donyale_luna_vida.pdf

Donyale Luna Blog

Tag Archives: Donyale Luna

Racism III: A Night on the Town, a Day in Court

Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, left the US for London in December, 1966 largely because

Negroes were less discriminated against there. But in November 1968 racism raised its ugly head in the

posh Cavendish Hotel.

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/donyale1.jpg)

Donyale with Ian Quarrier (back), Mia Farrow, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate at the Paris premiere of

"Rosemary's Baby." Photo from Sharon Tate blog

In a row that received sensational international media coverage, Donyale, Mia Farrow and three male

companions were asked to leave the hotel restaurant at 4 am, ostensibly because the men weren’t

wearing ties. When they pointed out that men at the other tables were tieless, management called the

police. A fracas ensued and Donyale’s date, Canadian photographer Iain Quarrier, was arrested and

charged with assaulting a bobby.

A few days later, in a courtroom scene in which Mia and Donyale stole the show, Quarrier was found

guilty and fined $24.

This post examines how the media handled the event.

AP/UPI VERSIONS

In those days, most newspapers rewrote the releases coming from the two major wire services: AP (The

Associated Press) and UPI (United Press International). The way that the two handled the story shows

the dominant white culture of the time schizophrenically caught in the middle of an attitude shift

FEBJANNOVOCTOCTSEPSEPAUGAUGJUL

Donyale Luna | Donyale Luna Blog https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/

1 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/dsc00244.jpg)

La Luna and Ian Quarrier arrive at Bow St. court

toward Negroes.

Here’s the AP version, apparently in its entirety, as these words were printed verbatim in every

newspaper I read with the AP credit (the Tucson Daily Sun, the Yuma Globe, the Elyria (OH) Chronicle

and the Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe).

LONDON (AP) — Actress

Mia Farrow, 23.

and four com-

panions were

thrown out of a

fashionable West

End hotel Sun-

day.

Donyale Luna.

21, a 6-foot-taIl

American Negro

fashion model

said the

Cavendish Hotel

“re-

fused to tell us

why we were

being thrown

out.”

The management said it was

because the group created a dis-

turbance at their predawn

breakfast in the hotel’s restau-

rant.

Canadian-born actor Ian

Quarrier was charged with ob-

structing police who had been

called to escort them out.

Besides Miss Farrow, the for-

mer wife of Frank Sinatra, the

group included Steve Brant, an

American magazine writer, and

film director Donald Cammell.

Reading this, how do you feel about Luna et al? Obnoxious, spoiled celebrities, drinking and partying

too hard, disturbing the peace? Read on.

NEWSPAPER VERSIONS

In Fresno (CA), the Bee-Republican included something that AP—oops!— left out: Donyale’s second

sentence. Management didn’t give them a reason for the heave-ho, but “It was obvious (sic) because I

was colored.”


2 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/00000006.jpg)

Leaving the court with Quarrier. Pity we can't see the red skirt and blue suede boots in color!

As we look at more newspapers across the country, our story continues to unfold: the more balanced

UPI account says Mia also made a statement, in support of Donyale.

However, only the Des Moines Register ran Mia’s statement in full: she called the incident a cruel act of

intolerance. We must fight prejudice and intolerance whenever possible. We are fighting the battle for a better

world. We have inherited a mess. We cannot be passive while the future still holds promise.

How much promise did the future hold in Tucson or Yuma AZ, Elyria OH or Ironwood MI? The AP,

like many of its mainstream media clients, chose not to ruffle any white feathers with distasteful and

unsettling talk of racial discrimination. You didn’t have the information to even suspect the hotel of

provoking the incident by publicly humiliating Donyale about her skin color. Chances are you didn’t

even want to: she was another “American Negro” (one of them) acting up again.

Donyale was even skewered in her home town. The Detroit Free Press opened by recounting a previous

run-in our girl had with a Detroit hotel. There was the mandatory description of Donyale’s couture:

“She wore a short yellow Mongolian lamb coat over black velvet trousers, a red skirt and hip-length

blue suede boots.”

The

story

did

mention Farrow’s statement charging the hotel with racial discrimination (without the circumstances),

followed by the hotel’s counterclaim that the five were evicted for “disturbing other customers.”

Donyale “has not commented upon Mia’s discrimination charge,” it reported, “but she did say once: “I

never think of color. I went to a mixed high school. No one ever hurt me by prejudice.”

UPI STORIES

Readers of newspapers citing the UPI version got more balanced accounts.

The Long Beach Independent/Press-Telegram, for example, concluded: Cause of the disturbance was not

clear. Miss Farrow accused the hotel management of an immoral and cruel act of intolerance. Miss Luna said it

was pretty obvious they were thrown out “because I am colored.”

The hotel said they were rowdy.


3 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

Brandt said the hotel told them to leave because they were not wearing lies— although other men there weren’t

either. “The hotel refused to give another reason and called the police,” Brandt said. “That’s when the fighting

started.”

The Salt Lake City Tribune, bless their Mormon hearts, made Mia’s accusations the lead. And the

Canandaigua (NY) Daily Messenger ran only a paragraph from UPI, but concluded with Donyale’s full

statement (attributed to both her and Mia), that the hotel wouldn’t give a reason for the ouster but it was

obviously because of her skin color.

Another balanced account, from the Morgantown, West Virginia Dominion-News, citing the London

Daily Mirror as its source, unfortunately described Farrow (who was a top property, having just starred

starred in the year’s most talked-about film, Rosemary’s Baby) only as “recently divorced from Frank

Sinatra.” But it repeated her accusation that the group was refused service because Donyale was Negro.

It gave the hotel equal time, quoting a spokesman: “The Cavendish Hotel does not, never had, and will

never operate any kind of a color bar….they were disturbing other guests by their behavior.”

Jet, a Black magazine, zeroed in on the racial issue. Nothing happened when the white members of the party

entered, but when Miss Luna, who was trailing behind, came in, the group was told to get out. Brandt said the

group was told to get out because the men were not wearing ties, even though they pointed out that men at three

other tables were not wearing ties. The hotel refused to give another reason and called the police. That’s when the

fighting started.

Luna said they were thrown out ‘because I am colored. It was a nightmare. The Hotel staff and police were pushing

me around. The Hotel refused to tell us why we were being thrown out.’

And finally, we have a first-hand account of the incident. Photoplay magazine journalist Steve Brandt

was in Donyale’s party. Noting that false versions of the incident abounded, he wrote the following for

the Feb. 1969 issue (lightly edited from where it appears online at a blogsite for slain actress Sharon

Tate): (http:///sensationalsharontate.blogspot.com/search?q=donyale+luna)

PARTICIPANT VERSION

Mia Farrow, myself, Donyale Luna (a beautiful six foot Negro model who soon makes her film debut in Otto

Preminger’s Skidoo), Luna’s beau, producer Iain Quarrier and Donald Cammell (he just directed the new Mick

Jagger film Performance) decided to top off our evening of disco dancing with a late breakfast. Having been there

before, Iain suggested The Cavendish, a hotel that had an all-night restaurant.

We arrived and entered, everyone was seated at the table, and then Donyale (who’d been primping in the ladies’

room) made her entrance. At this point, one of the staff approached our table and advised us we couldn’t be served.

“Why not?” we queried.

We were told it was because none of the men were wearing ties. At least two of the four occupied tables were

comprised of men not wearing ties. We pointed this out to a grumpy middle-aged manageress who then said, “No

reason, I just want you out of here!”

It was obvious to all of us that we were being asked to leave because a Negro woman was seated with us. Even a

very self-conscious Miss Luna blurted out, “Why, is it because I am colored?”

The manageress walked away. Within 10 minutes, four policemen came running in and advised us we had to leave.


4 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

Right or wrong, they added, it was the hotel’s prerogative to refuse service to whomever they wished.

“But we just want to know why,” Mia chimed in.

The police admitted that no reason was given.

“Well, then, we’ll sit here until we get an explanation.” I figured I might as well get in on the issue.

A few seconds later two waiters grabbed Iain and started pulling him out of his seat. Iain fought back and then the

police joined in. Before we knew it, six men were on top of Quarrier, with Mia and Donyale screaming, “Leave him

alone!” as they tried to help him out. Both slender ladies were pushed clear across the room!

Next we learned Iain was being arrested for “obstructing justice.” Mia announced, If you’re taking him, we’re

coming too!” and we all traipsed down to the police station. After waiting an hour, Quarrier was released.

Both Mia and I stayed on in London, just to give testimony at his hearing.

Despite our protests, Iain was found guilty. Although he was fined only $20 (after all the headlines), the principle

of the incident still bothered all of us. As we left the court, people ran up and said, ‘We believe you…we’re on your

side…take it to a higher court.’ We decided not to; instead, La Luna reported the incident to the Racial

Discrimination Board.

Reading this, one can certainly question Brandt’s decision to “sit here until we get an explanation.”

Right or wrong, you’re asking for trouble if you don’t do what a cop tells you to—even in England. But

considering the group’s moral rightness and the enormity of the issue, and possibly a little nudge from

the alcohol, it’s understandable.

What was Donyale feeling before the fracas erupted? I’ll bet part of her wanted more than anything to

just creep away and not spend another minute at the center of the rapidly escalating tension. Another

part felt righteous indignation: “At last! Someone gets to see what I live in constant fear of being

subjected to!” and finally she must have felt warm all over to be with white friends who stood by her

side in such a humiliating situation.

No wonder she didn’t like to discuss her heritage!


5 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


Would you kick this woman out of...your hotel? Donyale graced this Minolata camera ad

IN COURT

Five days later Quarrier and Mia appeared in Bow Street Court, with Luna, Brandt and Cammell there

to support them. Quarrier faced a reduced charge of obstructing an officer and Mia of saying the F

word. Reportage of the hearing reached a new low.

On the stand Mia repeated the expletive, to the consternation of The El Paso Herald Post’s man on the

London beat. Arnold Latcham’s entire story was about the dastardly obscenity and included this

astonishing paragraph:

As the word was uttered spectators gasped and the monocle fell from the eye of a friend she had come to court with,

long-haired velvet-suited American journalist Steven Brandt. Magistrate Kenneth Harington remained stoic, and

the lawyers in court blushed.


6 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

Anderson (IN) readers received a long account from UPI, but if UPI maintained its earlier standard of

reporting both sides, the defense charges were edited out.

AP’s man on the scene, Geoffrey Anderson, filed a balanced story that added some missing details: The

case lasted all day long. Mia, feeling poorly, went to the doctor and didn’t show up until near the end.

The prosecution’s case was that they were drinking, they were dressed in “fantastic, way-out clothes

and the men wore no ties.” Not a word of disturbing others.

Police said that when they dragged Quarrier out of an elevator and through the hotel lobby, Miss Farrow and

Miss Luna were clawing at them and trying to get them free, and that Miss Luna was screaming,”Let him go!”

Good for the girls! Donyale’s testimony basically agreed: According to Miss Luna, Quarrier was brutally

and forcibly dragged from the hotel restaurant.

“He was in no physical condition to resist,” she said. I started screaming, “Let him walk. He’s not an animal.”

When Mia finished testifying, she squatted cross-legged on the floor of the crowded court—something which

probably has never been done before in an English court of law. (She was temporarily removed and sat

properly when she returned.)

Unfortunately, the only newspaper I could find that carried Anderson’s account was the Lowell (MA)

Sun.

The Detroit Free Press focused on Donyale and Mia’s courtroom appearance and behavior.

“Perjurors!” shouted Detroit model Donyale Luna as she and Mia Farrow were led from the London

courtroom.“It’s a lie!” shouted Mia.

Then Donyale’s clothes: Donyale wore a black satin catsuit with high-heel suede boots. There was a turquoise

stone set in the center of her forehead Indian-style, and she wore four large rings on her fingers.

It had been a bad day for Donyale, the story continued. First, she was handed a writ as she stepped from a

maroon Rolls-Royce outside the court. It was from a London hotel involving what Donyale called “a personal

matter.” Then, while she lighted a cigaret while waiting in the wrong court for the case to begin, she was rebuked

by an usher for smoking in court.

Mia’s antics came next: Her first words, on entering the court late, were: “Can I take my clothes off?”


7 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/babyprem.jpg)

Another shot from "Rosemary's Baby" premiere, showing off Mia's garb. That's Peter Sellers on the right

“What is bad?” she asked (on the stand) of an obscene language report. “I don’t think I said anything cruel. Oh, yes

I did. I said “Heil Hitler” because there were a lot of Germans attacking us.”

She then used a four-letter word and asked: “Would you call that bad? It’s the nicest thing you can say to anyone.”

After her testimony, Mia tried to enter the prisoner’s dock with Quarrier, but was removed by police. She sat cross-

legged on the floor of the crowded court for a while, then crossed the room and sat on the lap of the fourth

co-defendant, Donald Cammell, an American movie director.

End of story. No mention of racism from start to finish.

The Detroit News ran only a paragraph with a photo. They devoted one sentence to the event: The group

was tossed out of the eatery after the incident in which Miss Farrow used a four-letter word which she repeated

yesterday in coming to Quarrier’s defense in court.

Elsewhere, The Charleston Daily Mail focused on the prosecution statements:

“I had the impression they (Mia and Donyale) had both been drinking heavily,’ the Inspector testified. ‘They were

very confused and swore.”

“The party was ‘dressed in fantastic, way-out clothes, drinking, making a lot of noise, the men wore no ties.”

Further down the page, Apparently Mia Farrow swore at and clawed one of the cops. Farrow said a four-letter

word in court and put on a show.

You could read all of these stories and never have a clue that the party got the heave-ho because of

Donyale’s skin color.

With hindsight, we can question the ladies’ decision to put on a show rather than stress the

discrimination. But they got what they wanted: publicity, in an era when so many newspapers (and

even the wire services) routinely edited out any references to racism. If you think Donyale was in denial

of her heritage or chose to remain above the fray, this might be grist for your mill. But read on.

Piecing all these stories together to learn what really happened is like watching the movie Rashomon.

(Could we expect a clear understanding if Donyale was involved?) Racism was so prevalent at the time


8 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

that, although it was at the core of the fracas, some publications don’t even mention it.

Was the party indeed drunk and disorderly? Did the hotel’s charge that they were disturbing the other

customers have merit?

Several tell-tale clues suggest not.

First, the hotel couldn’t get its story straight. It claimed the party was rowdy only after saying the men

weren’t wearing ties (a common pretext then for denying admission to people of color).

Second, in Steve Brandt’s account the manageress says, “No reason, I just want you out of here.” This

echoes the waitress in the restaurant I took Donyale to and my apartment manager: “We don’t want

them in here.” It’s an accurate reflection of how many white people felt about Negroes.

Third is the amount of Quarrier’s fine: $24? Plus $15 court costs for a case that lasted all day? Judge

Harington couldn’t really dismiss the charge if Quarrier actually laid a hand on the bobby, even in

defense, but he clearly was not going for the hotel’s story.

And finally: Donyale Luna, so-called traitor to her race, she who chose to live her life above the fray,

filed a charge with the Racial Discrimination Board.

Go Donyale!

Sources:

“Producer Fined after London Bobby Struck,” Anderson (IN) Herald, 11/17/68

“Hotel Ousts Actress,” Canandaigua (NY) Daily Messenger, 11/11/68

Charleston Daily Mail, 11/15/68

Des Moines Register, 11/11/68

“Mia’s Pal, Hotel Here Also Clashed,” Detroit Free Press, 11/12/68

“Irked by the Verdict, Mia, Donyale Disrupt Court,” Detroit Free Press, 11/29/68

“Mia Stars in Court,” Detroit News, 11/16/68

Arnold Latcham, “Mia Farrow Startles London Court with Obscene Word,” El Paso Herald Post,

11/20/68

untitled, Elyria (OH) Chronicle-Telegram, 11/11/68

untitled, Fresno Bee Republican, 11/12/68

untitled, Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe, 11/11/68

“Bias Charged Against Hotel That Threw Out Mia, Luna,” Jet, 11/28/68

“Hotel Ousts Mia Farrow and Friends,” Long Beach Independent/Press-Telegram, 11/11/68

Geoffrey Anderson, “Mia Farrow Has Real-Life Role in London Brawl,” Lowell (MA) Sun, 11/15/68

Morgantown (WV) Dominion News, 11/12/68

Steve Brandt, “4:00 am Breakfast Incident,” Photoplay, Feb. 1969

“Fray in Hotel Prompts Racist Charges by Mia,” Salt Lake City Tribune, 11/12/68

Sharon Tate blog (http:///sensationalsharontate.blogspot.com/search?q=donyale+luna)

“Companions Tossed Out,” Tucson Daily Citizen, 11/11/68

“Mia and Friends Ejected from Hotel Room,” Yuma Sun, 11/11/68

Tags: African-American (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/african-american-2/), black cover

girl (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-cover-girl/), black supermodel

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-supermodel/), Donyale Luna


9 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/img_0061.jpg)

This wonderful photo by Michael Alexander accompanied the New York Times article. The caption

read: Luna, 6-foot-2-inch model, will act Groucho Marx's mistress in "Skidoo." Will her job open up

movie roles for Negro women? "I couldn't care less."

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), Donyale Luna biography

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna-biography/), first black supermodel

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/first-black-supermodel/)

COMMENTS 6 Comments

CATEGORIES Uncategorized

Race Part II Four Fateful Words: Donyale Puts her Foot in

her Mouth

Sorry for the long delay, folks; I’ve been traveling. Here’s the next installation about Luna and race.

I’ve also added photos to the last post.

Enjoy! —Don

_________________________________

If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Negroes, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I

couldn’t care less.

—Donyale Luna, New York Times, May 19,1968

If you’ve ever googled Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, you’ve read those words. She uttered

them in response to interviewer Judith Stone when Stone asked her if she thought that being cast in Otto

Preminger’s Skidoo would open up more movie roles for “Negro women.”

Donyale’s answer kindles passions in Blacks to this day. A future post will run some of the fiery


10 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2011/01

/dsc00736.jpg)

Salvador Dali claimed Luna was the reincarnation of Nefertiti

comments on Luna blogs more than 40 years later.

She initially responded to Stone’s question with an icy, “I don’t think about that.” How long had she

been telling the media she was of mixed heritage? Wasn’t Stone listening to her?

Then Donyale’s fiancé, German actor Georg Willing, piped up, “She’s white, didn’t you know?” I’ve

disliked Willing ever since I read that remark: what a sarcastic clod! And I can see I’m doing the same

thing as people who castigate Luna for her reply to Stone. Willing may have been merely showing

support and it came out wrong.

“But then,” writes Stone, “Luna reconsidered for a moment. ‘If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans,

Chinese, Indians, Negroes, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn’t care less’.”

Read the first sentence. Donyale, living the role of “Donyale Luna,” probably, as she said, “didn’t think

about that.” Now she thought about it and it sounded good. Had she stopped there, she had said the

right thing and also made her point that her blood was not pure Negro but mixed.

But would her landing the role actually bring down the barriers? Offhand, she didn’t know: “It could be

good, it could be bad.”

Then out tumbled the Four Fateful Words: “I couldn’t care less.”

Why on earth did she add them? The more I ponder it, the more I think they were an unfortunate

rhetorical fillip, words to fit the rhythm of a conclusion, spoken in haste by an uncertain woman all of 21

or 22 years old, beating a hasty retreat from a subject that could trigger a lot of pain and confusion inside

her back into the role of diva.

This was before Donyale and Salvador Dali had become buddies, when she would take a page from his

book of tricks and make up an outlandish response for the press, not a lie so much as an imaginative

creation to further her public image. At this point she didn’t have the tools to handle a savvy journalist

like Stone.


11 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

Stone’s portrait of Donyale is actually the most sympathetic and perceptive I’ve read. An unkind editor

ignored Luna’s first two sentences and wrote the photo caption: “Will her job open up movie roles for

Negro women? ‘I couldn’t care less’.” Later, Wikipedia’s account also accentuated the Four Fateful

Words and suggested that Donyale renounced her race. A hefty percentage of Net profiles copied

Wikipedia.

But it simply wasn’t true that Donyale couldn’t care less.

Ex-beau Sanders Bryant tells of a time Donyale and he visited a museum of slavery artifacts in Dresden,

Canada one day when she still lived in Detroit. “When Donyale saw those artifacts and the slave

conditions,” recalls Bryant, “she broke down in tears.”

Remember, this was “Donyale Luna,” who was going to be happy only, who had banished tears from

her life.

Early articles about Luna portrayed her as the new top Negro model. “She never denied that,” says

Bryant. “But she had that other side….To Donyale, denying any part of that was like denying herself.”

Donyale’s remarks to Detroit Free Press reporter Colleen O’Brien in 1966 show careful wording about her

ethnicity: “Most of my publicity has been because I’m dark-skinned. But I think the reaction would have

been the same if I were white because of my features.” Note two things here:

1. She said she wasn’t white.

2. She described herself as “dark-skinned” as opposed to “Negro” or even “colored.” (And she wasn’t

even that dark-skinned.)

When asked whether she thought her success was due to her color, she also told O’Brien, “I never think

of myself as a brown-skinned girl.”

While Donyale was tuned into the racial struggle, Bryant says, “she felt that she should be above the

fray.” She was a seeker. She adorned her third eye with bindis. She took psychedelics. She saw the Big

Picture, where racism was resolved. There she dwelt—by herself, if necessary, until the struggle and

fighting was over.

Not a position that gains you points in history, but understandable for an artist who chose to live her life

at the mythic level. Three years later, sounding weary of the subject, she told Free Press reporter George

Kirvay, “I honestly don’t know what I am. I’ve been described as being both a white person and a

Negro. Whatever people want to think…they can.”

I’m not exonerating Donyale from the charge that she denied her heritage. At age 15 she told Sanders

Bryant she was Hawaiian. At age 17 or 18 she told me she was Polynesian. She was honing a story that

eventually included a Mexican father and a veritable but unverifiable smorgasbord of colorful ancestors.

But as was usually the case with Donyale’s fabrications, this one had some truth mixed in: her mother

was half Irish and that entire side of her family, according to Sanders Bryant, “could have been more

‘Hawaiian’ than she was.”

Donyale was a scared little girl playing diva, the only role in life large enough for her to make her

qualities virtues, not flaws. As such, she wasn’t tapped into the world of ordinary reality so much as a

deeper, more powerful truth. She was descended from Nefertiti, from goddesses and mermaids. Her

ancestry was part of her mythic life.


12 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

Many if not most of us, black and white alike, while being primarily of one ethnicity, have mixed

heritage. Negroes were much more second-class citizens 45 years ago than now, and it was common for

those who could pass for white or mixed to do so.

The mythic part of Donyale loved her skin. She was proud of it. The little girl part felt ashamed of it and

afraid in the world. She passed; or at least she tried to. What a heady game to play when you’re front

and center on the world stage!

From that location, every foible, every shortcoming becomes magnified in people’s minds. Donyale was

no trailblazer, no Muhammad Ali. Neither are most of us, but we live with our other pedestrian fellows

quietly and no one thinks badly of us.

Sometimes the times turn some of us into trailblazers. Donyale lived in one of those times, an

extraordinary time. If she failed to pick up the machete, how does that make her worthy of anyone’s

derision? It merely shows that in this arena she was ordinary. Rather than anger or blame, we might

choose to feel compassion for her. What would you or I have done for our primary race in her shoes

(when she wore them)?

How many of us can handle the limelight? Especially a limelight so dazzling, so sudden, so early in life,

with no one to guide us through its blinding brilliance? When I first learned of Donyale’s rise to glory in

1966, after I had moved to California., I thought: “Of all the people I knew in Detroit, Donyale is the last

one I would have wished fame upon.” (Incredibly, when I was seeing her, I didn’t even know she was

seeking it.)

Be careful of what you wish for, the adage goes, lest your wish comes true. Donyale Luna’s wish came

true and she paid the price: this subject of race that so pained and tormented her, this issue that she fled

halfway across the globe to escape, was thrust in her face wherever she went.

Sources:

Sanders Bryant, conversation, Nov. 2009

George Kirvay, Detroit Free Press, 1969

Colleen O’Brien, Detroit Free Press, 1966

Judith Stone, “Luna, Who Dreamed She was Snow White,” New York Times, 5/19/68

wikipedia, Donyale Luna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donyale_luna)

Tags: African-American (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/african-american-2/), biography

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/biography/), black supermodel

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-supermodel/), Donyale Luna

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), fashion

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/fashion/), first black supermodel

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/first-black-supermodel/), racism

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/racism/)

COMMENTS 1 Comment

CATEGORIES African American, biography, donyale luna, fashion, racism, Uncategorized

Donyale and race, part I: an outcast in her white


13 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


The many shades of Donyale Luna: Here she's lily-white on her groundbreaking Harper's Bazaar

cover

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/4bdoqko.jpg)

Here she's dark chocolate with Brian Jones

boyfriend’s world

OK, we’ve looked at the volatile relationship between her parents as one factor in Peggy Ann Freeman’s

teen decision to mold herself into “Donyale Luna.” Today we’ll look at the other: racism.

Full disclosure first: I’m a honky. My mind and capacity for empathy allow me a degree of

understanding, but I was on the other side of the Black experience of the 1950′s and 60′s.

That said–racism is a huge topic in Donyale’s life and we’re opening a potential Pandora’s Box here.

This inaugural post is up close and personal: four stories from my time with her in 1964. Remember,

although Donyale and I informally “went together” for four or five months, I learned only last year that

she was “colored.”


14 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


Blue-eyed and pale-skinned on the cover of Queen

First story: I took Donyale to dinner at The Famous Italian Cafe, where I worked part-time delivering

pizzas. The next night when I showed up for work, feeling proud, I asked one of the waitresses what she

thought of Donyale.

“We don’t like ‘them’ in here,” she sniffed.

I was taken aback. “She’s not Negro, Kay. She’s Polynesian.”

“We still don’t like ‘them’ in here,” Kay repeated.

Second story: I lived in a seedy apartment building off-campus with a lot of sad tales. It was a tough

neighborhood and Jimmy, the manager, locked the door each night about midnight. One night after

Donyale and I left Verne’s Bar, I brought her over to my place. I knocked until Jimmy let us in.

The next morning Jimmy told me, “We don’t allow ‘them’ in the building.” Yep, same word. Same

inflection.

Same reaction from me: “Jimmy, she’s not Negro. She’s Polynesian.”

“So she says. We still don’t let ‘them’ in here.”

A few mornings later, Jimmy told me, “That colored girl came over to see you again last night. I didn’t

let her in.”

Of course Donyale never mentioned it. What, did she want me to suspect she was Negro? And I didn’t

mention it to her: I felt embarrassed, bad that I missed her, but basically I was clueless.

Third story: Donyale never said no when I suggested going anywhere or doing anything. The only time


15 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/000000154.jpg)

A pale bindi and white canine accessory darken Donyale's skin

she even hesitated was when I invited her to an overnight visit to Albion College (all-white, I realized

only when I re-examined this last year), where I had attended the year before. “Where will I sleep?” she

asked me. I figured she was afraid I was trying to trick her into bed. “I’ll call my friend Ann. Somebody

in the dorm is always away, and you can stay in their bed.”

Ann said sure, no problem. There never was.

We arrived later than planned, just before the girls’ 9pm curfew. Ann was less overjoyed to see us than I

expected: I figured because we were late. She said she thought she could find a bed. (What, she didn’t

have one lined up?) I couldn’t stay to make sure; boys had to be off the premises at 9pm. I told Donyale

to call me at the frat house if there was any problem.

The next morning I asked her how it went.

“OK, I guess,” she said. “Ann brought me a blanket and pillow and I slept in the lobby.” Again, clueless,

I heard her “OK” and figured the dorm was uncharacteristically full.

We were going to stay the day. But a few minutes later Donyale said, “Let’s go home now.” My plan

hadn’t been very well-conceived; I had nothing specific in mind for the day anyway.

“Let’s have breakfast first.” We ate and drove home.

Only last year did I put myself in Donyale’s shoes (she did wear them, mostly) and feel the heart-

stabbing grief that must have gnawed at her heart–the rage at being turned away from the door of the

guy she was sweet on because someone thought she wasn’t fit to enter; the shame of having to sleep in

the lobby because no white girl would share a room with her.

I can only guess at the awful patterns created in her mind and heart, the same self-deprecating–even

self-loathing– patterns that governed Negroes everywhere at that time. I can begin to understand the

black man who told me recently that he watched Leave it to Beaver and wanted his mother to look like

Louise Cleaver. “I know white supremacy is real,” he said, ” because I’ve been a white supremacist,

although I’m in black skin.”


16 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

And only now do I see the culturebound racism inherent in my response to Kay and Jimmy. True, I

thought Donyale was Polynesian. Nonetheless, today I’d jump all over their racism. Back then, although

I knew their attitude was wrong, the idea of challenging it just didn’t exist in the white world–in my

clueless world, at least. I had heard about Malcolm X and his murderous Black Muslims out in

California (I didn’t even know he was from Detroit). Even while Abbie Hoffman and other prescient

white youth were getting their bones broken by Jim Crow lawmen in the South, I watched a Negro rally

march along Woodward Avenue past the Famous Italian Cafe (along with the rest of the crew, including

Kay) and didn’t know what I felt about that: the idea of Negroes marching was a new neuronal implant

to me.

For the era, I was relatively unprejudiced: my parents fought for Negroes in the unions, and I went to a

well-mixed high school. I dwell on myself here to illustrate the pre-civil rights white mindset –even the

liberal white mindset–to balance what I’ve imagined of the Negro mindset.

Now for the final story.

Jimmy’s three little words: “So she says,” got a little toehold in the back of my mind: was Donyale a

Negro?

One day we were sitting on a bed in a friend’s house. Donyale was knitting, smiling her perpetual

smile. I felt I had a right to know. “Are you Negro?”

The needles clacked; behind the smile was an almost imperceptible tightening. It was the only time I

ever felt tension between us. “I’m Polynesian,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter to me if you are Negro,” I said. Was that true? Yes: what prejudice I held was all

unconscious. It would make her slightly less exotic to me, but she’d still be the most exotic woman I’d

ever met.

“I’m Polynesian,” she repeated.

About a month after I stopped seeing her, I saw her with three Negro men at the Little Theatre at Wayne

State.

What got into me? I greeted her and said, “You said you’re not Negro, but I see you hanging out with

Negroes. Are you sure?”

Graceful as always, she replied: “I seem to get along with them. I like them and they like me.”

Last year her sister told me Donyale was heartbroken over a white boyfriend who accused her of being

black. “She cried and cried,” she said.

I cried too–45 years too late.

Tags: black supermodel (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-supermodel/), Donyale Luna

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), Donyale Luna biography

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna-biography/), first black supermodel

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/first-black-supermodel/), racial prejudice

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/racial-prejudice/), racism

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/racism/)


17 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc00762.jpg)

Donyale looking her most beautiful in this still from Skidoo


COMMENTS 8 Comments

CATEGORIES African American, biography, donyale luna, fashion, racism, Uncategorized

Skidoo: Donyale Luna’s Only Hollywood Film

Great news! We’re taking time out from the chronicle of Donyale Luna’s childhood for an exciting event!

Luna’s only Hollywood movie, Otto Preminger’s Skidoo—which Paramount Studios yanked and stuffed

in its vaults after it flopped in 1968—will soon be available through Olive Films (olivefilms.com

(http://www.olivefilms.com), click on Coming Soon on the far left). (It’s not there yet, but they

promised soon.)

Skidoo—as befits Donyale—is… different. Maybe even weird. It’s one of the strangest films ever made by

a major Hollywood studio and director: as one reviewer put it, “There’s no movie remotely like it.” And

its making is filled with fascinating side stories.


18 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

/dsc00770.jpg)

The bride looks pure and innocent, right down to the camera sundog on her heart. A moment later

she kisses Cesar Romero (who isn't her groom)

Just about everyone who was anyone in Hollywood appeared in Skidoo: Jackie Gleason is retired

gangster Tony Banks (likely a model for Tony

Soprano). Carol Channing (who hid her own racial mixture until 2002 and was never criticized for it) is

his wife, Flo. Groucho Marx is his boss, “God.” Donyale Luna is God’s sex-crazed mistress. (Now there’s

a screen credit! Groucho was 77 at the time; Donyale was 21 or 22, and of a different racial hue. But, as

Preminger said, “Call a character God and everything becomes a little unreal.”) John Phillip Law,

Arnold Stang, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Frankie Avalon, Alexandra Hay, George Raft, Burgess

Meredith, Peter Lawford, Slim Pickens, Frank Gorshin, Austin Pendleton…such awesome star power as

was seldom gathered into one movie before or since. Rudi Gernreich designed Donyale’s shift, and

Harry Nilsson wrote the music and sang the closing credits.

The film is also distinguished by who’s not in it. Faye Dunaway, atop the heap after Bonnie & Clyde, was

originally cast in Donyale’s role but she refused, even though she was under contact and a resultant

lawsuit by Preminger cost her dearly. Groucho was a last-minute replacement: Donyale might have

wound up the mistress to Frank Sinatra, Rod Steiger, Zero Mostel, Anthony Quinn, Alfred Hitchcock or

Senator Everett Dirksen!

Skidoo was Groucho’s last film; for three of the stars— Pendleton, Hay and Luna—it was their first. Hay

was recruited from the Warner Playhouse, where she was starring in Michael McClure’s The Beard,

appearing nude and getting arrested nightly. Like Donyale, she died young—of heart failure at 46.

The story of how Donyale got the role is worth telling. Preminger “discovered” her at a party for

Twiggy, where she invited him to a screening of Andy Warhol’s Snow White—written and starring Luna.

At the screening, in Preminger’s office the next day, Warhol was silent until the director offered him a

drink. Warhol asked if he had any amphetamines. Preminger proffered a box of diet pills. “He emptied

the pill box,” recalled Preminger, “ate them all and still didn’t say anything.” Inside Warhol’s placid

exterior, things must have been lighting up and shooting around like pinballs cascading in a machine.

It’s a tribute to his nervous system that he could gulp gobs of speed down his craw and still sit there,

outwardly as meditative as a monk.

The next day Donyale invited Preminger to lunch to ask if he wanted to finance Snow White. “I said I

didn’t finance films,” recalled Preminger; “I directed them.”

“Oh, you direct too,” she said. Soon after, Dunaway bought out and Preminger, enthralled by Luna,

signed her.

Donyale was ecstatic about her role: “…For the first time I can be someone I’ve always wanted to play, a

sexy, seductive type of gangster girl. Now it’s even better. God’s girl.”

Her opening scene, standing beside Groucho at a pool table, accentuates her height. Thereafter she

appears mostly beside 6’3” Cesar Romero or 6’5” John Phillip Law and appears less tall than she was.

How was her acting? Both she and Groucho gave the director fits with their opening pool table scene.

“Luna’s inability to stand still while standing behind Marx’s chair drove Preminger to a fury,” reported

a film student covering the set for his Ph.D. But the big problem was Groucho’s “inability, even with a

teleprompter, to get through his lines.” This cost Donyale some screen exposure, as Preminger kept


19 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc007482.jpg)

God and his mistress enjoy a game of bumper pool. How long is Luna's neck?!!


/dsc007571.jpg)

"What's wrong with my body? Don't you like my body?" Twice she spoke these lines, which must

have been liberating for her

deleting lines, reducing the scene “down to the barest essentials.” It still required 14 takes.

She delivered her remaining lines better than on the Detroit stage, although her laugh sounds forced at

times. She adopted one of her patented made-up accents for the role—just a slight bend in the way she

normally talked.

But—as befits a model—Donyale did her real acting with her body. Clad in a lime-colored Gernreich

shift, she undulates around God’s yacht like a snake. The reviews focused on her exposed derrierre

cleavage, but the real attention-getter is her sweeping, sinewy bronzed back. Her fingers, long and

spindly as daddy longlegs, are usually in motion and seem to occupy half the screen. Although they

diminish her most spectacular feature, her blue contact lenses are startling.

Here’s a synopsis of Skidoo: From his yacht (it actually belonged to John Wayne), God (Groucho), orders

retired mobster Tony (Gleason), living a suburban life with wife Carol Channing, to sneak into prison to

off a squealer (Rooney). While Tony’s locked up, Flo and their daughter (Hay) open their house to a

tribe of hippies led by Stash (Law). Behind bars, Tony accidentally ingests some LSD smuggled in by his


20 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


"Her fingers, long and spindly as daddy longlegs, are usually in motion and seem to occupy half the

screen"

cellmate (“the Professor,” Pendleton) and realizes he can’t kill anyone. He and the Professor dump the

rest of the contraband into the prison lunch and pretty soon everyone in the joint is ripped. While the

guards trip, Tony and the Professor escape in a jerry-rigged hot air balloon. They arrive on God’s yacht

at the same time as Flo and the hippies. A new Tony approves his daughter’s marriage to Stash, while

God and the Professor sail off into the sunset in a cannabis haze.

After Skidoo landed with a huge belly-flop—some theaters yanked it within a week of opening

—Paramount quietly stuffed it into the studio vaults, where it has remained until this autumn. Internet

reviewers who call Skidoo the worst movie ever made suggest that Preminger’s children prevailed on

Paramount to lock it up to save their father’s reputation. According to several IMDb reviewers,

Preminger’s kids do claim Skidoo is “not their father’s best work.” But they may be less concerned about

Skidoo’s quality than its politics. While it pokes fun equally at hippie culture and the Establishment

(represented by the mobsters), it lands squarely in the corner of LSD: once Tony imbibes it, his violent

instincts turn to mush.

In 1968, everyone in Hollywood was looking to capture the hippie mystique, but, except for Dennis

Hopper (Easy Rider), they were clueless. Preminger gave it the old college try: he dropped acid under

Timothy Leary’s tutelage and even got Leary to star in the trailer. The Professor’s words of guidance as

Tony comes on to the experience sound like Leary himself could have spoken them.

But the acid imagery is ludicrous (what did Preminger see on his journey? Certainly not screws with

Groucho’s head on top!) and the actors, few of whom had any psychedelic experience, mostly played

drunk. One could also argue that Preminger’s view of acid appears naïve in light of later revelations

about CIA hanky-panky under the influence. But he may have been making fun of the hippie peace-

and-love message.

Besides Preminger, Groucho also famously underwent a maiden voyage—at the age of 77!—with

counterculture clown and Yippee! co-founder Paul Krassner, “to prepare for his role.” (Read Krassner’s

account here (http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/groucho-marx-on-lsd.html).)

At least one other cast member was familiar with LSD. On May 19, 1968—during the shooting of Skidoo


21 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


Oops! We wouldn't want to leave Frankie Avalon out of the harem


The garb. The back. The behind. Luna by Gernreich

and 11 years to the day before her death—Donyale Luna extolled its virtues in the New York Times.

In September

1967,

according to

Andy Warhol

in POPism, she

castigated her

roommates in

New York for

taking acid. Some

time in between, she

dropped for the first

time. Was it also to

prepare for her role?

It’s doubtful she

scored it from

Preminger, who got

his from Leary and

tried it just once. Did she get turned on by the Beatles, with whom she was hanging out at the time? Or

by someone in Rome, from where she flew to California for the film? If anyone reading has a clue as to

who turned Donyale on—it’s another major unanswered question about her life.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times liked Skidoo, but he was a lone voice in the wilderness: it was

skewered by the critics, who understood acid and hippies even less than Preminger. With some

exceptions, blogger critics have been harsh as well. Many of their points are well-taken: Skidoo is far

from a comic masterpiece and it doesn’t always succeed even on its own terms. Had I seen it in 1968, I

would have detested it for its shallowness and misunderstanding of hippie culture.

But having viewed it several times in 2009 and 2010, I like it for its goofiness and for the gentleness

behind its jabs at both hippies and the Establishment. I come away feeling good. Preminger was known

as a German autocrat whose sense of humor was lugubrious when it existed at all. But in Skidoo, with all

its missed opportunities, embarrassing dialog and flat Hey-Look-at-Me sight gags, I think, for just one

film, he tapped into a higher comic vein, one that blends compassion with slapstick and satire: he

flashed us an Olympian smile at humanity’s foibles.

I think of Skidoo as a very ambitious film that failed nobly: besides American culture and the Sixties

subculture, Preminger took on all of technology and seemed to be jousting at organized religion. He

overreached and simply fell short, partly because he was too much in the Hollywood box to capture the

social revolution in the streets and partly because his sense of humor was puerile and heavy-handed.

Three things about the movie that I really love: 1. The production number at the end with Carol

Channing singing “Skidoo” as the hippies invade God’s yacht 2. The entire prison population on LSD.

Shockingly inaccurate, but what a concept! The screenplay wisely intersperses story development so it

doesn’t grow tiring. 3. Our girl Donyale Luna, gliding gracefully around God’s yacht in her lime-green

Gernreich shift, seducing every man she sees.

References

Chris Fujiwara, The World and its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger, Farrar, Straus & Giroux,


22 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc00765.jpg)

Can Stash (John Phillip Law) resist these seductive charms?

2008, pp360-366

Pierre Greenfield, “Out of the Past: Skidoo,” parallax-view.org (http://parallax-view.org/2009/11

/05/out-of-the-past-skidoo/)

Skidoo reviews, imdb.com (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063612/)

Paul Krassner, “I Took LSD with Groucho Marx” (http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/groucho-

marx-on-lsd.html)

Judith Stone, “Luna, Who Dreamed of Being Snow White, New York Times, 5/19/68.

Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett, POPism: the Warhol ‘60s, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1980, p237

wikipedia.com, Carol Channing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Channing)

Tags: donyale in hollywood (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-in-hollywood/),

Donyale Luna (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), skidoo

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/skidoo/)

COMMENTS Leave a Comment

CATEGORIES Uncategorized

Four weddings and a funeral


23 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


Donyale Luna: off in another world?

It’s a given on Internet lore that Donyale Luna created a fantasy world to escape the terrors of growing

up with a father who worked sporadically and was an abusive brute.

What is the source for this? Is it true, or has Nathaniel Freeman been given a bum rap?

Whatever his nature, he and Donyale’s mother Peggy had a really wild ride: they were married and

divorced four times!

A powerful chemistry must have bound them together, because as life partners they were like oil and

water. Or better, oil and fire.

Nate came to Detroit from Alabama as part of the great Black migration to the auto factories. Contrary to

reports of his lackadaisical approach to work, he was employed by Ford Motor Co. nonstop for 37 years.

He worked most of those years in the foundry, shoveling metal into hot furnaces. “At one point he was

going to quit,” says his daughter, Donyale’s sister Lillian, “because he was getting older and the work

was so hard. He went in and talked to the bosses, told them he was tired of getting burned. They gave

him a promotion to an easier job in a different division.”

The foundry was hard work, but the pay was much better than what Nate could earn down South. He

was not qualified for office work, and he was content to muscle down for eight hours, then kick back

with his family.

His wife Peggy was beautiful, but she was a woman and a Negro. (She was only half-Negro, but in those

days mulattos were Negroes.) As such, her job as a receptionist at the downtown YWCA might be as

much as she could reasonably aspire to. But she had drive, the same drive that she imparted to her

eldest daughter. Seeking to climb the social mobility ladder, she played real estate. This undoubtedly

created friction between her and Nate, who after eight hours of shoveling was content to read the paper,

have a beer and watch TV.


24 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

No alcohol in the house

That was another source of friction. Peggy didn’t allow alcohol in the house—which also meant no visits

from his brothers, who drank.

“Our mother wouldn’t allow us to associate with my father’s brothers,” says Donyale’s sister Lillian.

“You can’t do that to a grown man, tell him he can’t have company in his own house, when he’s

bringing money home, working every week. He has to have his way sometimes.

“She was strong-willed and what she said went. There was no argument; that’s the way it was. She was

strong; almost the head of the household. But the man has to be the head of the household. When you

have a 100% man like my dad, you can’t have a second head of the household.

“So they clashed. My dad was high-spirited and my mother was even more high-spirited. They clashed

on a lot of things.”

If anyone, it was Donyale’s mother who was abusive to the children. Sanders Bryant remembers Lillian

telling him that Peggy was physically abusive to both Josephine and Donyale, hitting them at times.

Lillian concurs that Josephine had a rough time:. “My mother treated her very harshly.” But Donyale,

she says, got preferential treatment.

Where did Peggy get her aversion to demon rum? Was she traumatized early in life by an alcoholic

parent? Or did Nate have a drinking problem?

“My favorite was my daddy,” says Lillian. “I was closer to him.” Donyale loved him too, and visited

him whenever he and Peggy were between marriages. This suggests that Nate Freeman was not a

rummy.

However, everyone agrees that he did get drunk and beat Peggy on occasion.

By AA definition, if your consumption of alcohol negatively affects your life, you’re a candidate for the

12 Steps. Beating your wife is a felony. So Nate had a problem, yes.

Peggy had a problem too: she was rigid, a control freak. And she was smart and sophisticated—hell, she

was even half white—and she could talk rings around Nate. Both of their problems, really, were each

other. They loved each other and they hated each other.

Donyale loved both parents

Donyale loved her dad and she loved her mom. Her dad must have also brought fear into her heart. Not

that he would ever do anything to harm her, but if he came home with liquor on his breath, he and her

mom would shout. It scared her a lot when they shouted, because shouts could come to blows, and that

made her sick and took her right out of reality into dissociative denial. It was the most horrible of all the

bad memories Donyale Luna was learning to banish from her psyche—out, where they could do her no

harm.

Or so she thought. “She tried to keep it all out,” says Sanders Bryant, “but you could see some things got

in.”

One day in March, 1965, about six months after Donyale had left for New York, Bryant visited the

family. He found Peggy sitting on Nate’s lap. They were considering yet another spin on their marriage-


25 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

go-round. “I had never seen them so close,” he said.

Sometime after he left, somebody pushed somebody’s button and the koochie-koochie stopped—we’ll

never know how the argument started. Nate left and headed for the bar.

She makes me so mad, I’m gonna punch out her lights. I’ve done it before. True, but it made him feel so bad

when he sobered up, he swore he’d never do it again.

But after he got mad he started getting scared, and another drink and the anger returned, only without

the shame this time, and he felt pretty righteous, and finally he figured it out: she’s taking away my

manhood, trying to wear the pants in the family. Even my daughters can see that I’m not half a man around her. If

I don’t show them what a man is, they could turn out like her. And I’ll show her too, bitch! Just a few more drinks

while I plan out what I’m gonna say to her. She won’t be talkin’ back to me if she’s afraid I’m gonna hit her; she’ll

listen to my side all right.

And finally Nate had enough to drink, and he had his words figured out, and off he went.

Peggy heard him pull into the driveway. There he is, steaming drunk again, thinks he’s gonna hit me around

and hurt me, hurt me real bad and put bruises on my skin that makes me feel shame whenever anyone looks at me.

But hey, I’m not gonna be freezing up in fear this time. No more! She opened her purse and got out the gun

she had bought for the next time. And I’m not afraid to use it! Not to kill him: I’ll shoot him in the leg.

Oh God, my heart’s pounding, I can hardly breathe, I can’t do it—yes! Yes I can! She holds out the gun and

walks in a dream world to the door: “You go away Nate. Do you hear? I got a gun and I ain’t afraid to

use it.”

Listen to her, out on the porch, still yelling! Nate got out of the car and headed toward her.

A gun! He never figured on that.

But when she tried to aim it at him, Nate saw that she was too riled up to hold her hand steady. It just

pissed him off more. He walked straight at her, didn’t even break his stride.

Peggy empties the gun

That was the final frustration for Peggy: didn’t he even see the gun? A strange energy moved through

her body and she could barely hold it in her hand, which was shaking like she had the palsy. Suddenly

something else took control and the weapon exploded in her hand, and kept exploding, six shots in wild

succession, firing off in all directions.

Two bullets landed somewhere in distant corners of the neighborhood. Two more drilled holes in the

car that Nate was driving. One burrowed into the trunk of the tree in the front yard, where it remains to

this day. The other—by chance or in a moment of life-changing clarity?—sped straight into Nathaniel

Freeman’s heart.

Was it the first bullet or the last? Even for this, there are two stories. Sanders Bryant says the last. Lillian,

who at age 18 witnessed the shooting, says it was the first.

“My mother didn’t want to kill him,” she says. “She just wanted to shoot him and knock him down or

something.”


26 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


The house where the shooting occurred. 45 years later, a bullet remains lodged in the tree on the right

Bryant concurs: “It wasn’t a murder; it was almost a fluke. She wasn’t angry; she was afraid, and he kept

coming at her. She told him to leave. He was coming toward the porch when he was shot. She was on

the porch and he was in the driveway. The distance between them was no more than here to there. She

missed five times.”

Lillian called the ambulance. “The hospital was half a block away and nobody tried to get him there.

Nobody tried to revive him or keep him awake or anything. They didn’t do anything for him. I don’t

want to talk about that any more.”

The police arrested Peggy. Lillian, in shock, called Sanders Bryant, who came and stayed in the house

with her. The next day, after interrogating Peggy Freeman for 24 hours, the police called it self-defense

and released her. When Nate was laid out for burial, Peggy asked Sanders Bryant, who was a budding

photographer, to take a photo of him. She also sold Bryant the bullet-marred car.

Donyale stayed in New York

Donyale, who was in New York, did not come home for the funeral, something for which she still

catches flak on the Net.

Did I mention that the shooting happened in March, 1965? That was the very month her

groundbreaking Harper’s Bazaar cover appeared. And—not to get ahead of our story, but she also got

married that March. What an incredible three-way convergence of psyche-bending experiences for an

ultra-sensitive 18-year-old girl to undergo!

That ultra-sensitive girl had spent 18 years soaking in all the family dynamics, although her

understanding of them was probably suppressed, causing little-understood emotional energies to careen

wildly through her psyche and body.

Did Nate’s eldest daughter pay her respects in her own way, with some sort of spiritual ceremony? Or

did the let’s-be happy mind of Donyale Luna simply give the incident its walking papers?

But go home? To a funeral? Go home to drench herself once again in the woes of that tragic war-torn

couple whom she claimed didn’t even spawn her? Hell no, she didn’t go back.


27 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


The world meets Donyale Luna. This is the March 1965 Harper’s Bazaar cover that launched her

career. The magazine had never run a Negro on the cover before, and the editors made sure Donyale

was more vanilla than chocolate.

She got married instead.

__________________

Would you go back? Let us all know. Send a comment!

Sources:

Sanders Bryant III, conversations Sept.-Oct. 2009

Lillian Washington, conversation, Oct. 2009

Tags: Donyale Luna (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), Donyale Luna

biography (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna-biography/), Donyale Luna family

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna-family/), Harper's Bazaar cover

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/harpers-bazaar-cover/), tragic shooting

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/tragic-shooting/)

COMMENTS 8 Comments

CATEGORIES African American, biography, donyale luna, fashion

Metamorphosis Part II

As a young teen Peggy Ann Freeman was “crazy” about Johnny Mathis. “She was in love with him,”

says her sister Lillian. “He was so handsome—a good-looking black person.” She also liked Motown

and loved the movie West Side Story.

But this was the Beatnik era, and Peggy Ann, as she stepped into the role of Donyale Luna, acquired


28 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/00000012.jpg)

Donyale opposite Bob Moldowan in Detroit Civic Theatre production of Anything Goes. Donyale

played Chastity

more subterranean tastes. Jazz. Folk music, especially Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Poetry. And of course

theatre. She hung out with beau/friend Sanders Bryant at a coffeehouse called the Chessmate. They took

in stage productions of Porgy and Bess.

Some pop stars made the cut through her evolving preferences: Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis Jr., the

entire Rat Pack. She enjoyed Dr. Zhivago and the original cast production of The Music Man.

And Elizabeth Taylor—although when I took her to see Ms. Taylor’s Cleopatra, what enthralled her most

was the character of Cleopatra.

Young Donyale star-struck

The newly-minted Donyale Luna was star-struck. She dreamed of being a movie star herself.

“Continuously. That’s all you would see, hear or smell from Donyale,” says sister Lillian. “‘Oh, I’ve got

to go to practice. I’ve got to go to rehearsal. I’ve got to go to this place over here; we’re having practice.

We’re having cast party.’ She was totally into it.”

“She was always busy, involved,” Sanders Bryant concurs. “She wasn’t at home in front of the TV set;

she stayed out a lot.” She didn’t hang out with friends often because “she was involved in plays after

school, singing, other activities.”

Donyale’s constant whirl was painful to Lillian. “I wanted to go too,” she says, “ but she never invited

me and I didn’t want to just bust in and be rude. I was so jealous I didn’t know what to do. She was

always going somewhere and I couldn’t go anywhere.”

Donyale was nothing if not sensitive, and she must have felt Lillian’s unhappiness. Some big sisters

might try to include her. Others, especially anyone on as fast a track as Donyale Luna, spinning by her

younger sister as she danced into her dreams, might not.

At age 16 and 17, Donyale was performing onstage at the Civic Center Theatre in Detroit, appearing as

Cherry in Paint Your Wagon, Ariel in The Tempest, Chastity in Anything Goes and Terry (the lead) in Stage


29 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/diana-

ross-sp03.jpg)

Did Donyale sing with the Supremes? Diana Ross graduated from Cass Tech 1½ years before Donyale

did from sister school Commerce High. Ms. Ross co-produced and starred in the movie Mahogany,

about a black supermodel, which some say is based on the life of Donyale Luna. Maybe Donyale was

the starting point, but there are few similarities.

Door.

Donyale’s first flirtation with fame may have come not under the limelight, however, but in another

arena. She loved singing and joined the Commerce High chorus, another small chorus at school and a

large choir in Glee Club as well. And she was talented enough to be accepted into the Honors Choir.

At that time Diana Ross was attending high school at Cass Tech, next door to Commerce. Sanders

Bryant was driving Donyale somewhere when the Supremes’ first song came on the radio. “Imagine

when she told me she was singing backup when that was recorded! It almost caused me to have an

accident!” He recalled dropping her off at the Motown door some months before. “That door led

directly down to Studio A.,” he says. “There was no lobby, nowhere else to go.”

Sang with Supremes?

Lillian is skeptical that it happened. “That was something big; she would have told me about that.”

It’s hard to know. Donyale was a master at deception, but her lies were usually more creative than

simply claiming she did something that she didn’t.

Bryant, who took journalism classes with her in high school, believes that even more than her

well-chronicled ambition to be a great actress (“like Anna Magnani”), she aspired to writing screenplays

and stage plays. “She had already written some screenplays,” Bryant says. “Andy Warhol shot Snow

White, which she wrote back in high school. She was planning to go to the University of Hawaii—she

still lived and talked this Hawaiian persona with me—to pursue a writing career. She always thought in

international terms.”

When I was seeing Donyale, whenever I mentioned my writing to her she would tell me she had written

eight books. Or four books, or several books: the number kept changing.


30 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

“What kind of books?” I asked once.

“Stories. Books of stories.”

I asked her if I could see them, but none were forthcoming. She told me so many other things that

weren’t true that I didn’t believe her. One of my many shocks in researching Donyale Luna 45 years

later was learning that yes, she had written books in high school. She may have been afraid to show

them to me because I wrote theatre reviews. I was young and my critiques were not always kind.

“A natural born dancer”

Teenage Donyale had yet another artistic love: dance. Early on she combined that with her thespian

ambitions: three of her four roles with the Civic Center Theatre were primarily dance roles. “She was a

natural born dancer,” says Roland Sharette, the theatre’s Managing Director.

What possessed Peggy Ann Freeman to rip up her entire personality and even her inner workings and

launch such a sweeping change in who she was? Physically there was the obvious—to enhance her

chances of realizing her dreams of writing, acting and dancing. Underneath that lurked two deeper

motivations.

First, she lived inside a female form that daily grew increasingly unlike any other that she, or anyone

else, had ever seen. Maybe she was from the moon! She had a choice of slouching over and trying to look

invisible or of stepping into it, creating a being that could contain the vehicle and its strange, unearthly

beauty.

Yes, she was star-struck, yes she was driven to become famous. But that was only the surface

manifestation of an inner knowledge, of which she was most likely only hazily conscious, that she was

destined to live a mythic life.

This may have been part of what led her to Catholicism: she was looking for strength to meet her

destiny. Her joining the church was the formal beginning of a path of spiritual seeking that would wind

through psychedelics, the eclectic smorgasbord of Eastern mysticism that swept through the hippie

culture, stones and crystals, and something of her own creation, “Future Visioning,” a pre-New Age

version of creating your identity by imagining it.

Did she succeed? Who ruled whom? Which won?

Second, part of becoming Donyale Luna was choosing to always be happy. “She wiped out all the

negative and accepted only the positive,” says Lillian. “That was Donyale Luna. Her world, her way.”

This suggests that, for whatever reasons, young Peggy Ann Freeman spent a lot of her time feeling

unhappy. Unhappy over what? Two big issues come to mind. We’ll look at one of them next time in

“Four Weddings and a Funeral: Donyale’s Parents.”

Did this post hit a chord? Send a comment.

Sources:

Sanders Bryant III, conversations, Sept.-Oct. 2008

Yvonne Petrie, “Barefoot Girl with Chic,” Detroit News, April 1966

Richard J. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, U. of Chicago Press, 2008


31 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19



Tags: Diana Ross & the Supremes (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/diana-ross-the-

supremes/), Donyale Luna (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), Donyale Luna

actress (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna-actress/), hippie culture

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/hippie-culture/), jazz & folk music

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/jazz-folk-music/)

COMMENTS Leave a Comment


Metamorphosis: Peggy Ann Freeman becomes

Donyale Luna

(This a long one; I’ve divided it into two parts. Since the only photo extant of Donyale Luna at this time

in her life is her high-school graduation photo, I have tried to be creative.)

The child is father of the man

—William Wordsworth

The girl is mother of the woman

—what Wordsworth would have written if she were a woman

During the course of her high-school years, Peggy Ann Freeman undertook one of the most radical

personal transformations imaginable. In what her younger sister Lillian still refers to almost 50 years

later as “The Great Change,” she shed her childhood as Peggy Ann and bloomed into one of the most

unique personae of her time: Donyale Luna. It didn’t happen overnight. Peggy Ann carefully

constructed “Donyale Luna” piece by piece. While the metamorphosis was essentially complete by

graduation day, the fine-tuning into eccentric diva continued over many years.


32 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

/dsc00373_23.jpg)

Donyale’s high-school graduation photo, published in June 1964 and taken in autumn of 1963. She

looks attractive but not extraordinarily beautiful; her height doesn’t show. When I started seeing her a

few months after this, she was leagues more stunning, with her hair down and her eyes—the photo

only hints at their size. On her face is a subdued version of the perpetual smile that she wore when I

knew her. Photo courtesy Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library main branch


“Wear your own clothes; don’t touch my clothes.” This is among the photos Richard Avedon took of

Donyale wearing Paco Rabanne outfits.

The Great Change began as Peggy Ann and Lillian entered their teens. Peggy Ann began distancing

herself from Lillian and the family. Except for Church and the outings to museums and movies, they

saw her less and less.

For Lillian, part of the separation came because they now attended different schools. Peggy Ann was

bright and already ambitious: she applied herself and got into prestigious High School of Commerce,

which, along with next-door Cass Tech, were the schools where judges, politicians, professionals

—anybody who was anybody—sent their kids. “I wasn’t dumb,” says Lillian; “I just didn’t do my work.

I didn’t have the kind of motivation she had.” Lillian attended Central High.

The two sisters also didn’t share the usual gossip about boys. “Donyale withdrew. She had her own way

of doing everything. She didn’t need me for anything. I felt hurt about that. Everything changed.”

Donyale wanted “lots of babies”

Donyale did confide in Lillian that she wanted to have lots of babies. “We both did,” says Lillian. “When

you’re from a small family, you want to have more family around you.”

Another point of separation, unusual for sisters so close in age: they didn’t share clothes. “That was a

big thing with her,” Lillian says. “‘Wear your own clothes; don’t touch my clothes. My clothes are

folded up in my drawer. You leave my clothes alone; you’ve got your own clothes.’”

By childhood’s end Donyale had constructed the barrier between her and the person she was closest to:

her sister. Did she ever come back into close contact again?


33 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

By the age of 15, Donyale was 5’10” and rail-thin, and on her way to 6’3” by graduation. (Was she really

6’3”? I’ll talk about that in a future blog.) How many items of clothing could she share with Lillian, who

topped out at about 5’8”?

Of course, a big part of the metamorphosis was orchestrated by God. Not just any woman can be 6’3,”

110 to 120 pounds, and “so beautiful that people would stop eating if they were in a restaurant and they

saw her walking by,” according to her friend in later life, fellow supermodel Pat Cleveland.

From gangly to heartthrob

Peggy Ann Freeman was tall and gangly; “some students made fun of her because of her height and

unusual looks,” recalls fellow Condon Jr. High student Kenneth Collier, who nonetheless “had a teen

crush on her because she was so beautiful.” By high school, Donyale Luna was unarguably gorgeous.

“She was tall and lean, and a very imposing figure,” says ex-beau Sanders Bryant. “The guys were

intimidated. Even the girls. People would just back up.”

Donyale wore only the lightest of makeup when I met her; with those features she didn’t need much.

Her looks were, besides spectacular, picture-perfect. I don’t remember any jewelry either, though Bryant

says she wore her mother’s bracelets up above her elbows.

Earlier on Donyale had one blemish, which she corrected before I met her: a gap in her teeth. “Right in

the middle,” says Lillian. “She fixed it herself for awhile, putting some gum or something hard in it and

letting it stay there. Then she got her teeth fixed.”

The physical transformation was now complete. Kenneth Collier ran into her at a department store and

called out “Peggy.” “But by this time she was Donyale Luna and just smiled at me. She was even more

beautiful than before.” She was soon to become the most sought-after, famous and highly paid fashion

model in the world.

Donyale Luna from Hawaii

When Sanders Bryant met the unfolding diva at age 15, “she was already radiant and gorgeous.” They

were in the Cass Tech high school cafeteria, and our girl was working on a film script. She introduced

herself as Donyale Luna, recently arrived from Hawaii. Her parents had been killed in an auto accident

and she was adopted. “She continued that story as long as I knew her,” says Bryant, “even after I knew

her mother and father and that she was born in Ford Hospital right here in Detroit.”

When I met her at 17, she said she was Polynesian. The car crash and dead parents were still in the story,

although a few months later she told me she lived with her mother.

“What’s interesting about the car crash part,” says Lillian, “is that when Donyale was about 15 or 16,

she was practicing driving in the garage. She went forward when she meant to go backward and drove

the car right through the garage. It made her afraid to drive. I don’t think she ever drove.”

Besides being the most strangely beautiful woman I had ever seen, Donyale also had the most beautiful

voice, a voice like music. Were the vocals part of her makeover?

Donyale’s unique speech

“Some reporters claimed that Donyale made up her accent. It wasn’t an affectation,” claims Sanders

Bryant. “It was actually her real self, her true speech. Donyale, her sister and her mother all sounded


34 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


Donyale's youthful conversion to Catholicism inaugurated a lifetime of spiritual exploration. Photo by

Luigi Cazzaniga

alike. Often when I called I’d have to ask, ‘Who am I talking to?’ Once I spent 15 minutes talking with

her mother when I thought it was Donyale.”

“The way she had of talking, that was made up!” says Lillian. “That was ‘Donyale Luna.’. Lillian does a

great imitation: “’My name is Donyale Luna’.

“It was like she was singing. But she never talked that way until she became Donyale. Then her voice

changed too. By the time she finished high school, she completely re-made her self. To a T.”

Again, here we have two of the people who were closest to Donyale 180 degrees apart over a basic

aspect of her life. Whom to believe? Bryant didn’t meet her until she was 15. I figure she may have

completed the vocal component of Donyale Luna before then and had him fooled too.

Donyale stopped going to church with the family. Most teens do. But at about age 16 she also started

leaving the house in the wee hours each morning.

“Where you going out every morning with a rag on your head?’” Lillian asked her. (The rag was a

scarf.)

Catholic convert

“I’m going to Mass.” Unlike most teens, and certainly unlike most youngsters with a beatnik bent,

Donyale converted from the family’s Presbyterian faith to Catholicism. The Catholic church was just

behind the Freeman house on Glendale Ave. Sometimes teens will switch churches through the

influence of a friend. But as far as anyone knows, Donyale did it on her own.

What could have attracted someone with such avant-garde tastes to Catholicism, which even then was

the religion young people left, not joined? “I think it was mostly the pomp and circumstance,” says

Sanders Bryant, who witnessed the conversion— “the formality and the ritual of it.”

The pomp and circumstance and ritual must have appealed to Donyale’s love of theatre. And the

formality may have given her a sense of structure that she must have needed sorely as she ventured out


35 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

alone on her great adventure as a Mythic Being. She never formally left Catholicism, although she

eventually “just got too busy” to continue her daily devotions. She continued exploring psychedelic and

mystical experiences until her death at 33— the same age as You Know Who when He died.

Sources:


Kenneth Collier, blog comment—rats, lost the blog

High School of Commerce, Detroit, yearbook, 1964

Barbara Summers, Skin Deep: Inside the World of Black Fashion Models, Amistad Press, 1998


Tags: Donyale Luna (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), Pat Cleveland

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/pat-cleveland/), psychedelic experience

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/psychedelic-experience/)

COMMENTS 4 Comments


Before Donyale Luna came Peggy Ann Freeman

We have seen that Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, was not as weird a child as we might have

supposed Like Tillie Williams, she was odd and queer, but she was not peculiar. Now a look at her life

growing up. We are all indebted to Donyale’s sister Lillian Washington for these first-ever glimpses into

Donyale’s childhood.

Peggy Ann Freeman was reared on Detroit’s near northeast side. Her father, Nathaniel Freeman,

worked for 37 years at Ford Motor Co., mostly in the foundry. Her mother, Peggy Freeman, was the

receptionist at the downtown YWCA for 27 years. Although her parents’ relationship was difficult and

her father often lived separately, the family was relatively stable and no more dysfunctional than most.

A notable feature of Peggy Ann’s childhood is that the Freemans were always moving: her sister Lillian

recalls living in six houses in the space of about six years. “I didn’t understand when I was young why

we moved so much,” Lillian says. Later she figured out that her mother was playing real estate. “She

bought the houses, then she moved and rented them out, or we’d just swap one for the other. They were

nice houses.”

In those days, the combined salaries of a factory worker and a YWCA receptionist allowed for real estate

investments. Says Sanders Bryant, who met Donyale at age 15 and remained friends throughout her life:

“A factory worker’s earnings were actually more than a lot of professional people’s. Not more than

doctors, but more than teachers, definitely. It afforded a lifestyle where, particularly in Detroit, you


36 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


37 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


No photos are extant of Donyale between the ages of 7 months and 17 or 18 years. Is this how she

looked as a schoolgirl?


/ds-house.jpg)

This house, on Burlingame St., was Donyale Luna’s last home in Detroit. I took the photo in 2009; you

can see a Condemned sign on the door. Childhood photos of Donyale and letters to her family may

still remain inside, ready to be destroyed by the wrecking ball

could own property. So even though it was a working-class family, with both of them employed they

did well. Donyale’s mother owned several houses and apartment buildings. She was an astute

businesswoman. She wanted to move and become more upscale.”

Scotten Ave. house

Although each house was more upscale than the last, Lillian’s fondest memories are of the first one, on

Scotten Ave. “We had a big back yard with two apple trees and a plum and a pear tree. My mother was

an excellent cook. She made everything you can make with those apples: apple turnovers, apple fritters,

apple pie, applesauce—you name it, she made it.”

In this house, in which she and Peggy Ann were raised until junior high, the two sisters were also

closest. They were just a year apart, and they played together at everything.

Grade school days were pretty Elm Street. The girls each had their own bedroom. School days they

would get up, wash up, get dressed and eat breakfast. “My mother always made us eat breakfast. She

cooked everything from scratch. We had oatmeal a lot, sometimes grapefruit, sometimes regular cereal.”

Then they would get their gear together and off they went. They ate lunch at school. “School lunches

were good back then,” says Lillian.

The Freemans didn’t take family vacations together, but Peggy Ann and Lillian enjoyed summer

vacation at home. In the afternoons, they would go swimming in the big pool at the Cronx gym, where

Tommy Hearns and other pro boxers trained.

They also attended a summer camp program sponsored by the City of Detroit. “We’d go by bus to Belle

Isle or River Rouge Park. We’d pack our lunch, and they served hot dogs and soda. We’d walk on

adventure trails, eat lunch, then play games.”


38 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/r3-01.jpg)

According to many sources, Frank Horvat shot this famous "Chrysalis" photo in New York in 1960,

when Donyale was only 14.

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/r3-021.jpg)

Not so. Horvat's site gives a 1960 date for both of these photos, but the photographer says he erred

and the year was likely 1964.

Donyale consumed more than her share of hot dogs and soda. Amazingly for someone so tall and so

thin, she always had a voracious appetite. “She’d eat anything and everything and never gain a pound,”

says Lillian. “She was raised like that. When your mother cooks from scratch, when you have a good

cook for a mother…”

The family attended church on Sunday, and afterward they would visit the art museum and the other

museums on Woodward, and then eat dinner in a restaurant. The museums were Big Peggy’s idea. “We

got our cultural upbringing from my mother,” recalls Lillian.

They also went to the movies a lot. “That was the big thing, that and going to swimming practice,” says

Lillian. “My dad was usually living in the house then, and sometimes he’d take us to the show on the

bus.”


39 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


This photo by Richard Avedon, of Donyale in a Paco Rabanne dress, couldn’t get published when it

was taken. In 2009 it was blown up 15 feet high to advertise the Avedon exhibit at the Detroit Institute

of Arts (DIA). It brought Donyale back home to DIA, one of her favorite childhood and teen-age

haunts.

Dancing with Donyale

Lillian also remembers dancing with Peggy Ann and one of their girlfriends in a talent contest at the

church. “We wore white pleated skirts and tap shoes and black leotards and black shirts,” she says. “We

didn’t win, but we were so cute.” The memory brings laughter.

Later on, during junior high school, Peggy Ann and Lillian attended dancing lessons together, studying

ballet, tap and modern dance. “We used to take our little cases with our tap-dancing shoes and catch the

bus,” recalls Lillian. For Lillian it was just fun: she had no dreams of becoming a dancer. But Peggy was

much more serious about it. Even then, “everything she did was exotic and different. That’s why she got

noticed so much. She was different.”


40 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc006831.jpg)

Donyale never lost her love of animals. She was often photographed with her little white terrier, and

once made a scene when a restaurant wouldn’t let it dine with her. Does anyone out there know her

dog's name? Photo: still from "Tonight Let's All Make Love in London" by Peter Whitehead


Yep, that's our girl in front. In Detroit, Donyale was considered a better dancer than an actress.

Christmas was a big deal for the girls: tree with ornaments, presents, decorations all around the house.

Birthdays, on the other hand, were low-key. Mom didn’t allow birthday parties or gifts. “Just Happy

Birthday, and that was it,” Lillian recalls. “ I might have had one or two birthday cakes my whole

childhood.”

The household usually included pets, more than likely strays that Peggy Ann brought home. Sanders

Bryant remembers her making him stop his car so she could “rescue” some kittens from under a car at

3am.

Lots of pets

“She loved little animals,” says Lillian. “If my mother and father allowed it, she’d have it.” Dogs,

mostly, and they each had a rabbit. A cat once, but not when Nate lived at home: he didn’t like cats.

While she lived at home, Peggy Ann Freeman never had to hold a job. “Her job was acting and being in

plays and the arts,” says Lillian.

“Overall,” says ex-beau Sanders Bryant, “Donyale lived a fairly comfortable life growing up. It was a

nice neighborhood, she went to a good school, she had clothes—the family was fairly affluent; she

wasn’t deprived.”

Mom was pretty stern though. She didn’t allow her daughters to associate with their uncles on dad’s

side. In fact, she didn’t allow Nate’s brothers in the house. “They drank, and she didn’t like alcohol in

the house,” says Lillian. “You could barely smoke a cigarette, even though she smoked.”

Sanders Bryant says that Lillian told him Big Peggy was “quite harsh and physically abusive” to

Donyale and her elder half-sister Josephine. Lillian concurs about Josephine: “She was treated like a

princess in Georgia. And then she came home and the walls came tumbling down. My mother treated

her very harshly.” But, she says, if anything, Peggy Ann got preferential treatment. “She wasn’t tough

on Donyale at all. Donyale got better everything.”


41 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

A high-energy girl

Maybe big sister had mom wrapped the same way she had whomever else she chose to. The most signal

quality of young Peggy Ann Freeman was her energy level. “She didn’t have an off-switch,” says

Bryant. “She was always upbeat. She ran at such a high-octane level that it was almost draining.”

This extraordinary effervescence gave Peggy Ann a hypnotic effect on people even before she made the

transition from gangly to beautiful. An example: Although she was “terrible” with money (a trait that

didn’t change when she became Donyale), she had, according to Lillian, a talent for getting money out

of other people.

“She’d think of something and get a container and collect money for a project. She’d say, ‘Oh, this is for

this fund.’ ‘Oh, I need bus fare.’ Or, ‘Would you like to contribute to…?’ yata yata. She would keep the

money. I’d say, ‘How are you doing it? You’re swindling these people.’ Whoever she was talking to

would be hypnotized; they would give her anything she asked for.

“She could be overwhelming at times. Convincing, and overwhelming too.” But not with everyone.

“She’d pick her people. She’d check them out, and if she figured she couldn’t get away with anything, or

if things weren’t going the way she wanted them to go, she didn’t turn on her wiles.”

Bryant also remembers Peggy Ann “double-dipping” allowances, collecting from both parents when

father was living apart.

Although I never saw it, Peggy Ann apparently had a temper. “She had a long fuse,” says Lillian, “but

don’t get her mad.” When the girls were teenagers, Peggy Ann threw a garbage can at Lillian—“one of

those little decorative tin garbage cans. She hit me right in the eye. I had to walk around with sunglasses

to cover up my black eye.”

But temperamental con artist or no, the two agree that Peggy Ann was also an extremely kind-hearted

person. She was “very conscious and feeling,” according to Bryant. “She was always happy and

smiling,” says Lillian, “and she’d make you smile and be happy.”

So, what thoughts do you have about Donyale’s childhood? Click the Comment button and let your

fingers do the talking. (WordPress is at it again. If you can’t access the Comments by clicking the button

below, look to the right and click the microscopic Comment button there.)

_______________________________________

Next: Metamorphosis: Peggy Ann becomes Donyale Luna

Sources: Sanders Bryant III, conversations, Sept.-Oct.2009


horvatland.com (http://horvatland.com) (Frank Horvat photos),

Frank Horvat, email, June 19, 2010

Tags: black fashion icon (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-fashion-icon/), black

supermodel (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-supermodel/), Donyale Luna

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), first black supermodel



42 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

COMMENTS 2 Comments


“She was a very weird child, even from birth”


"What, me weird?"

If you have read anything on the Net about Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, you have most

likely encountered the quote in the headline, attributed to “a relative,” perhaps many times. Since that’s

all the information the Net has to offer on Donyale’s childhood, it’s easy to conclude that she was a

weird child.

Here’s the full quotation:

She was a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream. We’d say, “Peggy, these things aren’t

true.” Maybe that’s why she was so good in drama class.

The quote was given to the New York Times by Donyale’s elder half-sister Josephine, who was several

years Donyale’s senior. Josephine was sent back to Georgia to live with her aunt when Donyale was four

or five and didn’t return for 10 years, at which time she was in her 20’s and Donyale was about 15.

Josephine’s evaluation covers Donyale’s very earliest years, before her personality was formed, an age

when almost anyone can seem weird.

“Donyale was real”

The quote makes Donyale sound like Laura in The Glass Menagerie rather than a little girl with a


43 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

wonderful imagination who often preferred her creations to conventional reality, and who expressed

them more with enthusiasm than confusion over their veracity. I’ve known lots of little girls like that,

and some not so little. Boys create different realities, but they do it too. “Donyale was real,” says her full

sister Lillian, “all through her childhood.”

Does that single sentence even reflect Josephine’s opinion of Donyale, or has it been pulled out of

context and assigned much more weight than it deserves? Soon after Josephine returned to Detroit, she

married and left the nest. Did she still think her half-sister was weird? Not too weird to entrust with her

kids: Donyale baby-sat for her regularly.

If you read the only biography of Donyale Luna to date, The Imperfect Dream, by Dorothy Marie Wingo, a

self-published (Vantage Press) offering with a limited run published in 1998, you learn that Donyale’s

mother shot her father in 1950 while Little Peggy (Donyale) and her sister Deborah (now Lillian

Washington), aged 5 and 4, looked on in horror:

Late into the night, they (the two girls) were suddenly awakened from their sleep by the sound of loud voices

coming from the kitchen. The harsh voices grew louder and louder. They heard thuds and screams. Quick sharp

sounds similar to those coming from firecrackers brought the girls hastily to their feet. They raced through the

darkened hallway toward the kitchen. Beyond the dim light of the kitchen, the girls could see their father lying

on the floor and their mother standing over him, continuing to empty the chamber of the gun into his body.

When the police arrived:

Little Peggy seemed to be in a state of shock.

An experience that traumatic is enough to make anyone weird, right?

Off by 15 years

Only thing is, it didn’t happen like that. According to everyone else who would know, including kid

sister Lillian and the Detroit Police Dept. Homicide Bureau, the shooting occurred not in 1950 but in

March of 1965, after Donyale was grown and living in New York—in fact, the very month of her

groundbreaking first magazine cover, for Harper’s Bazaar. And, as we shall see in a later blog, it didn’t

happen that way at all.



44 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc003724.jpg)

Donyale, still “P Freeman” in her yearbook photo, was popular in high school. Photo courtesy Burton

Collection, Detroit Public Library main branch

This photo in The Imperfect Dream identifies the tall girl with the flower in her hair as Donyale. But

according to Donyale’s sister Lillian, who gave Ms. Wingo the photo, it’s a neighborhood girl.

As I said earlier, reconstructing Donyale Luna’s life is like chasing a ghost through a house of mirrors.

How did Ms. Wingo get such a seminal event so wrong? From her source: Josephine. Josephine married

Ms. Wingo’s brother, Gerald. She was reluctant to talk with Ms. Wingo about Donyale (she wouldn’t

talk to me at all), so all the information was relayed through Gerald.

Ms. Wingo, a lovely-looking woman of 85 who taught English all her life, lives with her son in a

well-to-do neighborhood in Troy, just north of Detroit. “How could Josephine be off by 15 years?” I

asked her.

“She blocked it out of her mind.”

If The Imperfect Dream is any indication, I’m afraid Josephine blocked a lot of memories out of her mind.

Donyale wasn’t the only one in the family who created her own reality. Anything Josephine says about

her must be taken with a grain of salt. Make that a gram of salt.

Donyale was “normal”

The standard Internet perception of Donyale’s childhood is of one filled with pain, with a “brutal,”

“abusive” father—a dreadful reality from which she retreated into a fantasy world to escape. Donyale’s

sister Lillian, who grew up with her, paints quite a different portrait of her early years: “She was

carefree and a typical young child and teen-age girl. She was normal.”

She also had a sharp mind. Getting into High School of Commerce, where Donyale attended, wasn’t

automatic: you needed good grades in Condon Jr. High. (Lillian didn’t have them; Donyale did.)

“She had a lot of friends,” says Lillian. “She knew a lot of people and she was a happy person. Her

yearbook was filled with signatures on the outside and the inside. You fold it open like this—all this was


45 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/00000012_2_2.jpg)

Donyale Luna at age 18 in Oct. 1964, made up as Chastity for the Detroit Civic Theatre production of

Stage Door. Barely visible is the star-shaped beauty mark she pasted on her cheek for the role.

filled up, all that was filled up, and the other sheet on top, and the same way at the end of the book. She

had plenty of friends. She got along well with people.”

“But,” she admits, “Donyale was sometimes off in the clouds. Because she wanted to be. You couldn’t

get deep with her. She had a shield up.”

“Kind of a kook”

Roland Sharette, who directed Donyale in Detroit’s Civic Center Theatre productions in 1963 and ‘64,

remembering Donyale walking barefoot and feeding popcorn to the pigeons in the park, calls her “kind

of a kook.” “Kook” is a gentler term than “weird,” but maybe still too strong. Donayle was 16 or 17 and

went barefoot? I’ve gone barefoot most of my life and I’m only marginally kooky. Besides, the unshod

nethers are overplayed; just a part of Donyale’s mythology. Look at her non-modeling photos: she’s

usually wearing shoes. She did when I knew her. She apparently didn’t the day photographer David

McCabe spotted her walking through the Fisher Theatre—and there a legend was born.

Hey, if you’re female and 6’3” tall, where do you find shoes that fit? Is it kooky to not want to torture

your feet?

And she fed the pigeons? If she were poisoning them—yeah, weird. But doesn’t everyone feed the

pigeons when they’re a kid?

When ex-beau and lifelong friend Sanders Bryant met Donyale at age 15, she was writing a play. Now

that’s pretty unusual, but I wouldn’t call it weird: it’s just…different. Commendably different: how

many 15-year-old dramatists do you know?

“She was sharp,” recalls Bryant. “ She was quite observant. And she didn’t have an off-switch. She ran

at such a high-octave level that it was almost draining. She was always upbeat, very conscious and very

feeling. Her enthusiasm drew you in, made you part of the experience. She had the same effect on

everybody.

“But,” he acknowledges, “it was hard to get into her head. You never knew whether she was putting you


46 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

(http://donyaleluna.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/downloadedfile1.jpeg)

Detroit Poet John Sinclair, for whom John Lennon headlined a rally while he was serving a 10-year

sentence for possessing two marijuana cigarettes, knew Donyale.

on. None of us could ever tell her reality. But she always knew her identity.”

When I was dating Donyale, she was generally upbeat, sociable and fun, occasionally moody. And she

sometimes did things that were…different.

One night we were driving to Albion College, about 100 miles from Detroit, where I had attended the

year before. It was a winter night; a full moon filled the sky and cast a soft luster across the forests and

fields. Suddenly Donyale shrieked, “Stop the car!” She had never issued an order before, and even as I

slammed on the brakes I heard more excitement than emergency in her voice. She leaped out of the car

and started chasing a rabbit through a field—chasing, it seemed, with no intention to catch it, only to

share in its wild energy.

To this day, nobody else has ever done anything like that around me. I guess you could call it weird. But

I can still see Donyale’s long, long legs pumping through the field, her jeans glinting in the moonlight.

It remains the most Romantic memory in my life—Romantic in the spiritual sense of her feeling her

oneness with the rabbit, and with all of Creation.

John Sinclair: “She was cuckoo”

Both Donyale and I knew John Sinclair, who later founded the White Panthers and managed the kickass

band MC5. John told me she was cuckoo.

He may have remembered a party I brought her to. Donyale immediately plunked a chair down in the

middle of the crowded living room floor and spent the evening knitting (or crocheting; she knew both),

looking at no one, speaking only when spoken to.

At the time I thought that was strange. I might have even acknowledged it as weird—then. But I was

unaware of her driving ambition. Looking back at it with that knowledge—what better, more creative

way to get a roomful of theatre people to notice you?

Cuckoo, John? Cuckoo like a fox.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As usual with our Princess of Paradox, one can go either way. Nobody would ever call Donyale Luna

normal. But does that mean she was weird? Or just…different?


47 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

What do you think? Send a comment.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sources

Sanders Bryant III, conversation, Sept.-Oct. 2009

Yvonne Petrie, “Barefoot Girl with Chic,” Detroit News, April 1966

Lillian Washington, conversation, Sept.-Oct. 2009

Dorothy Marie Wingo, The Imperfect Dream, Vantage Press, 1998

Dorothy Marie Wingo, conversation, Sept. 2009

Tags: black supermodel (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/black-supermodel/), David McCabe

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/david-mccabe/), Donyale Luna

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), first black supermodel


COMMENTS 7 Comments


Donyale Luna arrives on the planet, somewhere, sometime

Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, was, for two years in the U.S. and for a dozen years afterward

in Europe, famous beyond her wildest dreams. (And she dreamed wildly!) Time magazine proclaimed

1966 “The Year of Luna.” Andy Warhol used her in five movies. She was Salvador Dali’s compadre and

favorite model. Her lovers were film and rock stars—even a real prince.

The spotlight was ubiquitous and intense. Yet it captured no more than her silhouette. Her inner life,

and even large chunks of what was knowable, remained wrapped in mystery.

This is as Donyale wanted it. Once past her first few interviews in her native Detroit, she hit her stride as

an enigma, seldom giving two reporters the same answer to the same question. When I encountered this

trait in her at age 17 or 18 (Which was it? More about that later), I concluded that she had a hard time

separating reality from fantasy. While I still think that was partly so, her later interviews show that she

clearly liked to play with the media.

At any rate, here and now in 2010 a host of Internet sites about her are issuing contradictory facts or

information that just ain’t so. Donyale’s ghost rises from her grave, gives us that Giocanda smile and

says, “I’m seven feet tall, I can see out of my third eye and I eat rats.”

The intrigue starts with her birth: when was it? and continues right up to her death: what was the cause?

This post examines just the beginnings. And only the basics, the kind of questions to which we more

prosaic mortals give the same monotonous answers every day: name, birthdate, place of birth.


48 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


"I'm from the moon, baby!" Donyale as Salome in Carmelo Bene's 1972 film, head shorn before a

blood-red moon

In the 1930’s and 1940’s Henry Ford, already one of America’s most innovative geniuses, came up with

perhaps his most novel idea: pay Negroes as much as whites to work in his auto factory. This altered

America’s sociological landscape as radically as his Model T and other vehicles altered the physical

landscape. Negroes poured into Detroit from the South. Along with them came a man named Hertzog,

who was not Negro but German. But he lived with a tall, dark and beautiful woman named Peggy.

Peggy was mulatto, but at that time in America anyone with one drop of Negro blood was considered

Negro. The Hertzogs had a daughter, Josephine, born sometime around 1936. Their relationship went on

the rocks, and soon after their arrival in Detroit Peggy was on her own. She shipped Josephine back to

Georgia to be raised by her sister.

The tragic circumstances that led to the star-crossed union of Peggy with Nathaniel Freeman are lost in

the mists of time. We know only that Nate’s family also arrived from Georgia to cash in on Henry Ford’s

magnanimity, and he and Peggy met and eventually married.

Nate, like Peggy, may not have been a full-blooded Negro. His youngest daughter Lillian identifies him

as “a black man from Georgia.” But his eldest daughter Peggy Ann (aka Donyale Luna) claimed he was,

among other things, Mexican and “Quechuan, from the Islands.” Now, Quechuan is not an ethnicity but

a family of languages, spoken originally by the Incas. It’s still spread among the indigenous tribes of

northwestern South America.

Donyale is a most unreliable source. But the photo below shows a man whose high cheekbones and

narrow nose look more Incan than Negro: might Donyale have known something about her father that

Lillian did not? Quechuan is not spoken in the Caribbean. But Nate or his forbears could have moved.

Negro or Native American, he must have descended from slaves to carry the surname “Freeman.”


49 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/00000002.jpg)

Dad and Peggy Ann, age 7 months, from The Imperfect Dream, a fictionalized biography of Donyale

by Dorothy Maria Wingo. This is the only known extant photo of Nathaniel Freeman and the only

known extant photo of Donyale before she was 17.

What was her name?

Nate and Peggy conceived two daughters—and here, at its start, we enter the maze of conundrums that

made up the life of Donyale Luna. The first daughter, Peggy Ann, re-named herself Donyale Luna in

high school and insisted thereafter that Luna was her “real” father’s last name. ‘Donyale Luna’ was the

short version: the full name was “Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Peugot Luna.” She frequently gave

the whole mouthful to the media, who duly reported it as her birth name. At least one top current

website, fashion insider (http://www.thefashioninsider.com), still repeats it.

Donyale’s parents named her after her mother, Peggy Freeman, adding a middle ‘Ann’ to keep the two

from becoming confused with each other on documents, forms, mail etc. At home they were simply Big

Peggy and Little Peggy. Duke University art historian Richard Powell, Donyale’s most accurate

biographer, inexplicably tacks an ‘a’ onto her middle name: Anna. But according to younger sister

Lillian, and to various newspaper articles in Detroit, she was born Peggy Ann Freeman, no ‘a’ after Ann

and no ‘e’ either.

Birthplace?

Where was Donyale Luna born? When ex-beau and lifelong friend Sanders Bryant met her at age 15, she

told him she was from Hawaii. When I met her a couple years later, she was Polynesian. During her

final decade, in Italy, she often told the media that she came from Boston. She also told them she ate

three kilos of meat every day and had three brothers who played in a band, but they still duly printed

Boston without checking.

Donyale continued the Hawaiian charade with Bryant all her life, even though he was a close friend of

the whole family and knew she was born right there in grimy old Detroit. “In Henry Ford Hospital,” he

says.

Eventually, when asked where she was born, the diva came up with the last word: “I’m from the moon,

baby!”

Birthdate?

Finally, when did this mystery woman arrive on the planet? Four dates are in contention: Aug. 31, 1945

and 1946, and Jan. 1, 1945 and 1946.


50 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


/dsc00373_25.jpg)

“P Freeman” graduated from Detroit’s High School of Commerce in Jan. 1964. Photo courtesy of

Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library, main branch

Richard Powell claims it was Aug 31, 1946. His source, who ought to know, is Donyale’s mother, quoted

in The Detroit News. Judith Stone of the New York Times, who claims Donyale’s birth certificate as

authority for her name, pegs her as 18 years old when her landmark Harper’s Bazaar cover appeared in

Jan. 1965, which also jibes with the 1946 date.

I too subscribe to Aug. 1946. When I met Donyale in Dec. 1963 or Jan. 1964, she told me she was 17. I

know better than to take Donyale’s word for anything. But what high-school girl lies about her age

backwards, especially to an older boyfriend and his cohorts?

However, sister Lillian, who also ought to know, claims she was born in August, 1946, when Donyale

was already a year old. Ex-beau Sanders Bryant, born Aug. 27, 1945, insists that he and Donyale were

only a few days apart in age.

What can we learn from Donyale’s high-school yearbook? “P Freeman” graduated in Jan. 1964. Most

kids enter kindergarten at age 5, turn 6 during the school year and graduate 12+ years later in June at

age 18. Those born in summer, like Donyale, enter school so soon after their fifth birthday that they’re

still 5 when kindergarten ends in June and therefore still only 17 when they graduate in June 12 years

later.

Those in the January class either take an extra load and graduate early or fail some classes and graduate

late. Donyale was a bright student; she conceivably could have finished school early. If she were

scheduled to graduate in June of 1964, she would have been in kindergarten from Sept. 1951 to June

1952, placing her birthdate in 1946.

But Lillian believes Donyale had to make up some classes (probably because she took too many artistic

electives). That means she should have graduated in June 1963, at age 17, and sets her birthday in Aug.

1945. That also jibes with the birthdate Lillian ascribes to her.

The Jan. 1 dates appear on various Internet sites. Most of them stem from Wikipedia, which says Jan. 1,

1945. Where did Wikipedia get the date from? If Donyale Luna were to make up her birthday, what


51 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19


This uncredited photo from Richard Avedon’s spread in the April, 1965 Harper’s Bazaar accompanied

the article “Barefoot Girl with Chic,” by Detroit News Fashion Editor Yvonne Petrie, a year later.

Petrie reported that Donyale was 19 when the article appeared, which would set her birthday in Aug.

1946.

better one to choose than Jan. 1? Not that our girl would ever do a thing like that!

(Note to Djellabah, who wrote the Wikipedia entry: If you read this, will you please send a comment? I’d like to

compare notes with you.)

Did Judith Stone of the New York Times actually see Donyale’s birth certificate? For some reason birth

records are confidential to anyone but immediate family—even records of celebrities who have been

dead for 31 years. The mystery could be solved in a moment if the Michigan Dept. of Vital Statistics

would simply make the document available.

So there you have it: three solid sources, including (indirectly) Donyale’s mother, assert that she was

born Aug. 31, 1946. Two probably even better sources say Aug. 31, 1945. Which date is more persuasive

to you?

NEXT BLOG: “She was always a weird child”…but was she?

Sources:


High School of Commerce, Detroit, yearbook, 1964, in Detroit Public Library, main branch, Burton

Collection

Yvonne Petrie, “Barefoot Girl with Chic,” Detroit News, April ?, 1966

Richard J. Powell, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black portraiture, U. of Chicago Press, 2008

Judith Stone, “Luna, Who Dreamed She was Snow White,” New York Times, May 19, 1968.

Lillian Washington, conversations, Oct. 2009 & July 2010


52 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

wikipedia: donyale luna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donyale_luna)

Tags: Dali's model (https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/dalis-model/), Donyale Luna

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/donyale-luna/), first black cover girl

(https://donyaleluna.wordpress.com/tag/first-black-cover-girl/), first black supermodel


COMMENTS 6 Comments


← OLDER ENTRIES

BLOG AT WORDPRESS.COM.

THE BUENO THEME.

Follow

Follow “Donyale Luna Blog”

Powered by WordPress.com


53 de 53 16-02-2014 13:19

donyale_luna_vida.pdf

Documents

Transcript of donyale_luna_vida.pdf