The middleweight champion Jake LaMotta famously got himself in trouble with an underage female, who when she was making herself seem available was not dressed as the catholic school girl she was when she appeared in court. Dim lighting can have consequences. Jake went to jail.
The famous film director Roman Polanski is stuck outside the United States because he fled the proceedings that were going to sentence him for having sex with a 13 year-old girl. Mr. Polanski has luckily for him found friends in the European court system who reject the extradition requests of the United States. Roman is stuck in Switzerland right now. The court proceedings were decades ago.
So, when Jackie Collins passed away at 77, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that she might have had celebrity sex as a young lady. Jackie Collins was of course the famous novelist whose books revolved around the instinctive urgings of the Hollywood crowd. Her sister was the actress Joan Collins, someone who you might be able to count on to have had a lively life, and might even now be having one, despite being the older sister to Jackie's 77 years.
The NYT obituary describes Jackie meeting 29 year-old Marlon Brando at a party when she was 15. Jackie recounts in an interviews, "we had a brief but fabulous affair." Different states set statutory rape statues (even if consensual) at different ages. The rock and roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis eloped and married his 13 year-old third cousin in 1957. It was not illegal, because the state, probably Tennessee or Mississippi, had a lower threshold for statutory rape. The publicity from the marriage did damage to 'The Killer's' career, but if you're interested, he's going to appear in NYC at B.B. King's Club on December 16. He's not likely to tell you anything about it. He's 80 now.
On the heels of the obituary for Jackie Collins we learn of Joan Leslie, 90, described as Hollywood's girl next door. A wholesome image.
Margalit Fox, who wrote the NYT obituary for Joan, can usually be counted on for using the one word that stands out in describing something or someone.
Ms. Fox doesn't disappoint when she describes a Hollywood reception encounter with the very young Ms. Leslie and Errol Flynn-"a notorious roue."
You don't even have to know the definition of roue to guess what Mr. Flynn's interest in Ms. Leslie might have been. No age for Ms. Leslie is given, but there is no need to imagine she was anything but very young.
The difference between lightning and a lightning bug is the using the right word, and Ms. Fox nails it with roue. Look it up and the synonyms are mild and rugged: a rake; a debauchee.
Flynn's reputation with chasing and catching women was the stuff of legends. He was from Tazmania, and was the Tazmanian Devil. "In like Flynn" has become a phrase to mean having success in the chase.
Think of someone who gets in as easy as it is to get into community college. or Angie Dickinson's bedroom, and you've got it.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment