Here we make a list of mistresses linked to famous men.
1. Elizabeth Ray
Elizabeth Ray
Wayne Hays
She was the mistress of Wayne Hays, the U.S. Representative of Ohio, in the Democratic Party, from 1949 to 1976. Wayne who hired Ray on his staff initially, later gave her a raise, as staff of the House Administration Committee, in return for serving as his mistress. Ray leaked the story to Washington Post’s editor, Marion L. Clark, in May 1976 when Wayne decide to remarry and did not invite her to the wedding. Ray’s admission resulted in a political scandal, after which Wayne Hays resigned from Congress on on September 1, 1976. Marion L. Clark, the editor who reported the scandal was killed on September 4, 1977, when she reportedly walked into a moving small private airplane propeller.
2. Marion Davies
William Randolph Hearst with his mistress Marion Davies
The actress Marion Davies was the mistress of newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, who managed and supported her career through his newspaper. They met in 1916 and were together till his death in 1951. He founded Cosmopolitan Pictures to produce her films. She had become the number one female box office star in Hollywood by 1924, but her career declined after her named got linked with the mysterious death of producer Thomas Ince, who died in a party on Hearst’s yacht. Actress Patricia Lake who is presented as Marion’s niece is long suspected to be her love child with Hearst. She married sea captain Horace Brown, eleven weeks after Hearst’s death. The character of Susan Alexander Kane in Citizen Kane (1941), the gold digger second wife of Charles Foster Kane, is assumed to be based on Marion Davies.
3. Rajkumari Kaul
Rajkumari Kaul
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
She was the mistress of the famously bachelor Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The adopted daughter of Vajpayee, Namita Bhattacharya, is suspected to be their love child, which is speculated by author Abhishek Choudhary, in his book Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977.
4. Hedwig Potthast
Hedwig Potthast
Heinrich Himmler
She was the private secretary of Heinrich Himmler from early 1936 until early 1941. By 1938 she became his lover/mistress and had two children with him, a boy Helge and a girl Nanette-Dorothea. After World War II, Potthast married and took her husband’s name. She remained outside the public eye for the rest of her life and refused to talk about Himmler’s involvement in Nazi activities in her later interviews. She died on 22 September 1994, aged 82.
5. Lída Baarová
Lída Baarová with Joseph Goebbels and Gustav Fröhlich (middle)
She was the biggest actress in Germany & Czechoslovakia in 1920’s & 1930’s who was the mistress of Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, for two years. She met him in 1936 at her then boyfriend Gustav Fröhlich’ home. Their relationship was broken by Hitler because Goebbels’ wife threatened to divorce him, which Hitler thought was against the family values of Nazis. This affair ended Lída’s movie career. She was shamed internationally after the end of the war. Lída died in 2000, aged 86.
6. Rekha
Rekha, Amitabh and Jaya in a still from Silsila (1981)
Rekha was suppossedly the mistress of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, when he was and still is married to actress Jaya Bachchan. Rekha and Amitabh co-stared in seven films together. Filmmakers of the time tried to take advantage of their alleged affair by casting them in their films, the most scandalous of such films was Silsila (1981), a movie about adultery in which Amitabh and Rekha were cast as lovers and Jaya as his unloved wife. Amitabh on his part has always denied their relationship. Rekha when asked about his denial, replied that he was trying to protect his family and image.
7. Christine Keeler
Christine Keeler
John Profumo
She was a English showgirl who was the mistress of John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War, and got involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, at the same time. Christine tried to coax information about nuclear warheads from Profumo, at the urging of her Soviet lover. Profumo and Keeler’s affair got exposed in 1963 which resulted in a huge scandal. Profumo denied the affair on the floor of House of Commons. But on investigation it was discovered that Profumo lied, which led to his resignation.
8. Mary Teissier
J. Paul Getty with his mistress Mary Teissier
She was a Ukrainian-French socialite who was the long-time mistress of American industrialist J. Paul Getty, who was named in 1966 Guinness Book of Records as the world’s richest private citizen. Mary who was married to Parisian socialite Lucien Teissier was introduced to Getty by their mutual friend, French industrialist Paul-Louis Weiller. When Getty died in 1976, the famously frugal tycoon left her, the second-largest inheritance out of all of his mistresses.
9. Vicki Morgan
Vicki Morgan
Alfred S. Bloomingdale
She was the mistress of Alfred S. Bloomingdale, who was the heir to the Bloomingdale’s department store fortune. They met in a restaurant on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in August 1969, when she was 17 and he was 53. They were together for 12 years, during which he showered her with expensive clothing, jewelry, and cars. When he was diagnosed with cancer, his wife Betsy cut off Morgan’s financial support. Morgan filed a $11 million palimony lawsuit against Bloomingdale’s estate, after which the sordid details of their affair made headlines. Morgan in the meantime started living at a condominium in the San Fernando Valley with Marvin Pancoast who she met at a drug rehabilitation center. In July 1983, Pancoast beat her to death with a baseball bat. Alfred succumbed to cancer six weeks later. Pancoast who was sentenced to 26 years-to-life in prison, died of complications related to AIDS in 1991. The courts awarded Morgan $200,000 after her death from Bloomingdale’s estate in December 1984.
10. Clara Petacci
She was the mistress of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Clara became his mistress in 1936, when he was 53 and married to Rachele Mussolini and she was 24. A small apartment in Palazzo Venezia in central Rome, was reserved for her where they would have their tryst. Their affair was widely known and her brother Marcello, benefitted financially because of it. She was genuinely infatuated with him and was by his side till the end when they were lynched in public by Italian partisans on 28 April, 1945, near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Hitler who learned of Mussolini’s execution, decided to take his own life and have his body burned, to avoid suffering a similar fate.
Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara’s body photographed in the Milan City morgue
