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The story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is one of the most romantic of all time: Edward VIII abdicated his throne and gave up an empire so that he could marry the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Very few people suspected, and even fewer actually knew, that the Duchess cuckolded him—and almost gave him up—for a gay playboy twenty years her junior.
Blond and slender, Jimmy Donahue was the archetypal post-war playboy. He could fly a plane, speak several languages, play the piano, and tell marvelous jokes. People loved him for his wit, charm and personality. The grandson of millionaire Frank W. Woolworth, Jimmy knew he would never need to work. Instead, he set about carving for himself a career of mischief. Some said evil.
Gay at a time when the homosexual act was still illegal, Jimmy was notorious within America’s upper class, and loved to shock. Though press agents arranged for him to be seen with female escorts, his pursuits, until he met the Duchess of Windsor, were exclusively homosexual. He was thirty-five when he was befriended by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1950. The Duchess was fifty-four, and despite the difference in age, there was an instant attraction. A burgeoning sexual relationship – a perverse sort of love – was formed between Jimmy and the Duchess. Together with the Duke, they became an inseparable trio, the closest of friends. As Jimmy had planned, the royal couple became obsessed with him.
With information from surviving contemporaries, Dancing with the Devil is the extraordinary tale of three remarkable people and their unique and twisted relationship.
- Sales Rank: #1095388 in Books
- Published on: 2001-01-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.02" w x 6.82" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Amazon.com Review
It shouldn't be a fascinating read, this book--it really shouldn't. It's just higher gossip about how Wallis Simpson took a younger lover after her marriage to Edward, and how she and said lover enjoyed nights of "nonpenetrative and principally oral sex." I mean, who cares? Shouldn't our minds be on higher things?
The trouble is, it's all absolutely fascinating. The lover was the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know Jimmy Donahue: grandson of Woolworth's founder Frank W. Woolworth, heir to millions, and considered to be dashingly good-looking. (From the photos in the book, he looks a bit like a baby-faced bore, but maybe having those millions in the bank skewed perceptions of him, somewhat.) Donahue could fly a plane, could speak several languages, was a marvelous raconteur, and, on top of all this, was a promiscuous homosexual. That didn't stop him from forming a passionate friendship with Wallis, however, that soon turned into more than mere friendship. Wilson suggests that this constituted, on Wallis's part, perhaps "the greatest betrayal in history." Edward gave up his throne and kingdom for the woman he loved, only to have her take off with another man. However, it was never quite so simple as this. Edward didn't want a normal sexual relationship with Wallis, really--he got all of the satisfaction he wanted from playing with her feet--while she evidently continued to adore him, even if she found that the need for sexual satisfaction drove her into Donahue's arms. It might even have been that Edward knew, but didn't mind. The whole thing reads like some kind of royal soap opera, and, as such, it's absolutely riveting. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
From Publishers Weekly
Those interested in the empty but privileged lives of American Wallis Simpson (1896-1986) and her husband, the duke of Windsor (1894-1972), who renounced the British throne for her in 1936, will be absorbed by this gossipy story of a strange love triangle. After the abdication, the royal family refused to accept the duchess, so the Windsors embarked on a life of travel and conspicuous consumption. In 1950, they befriended Jimmy Donahue (1915-1966), a playboy and an heir to the Woolworth fortune. Although Donahue was 19 years younger than the duchess and an active homosexual, the two began an amorous relationship that lasted four years. According to the author, despite the Windsors' epic romance, the duchess was apparently unfulfilled sexually (though she did, according to an unnamed source, indulge her husband's foot fetish and interest in masochism). Donahue's mother, Jessie, controlled his purse strings, because her son had repeatedly demonstrated his recklessness, but she approved of his relationship with the duchess. Jessie and her son paid for the Windsors' extravagances in exchange for using the royal connection for social advancement. Wilson, a London journalist and observer of royal romance (A Greater Love: Prince Charles's Twenty Year Affair with Camilla Parker Bowles), writes in a brisk, entertaining style, but there is little here to justify his description of DonahueAa self-indulgent substance abuserAas charming. Indeed, Donahue took pleasure in scandalizing those in his social circle; for instance, he would strip or display his genitals to waiters and party guests, and he enjoyed cuckolding Edward Windsor. The duke, who not only endured his wife's affair in silence but accepted gifts from her lover, did, however, eventually call a halt to the relationship. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"[A] fabulous sex and scandal tale." - Cindy Adams, the New York Post
“For true romantics, it’s like finding out that the epic love affair of Abelard and Heloise was really just a quickie in a Left Bank nightclub’s men’s room. Or that Rapunzel wore hair extensions and Cinderella had an ingrown toenail . . . Dancing With the Devil certainly makes for a juicy read.” –W magazine
“[This] naughty book dishes the grade-A gossip.” –Jane Magazine
"[Wilson is] imaginative...sensitive...an original stylist...fair-minded." - New York Observer
"A juicy read!" - Indianapolis Star
"Lots of spicy detail." - Newsday
Most helpful customer reviews
44 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
Take it to the beach...
By Kamahinaohoku
OK, so the author isn't going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for this book. But why should he? It's a book about an affair. A tawdry affair at that.
Initially, I payed attention to the other reviewers and didn't buy the book. But I have a fascination with Wallis and Edward (as vapid as they might have been...)and wanted to know more about Wallis' relationship with Jimmy Donohue. I must have read at least 10 to 15 books about the couple, and despite what the one of the reviewers said, I've only come across a few rare references to him. This book fills in the gaps.
So is it great literature? No. Is it an interesting book? Yes, if you like the subject matter, and know something about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to begin with. I enjoyed the book.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
The Uncovering of a Gigolo?
By anne
This book gives you a ringside seat into the lives of three famous people - The Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Woolworth heir Jimmy Donahue. Author Christopher Wilson does a wonderful job of taking the reader into an era that will never be seen again. From the '30s through the '50s the rich lived their lives showing only what was appropriate for the public to see. Any questionable behavior was covered up by their wealth. Enter Jimmy Donahue. Here was a very rich, spoiled, irresponsible, homosexual mama's boy who used his personality and charm to accomplish anything he set his mind to. This included his attempt to be the obsession of both the Duke and Duchess. It wasn't a far cry to upset an already dysfunctional marriage but it was interesting to read the winding road to hell that Donahue lead them to. What's also very interesting is the bizarre relationship Wilson writes of between Donahue and his mother Jessie - very controlling and always covering up every scandal involvoing her son. This book is complete gossip but if that's your liking this book is for you. For all his shocking exploits, in the end, Jimmy Donahue ended up a mere unknown. A complete opposite of how hard he tried to stay in the public eye.
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Rocks for Jocks
By margot
I read all the reviews of this when it came out a few years ago, and am only mildly disappointed to find that the full copy (obtained at The Strand: hard cover, last copy) tells me nothing new other than that Jimmy Donahue didn't much apply himself at Choate.
This is biography lite, highly entertaining, scantily referenced and hence easy to capsule into a 500-word review. Not a great book or a good book, but a fun book. The sort of book you or I could write over a long weekend simply by Googling a few names and following sources referenced in Wikipedia. In fact, I suspect that is how Christopher Wilson wrote it. He's not big on apparatus. There is a bibliography, true, but it consists mostly of books by names on the order of Charles Higham (you know, the guy who claimed Errol Flynn was both homosexual AND a Nazi spy!). Almost no footnotes, of course. Wilson has a slim grasp on history altogether. He thinks King Charles II was executed (he wasn't). He passes on, as accepted fact, the posthumous tale about how Cardinal Spellman of New York was a notorious homosexual and cruised for new partners to "deflower" after the noon Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. On one page Wilson tells you that the Duchess of Windsor underwent a hysterectomy, on the next he relates the old camp rumor that she was a genetic male with AIS; apparently he doesn't know enough to note a contradiction.
The book seems to have originated in an earlier biography of Barbara Hutton, Jimmy's first cousin and fellow heir to the F. W. Woolworth fortune. There was almost as much information about Jimmy in that book as there is here. The juiciest bit, which Wilson repeats and expands upon before discrediting, is about the sailor whom Jimmy picked up at Cerutti's in 1945. During a drunken party, someone decided to shave the sailor's body hair and accidentally emasculated him. The Woolworth millions hushed up the story. That is the tale as related by that reliable source Truman Capote. Of course it is not true. (It wasn't a sailor, it was a salesman. Sailor, salesman, what's the difference? Oh, and he may have had a bite out of his ear. But $200,000 was the Woolworth payoff, according to Wilson, and the salesman never had to work again.)
Wilson does not have much of a handle on the exact relationship between Donahue and the Duchess, but speculates there was some sort of emotional bonding and maybe some oral sex. He spends many pages speculating why this may have been so. In addition, Donahue and his mother gave the Windsors a lot of money, and that no doubt lubricated the friendship. But then Jimmy was generous with the New York Foundling Hospital and other charitable enterprises as well, so the Windsors weren't the only beneficiaries of this degenerate scamp. Possibly Jimmy just felt sorry for the abandoned and downtrodden.
Good guy, Jimmy. Deserves a decent biography.
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