Today would have been the 81st birthday of elegant actress JEAN SIMMONS … but sadly she died just nine days (02) short of celebrating it with us! As this New York Times obituary began: “Jean Simmons, the English actress who made the covers of Time and Life magazines by the time she was 20 {actually 21} and became a major mid-century star, died Friday at her home in Santa Monica, California. She was 80.” And quite a lady …

“Jean Simmons was the most beautiful actress I ever saw in the movies,” a fan wrote to Parade magazine in the 1980s … and Sleuth concurs. But after countless costume dramas in the Fifties such as playing Napoleon’s nymph in Desirée—where Sleuth managed to unearth a wardrobe test in which Jean’s costume was decidedly see thru {blow it up for maxi•mam exposure}—she derisively dubbed such roles “poker-up-the-ass parts … very boring.”

One playboy who found Simmons anything but boring was billionaire Howard Hughes {with Ginger Rogers}, who made it clear he’d like to poke•her up the ass … alas, he was overheard by her then-husband, actor Stewart Granger: “I’d sure like to get my teeth into that,” Hughes drooled to Cary Grant in the men’s room. “That Granger is a goddamn lucky son of a bitch.” The reclusive romeo was unlucky again, when he told Jean over the phone: “When are you going to get away from that goddamned husband of yours? I want to talk to you alone, honey.” Granger grabbed the phone and shouted: “Mr. Howard Bloody Hughes, you’ll be sorry if you don’t leave my wife alone!” As for Hughes being “sorry,” it was only a matter of Time.

And it was only a matter of time before the straight-laced Simmons would strip on screen: “I hope I don’t shock anybody,” Jean wondered when news leaked she’d skinny-dip in 1960’s Spartacus. “I must say I shocked myself a little in consenting to do it.” The nude swimming scene “was not in the original script,” the actress revealed, “but director Stanley Kubrick and Kirk {Douglas} both suggested that it would be more effective if played nude {and we’re betting Kubrick didn’t keep his Eyes Wide Shut!}. I kept agreeing, and then realized: ‘What have I said?’” What she’d done was prove her beautiful buoyancy … but only on HER side of the pond … as American audiences only saw her bare back before “doing” Douglas.

Yet unlike Spartacus, Sleuth is no slave to the censors … so he rebelled by importing these European exposures of Jean’s elegant epidermis from an overseas print of the film: Sipping some bubbly while her boobies bobbed below the surface, sultry Simmons showed a pair of flotation devices that might have saved the Tit•anic!

Jean would get along swimmingly for the next five decades … remarkably reprising the 1946 Great Expectations debut that made her famous forty-three years later … only this time as the malicious Miss Havisham! In her later years, the actress said she continued to receive fan mail but that younger writers “often confused me” with someone else: “One day a letter arrived from a 10-year-old,” she recalled. “It was the usual fan letter, saying things like, ‘I think you’re wonderful.’ Then I got to the P.S.:  ‘I love it when you spit blood!’ That’s when I realized,” joked Jean Simmons, “the letter wasn’t for me.”

But Sleuth’s favorite story concerns the time amorous Ava Gardner—then the lover of “Simmons-smitten” Howard Hughes—burst into Stewart Granger’s bedroom at 2 a.m. while on location in Africa in 1956 filming Bhowani Junction and demanded to know why he didn’t find her attractive. “Ava, you’re probably the most attractive woman in the world,” Granger gasped, “but I’m married to Jean.” Griped Gardner: “Oh, fuck Jean!” Grinned Granger: “I’d love to, darling.” Who wouldn’t …

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MARILYN MONROE would have been 83 this past Monday, June 1…and we don’t wish to blow it by merely paying lip service to the Greatest Sex Symbol in Hollywood History! {Guess whose picture appears on Wikipedia under “Sex Symbol”?}

Her early years were shrouded in mystery, but in case you doubt the date, Sleuth has unearthed a copy of the actual birth certificate of “Baby Norma Jeane Mortensen”…and even the original microfiche from which it was made! Not to mention a Department of Health Certificate verifying its accuracy. And since Sleuth is all about accuracy, let’s specify that she was born at 9:30 a.m. on June 1, 1926 in the charity ward of Los Angeles Hospital, as this detailed natal chart she had done later, attests.

And while Edward Mortenson’s name is listed as her father on the birth certificate, Marilyn’s sire was almost certainly womanizing Charles Stanley Gifford, who had an affair with her lookalike mother Gladys Pearl Monroe, when they worked together as film cutters at RKO Studios in 1925. This family genealogy chart seems to seal the deal. Sleuth has learned that Gladys had married a Martin Mortensen in 1924, but they separated before she became pregnant…so the scared 23-year-old named the father as Edward Mortensen, with residence listed as “Unknown” on the birth record—hoping to avoid the “stigma of illegitimacy” for her daughter. To further cover her tracks, Gladys listed her last name as “Monroe” {her middle moniker and the source for Norma Jeane’s future nom de vroom} and the occupation of the fictional father as “Baker.”

But when the child was old enough, Marilyn recalled being shown this photo that Gladys identified as her “real father”—the cad who had deserted his lover on Christmas Eve 1925 when she told him she was pregnant! Gifford—whose wife Lillian charged him with “addiction to narcotics, abuse and associating with women of low character” in her divorce petition—had a pencil-thin mustache that reminded young Norma Jeane of then-heartthrob Clark Gable, and she thus carried the picture with her throughout her life! Near her death, she reportedly fell in love with “father figure” Gable—blatantly trying to “seduce him” by secretly going au naturel under the covers (though nudity couldn’t be shown in 1960) and then letting the sheet slip while making The Misfits, her final finished film!

Her very first nude, however, came when her troubled mom left her with a foster family just  two weeks after her birth … and, as the song goes, she “musta been a beautiful baby cuz baby look at you” then! Her second nude was taken as she played in front of the foster home of Ida and Wayne Bolender, where she spent the first 7 years of her life. And she only got more beautiful as she grew: check out this photo booth snap taken when she was just twelve! Just two years later, she was already unsurpassed.

Everyone knows her iconic images, so Sleuth prefers to include a few of the rare “firsts” from his mountain•ous Marilyn files, such as: her first ever glamour pose at age 18 in 1945; her first ever magazine cover for the airplane factory at which she was discovered, in 1946; her first ever billboard for Pabst beer; her first parking pass for the 20th Century Fox studio lot; her first starlet publicity shot; and her first national ad … for photo mounts! But what about, I hear you say, her first pubic mound?

“Throughout recorded history,” reads one review of The Seven Year Itch, “certain images and people become entrenched in the public consciousness. In 1955, wearing a dress {Sleuth even has the wardrobe test for the garment!} and standing over a subway grate, Marilyn Monroe became a sex symbol like no other. The dress flitting about in the breeze while she futilely tries to hold it in place became an image that was sought after as the very definition of sexuality. Yet, in the film quick cuts and angles stop you from actually seeing anything too revealing.” Yet they don’t stop Sleuth…

As an eyewitness to the legendary shoot in the early hours of  September 15, 1954 put it: “About 1,500 stay-up-late New Yorkers formed an audience—very appreciative, too—as the synthetic breeze unveiled the Monroe legs and nylon whatchamacallits.” What it gets called is many things…but, in this rare outtake, bountiful bush would seem to fit! “Here comes the wind machine,” recalled one lucky observer, “up goes the skirt and damned if she isn’t wearing something filmy. From back of me I hear a voice, pure New York, saying loud and clear, ‘Chees, I thought she was a real blonde!’”

The observer, a Mr. Morse, continued: “Her husband Joe DiMaggio hears it too, and this is his wife! He walks on the set, sorer than hell, and makes Marilyn go into the trailer and change into some underpants that you couldn’t see through with a spotlight” {actually two pairs}! The Yankee Clipper then stormed off the set, with what the film’s impish director Billy Wilder later called “the look of death” on his face. And when a 52-foot billboard of a mild image from the scene was erected over the theater for its opening night on Marilyn’s 29th BIRTHDAY, their marriage was dead. So, it’s only fitting that we present this one-of-a-kind rarity in its Digital Age fully expanded equivalent of her Times Square triumph! No wonder a young stringer on the scene that day recently remarked: “I hate the term ‘photo-op,’ but this was certainly the most important photo-op ever staged, notwithstanding George W. Bush landing on a battleship”—with similar, though much more padded, crotch focus.

“Do you wear underwear?” the sexy starlet was asked shortly after her nude calendar surfaced. “Men seldom jump hurdles,” MM mused, “for girls who wear girdles.” Which might explain why her next national calendar pose—for which Sleuth unearthed the original insert—was entitled “Southern Exposure“! Or that her favorite fur—a fetish inherited from her mom—was Beaver. Only when she married esteemed playwright Arthur Miller, in fact, did Marilyn finally decide to “Wear the Pants.”

Now she belongs to the Angels—amazingly, Sleuth snapped these glowing halos of light circling above her crypt when he paid homage in 1993—so let us fondly remember not only her current birthday but also her final one, on the set of the unfinished Something’s Got to Give in 1962, just days after filming her only screen nude scene {to which the cast’s card refers}. And what a fitting END it makes …

So Goodbye, Norma Jeane … and Happy 83rd Birthday {a good guess how she’d look today}! You were truly, and uniquely, A Candle in the Wind.

Cheers!, my dear. Dots all she wrote…

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In this section of the site, we’ll single out celebrities who deserve more in depth uncoverage…and gradually reveal more and more about them throughout the month—culminating in the rarest and usually never-before-seen revelations that only the Sleuth has unearthed!

The women chosen will generally be in the news at that particular time, either because they’ve just come out with a hit film, they’ve just “come out” {as loving the ladies}, or perhaps they’ve just gone out {to the great beyond}!

Such is the case with our first Spotlighted Celeb–who better to inaugurate a site dedicated to finding long-hidden revelations than that long-hidden heroine of millions of men’s fantasies, the legendary BETTIE PAGE !

This gorgeous “Ghost of Christmas Past” didn’t quite make it to her 86th Christmas, succumbing to a heart attack two weeks shy of 2008’s Noel. “My biggest regret,” Bettie admitted a year before she died—a measure of her fame was being pictured (along with Paul Newman, Tim Russert and Bernie Mac) on AOL’s “In Memorium” review of the year—”is that I didn’t answer that telegram to be a movie star at Warner Bros.” The young starlet rejected both a screen test and honcho Howard Hughes! “I’ve heard that even Marilyn Monroe went to bed with one of them at 20th Century Fox (arranged by her smitten agent Johnny Hyde), in order to get into the movies,” Page dished. “If I had wanted to do that, I might have been a movie star in 1948!” Ironic then, that 60 years later Bettie was laid to rest at Westwood Memorial Park within sight of Marilyn’s famous wall crypt (top left in the right rear)!

Since this is our very first Celeb Spotlight, let’s conclude by revealing these rare debuts from “The All-Time Queen of the Pinups” … her very first: pinup pose (at 15); modeling composite (from San Francisco in 1945); visit to New York City (1947, who’d have guessed?!); professional headshot; studio pose (holding her shirt closed); tentative topless exposure; and full nude–accidentally exposiing her pubic hair (totally forbidden at the time)!

LEARNING THE ROPES

“I was trying to be the Valedictorian in high school,” Bettie Mae Page recalled, “because if you were first in your class you would win a 4-year scholarship to Vanderbilt University. I was beat out by one quarter of a point—all I got was a $100 scholarship to George Peabody teachers college in Nashville.” Our salute to the Salutatorian of Hume-Fogg High, Class of 1940, shows Bettie was also voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by her classmates, who left her “nothing” in the class will because “she already has everything.” Alas, she had too much—when she tried teaching 5th and 6th grade, Miss Page was all the rage: “I couldn’t control my students, especially the boys. They would make cat calls at me.” Gee, wonder why…

Though she’d later go on to inspire lunch boxes and dolls in her image, the teacher-turned-typist admits: “I was never the girl next door.” Especially after she moved…to the Big Apple…and was spotted strolling the beach at Coney Island in October 1950 by NYPD cop and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs. “He gave me his card,” Bettie shrugged, “and offered to make up a portfolio for me free of charge.” But not free of hassle: “I didn’t like what he did with my breasts. He had me stuff Kleenex inside the bikini. I didn’t need the Kleenex.” But she did need “a look”…which Tibbs came up with: “Jerry said I had a very high protruding forehead, and that I’d look good with bangs. I’ve been wearing them ever since.” He also had her wear some mild fetish attire in one shoot–which caught the attention of “New York’s pin-up and bondage king,” Irving Klaw … and that was all she rope.

The only thing I find upsetting,” Bettie later revealed, “is that they keep referring to me as the Queen of Bondage. The only bondage posing I ever did was for Irving Klaw and his sister Paula,” she made clear {the trio became “like family”}. “Usually they would shoot 4 or 5 models every Saturday. He wouldn’t pay for the regular pictures unless we did some bondage. So I did the bondage shots to get paid for the other photos! And that was the only reason I did it. I never had any inkling that way {liking to be tied up}. You had to do the bondage or you didn’t get paid!” And how much was Page paid for these 4-hour sessions? “Eighty dollars” {Paula Klaw recalled it was $100 “with a tip”}. And here’s the best tip of all: Sleuth got to know Paula quite well in the ’80s and ’90s…and she gifted him with many rare original prints she and her brother had taken of Bettie in bondage. So let’s share, shall we?

“Irving was a wonderful man,” the model who made him famous felt {the notation at bottom right of this original indicates it was the 357th shot they printed of “BP”}. “For years it was rumored that he and I were involved, but that was ridiculous”—besides, she quickly became the “love object” of Klaw’s anonymous benefactor , known only as “Little John”! And “Paula was one of the nicest women I’ve ever known in my life—bar none {Lili Taylor played her in the 2006 film The Notorious Bettie Page}. Only Paula was allowed to tie us up. She never tied any ropes too tight.” Knot ever?!

The bondage sessions “were safe and relaxed,” Bettie remembered…and in those days when models “took a coke break,” it was much more innocent. The only time it wasn’t, she was genuinely afraid: “I had just one bad experience,” the model moaned in her deep Southern drawl, “when I was tied spread-eagled between two big wooden beams with my arms up and out and my legs spread and then my feet were about 6 inches off the ground and before they got through taking what seemed like umpteen pictures, I thought it was gonna pull the sockets right out of my shoulders. And I started hollering, ‘Hurry up, I’m hurting!’ Later, Irving Klaw told me that those pictures of me spread-eagled off the ground sold more than any pictures he ever sold in all of his years of selling pin-ups and even movie star pictures, those things of me in agony,” she laughed.

Otherwise, Bettie was “delighted to admit” the bondage sessions were “a ball” … make that ball gag! “It was fun {a real sight gag. Much like this rarity of Page playing a reel Lucille Ball gag!} I got a kick out of it {floored with legs reared up}. But I never thought those pictures would have such a lasting effect.” With no END in sight…

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