The Groping Governor

On October 7, barring an act of God, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be elected Governor of California. As the former bodybuilder takes the helm of the world’s fifth richest economy, Maria Shriver, his wife of 17 years, will take her place by his side as First Lady, a role she was born to play.

Maria is the poised, glamorous niece of John F. Kennedy. She’s a TV personality, best-selling author and the mother of Arnold’s four children. Above all, she is a classic Kennedy wife, bred to ignore a boorish husband’s infidelities and chauvinistic behaviour towards women.

Until earlier this month, when Arnold’s latest film, Terminator 3, was released, it wasn’t clear whether he was planning to run for Governor, or was just using the possibility as a means to promote his movie. Some suggested he was hesitating because he didn’t want to expose his family to the inevitable scrutiny of his private life that would ensue.

For although Arnold portrays himself as a faithful husband, besotted by his beautiful princess, there is ample evidence that he has had numerous dalliances with other women.

Yet, Kennedy wife that she is, Maria is not only said to be taking an influential role in his campaign, but consistently seems to have turned a blind eye both to his straying and his antics.

Most notably, Arnold has developed an apparent penchant for groping nubile young women. This has even extended to fondling the breasts of his Terminator co- star Linda Hamilton — in front of Hamilton’s then-boyfriend, Terminator producer James Cameron.

And when Arnold came to London in 2000, his behaviour led insiders to label him ‘the octopus’.

When TV presenter Anna Richardson interviewed Arnold for Big Screen at the Dorchester Hotel, he asked her pointblank if her breasts were real. He then pulled her onto his knee, circled her nipple with his finger, squeezed it and announced: ‘Yeah, they are real.’

And when Denise Van Outen interviewed him for The Big Breakfast, he slapped her bottom then brushed his arm against her breast. Afterwards, he smirked: ‘It was a handful. I never know if my wife’s watching. I’ll tell her it was a stuntman.’

Arnold’s apparent disregard for Maria’s feelings, and his certainty that she will ignore his chauvinistic behaviour towards other women, is so strong that when he was promoting Terminator 3 in London a few weeks ago, TV cameras caught him putting his hand on co- star Kristanna Loken’s bottom while they waved to the crowds from the balcony of the Odeon Leicester Square. Maria was close by.

The great irony is that Arnold is seeking office in one of the most politically correct states in America. And there is even talk that he could run for President one day, if the rules are changed to allow foreign-born candidates.

The roots of Arnold’s attitude to women lie far away in his homeland of Austria. When his father, Gustav, observed that the 17-year-old Arnold had never had a girlfriend and was obsessed by bodybuilding — an activity which has always had gay connotations — he became worried about his sexuality.

So he did all he could to encourage Arnold to bring girls to their home in Graz; he gave them wine then left them alone together, hoping that the inevitable would happen.

Gustav’s permissiveness paid off. By the time Arnold was 19, and had come to England to compete in the Mr Universe contest, his appetite for women was well-developed — as was his crude approach to them.

Newcastle bodybuilder John Citrone told me: ‘Any time we were in hotels or bars, he’d ask girls straight out: “Do you want to come to bed with me?” He was very forward.’

Women fell for Arnold like ninepins, and his success with them was legendary.
When Arnold attained fame as a bodybuilder, his celebrity made it easy for him to indulge his desires. He won 13 bodybuilding titles, including becoming the youngest Mr Universe in history when he was only 20, and going on to win Mr Olympia an unprecedented seven times.

This success only served to boost his arrogance and disrespect for women.
His mentor, publisher Joe Weider, said that when a woman asked Arnold for an autograph, he would say ‘Only if you let me touch your breast’.

Despite the fact that Arnold’s crudeness around women is an open secret in the film business, it hasn’t hindered his career one iota. His ability to carry on behaving badly while escaping censure has perhaps only served to encourage him.
St Lucian bodybuilder Rick Wayne once saw Arnold, in the days before his relationship with Maria, approach a black restaurant employee, ask her why she worked so hard — and then, in the next breath, invite her to come home with him for sex. She complied.

The next morning, according to Wayne, Arnold made a point of saying to him: ‘The girl said I was better than any black guy she ever had.’
He is a man with a burning desire to be the best at everything — and that drive applied to his performance in bed as well as his professional career.

By the time Arnold met Maria Shriver, in 1977, he had already starred in a documentary called Pumping Iron, developed a taste for country music and grasped the concept of the American Dream, through his
first American girlfriend, a teacher named Barbara Outland. He was ready for the big time. So when he met Maria, he instantly knew that she was his passport to the top echelons of American society.

The daughter of Jack Kennedy’s favourite sister, Eunice, and her husband, Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver, Maria was highly eligible, intelligent and pretty, but also convent-educated, innocent and naive.

Her naivety made it extremely easy for Arnold to maintain a relationship with her — reaping all the rewards of being allied to a Kennedy princess — while indulging his appetites for wild sex with another woman.

Her name was Sue Moray. At 25, she was four years younger than Arnold when they met on the beach in Venice, California. She was completely captivated by him. True to form, he made no bones about his sexual proclivities, telling her that he wanted an open relationship with her.

Part of that relationship, according to Sue, included revealing the details of sexual liaisons they each had outside of their relationship.

‘It was part of the turn-on for us,’ Sue confided to me. ‘He would tell me. Then I would tell him. But when I did, he got really mad. All he ever said about Maria was that she was “just a friend”, but I didn’t believe him.’

Arnold managed to sustain simultaneous relationships with Sue and Maria for more than a year, also dallying with other women along the way. One of them gave him a venereal disease. ‘I was outraged,’ remembers Sue. ‘Arnold just said: “Look, what if I came and gave you a cold — would you be outraged? You know I sleep with other people.”

‘He turned it on me, telling me that I was outrageous even thinking there was anything wrong about getting a venereal disease from him.’

Despite his infidelities to Maria, Arnold artfully maintained the fiction that he was besotted by her, and faithful. His performance was so successful that, although he was a Republican, he was accepted by the Kennedy clan, gaining the approval of matriarch Rose Kennedy, JFK’S mother.

Maria, now a celebrated American TV journalist, seemed on the verge of becoming Mrs Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in 1984, Arnold embarked on a passionate sexual affair with Red Sonja co- star Brigitte Nielsen, and even took her home to meet his mother, Aurelia, in Graz.

When Maria learned of Arnold’s infidelity, she issued an ultimatum — and, in August 1985, he proposed marriage to her (Brigitte Nielsen, meanwhile, went on to marry, then divorce, Sylvester Stallone).

In April 1986, in a romantic Cape Cod ceremony attended by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Grace Jones and countless Kennedy cousins, Arnold married Maria. He was now a fully-fledged member of America’s aristocracy — and, it seemed, destined to live happily ever after with Maria.

By now, he was also a movie star. Starting with the 1982 blockbuster Conan The Barbarian, followed by Conan The Destroyer in 1984, he starred in Commando in 1985, and was soon earning $10million a film.

However, forever reckless and arrogant, Arnold continued in his wild, womanising ways. According to Premiere journalist John Connolly, there were rumours that Arnold had an affair with co-star Rachel Ticotin during the 1990 making of the film Total Recall.

Connolly quotes a journalist who accompanied the-then married Ticotin and Arnold on an evening out as saying: ‘When I left them, they were making out and were all over each other on a banquette.

‘The next day, I saw Arnold and Maria strolling out of the elevator. Maria gave me the look a married woman does when she knows that you know her husband is cheating on her.’

More recently, Arnold conducted a seven-year extra-marital affair with former Little House On The Prairie actress Gigi Goyette. According to an American magazine, Arnold and Gigi first met when she was 16 and he was 28 and unmarried. They had sex, then separated, only to meet again in 1989.

Last week, Gigi revealed that she had been Arnold’s secret mistress for seven years. ‘I was his avenue of relaxation,’ she said. ‘His wife wasn’t there to relieve him.’

Although Gigi’s revelations were publicised throughout America, as were other revelations that Arnold was interrupted in his trailer while giving another woman oral sex, Maria Shriver steadfastly ignored all the evidence, standing by her man no matter what.

Arnold’s representatives, meanwhile, have constantly denied all such stories.
But while Maria’s loyalty may well be prompted by her love for Arnold, as well as the four children they have together, in ignoring her husband’s infidelity and inappropriate sexual approaches to other women Maria is simply acting like a classic Kennedy woman.

JFK’s mother, Rose Kennedy — the matriarch whom Maria adored — was the model, enduring infidelity in exchange for marriage to a rich and powerful man.
Joe Kennedy’s affairs were legendary, and he even went so far as to take one mistress, Sunset Boulevard star Gloria Swanson, on a European cruise with him and Rose.

The late columnist Doris Lilly was propositioned by Joe, and later one of his showgirl mistresses confided in her that ‘Rose didn’t care how many women Joe kept, as long as she had her family’.

Doris once said: ‘The only time Rose had sexual relations with her husband was for the purpose of reproduction. She was that devout a Catholic. Rose didn’t object to Joe’s women as long as they didn’t interfere with her personal life or her family.’

Rose’s daughter-in-law, Jacqueline Bouvier, who married JFK, followed her example. After she became aware of Jack’s rampant womanising, she took her revenge by spending a fortune on clothes, and on redecorating the White House — and finally, when she could no longer tolerate his affairs, accepting $1 million from Joe Kennedy to stay with Jack.

Jack’s brother, Bobby, followed in his footsteps — so much so that they even had extra-marital affairs with the same women, sharing Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. True to Kennedy protocol, Bobby’s wife Ethel never batted an eyelid.
Clearly, Maria has learned from the other Kennedy women exactly how to grin and bear it while her husband gropes women’s breasts, makes salacious sexual suggestions to them and, now and again, indulges in an extra-marital fling.

She once declared: ‘I thought Arnold was interesting. And I was impressed with his sense of humour. I’ll say he’s different. Certainly different.’

Born and bred to endure the infidelity of a powerful husband, Maria will no doubt take solace in his wealth and prestige, and carry on being a classic Kennedy wife — all the way to the Governor’s mansion.

WENDY LEIGH is author of Arnold: An Unauthorised Biography.