HONEYTRAP the Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward
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BY ANTHONY SUMMERS HONEYTRAP The File on the Tsar (with Tom Mangold) The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy? Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe ANTHONY SUMMERS and STEPHEN DORRIL Weidenfeld and Nicolson • London Published in Great Britain in 1987 by For Sam, who helped George Weidcnfeld & Nicolson Limited A.S. 91 Clapham High Street, London sw4 Ira All rights reserved. No part of this publication may- be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, For Stephanie, Alexis, and Guy Debord mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, S.D. without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The authors thank the following for their kind permission to quote: Warwick Charlton, for quotations from Stephen Ward Speaks. Hod Dibben, for quotations from the late Mariella Novotny's unpublished manuscripts, 'The Government Chief Whip (Retired)' and 'The Girl who Paved the Way for the Permissive Society'. Victor Gollancz Ltd, for quotations from The Trial of Stephen Ward, by Ludovic Kennedy. A. D. Peters & Co. Ltd., for quotation from The Profumo Affair, *Pail of Conservatism, by Wayland Young. Mandy Rice-Davies, for quotations from Mandy. ISBN 0 297 79t22 2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London 62 HONEYTRAP in 1948 and her husband, who was in the anti-communist underground, attempted to follow with nine-year-old Mariella in 195o. Marietta said she and her father became separated after fleeing to West Germany, 5 and then spent harrowing months in a camp for displaced persons. Years later, to prove it, Marietta would produce a childhood photograph of herself standing in a breadline. She said she later rejoined her mother MARIELLA IN NEW YORK - THE in London. Who was the father, and what became of him? Novotny said her KENNEDY CONNECTION father was 'first cousin' to President Antonin Novotny. 'I am ashamed of my relationship,' she said. 'It is something I have tried to hide all my life.' The Novotny she was referring to was a Khrushchev prot46 who Caine to power in 1957. Josef Josten, a Czech journalist who came over to the West after the war, has confirmed Novotny's blood relationship with the Czech leader. It is clear that the British Govern- ment long knew about Novotny's father, and was sensitive about him Dibben was playing nightclub boss again. With the takeover of Esmer- entering the country. One document shows he was refused a visa to alda's Barn by the notorious Kray twins, he opened a new club in enter Britain in 1948, but Marietta's mother says he did eventually Mayfair, called the Black Sheep. It would, he said, cater for 'black sheep from the , come to London. titled families, because they are the rarest'. Dibben's When he did arrive, Mrs Capes has said, 'my husband acted very customers included, among others, the Duke of Kent, Antony Arm- strangely. He was asked to leave by the Home Office ... Mariella has strong-Jones and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. By the time Mariella came to grown up in an atmosphere of intrigue. She is very nervous. What my the club, she was a teenage veteran of London nightlife. After training husband's secrets were I don't know — but we still get frightening echoes as a model, at her mother's suggestion, she had started as a hat-check here in London....' girl at the Pigalle Club, then graduated to topless dancing. Now she Novotny herself said her childhood was 'idyllic' until the communist wanted a job as a dancer at the Black Sheep, but settled for waitressing takeover. 'I was never quite sure what my father did for a living,' she when told there were no vacancies. Novotny was probably introduced wrote later, 'but we were well off. What I am certain of is that almost to Hod Dibben at the club by abortionist Teddy Sugden. He was fifty- alone of his family he was not a communist. He was, if you like, a four and she only eighteen, but they were to be married within the month. political black sheep of the family. All I know is that my father was tipped off that the communists were about to seize power, and it would It all came about, supposedly, as something of a joke. Novotny, though sensationally good-looking, was so short-sighted she could be best if he got out of the country....' her Novotny's mother, traced by us in 1985, refused to discuss hardly see the customers she was serving in the gloom of the night-club. • daughter. 'What does it matter?' she asked. 'They won't believe the When one of the managers fired her she rushed up to Dibben in floods of truth.' The truth as to the whereabouts of Novotny's father, and, tears, begging him to help. 'How about if I marry you?' he is said to most important, his political loyalties, remains elusive. While it dots, have replied. Novotny stopped crying. 'I will,' she said. Matt White, now Show Business Editor of the Sydney Daily Mirror, Mariella Novotny's role in the Profumo scandal remains especiallyshe met intriguing. It began shortly before Christmas 1959, when observed the touching scene. 'Hod, of course, was an antique compared Stephen Ward's friend, Hod Dibben. to Mariella,' he remembers, 'but when he put a pair of black rimmed glasses on her she said, "I still love you. And I can't wait. Let's get arried right away."' White sighs philosophically. `God, knowing love for a puzzle, gave him woman ... and Hod got Mariella.' el' ti ears later Novotny put it more prosaically: she did it to get away from 'ter mother. 64 HONEYTRAP MARIELLA IN NEW YORK — THE KENNEDY CONNECTION 65 The couple married at Caxton Hall on 29 January 1g6o, with Dr Towers, said Novotny, drew up a contract for her to work for him Sugclen as best man. So hilarious did they find the ceremony that the in the United States. Towers says he simply said, `Do you want to come registrar threatened to stop the wedding. The large reception, at the to New York and have a laugh?' Novotny agreed, and — since he was Black Sheep, was photographed by David Bailey. It was on the honey- going on ahead — he bought her a plane ticket. 'The day before I flew moon that Dibben discovered that his bride was terrified of sex — she to America,' Novotny said, 'Stephen Ward came to dinner and drew said her fear was rooted in her childhood, when she witnessed rapes three sketches of me.' and public hangings during the chaos in Czechoslovakia and Austria Towers and Novotny offer diverging accounts of what happened in at the end of the war. As we have seen, she says he did eventually take New York. She later told the FBI, 'Towers took me to the Great her to bed. Dibben, however, says that her marital 'first time' was a Northern Hotel ... The following afternoon Towers brought a pros- threesome: he watched white a male friend had sex with Novotny. If titution date to me, ,* who paid me Sr to commit a so, she started as she was to continue. sexual act. Thereafter I entertained prostitution dates regularly and 'Possibly my slow, fate start as a promiscuous girl,' Novotny wrote earned approximately $400 a week. I gave Towers about $300 of this later, 'urged me to taste more than most ... Hod made it clear from the money.' Later, Novotny told the FBI, 'Towers was present when start I could be as permissive as I liked ... The endless parties I went prostitution acts were committed', at a Manhatten apartment. She to were extravagant, and I met many famous names.' One of her first provided detailed lists of madames and prostitutes who had arranged encounters on the London scene was with a friend of her husband who dates, or gone on threesomes with her — all, she claimed, introduced to was going to become notorious, Stephen Ward. her by Towers. She named some of her customers who, she said, paid Ward was at a party given by American millionaire Huntington for a peculiarly British speciality. 'They desired to be whipped with Hartford, an occasion which Novotny called 'a turning-point'. Also, cat-o'-nine-tails.' thdre was a forty-year-old show business whizz kid named Harry Towers says today, 'I had an affair with her and didn't know she Towers, and he quickly showed interest in her. He telephoned after the was a hooker. Our total involvement was that she joined me in New party, inviting her to tea at Claridge's. Over the teacups, according to York and lived with me in a couple of hotels ... I got into trouble Novotny, 'Towers said he could make me into a television model for through my own stupidity.' Towers dismisses Novotny's accounts as commercials in America.' Novotny already had a London modelling 'absolute fantasy'. contract, but she decided to go to New York with her impresario. One thing that was brutal reality for both Towers and Novotny was Harry Towers, now a prosperous film producer working out of the day in March 1961, three months after Novotny's arrival, when Hollywood and Toronto, rocketed to success after a wartime post as a police of the t8th Precinct raided Towers' apartment. Assistant District programme director for British Forces radio. In the fifties he had been Attorney William Reilly had received an anonymous call advising him a leading figure in the founding of commercial television and become that Novotny was plying her trade as a prostitute at that address.