Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (57 page)

Louis Farrakhan

In October of 1996, Michael decided that if
he could not get an audience with the Pope, he
wanted to own a piece of him. Reading that the
Pope in Rome had successfully undergone surgery
for an inflamed appendix, Michael sent an offer to
the Vatican to purchase that appendix for a million
dollars, noting that such a bequest could be most
useful to aid Catholic charities. The private secretary to the Pope did not respond to the offer.

Suffering from laryngitis, Michael played to
audiences of 75,000 at concerts at Flaminio Stadio
in Rome. Attending were two celebrity guests,
Sophia Loren and her rival, Gina Lollobrigida. Lollobrigida confided to Michael, "I haven't spoken to the bee-tch in twenty
years until you brought us together for the paparazzi."

Michael had been booked in Rome's deluxe Lord Byron Hotel. With time
on his hands, he drew pictures in ink on the white, stiffly starched bed linens,
including a self-portrait. After Michael had checked out, a maid at the hotel
auctioned the doodles, getting $5,000 for Michael's profile.

Later, Michael was furious to learn that his concerts in Rome and also in
the city of Turin in Italy's Piedmont had been illegally taped. These unauthorized tapes eventually made their way into the United States and Britain,
although they had to be hawked underground.

Among the 55,000 fans who attended Michael's concert in Basel,
Switzerland, was Elizabeth Taylor. It was during their time together in
Switzerland that Michael astonished Elizabeth by proposing marriage to her.
Both the glamorous mega-star and Michael would later deny the proposal of
marriage, but intimates of both parties have insisted over the years that it happened.

To Michael, a May-December marriage to the aging star made a lot of
sense. Before flying to Switzerland, he'd even discussed his proposal with
Katharine Hepburn, who'd appeared opposite Elizabeth in Tennessee
Williams's Suddenly, Last Summer, released in 1959.

"Would she expect sex?" Katharine reportedly asked, obviously being
facetious.

"No, not at all!" Michael said, taking the question seriously. "It wouldn't
be that kind of relationship."

A gossipy friend of Hepburn's was seated with her when Michael visited
the star at her Turtle Bay townhouse in New York
City.

"Then go for it if Elizabeth's willing," Hepburn
advised. "I was married once. I made it clear from
the beginning that there would be no sex after I said
`I do.' Since my groom wasn't particularly keen on
the opposite sex, that proved no hardship for him at
all. I invited his boyfriend along on our honeymoon
to Bermuda."

Pope John Paul II

Hepburn told Michael that reporters would stop
calling attention to the fact he was not dating if he
were married. "You don't ask married men what
young girls they're taking out," Hepburn said. "It's
not done."

Elizabeth turned Michael down ever so politely,
her confidante, Roddy McDowall later said. "Marriage was proposed to Elizabeth by some of the most important men in
the world, including a former president of the United States who offered to
divorce his wife for her."

Michael, according to McDowall, made a counter-offer, promising to
donate $5 million a year in AIDS research if she'd give him her hand in marriage. Still, she said no.

"As my personal history has shown, I'd make a terrible wife but a great
friend," she said. "Let's be friends for always. If you need me, wherever you
need me, I'll be there."

"That sounds very much like Diana Ross," he said.

"Did you ever propose marriage to her?" she asked. "I think I read that
someplace."

"You are the only person in the world I'll ever ask to marry me," he said.
"You could lead a life of luxury. Everything you want, all the jewelry you
could ever wear."

"But Michael, I already lead a life of luxury. I have more gems than is
good for me, with more on the way."

"Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, and even James Dean proposed marriage to me, but I told each of them it wouldn't work," she claimed. "It wouldn't have, you know? The same with us. It wouldn't work."

"But you'd be free to have lovers on the side," he said.

"That's a right all my husbands have retained in marriage," she claimed,
"and a privilege I've always reserved for myself as well."

"Is your decision final?" he asked.

"Final and forever more," she said. "Now, let's not speak of this again.
However, as compensation, I have a few stray children I'll let you adopt."

Before he flew out of Switzerland, Elizabeth promised him that even
though she wouldn't marry him, she'd let him host her next wedding.

Before leaving Elizabeth and Switzerland behind him, Michael had one
more "house call" to make. He'd solicited and received an invitation to visit
Oona Chaplin, the widow of his all-time film hero, Charlie Chaplin, whom
Michael always referred to as "The Little Tramp." Chaplin had died in 1977,
and Michael wanted to bring flowers to his gravesite near her home in Vevey,
Switzerland.

The Oona Chaplin Michael encountered was not what he expected from
the famous widow. Her appearance shocked him. She came into her living
room wearing tight-fitting clothes more suited to Tatum O'Neal or Brooke
Shields. Her appearance was rather unkempt, and she wore too much makeup,
as if trying to erase twenty years from her face.

She spoke of the "lonely years after Charlie died" and told Michael that
The Little Tramp ended his life in a wheelchair. "I was his watchdog and nurse day and night, waiting on him hand and foot. He fired all the nurses I hired for
him."

Oona joined Michael for the pilgrimage to Chaplin's gravesite. She spoke
with a certain pain about her previous life and how she'd been dominated by
two powerful men, both her famous playwright father, Eugene O'Neill, and
Chaplin, whom she'd married in 1943 when she was just seventeen and he
was fifty-four. "My father cut off communication with me when I married
Charlie," she said.

She was surprised that Michael did not know who Eugene O'Neill was,
but she patiently explained to him the significant role he'd played in the
American theater.

Back at the Chaplin house, she led Michael into the bathroom. At first he
protested, "I like to do my business in private."

"No, no, you silly boy." In the bathroom she removed a bottle labeled
"shampoo." Drinking half of it, she offered him the bottle. "Want some?" she
asked. He declined. "It's not shampoo, ducky. But liquor. My family hides my
bottles from me, but I outsmart them."

Oona was living up to her reputation. Before meeting her, Michael had
heard stories about her wandering the streets of Vevey at night in her bare feet,
dressed in a nightgown. She'd shout obscenities to passersby. The tolerant
policemen never arrested her, but drove her back to the safety of her home,
where they would put her to bed.

Bizarrely, Michael wanted to know about the body-snatching caper that
occurred one rainy night on March 1, 1978, at the Vevey cemetery where
Chaplin was buried. A Bulgarian and a Pole had stolen her husband's coffin
and had held it for ransom, demanding 600,000 Swiss francs. Eventually they
were arrested, and Chaplin's body returned to Oona, who arranged for its second burial.

Oona Chaplin

"Imagine what grave-robbers would ask for my body
if they ever snatched it when I die?" Michael asked,
inserting himself into the drama.

"They're not going to get my body," she told
Michael. "In my will I've demanded that my coffin be
encased in a solid block of concrete two feet thick."

"But what if you're buried alive," he asked. "You'll
never escape if you wake up in a coffin like that."

"That's something you need not worry your pretty
head about," she said.

Before leaving, Oona startled Michael by making a
request. "More than anything in the world I want to
meet the divine Mel Gibson. Do you know him? If so, please introduce us. I'll fly to Los Angeles. If you don't know Mel, maybe
some other handsome hunk in Hollywood. You won't believe the checks I've
written to handsome men after Charlie died. I bought a luxury apartment in
New York for one of my favorites. Like Charlie, he was very well endowed."

Whether Oona knew it or not, she was preaching to the choir. Michael
himself had written many a check, but to males who were slightly younger
than those Oona so desperately desired. And much larger checks awaited
Michael's penmanship in his future.

Because she was trembling, he took her hand. "Aging courtesans in
Europe used to give sound advice to young girls. Spend your youth with a rich
old man so that you can enjoy old age in the company of a handsome hunk."

On June 27, Michael launched his concerts at the Pare des Princes in
Paris. In attendance were Grace Jones and the designer Patrick Kelly. The
mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, presented Michael with La Grande Medaille
de la Ville de Paris, an honor usually given only to visiting heads of state.
Michael accepted the honor but turned down the invitation to a formal state
dinner. He had other plans.

Bob Jones later claimed that those other plans concerned "Peter," who had
suddenly reappeared. Michael was staying at the grand luxe Hotel Crillon in
the heart of Paris. Later, Jolie Levine, an aide to Michael, discovered a mysterious sheet in the star's bedroom where he'd been sleeping with Peter.
Evocative of the incident at the Lord Byron in Rome, Michael had drawn a
picture in ink of himself and Peter on the sheet.

"Also written on the sheet was what amounted to a love note to the boy,"
Jones claimed. "The sheet was my first tangible clue that Michael Jackson, the
King of Pop, was up to no good with this young kid." Jones and Levine smuggled the sheet out of the hotel to prevent it from falling into the hands of the
tabloids.

Bob told Frank DiLeo of his discovery. Michael's manager, according to
Bob, topped him with a story of his own about an incident that occurred during Michael's trip with Peter to the Cote d'Azur. In Nice, DiLeo "found a
sheet painted with human feces." Bob claimed that one of Michael's favorite
words was "doo-doo." Now he knew why.

Michael had succeeded in making friends with two of the most famous
women on the planet, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. He had
only one more conquest to make it a triumvirate. He wanted to befriend
Princess Diana, the third woman he most admired in the world.

Michael's dream was realized on July 16, 1988, at the third concert of the
Bad tour at Wembley Stadium. He'd flown into Heathrow Airport on July 11
with his personal doctor, dentist, throat specialist, and chiropodist. In addition,
he brought with him a masseur, a manicurist, a hair dresser, a personal chef, two secretaries, and eight "minders."

Backstage he met the lady of his dreams, Diana, the Princess of Wales, for
the first time. She seemed somewhat awed by Michael, later telling friends,
"He is the most famous man I've ever met."