Prose's BLUE ANGEL: The Professor & Student "Little Slut" | Old\Young Sexual Affair

Francine Prose’s Blue Angel is a national bestseller and National Book Award finalist.

Here’s part of Publisher’s Weekly's plot summary:

Trust the iconoclastic Prose to turn conventional received wisdom on such subjects as predatory professors, innocent female students and the necessity for a degree of political correctness on campus on their silly heads […] He is [47-year-old] Ted Swenson, a happily married and reasonably content novelist who teaches creative writing at a much less than Ivy League college in darkest Vermont. Stuck on his own latest book, he is nevertheless charmed and intrigued by the writing skills of the unlikely, ungainly and punky [freshman] Angela Argo […]

Per usual, the jeune femme in the age-gap affair is deemed “innocent”. Not only did “innocent” Angela seduce her professor but she recorded and submitted a conversation she had with Professor Swenson to the college’s administration admitting, “The only reason I let you fuck me [in her dorm room] was so you would help me get this novel to someone who could do something---“

Angela’s novel and poetry are of interest too. In the novel, which I learned about while reading “The Real Scandal in Academia” in The Paris Review, the nymphet protagonist is having a sexual affair with Mr. Reynaud, her high school music teacher.

“All that summer […]” after her sophomore year (15-years-old?), the nymphet daydreamed about Mr. Reynaud. And shortly after her junior year began, the nymphet and her music teacher had rough sex in the shed behind her house:

“He took my hand with his free hand and closed my fingers around his, the one that held the egg. He pressed until the egg cracked […] he released my hand and reached down and opened his pants. Then he took my hand again, still slippery from the egg, and wrapped it around his penis […] Actually, it felt sort of nice, velvety and warm […] Maybe he knew I was thinking that, because he got rougher, angrier, and he picked my skirt up and pushed down my tights, and pushed himself hard inside me […] I began to cry because it hurt, and it was unromantic to think that there was raw egg on his penis inside of me […] At the same time I felt happy because he wanted me […] My parents were across the yard […]”

It turns out that Angela’s novel was semi-autobiographical. A biology teacher at her high school was, “[…] messing around with a whole bunch of girls. He had himself a regular harem. Friends of Angela’s, too.”

And Angela’s poems are often about a “[teen] phone-sex worker’s sexually abusive father.” Here’s one:

There's a reference to two famous ephebophiles in the Blue Angel: In reference to Poe, a student asked, 'Are you telling us that we've been studying the work of a child molester? And referring to a Chaplin poster on the wall of Angela’s dorm room, the professor asked, “What’s Chaplin got to look gloomy about? He slept with harems of [very young] women!”

In this New York Times Notable Book, despite being a college freshman, Prose and the professor referred to Angela as “little girl”, “child” and “little slut”.

Lastly, Blue Angel was adapted into Submission (2017). 

Famous Ephebophile: James Franco - Old\Young Teen Sexual Affairs On & Off the Screen?

[UPDATE 2/18/18] When I first wrote this post, I didn't include a review of James Franco's Actors Anonymous, because an Amazon review led me to believe that the novel didn't contain any ephebophilia, but a recent post on the Daily Mail proved me very wrong. 

1. By page 43, the protagonist took an acting class on Lankershim Boulevard in LA where he participated in an improvisation scene from Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

“So, last night, how’d it go? […] “Don’t bullshit,” he said.

“No bullshit.”

“So tell me. And no bullshit.”

“So tits like melons, no bullshit.”

 “No shit?”

“No shit, and an ass – momma.”

“A momma ass?”

“No, an ass like butter. An ass like candy.”

“An ass like that?

“An ass like an onion, bring a tear to your eye.”

“Like…”

“Like eighteen […] Sheeeit, you think she’s a virgin? […] Little slut, hungh?”

2. It’s mentioned on page 51 that it’s usually no fun to be the actor, director and writer of a film unless you’re Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen.

Joyce Milton shared in her book, Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, that Chaplin acknowledged: 

“I had a violent crush on a girl only ten or twelve. I have always been in love with young girls [...]” 

In addition, Milton clarified that Chaplin developed a crush on 12-year-old Maybelle Fournier, he met Mildred Harris when she was 14-years-old, and impregnated her when she was 16. Furthermore, he was smitten with 15-year-old Hetty Kelly, and impregnated Lillita Grey when she was 15-years-old - allegedly before they were married.

And the 33-page decision from the presiding judge in the case between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen revealed that in 1990, 19-year-old Soon-Yi asked 55-year-old Allen, her adopted step-father, if she could attend a New York Knicks' basketball game with him at Madison Square Garden. Soon-Yi "opened up" to Woody (no pun intended) after attending several basketball games and in 1991, after she had enrolled in Drew College in Madison, New Jersey, Allen and Soon-Yi began speaking regularly on the phone. And in January of 1992, Farrow found six graphically nude photographs (e.g., "legs spread apart") of Soon-Yi on a mantelpiece in Allen's apartment. Subsequently, Allen married Soon-Yi.

3. The perils of fame are often mentioned in the book. For example: “[…] I’m like Santa Claus: Everyone needs a picture sitting on my knee. The ones I don’t mind are the young pretty ones.” (52)

4. The protagonist had sex with a drunk and unconscious girl in her Ohio University dorm room, but despite the fact that she was a college coed, she was described as: “[…] a little blond girl, pretty cute.” (60) Freshman?

5. The famous ephebophile Charlie Chaplin was mentioned again: “My stare was the stare of an uncompromising carnivore that saw her young flesh as food; like Chaplin’s companion in The Gold Rush who is transformed […] into the Platonic form of the Female, a pinup bent-over in a tingly blue G-string. She was only eleven, but I never broke my vampiric stare as I went through our moves with the other zombies.” (104)

6. It’s shared in the novel that: “Errol Flynn once owned a Gauguin painting, but he had to sell it when he became dissolute and was two million in debt […]” (157)

Beverly Aadland’s mother wrote in her book The Beautiful Pervert: “My Beverly was only fifteen and still a virgin when she met [forty-eight-year-old] Errol Flynn. A few hours later, she was still fifteen…but she wasn’t a virgin anymore.” Beverly went on to co-star with Flynn in Cuban Rebel Girls (1959).

And Nancy Mowll Mathews related in Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life that 13-year-old Teha’amana was offered to Gauguin by her mother and that: "[...] Western tourists were commonly offered young girls, usually by the girl's parents, to serve as companions [...]" and that Gauguin had a "[...] genuine delight at having an adolescent lover [...]".

7. The Actor had a beautiful girlfriend, but that didn’t prevent him from having: “[…] an uncontrollable need to fuck every young thing he could. In France that summer, he fucked.” (181)  “Young thing” is elaborated upon: “[…] there was something nice about fooling around with her young body and having her say things like “You’re fucking the mayor’s daughter” over and over […]” (186)

8. The Villain shared: “[…] I was in Paris sleeping with college girls literally half my age, but underneath I have a good heart. Just as The Actor had a good heart.” (191)

9. The ephebophile shared his technique for procuring young girls: “One of my favorite approaches was to ask the young girls that requested to take a photo with me to email me a copy of the photo; that way I can give them my info very quickly in front of a crowd of fans and later work out a way to see them.” (213)

10. Kim was carried out by two orderlies, “grunting and thrashing”, but, inadvertently, her “flat young chest was exposed for all to see.” (225)

11. 17-year-old Cent, the star of “Day’s End, a film about teenage vampires […] was screwing the 38-eight-year-old producer, Mark Steely.” (266)

12. Lastly, The Actor had “a lifelong love of literature” that wasn’t shared by his father who didn’t care about The Actor’s: “[…] discovery of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, or Raskolnikov, or Hamsun’s Hunger.”

Underground Man is the protagonist in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. In part two of the novella, 40-year-old Underground Man has a brief sexual relationship with Liza, a young prostitute. Underground Man met Liza in a brothel where she had been sold into prostitution by her family. 

Figure 1.

James Franco posted the pictures in figure 1 on his Instagram. The pictures are inviting Franco's fans to see a trailer for his new movie Palo Alto (2014), which is based on Franco's book. And as you can see from the pictures, Franco's character is a teacher and soccer coach "who gets too close to a teenage girl on his team".

James Franco & Lucy Clode Selfie (Figure 2)

In a classic case of art imitating life, Franco invited Lucy Clode, a Scottish teen, to a hotel rendezvous after he signed her autograph and took a selfie (Figure 2) with her outside of the Longacre Theatre after he starred in a performance of Of Mice and Men. Clode tagged Franco when she posted the selfie on Instagram, which allowed Franco to directly contact the 17-year-old.

This is how their conversation went:

As you can cull from the conversation, there were two sources of contention - Clode wanted to verify Franco's identity and (initially) she didn't want to meet him until after her 18th birthday; however, she decided that if she could unequivocally verify Franco's identity, she would meet him at the hotel. 

This is the headline of an article posted on the Huffington Post -  So, Is James Franco's Use Of Instagram Innovative Film Promotion Or Just Kind Of Creepy? The Franco/Clode selfie and subsequent conversation may or may not have been to promote his film, but clearly the reporter, Lauren Duca, is middle-aged women who is, unsurprisingly, against age-discrepant relationships between ephebophiles and teleiophiles. In contrast, Franco got between 49,000 and 51,000 Likes, mostly from young women, for the pictures in figure 1. 

Lastly, it's not clear why Clode (initially) wanted to meet Franco after she turned 18, because the age of consent in Scotland is 16. And it's 17 in New York, which may explain why Franco didn't have an issue with inviting the nymphet to a hotel.

[Update 11\02\14]: What's James Franco's favorite book? You guessed it. He posted on Instagram that it's Nabokov's Lolita.

[Update 03/04/15]: This is a GIF from “Agent Provocateur” an episode of Law and Order: SVU  which was based on James Franco's encounter with Lucy Clode. Here's the episode's (partial) plot summary: A 15-year-old girl, answering a social media invitation, sneaks out to meet her movie star crush […]

Famous Teleiophile: Charlie Chaplin's Teen Brides

Lillita (Lita) McMurray first met Chaplin on April 15, 1914 - her 6th birthday. After Lita's mother spotted Chaplin sitting in the rear of a restaurant, she asked the owner, “Do you think it would disturb Mr. Chaplin if my daughter were introduced to him?” The owner replied, “[...] I'm sure it'll be all right. He's very flattered when the children want to meet him, but he's shy of grownups” And it was all right. Upon meeting Lita Chaplin opined, “Hasn't she lovely dark eyes and hair?”

By the time Lita was 12, the “incredibly shy” Chaplin had become one of the most famous men on the planet and arguably the most famous man in the United States which is why when 29-year-old Chaplin married 16-year-old Mildred Harris he only “drew gasps and condemnations only from a small section of the public.”

12-year-old Lillita 'Lita Grey' McMurray in The Kid (1921)

Lita met Chaplin again six years later after Chuck Riesner, Chaplin's assistant director, offered Lita a small but controversial part in The Kid. When Lita visited Chaplin's studio to the sign the contract, she was offered the opportunity to meet Chaplin. In anticipation of meeting him, the previous day Lita stood “in front of her full-length mirror, melodramatically posing and admiring [her] developing breasts.” Chaplin, in his mid-thirties, opined to 13-year-old Lita, “You're an extremely pretty child, my dear and I'm glad Mr. Riesner found you.”

After Chaplin had a company artist paint a likeness of Lita similar to the girl in Sir Joshua Reynolds' 'Age of Innocence', Lita began to “catch” Chaplin looking at her with a “rapt expression”. She wrote “It was an expression I couldn't define, but it made me feel strange.” After Chaplin showed Lita the painting he confessed, “I've been peeking at you, my dear, when you haven't been looking. I've been more and more drawn to those fascinating eyes of yours. They're so very young […] And only twelve years old! Amazing!

Using a seduction technique that Royal encouraged in The Pimp Game, one that Robert Beck shared in Iceberg Slim, The Lost Interviews and one that the Milner's discovered in Black Players, The Secret World of Black Pimps, Lita wrote that Chaplin “had a reputation for hibernating after a picture” and that after The Kid was completed she “[...] saw Chaplin rarely or not at all.” She shared “I discovered myself missing him, missing the fuss he made over me […] I had developed a twelve-year-old's crush on him and I could hardly wait to see him again.”

Chaplin and Lita

On the first day back at the studio after the New York premier of The Kid, Chaplin invited Lita, unchaperoned, to a birthday party for Mae Collins at his home; however, Lita's mother overheard the conversation, rejected the invitation and “steered” Lita home. Subsequently, Chaplin gave Lita and her mother the “cold shoulder” and at the end of the year, Lita's option on her contract was not picked up.

Lita shared that as she was nearing her 15th birthday, sex was “uppermost” in her mind “a great portion of the time”. Thus, Lita was enthralled by the stories that her good friend Merna Kennedy shared. Merna who was approximately five months younger than Lita had “brick-red hair, fair skin and blue eyes”. Lita pleaded with Merna “Gee, I'm hardly fifteen!” Merna replied, “If you're big enough, you're old enough.” Merna shared with Lita that she had lost her virginity at the age of 13 and, subsequently, had sex with “five boys and one man”.

Merna and Chaplin

By 15, Lita, although still a virgin, had become self-assured enough to pursue a role in Chaplin's The Gold Rush. After Lita got the part, she had “wishful daydreams” of Chaplin making love to her. She was certain that it would never happen since her mother was “zealously against” it. However, she was “[...] consumed by the fantasy of being held and kissed and protected by Charlie.”

Lita recalled the moment that it became “incontestably clear” that Charlie was sexually attracted to her as well. It was “at lunch in the dining car on the way to Truckee [to shoot scenes for The Gold Rush].” She wrote “Charlie was lunching with two studio workers at his table, and Mama and I were lunching at the table directly across the narrow aisle. He glanced up and saw me, and from the way he looked at me I suddenly got the feeling that he was seeing me for the first time – and that he very much approved of what he saw. All the guardedness, all his reserve was stripped away, and his distinctly intimate gaze sent erotic waves across the aisle that a shiver tore through me.”

While in Truckee, Lita was told by Henry Bergman, “Charlie wonders why you haven't dropped by to say hello.” 15-year-old Lita, with her mother bedridden with the flu, almost immediately sauntered to 35-year-old Chaplin's room. Here is a summary of what took place after some bantering:

Chaplin's hands circled Lita's waist and pulled the nymphet closer to him. Then he “roughly” pushed her onto the bed before he kissed her mouth and neck and caressed her body. Lita asked Chaplin, who was in a pair of red silk pajamas, to, “Please...stop...”, but he covered her “mouth with a deep-drawn kiss.” and clutched her breast “with almost brutal force.” Lita pleaded with Chaplin to stop, which he did, but forewarned Lita, “I'm going to make love to you. When the time and the place is right, we're going to make love.”

Despite Chaplin's aggression and Lita's (dis)pleasure with Chaplin's hour of “erotic scrutiny”, Lita decided that if she and Chaplin were alone again, she would be “[…] ready for him. Eagerly ready.”

After they arrived back in Los Angeles, Chaplin convinced Lita's mother to allow Lita to be seen with him in public as her protégée for publicity purposes. He assured her that they would not be attending “premieres and dinner parties alone” but that his fiancée, Thelma Morgan Converse, would be the third wheel. Lita's mother agreed, but even Lita knew that her mother “was making a big mistake”.

Consequently, Chaplin was able to get Lita alone at the Santa Monica Swimming Club, where he went to relax. He brushed Lita's ear and neck with his lips before he lowered Lita's bathing suit straps and palmed her “tingling breasts in his palms.” Lita “aggressively” threw her arms around Chaplin and hugged him - “bringing him closer”. Chaplin then “peeled” the bathing suit completely off of Lita and muttered to himself, “Beautiful, incredibly beautiful...” However, after Chaplin lowered himself and began “moving with small, steady increases of force”, Lita pleaded, “No. Oh, I can't, I can't!” But after Chaplin informed Lita that the pain would have quickly ceased after her hymen broke, Lita asked, “Why-didn't you keep on, then?” Charlie sympathetically replied, “Because you were so fearful.”

After dinner at Musso Frank's Restaurant, in the back seat of Chaplin's large limousine, Chaplin's “soft hand dug into the bodice” of Lita's dress, “[h]is other hand darted under” Lita's skirt and “danced” up her thigh until it found her “underpants”. Chaplin “found his way to the top of the elastic banded underpants, and wordlessly he yanked them down”; however, the pain was still too intense for Lita. Thus, once again Chaplin mercifully stopped.

But three days later Charlie announced that he had a “blistering headache”, dismissed everyone except Lita and (fully) took her virginity in the steam room of Chaplin's Cove Way mansion. Lita wrote “The pain blinded me far more than the encircling steam, but I writhed wildly, as though in ecstasy […] I was fifteen, but I felt younger than fifteen.”

In addition, Lita wrote about Chaplin's ephebophilia. She shared “It's hardly a secret that Charlie had a penchant for young girls. He approached them as projects, and indeed, cared for them. He liked to cultivate them, to gain their trust, to be their first-never their second or third lover, and to create them as scrupulously as he created a motion picture. To me he admitted his preference for the company of inexperienced girls over experienced women. '[…] The most beautiful form of human life is the very young girl just starting to bloom [...]'”

Minutes after Chaplin unsuccessfully attempted to have Lita perform fellatio, Lita “heard the doorknob squeak in turning.” Lita's mother “tottered weakly into the room” and found them in the nude “in each other's arms”.

Lita defended Chaplin by “insisting” she was the one who aggressively pursued him. She resented “being treated like a put-upon little angel who'd had no part in the seduction”.

However, Lita's mother insisted that Chaplin marry her daughter or she threatened to alert the authorities. In an effort to avoid going to the penitentiary for statutory rape, “prematurely graying” Chaplin fled to Mexico in 1924 with pregnant Lita for an impromptu wedding that would be his second marriage to a 16-year-old. Lita wrote that after the ceremony she overheard Chaplin say to a lieutenant, “Well, this is better than the penitentiary, I guess, but it won't last.” And on the train ride back to California, Chaplin matter-of-factly yet almost compassionately told his new bride, “This would be a good time for you to put an end to your misery. Why don't you jump?”

Chaplin was correct. It didn't last. Two years, two children, four affairs (Ed Purviance, Peggy Hopkins, Marion Davies and Lita's young friend Merna) and two children later, Judge Walter Guerin awarded the children a $100,000 trust fund and Lita $625,000 in the divorce settlement.

Mildred Harris

Mildred Harris, Chaplin's first nymphet wife, did not write a book; therefore, there are not many details about their marriage; but, it appears to be similar to Lita's marriage. Chaplin and Harris were married after Chaplin was under the impression that 16-year-old Harris was pregnant. However, two years, one baby, who died three days after birth, and two accusations of infidelity later, Harris was awarded a $100,000 divorce settlement.

Charlie Chaplin's THE KID (1921): [Pre] Teen & Two Men Love Triangle

Joyce Milton shared in her book,Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, that Chaplin acknowledged, “I had a violent crush on a girl only ten or twelve. I have always been in love with young girls [...]”

In addition, Milton clarified that Chaplin developed a crush on 12-year-old Maybelle Fournier, he met Mildred Harris when she was 14-years-old, and impregnated her when she was 16. Furthermore, he was smitten with 15-year-old Hetty Kelly, and impregnated Lillita Grey when she was 15-years-old - allegedly before they were married.

And author and ephebophile J.D. Salinger was livid after Chaplin married Oona O'Neill. Salinger and O'Neill began an affair when O'Neill was 16-years-old, but after Salinger joined the Army, 18-year-old O'Neill moved to Los Angeles and married 55-year-old Chaplin.

Interestingly, Barbara Wyllie wrote in "'My Age of Innocence Girl' - Humbert, Chaplin, Lita and Lo" about the influence that Chaplin had on Vladimir Nabokov. For example, there's a reference to Chaplin's toothbrush mustache in Lolita and Chaplin appeared on a movie poster in Nabokov's short story “Easter Rain” (1925).

Wyllie wrote: "[...] it could be argued that the particular nature of Chaplin’s incarnation in Lolita is linked to Nabokov’s 1928 poem, “Lilith,” via The Kid, Chaplin’s silent feature of 1921."

In The Kid, a nymphet in wings, played by Chaplin's 12-year-old future wife Lillita 'Lita Grey' McMurray, who wrote a tell-all book about their marriage, was told by Sin (i.e., The Devil) to "vamp" (i.e., seduce) the Tramp. 

The pre-teen and the Tramp (32-year-old Chaplin) kissed before her Sweetheart (34-year-old Charles Reisner) arrived. Then the nymphet and her Sweetheart kissed. Surprisingly, with her Sweetheart's approval, the nymphet and the Tramp embraced and kissed again. 

However, after the pre-teen in wings refused to cease embracing the Tramp, her Sweetheart became jealous and pummeled the Tramp.

The Allure of Nymphets: A Free-Verse Poem

The following is a free-verse poem that appears in the book The Allure of Nymphets and serves well as a plot synopsis:

Giacomo Casanova simultaneously took the virginity of
teen orphans Nanetta and Marta.

Charlie Chaplin developed a crush on a 12-year-old.
Before he met a 14-year-old and impregnated her at 16.

44-year-old Frank Sinatra had an affair with 14-year-old
Tuesday Weld who ironically refused to be Kubrick’s Lolita.

37-year-old Ronald Reagan smooched with 15-year-old
Elizabeth Taylor – and it was her idea.

69-year-old Joe Kennedy Sr. had sex with his 17-year-old
French caddie, while Lyndon Johnson listened over lunch.

While On the Road, Neal Cassady described the 15-year-old
Marylou as “...so sweet, so young, hmm, ahh!”

The Rosewood Day Pretty Little Liars pulled up their sky-high
minis to reveal their panties to the “fortysomething guy”.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s 18-year-old Holiday Golightly said,
“I can’t get excited by a man until he’s at least forty-two.”

Californication’s Frank Moody had sex with his
ex-wife’s 16-year-old step-daughter.

Bored to Death’s Ray was disappointed after Jonathan failed to
sodomize the 16-year-old.

And what was the 16-year-old’s New Year’s resolution?
“I’m going to fuck my history teacher!”