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What the mistresses said about Dumas and Son has gone unrecorded, but it is a fact that many of the women in this book have used sex to get what men expected by right. To Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood was an "overcrowded brothel," where actresses had to sleep their way to the screen. She dispensed her favors to Producer Joe Schenck, and then went on to affairs of the heart with Marlon Brando, Milton Berle, Yves Montand and Frank Sinatra. Later, they say, she had "secret assignations with President Kennedy," whose performance she cryptically described as "very democratic."
Eva Perón also slept her way to the top, starting at 14 with a second-rate tango singer and ending up with the dictator of Argentina. She was not above having a little fun as well, and once had a fling with Aristotle Onassis. "It is natural for a woman to give herself, to surrender herself for love," burbled Evita. "No woman's movement will be glorious and lasting . . . if it does not give itself to the cause of a man." But when it comes to sex, what is natural has many interpretations —some of them very odd indeed. Vincent Van Gogh's rather wise remark should perhaps stand as the last word on the subject: "The world seems more cheerful if, when we wake up in the morning, we find we are no longer alone and that there is another human being beside us in the half-dark."
—By Gerald Clarke