Personal and Family Life
It was in World War II that, according to Meyer, he found himself at a French brothel with Ernest Hemingway who, upon finding out that Meyer was a virgin, offered him the prostitute of his choice. Meyer picked the one with the largest breasts.
Despite his reputation as a Rabelaisian man, Russ Meyer never employed the casting couch and rarely slept with any of his actresses. He had no children though there were rumored unsuccessful pregnancies with his second wife Edy Williams and last serious girlfriend, Melissa Mounds, who was also found guilty of assaulting him in 1999. There is a long standing rumor among his closest friends and at least one biographer that he had a son in 1964 with a secret lover who he would refer to only as "Miss Mattress" or "Janet Buxton".
Meyer was very upfront throughout his life about being too selfish to be a father or even a caring partner, or husband. Yet he is also said to have been very generous with all his friends and acquaintances, and never isolated friends from one another. Biographers have attributed most of his brutish and eccentric nature to the fact that he was abandoned by his father, an Oakland police officer and overly coddled by his mother, Lydia, who was married six times. Meyer had a half sister, Lucinda, who was diagnosed in her twenties with paranoid schizophrenia and was committed to California State mental institutions until her death in 1999. Mental illness ran in his family and it was something he secretly feared. During his entire life Russ Meyer spoke with only the highest reverence for his mother and sister.
Meyer was married to:
- Betty Valdovinos (born 1922, divorced)
- Edy Williams (born July 9, 1942, divorced)
- Eve Meyer (December 13, 1928 - March 27, 1977, died)
Contrary to some accounts, Meyer was never married to Kitten Natividad, his longtime companion and the star of his final two films.
Read more about this topic: Russ Meyer
Famous quotes containing the words personal and, personal, family and/or life:
“... it is a rather curious thing to have to divide one’s life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one’s official duties are at an end.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families—sometimes into no family at all. When you’re the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)