam Hopkins died at the age of 69.
Claudette Colbert (September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996) was an American film actress and a leading lady in Hollywood for over two decades. We are told she was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin in France.
This is a supposed photo of Colbert and her mother. It’s a terrible paste-up and not even remotely convincing. If they need to fake this photo it means that Colbert’s family history must be fake as well. Despite being christened “Emilie”, she was called “Lily” after actress Lillie Langtry. This may be a clue about Colbert’s actual family roots since Langtry was known for her relationships with noblemen, including the Prince of Wales, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Prince Louis of Battenberg. Colbert’s father had lost the sight in his right eye, but worked as an investment banker. To pursue more employment opportunities, the family emigrated to Manhattan in 1906. They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd street. We are assured that her father worked as a “minor official” at First National City Bank. After attending a party with the writer Anne Morrison, Colbert was offered a bit part in Morrison’s play. She got her big break from a Morrison? The Morrison name is often associated with hoaxes including the Gulf of Tonkin false flag and the faked Lizzie Borden murders. “The Lizzie Borden Axe Murders Never Happened”.
In 1928 Colbert married Norman Foster, an actor and director. Their marriage remained a secret for many years while they lived in separate homes. Colbert’s domineering mother disliked Foster and did not allow him into their home. So, the 25-year-old Colbert preferred to live with her mother? Colbert and Foster divorced in 1935. Four months after her divorce, Colbert married Joel Pressman, a throat specialist and surgeon at UCLA. She gave a Beechcraft Bonanza single-engine plane to Pressman as a present. (The Beechcraft Bonanza is an American aircraft introduced in 1947 by Beech Aircraft Corporation, an American manufacturer of general aviation and military aircraft. Of course, the marriage lasted 33 years.
The marriage between Pressman and Colbert was “companionable,” Leonora Hornblow says… Early in her marriage Colbert learned not to expect her husband to escort her to gala affairs or movie premieres…
“They wanted very much to have children.
But by the time they started trying, it was too late,”
… Pressman may also have been rendered sterile as a result of contracting the mumps at age 19. Convenient. In 1958 Colbert met Verna Hull, a wealthy, (lesbian) painter/photographer, and the stepdaughter of a Sears Roebuck heiress. They had a nine-year friendship and painted together, went for drives together, traveled together and even rented twin penthouses in New York. They had a mutual interest in art. When Colbert bought a house in Barbados in the early 1960s, Hull also bought a modest house next door. The friendship ended suddenly, as Colbert's husband lay dying. Offended, Colbert denied lesbian rumors. Depsite that denial, the childless Colbert left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million to a long-time friend, Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue. Colbert instructed her friends to treat O'Hagan as they had Pressman, "as her spouse."
Claudette Colbert: The Dark Side of the Moon BY DAN CALLAHAN
…this biography (She Walked in Beauty, by Bernard F. Dick) creates nothing but confusion. To be fair Dick is working against two big stumbling blocks. The first is that there’s so little known about Colbert’s childhood in Paris and young adulthood in New York…The second, and more intriguing, is the question of Colbert’s sexuality. The longer he goes on about why she never lived with her first husband, Norman Foster, and why she barely lived with her second husband, Dr. Joel Pressman, the more suspicious he makes these arrangements seem. Strangest of all is the shadowy figure of Helen O’Hagan, Colbert’s companion for the last 20 years of her life…It seems like Dick is so completely under O’Hagan’s thumb that he doesn’t dare speculate intelligently on any of this information and what it might mean.
Merle Oberon (February 19, 1911 – November 23, 1979) was born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson. It’s impossible to know Merle Oberon’s true origins. She was born in Bombay, British India and was given “queenie’ as a nickname, in honor of Queen Mary, who visited India in 1911. This is probably a nod to her royal British ancestry or to something else. Over the years, Oberon obscured her parentage. The official story misdirects readers to believe that this was an attempt to hide her true ethnicity. Like Jack Nicholson, Oberon’s grandmother raised her as her own child and Merle believed her true mother to be her sister. The man alleged to be her biological father died when she was three during the Battle of the Somme. There is also some ridiculousness about how she got her big break in France. Director Alex Korda took an interest and gave her a small but prominent role as Anne Boleyn in The Private Lives of Henry VIII (1933). Alex Korda was a Hungarian-born Jew who reportedly worked as a spy for MI6 alongside Greta Garbo. Oberon’s career benefited from her relationship, and later marriage to, Korda. She would marry three more times, the last to Dutch actor Robert Wolders – later ‘companion’ to actresses Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. Despite four marriages, she never had any children, but did adopt a boy and girl.
Kay Francis (January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. Between 1930 and 1936 she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio and the highest-paid American film actress. Francis was born Katherine Edwina Gibbs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. By the time she was four her father had left the family. Francis was raised in the hardscrabble theatrical circuit of the period. That description leads the reader to believe that Kay Francis was an Okie from a broken home who pulled herself up by her bootstraps to overcome a “hardscrabble” childhood. That’s hardly the case. She is a direct descendant of the Douglas family of Drumlanrig, Scotland.
Visit Drumlanrig Castle and you’ll immerse yourself in over 600 years of The Douglas Family’s history. The story began in the 14th Century when William, the son of James, 2nd Earl of Drumlanrig (who died at Otterburn in 1388) became the 1st Laird of Drumlanrig.
Francis’ mother was the pioneering American businesswoman who established the “Katharine Gibbs” chain of vocational schools. (Wikipedia) Katharine Gibbs College was a for-profit institution of higher learning founded by Katharine Gibbs. As the Providence School in Rhode Island, it was founded in 1911 as an institution for the career education of young women. A few years later, the institution expanded with satellite campuses in Boston and New York and was renamed for its founder.
At age 17, Kay became engaged to a well-to-do Pittsfield, Massachusetts man, James Dwight Francis. This marriage is not when Kay Gibbs adopted the name Francis. Her mother and founder of the Katharine Gibbs College was born Katharine Franks, but anglicized the name to Francis. Since her ancestors were named Samuel, Isaac, and Moses, it was likely to hide her Jewish roots. James Dwight Francis’ maternal grandfather was Civil War General William Francis Bartlett.
Kay Francis shared great-grandparents with:
Nancy Reagan (Danforth/Symmes, Cambridge MA)
Dick Cheney (Seabrook/Goodspeed, Fairfield CT)
Charles Crocker (Hyde/Lee, New London CT)
Roscoe Arbuckle (Hyde/Molyneux, New London CT)
Paulette Goddard (Browne/Burgess, Sussex England & Maverick/Harris, Essex MA)
Buster Keaton (Hyde/Molyneux, New London CT)
The Gish Sisters (Gardner/Fryer, Salem MA)
Jean Arthur (Sherwood/Gillett, Fairfield CT)
Veronica Balfe (Hyde/Molyneux, New London CT)
Bette Davis (Dow/March, Rockingham NH & Danforth/Symmes, Cambridge MA)
Shirlee Mae Adams (Sprague/Holland, Dorset England)
Katharine Hepburn (Sprague/Goff, New London CT)
William Holden (Brockway/Briggs, New London, CT)
Humphrey Bogart (Bushnell/Adgate, New London CT)
the originator of the Quaker Oat’s brand Henry Dewey Seymour (Bushnell/Adgate, New London CT)
and Quaker activist Lucretia Coffin Mott (Gardner/Fryer, Salem MA).
Miles has shown us that Gerald Gardner started Wicca in 1954 (“The Unabomber Hoax”), so it’s interesting to see the name Gardner also linked to Quakers and Hollywood. Kay Francis’ mother changed her surname from Franks to Francis. People of prominence named ‘Frank’ or ‘Franks’ are too numerous to list. A few examples are: David Franks (aide-de-camp of Benedict Arnold), Dick Franks (Secret Intelligence Service), Tommy Franks (U.S. General), Anne Frank (The Diary of…), and Barney Frank (chairman of the House Financial Services Committee until 2011 and a prominent gay politician).
Speaking of gay, let’s finish with an examination of Kay Francis’ personal life.
(Wikipedia) Francis married five times. Her diaries, preserved in an academic collection at Wesleyan University, paint a picture of a woman whose personal life was often in disarray. She regularly socialized with homosexual men, one of whom, Anderson Lawler, was reportedly paid $10,000 ($180,000 in 2016) by Warner Bros. to accompany her to Europe in 1934.
Living the life of a madcap heiress she sailed on the S. S. Minnetonka, arriving at the Paris Vendome Hotel on March 8, 1925, where, according to her own diary, she began a soiree of
"wild nights filled with sex and alcohol."
Between her arrival on the Continent she divorced Dwight, moved on to London, became pregnant, had a fourth abortion in less than a year and married William Gaston in what we now know as a "modern marriage," the newlyweds deciding not to live together and have the freedom to sleep with other people. Little wonder that they called them "the roaring twenties."
In July 1927, she had her fifth abortion while dating Allan A. Ryan, scion to a $100 million-dollar fortune. Although she never considered marriage she continued to see him for the rest of the year. In January, she aborted Allan’s baby. It was her seventh abortion in two years. In her diary, she wrote that, while in Chicago between trains,
"Slept with Katty only because she wanted me to - Damn!!"
It was just one of the numerous lesbian affairs she interspersed between her many male liaisons. Hollywood gossips soon spread the news that Kay Francis was an open lesbian who just happened to also enjoy sex with men.
Even the staunchest abortion advocate would have to concede that seven abortions in two years is excessive, at best. Individuals opposed to abortion would use more strident language. Was Kay Francis just more careless concerning birth control (such as it was in the 1930s) than other actresses of the era? Were these other actresses also getting numerous (undisclosed) abortions?
They also could have just been practicing the two sure-fire forms of birth control:
abstinence
frigidity
lesbianism
Kay Francis died on 8/26/68 and her body was immediately cremated, her ashes were scattered. In her diaries, she had written,
“When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth.
I discovered this curious factoid. Scrapbooks are numbered according to original numbers written in the scrapbook, perhaps by Francis or someone associated with her. Numbers 1 and 47 were not part of the gift to the Cinema Archives.
Jean Arthur (October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She was born Gladys Georgianna Greene.
Even though her maternal ancestry is scrubbed; I have linked her to:
Roscoe Arbuckle’s wife Araminta Durfee & Susan B. Anthony (Hall/Thomas, Newport, RI)
Rod Taylor (Stebbins/Tough, Hartford CT)
Veronica Balfe (Holcomb/Ferguson, Hartford CT)
and Jane Fonda’s mother Francis Ford Seymour (Turner /Hyland, Plymouth MA). Of course, Jane Fonda was married to Ted Turner.
Miles:
She was also probably related to writer Grahame Greene and the Greenes of the peerage. Also, to their cousins who founded Rhode Island, and to their descendant William Cornell Greene, billionaire copper magnate who was by 1905 one of the wealthiest men in the world. Although he has been dead 105 years, his genealogy is still completely scrubbed at Geni.com and Ancestry.com. However, at this site we find he was related to the Hopkins family, which links him to many of the people above.
The Curtain Rises, which ran from October to December 1933, was Arthur’s first Broadway play in which she was the center of attention. With an improved resume, she returned to Hollywood in late 1933, and turned down several contract offers until she was asked to meet with an executive from Columbia Pictures. Arthur retired when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in 1944.
Arthur’s first marriage was annulled after one day. She married producer Frank Ross in 1932. They divorced in 1949. She had no children by either union. For the last decades of her life Jean lived in her oceanfront home in California with Ellen Mastroianni, an unmarried friend. Rumors circulated that Jean was a lesbian. By now you should be noticing the consistent trend of lesbianism and childlessness among these Hollywood actresses.
Sylvia Sidney (August 8, 1910 – July 1, 1999) was an American actress of stage, screen and film, with a career spanning over 70 years, who first rose to prominence in dozens of leading roles in the 1930’s. She was born Sophia Kosow in The Bronx, the daughter of Rebecca (nee Saperstein), a Romanian Jew, and Victor Kosow, a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a clothing salesman. Her parents divorced when she was five. She became an actress at the age of fifteen as a way of overcoming shyness. She’s not very shy in her “Sylvia Sidney Interview” on YouTube at the age of 88. In the video, when asked what part she would have liked to have played she responds,
“Honey, I made too much money to care.”
Sidney was married three times. She first married publisher Bennett Cerf on October 1, 1935. Bennett Cerf (Jewish) was one of the founders of American publishing firm Random House. For more about Cerf see my article “The Harvard Lampoon Goes National”. She was also married to Luther Adler whose father was one of the founders of Yiddish theatre in America. They divorced in 1947. Their only son Jacob died of Lou Gehrig’s disease (October 22, 1939 - August 1987). That’s the disease aka ALS that challenged people to dump buckets of ice on their heads in “The Ice Bucket Challenge”.
Miles:
It is also the disease that Stephen Hawking allegedly has lived with for 53 years. On March 5, 1947, she married radio producer and announcer Carlton Alsop; they were divorced on March 22, 1951. Sidney died at the age of 88. She was cremated.
Miles:
Alsop is another of the top hoaxing families, hailing back to Salem.
Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920’s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood, before turning to television. She was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in Brooklyn, New York. When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after a drunken stranger accidentally knocked her off a moving streetcar. Two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again. (Virginia Rappe’s fiancée also died by streetcar and Clara Bow’s uncle was appointed a position in the Panama Canal). Wikipedia informs us that Ruby never attended high school,
“although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyn’s famous Erasmus Hall High School.”
Wikipedia’s “Erasmus Hall High School” page lists Barbara Stanwyck as a “Notable alumni” along with that poor waif Clara Bow, Mae West, and other Jewish entertainers too numerous to mention.
During the late-1920s, Brooklyn-native Stanwyck taught dance at a gay and lesbian speakeasy owned by Texas Guinan, a butch impresario described as a lesbian. Lesbian singer Tallulah Bankhead once said she slept with Stanwyck, and most Hollywood historians admit there's something to rumors that Stanwyck's marriages to Frank Fay and Robert Taylor were studio backed "lavender marriages" created to keep the closet sealed tight. Of all the people Stanwyck was close to, her most consistent relationship was with her very loyal, sometimes live-in girl Friday, the prototypical actress-turned-publicist Helen Ferguson. The women never defined their relationship, but if Stanwyck's marriages to men were described as lavender, Stanwyck and Ferguson's union may very well have been of the Boston variety. Ferguson was by Stanwyck's side for the bulk of her career. I have linked Paulette Goddard and Veronica Balfe to the Ferguson name. And we just had a major fake event [shooting of Michael Brown] centered in the town of Ferguson, MO.
After her divorce from Frank Fay, Stanwyck won custody of their adoptive son whom she had raised with a strict authoritarian hand. Stanwyck and her son were estranged after his childhood, meeting only a few times after he became an adult.
Stanwyck’s genealogy is scrubbed.
Her longest “marriage” was to Robert Taylor.
I can directly link him to:
Charlie Chaplin’s wife Mildred Harris
Paulette Goddard
Nancy Reagan
John Fairbanks
Henry Fonda
Sherrie Mae Adams
Frances Ford Seymour
Phyllis Livingston Baker
Bette Davis
Katharine Hepburn
Jean Arthur
and Charles Crocker.
Lamarr, c. 1944
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View full-sizeDownload Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress and inventor. After a brief early film career in Czechoslovakia, including the controversial erotic romantic drama Ecstasy (1933), she fled from her first husband, Friedrich Mandl, and secretly moved to Paris. Traveling to London, she met Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a film contract in Hollywood. Lamarr became a film star with her performance in the romantic drama Algiers (1938). She achieved further success with the Western Boom Town (1940) and the drama White Cargo (1942). Lamarr's most successful film was the religious epic Samson and Delilah (1949). She also acted on television before the release of her final film in 1958. She was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. At the beginning of World War II, along with George Antheil, Lamarr co-invented a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of radio jamming by the Axis powers. However, the technology was not used in operational systems until after World War II, and then independently of their patent.
Hedy Lamarr (November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her father was born to a Jewish family and was a successful bank director. Her mother was a pianist who came from an upper-class Jewish family. At age 18, on 10 August 1933 Lamarr married Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer. Wow. It was also in 1933 that she starred in the film Ecstasy which became notorious for showing Lamarr’s face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief nude scenes.
(Wikipedia) Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist government of Italy, selling munitions to Mussolini, and, although his father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi government of Germany as well. Lamarr wrote that Mussolini and Hitler attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology.
Many of Lamarr’s roles emphasized her beauty and sexuality, while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom. Her earliest inventions include an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink. With the ongoing World War, Lamarr was inspired to contribute to the war effort, designing a jam-proof radio guidance system for torpedoes. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
Miles:
Since she was related to the spooks in codebreaking and so on, maybe you did. Anthiel and Lamarr developed the idea of using frequency hopping using a piano roll to randomly change the signal sent between the control-center and torpedo at short bursts within a range of 88 frequencies on the spectrum (there are 88 black and white keys on a piano keyboard).
On 11 August 1942, a U.S. Patent was granted. The idea was not implemented until 1962 during the “fake” Cuban Missile Crisis.
Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States on 10 April 1953, at age 38. In 1966, she was arrested for shoplifting in Los Angeles. In 1991, she was arrested on the same charge in Florida, this time for stealing $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. I don’t need those items to see this a load of crap. She admitted that her 1966 autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, was not actually written by her, implying that much of it was fictional. Say it isn’t so, Hedy! The autobiography coincided with Andy Warhol’s short film Hedy. In 1974, she filed a “fake” $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. claiming that the running parody of her name (“Hedley Lamarr”) in the film Blazing Saddles infringed her right to privacy (the lawsuit was great/cheap promotion for the film).
Lamarr became estranged from her adopted son, James Lamarr Loder, when he was 12 years old. She left James Loder out of her will and he sued for control of the $3.3 million estate left by Lamarr in 2000. There are few worse fates than being adopted by a Hollywood starlet. Despite being married six times Lamarr never had any children of her own. Following her final divorce, she remained single for the last 35 years of her life.
Rogers in 1943
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View full-sizeDownload Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer. She is known for her performances in musical films in which she was partnered with Fred Astaire. Rogers was born Virginia Catherine McMath, the only living child of William McMath and Lela (nee Owens). Her parents had separated before she was born, but her grandparents Walter and Saphrona (nee Ball) Owens lived nearby in Kansas City. We have seen the names Owen(s) and Ball in many of Miles’ papers.
Miles:
George Washington was a Ball and Owen was involved in the early pre-Marx Socialism project.
Engels & Owen – Library of Rickandria Her Owen ancestry ends with her great-grandfather. He was from Wales and was married to a Moore whose history ends there as well, so it appears some scrubbing has occurred. Wikipedia makes sure to inform us that Rogers was born in her mother’s “rented” home on 100 Moore Street, which seems more like a clue than an important fact.
Her mother was a:
newspaper reporter
scriptwriter
movie producer
She was also one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps.
Rogers was lifelong friends (relations) with Lucille Ball. She appeared with Ball in an episode of Here’s Lucy on 11/22/71. Ginger’s “Ball” family history ends with John Ball and Elizabeth Webb, both prominent names from Miles’ paper “Who was George Washington?”. Rogers and her final husband William Marshall owned a joint film production company in Jamaica.
There’s our sugar connection since Jamaica is just a hop, skip, and a jump from Barbados.
I was only able to directly link Ginger Rogers’ to Clark Gable (Stainbrook/Dressler, Wayne PA) and Shirlee Mae Adams (Taft/Woodward, Worcester MA).
Phyllis Livingston Baker
William Holden
the Gish sisters
all descend from Balls, so they are very likely related.
In fact, Rogers has a Gish in her family tree. Rogers was married five times, with all her marriages ending in divorce; she was childless.
Myrna Loy (August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television, and stage actress. She was born Myrna Adele Williams, the daughter of Adelle Mae (nee Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man ever elected to the Montana state legislature. Despite her father’s prominence, Loy’s family history is mostly absent. Her sparse tree includes the names Davis, Morgan, Giles, and Kennedy. Loy was married and divorced four times but had no children of her own. She was heavily involved in UNESCO, a big red flag. She died at the age of 88.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. The young Hepburn was a tomboy who liked to call herself Jimmy, and cut her hair short. Rumors have existed since the 1930s that Hepburn may have been a lesbian. Her one marriage was a sham and she never had children.
Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was a Canadian/American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong (1933). After the success of King Kong, Wray made numerous appearances in both film and television before retiring in 1980. Wray was born to Mormon parents and was a granddaughter of Daniel Webster Jones.
(Wikipedia) Daniel Webster Jones (August 26, 1830 – April 20, 1915) was an American and Mormon pioneer. He was the leader of the group that colonized what eventually became Mesa, Arizona, made the first translation of selections of The Book of Mormon into Spanish, led the first Mormon missionary expedition into Mexico, dealt frequently with the American Indians, and was the leader of the group that heroically wintered at Devil’s Gate during the rescue of the stranded handcart companies in 1856.
Miles:
Remember, I have shown the Jones were related to all the top Welsh families and were descendants of both George and Martha Washington. They were related to the Vaughans, the Swifts, and that lot. The Mormons were a Jewish creation, since their founder Joseph Smith was a crypto-Jew. His maternal grandfather was Solomon Mack. The Websters, including Daniel Webster, were also among these families. Wray was married three times. Her first marriage was to writer John Monk Saunders (11/22/97 – 3/11/40).
Miles:
See my papers on Frances Stonor Saunders.
Miles Williams Mathis: The Cultural Cold War – Library of Rickandria Wray’s second marriage was to writer Robert Riskin (3/30/97 – 9/20/55) who was born to Jewish parents who had emigrated from Czarist Russia. Her final marriage was to Jewish neurosurgeon Sanford Rothenberg (1/1919 – 1/1991). Wray had three children. There is scant photographic evidence of any of these individuals.
Fay Wray’s family tree includes many Jewish first names including:
Jonadab
Absalom
Ezra
Nehemiah
Obadiah
Hepsibah
and Israel.
Her paternal history includes the surnames:
Goulding
Blithe
Finch
but it only goes back to the mid-1700s.
Remember, Bill Clinton was born a Blythe.
On her mother’s side Fay Wray shared great-grandparents with:
Bette Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) is regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history. She was married four times and had one child. Police believed Bette Davis killed her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth, by hitting him on the head and causing a hemorrhage that led to his death two weeks later. But a grand jury – six men who confessed to being ardent fans – found her innocent.
Bette Davis Estate Near $1 Million; 2 Daughters, Grandsons Left Out
November 07, 1989| from Associated Press NEW YORK
— Actress Bette Davis left her daughters and grandsons out of her nearly $1- million estate, according to a will filed for probate Monday. Davis, who died on Oct. 6 of cancer at age 81, had been estranged from her daughter, Barbara Davis Hyman of Charlottesville, Va., since Hyman's book, "My Mother's Keeper," was published in 1985. Hyman wrote that Davis had been
"an abusive, domineering and hateful mother,"
and "a grotesque alcoholic" largely responsible for her own mistreatment by some of her three husbands. Davis' adopted son, Michael Woodman Merrill of Chestnut Hill, Mass., receives about half the estate, which totals between $600,000 and $1 million. Kathryn Sermack, a friend and secretary who lived with Davis in her Los Angeles apartment, also gets about half her estate.
Claudette Colbert’s estate was worth $3.5 million, and Hedy Lamarr’s was $3.3 million, but Davis’ is less than $1 million? She was a much bigger star and made many more films than either of those actresses. Kathryn Sermack, Davis’ longtime amanuensis, companion and friend, was first employed by Davis in 1979. Perhaps Davis was “overly generous” in compensating Sermack for her “services” over the years.
I have already connected Davis’ fourth and final husband Gary Merrill to Roscoe Arbuckle.
He also shared great-grandparents with:
Phyllis Livingston Baker (Greenleaf/Moore, Boston MA)
Lucretia Coffin and Henry Parsons Crowell (Kimball/Scott, Ipswich MA)
Carole Lombard (Noyes/Cutting, Newbury MA)
Lucille Ball (Quincy/Pares, Plymouth MA)
Miriam Hopkins (Shattuck/Bernard, Watertown MA)
Dick Cheney (Woodman/Pryor, Wiltshire England & Kimball/Scott, Ipswich MA)
Gary Merrill was also related to his wife Bette Davis (Hazeltine/Swan, Bradford MA).
I have previously linked Bette Davis to:
Roscoe Arbuckle Mildred Harris John Fairbanks Kay Francis Miriam Hopkins Nancy Reagan
Joan Crawford (March 23, 1904 – May 10, 1977) was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio, Texas. She was the third child of Thomas LeSueur, a laundry laborer, and Anna Bell Johnson, neither of whose years of birth can be conclusively established. Joan had an older sister who apparently died before her birth (twins?). Joan’s date of birth is disputed, with 1904, 1905, and 1906 the most likely estimates. She also had an older brother (born either 1901 or 1903). No family member has a birth certificate?
Thomas LeSueur abandoned the family a few months before Crawford’s birth but reappeared in 1930 as a reportedly 62-year-old construction laborer. However, after his death on January 1, 1938, his age was given as 71. His occupation as a laborer is appropriate since the French translation of Le Sueur is “sweat”. Crawford’s mother subsequently married Henry J. Cassin (died October, 25, 1922). The name Cassin is a contracted form of Mac “Cashin”, which is composed of the Gaelic prefix “Mac”, son of, and a byname “Caisin”, meaning crooked. The marriage is listed in census records as Crawford’s mother’s first marriage, calling into question whether Thomas LeSueur and Anna Bell Johnson were ever legally wed. Of course, they were never wed; LeSueur was a fictional character. It’s just more “crooked cashin’ in”.
After reading this mess, I had serious doubts that a search of Joan Crawford’s family tree would yield anything beyond a drupelet of information. That assumption was only partially correct, though. Thomas LeSueur’s grandmother is a Ball, but it stops there. LeSueur’s paternal history goes further but produces nothing of interest. Anna Bell Johnson’s paternal ancestry is totally scrubbed, so that’s probably where the biggest red flags are hiding. Johnson’s gg-grandmother was a Fuller, which is big enough for us.
We also find the names:
Morrison
Wheeler
Owens
Cook
and Northrup (think Northrop Grumman).
I can link Joan Crawford to Charles Crocker, founder of the Central Pacific Railroad through (Richard Platt & Mary Wood, New Haven CT).
She is also related to some prominent families from England named:
Cholmeley
Constable
Stafford
Gascoigne/Gascoyne
Wentworth
and Despencer.
These names link Joan Crawford to many prominent people. The terms and relationships concerning royalty a-maze me; meaning I end up feeling like Jack Nicholson’s character at the end of The Shining. For the names Wentworth and Despencer, I defer to Miles recent paper “From Daisy Ridley to Lord Byron, and everyone in between”. Miles’ grasp of the machinations of European royalty is amazing in the truest sense of the word.
Miles:
Despencer is the big one here. See Spencer Churchill, the Dukes of Marlborough. Crawford’s ancestor Marmaduke Constable was the eldest son and heir of Sir Robert Constable of Flamborough, Yorkshire, and Agnes Wentworth, daughter of Roger Wentworth by Margery Despencer. Marmaduke’s father was in the service of King Edward IV in 1461, but by 1470 both Marmaduke and his father were in the service of Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. I was about to reach for the axe and scream,
“Here’s Johnny!”,
so, I decided to stop writing.
Miles:
Constable links us to the artist Constable, still oversold by the BBC. For much more on the Earls of Northumberland, see my paper on Daisy Ridley. Joan Crawford’s family profile is so vague and unspecific for a reason. Do you really think a woman from this lineage would marry a “sweaty laundry laborer”? And then, against all odds, have a daughter who becomes one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood? Let’s move on. Joan Crawford was alleged to have been a lesbian.
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View full-sizeDownload Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages ended in divorce, the last ended with the death of husband Alfred Steele.
I could continue but let’s go out with bang. I think I’ve made my point. The title “The Illusion of Perfection” sums it up. Another title I was considering was “Beauty is Only Skin Deep”. Speaking of summing up, let’s crunch some numbers.
So whst will come after this area of perfection, sucess, awards, the ground of post industrialise society nobility where the fire is causing .... Real change or Black Rock & the lke will built dystopian technocratic norms?
