Inga Arvad: Notorious, but you’ve never heard of her
ONCE one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, Inga Arvad, paramour of President John F. Kennedy during the early days of World War II, is the subject of a revealing and startling new book by Scott Farris (former bureau chief for UPI) coming out later this month titled “Inga: Kennedy’s Great Love, Hitler’s Perfect Beauty, and J. Edgar Hoover’s Prime Suspect.”
This is a somewhat forgotten tale — a great read in this stressful election season.
Inga, a one-time Miss Denmark, actress and foreign correspondent in Nazi Germany who became a favorite of Adolf Hitler, won Kennedy’s heart when she was a Washington columnist. Her time in Germany led J. Edgar Hoover to suspect her of being a Nazi spy. Walter Winchell exposed Inga’s and Kennedy’s affffair, which nearly got JFK kicked out of the Navy.
Later, Inga moved to Hollywood and took over Sheilah Graham’s syndicated gossip column while Graham mourned the death of her lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Graham’s column had 20 million loyal readers, placing them on par with the notorious Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
Hollywood’s leading men were mad for Inga. Vincent Price called her “one of the most beautiful women in the world,” while Joseph Cotten simply referred to her as “the girl I love.” But Inga didn’t date movie stars. Post-Kennedy, she preferred handsome young Army surgeon William Cahan, who was company doctor for the unit that made the movie “Winged Victory,” the war fifilm that started the careers of Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb.
Taking a short break from her column, Inga wrote the fifirst extensive newspaper story on JFK’s heroism following the sinking of PT-109. Kennedy still loved her, but JFK’s family insisted — more than reasonably — that he could not marry a twice-divorced woman suspected of being a Nazi.
Inga’s Hollywood adventures also included a stint as a screenwriter at MGM and doing publicity for David O. Selznick’s controversial “Duel in the Sun,” a tale of rape and racism that Selznick hoped would be a western version of “Gone with the Wind.” (Selznick cast his wife, Jennifer Jones, of “Song of Bernadette” fame as the dusky, sluttish Pearl Chavez, and noble Gregory Peck as the libidinous Lewt McCanles.) This week’s Patio Page crossword puzzle can be found on page D3
After a frantic engagement to Winston Churchill’s right-hand man, British MP Robert Boothby, which ended after a week when her supposed Nazi affiffiliations again made the papers, she met and married Tim McCoy, once voted one of the 10 greatest Western motion picture stars of all time. McCoy was a star when John Wayne and Ward Bond were still extras. McCoy was a rarity in the business — a real cowboy from Wyoming who had known Buffffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson in real life.
McCoy won an Emmy for his children’s show on the Old West, but he nearly lost his shirt trying to start a drive-in rodeo in Nogales, Arizona. When that venture folded after exactly one performance, McCoy went on the road, performing in circuses, while Inga raised the couple’s two sons, until her untimely death from cancer in 1973.
And this, my friends, is only the Hollywood portion of her notorious, fascinating and unpredictable life.
Scott Farris’ juicy book arrives on Oct. 16 from Globe Pequot Press/Lyons Press.
And, yes, it would make a fabulous movie.