Carole Mallory vows she will sue the author and publisher of “Norman Mailer: A Double Life” for implying she was a gold-digger who Mailer was paying for sex.
The model/actress/author, who had an eight-year love affair with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, says biographer J. Michael Lennon never interviewed her for his Simon & Schuster book, published last fall.
“Lies were published about me without my being offered a chance to defend myself,” Mallory told me exclusively. “I did not need money from Mailer or anyone. I loved Norman Mailer.”
The redhead said Mailer’s sixth wife, the late Norris Church, knew about her because Mailer listed her on his tax return in 1985.
“He was going to base a character in ‘Harlot’s Ghost’ on me and deduct me as research. With five ex-wives and eight children he had severe financial problems,” Mallory said.
The book states that Church confronted Mallory at a Random House party at 21 and said, “She [Mallory] has gotten her last nickel out of Norman.”
But Mallory says, “I never went to a Random House party at 21 for Mailer and never talked to the sixth wife, Norris Church.”
Mallory takes exception to Lennon’s assertion that “[‘Harlot’s Ghost’] was not Norris’ favorite book, especially after she learned that Mallory was the model for the sluttish Maine waitress, Chloe.”
“To refer me to as being the model for a sluttish waitress is damaging to my reputation,” Mallory said.
Most hurtful is this statement by Mailer’s lawyer Ivan Fisher: “Mailer’s relationship with Mallory was 100 percent sexual. Period. There wasn’t the teeniest, tiniest, nanogram of anything other than sex.”
Mallory pointed out she interviewed Mailer nine times, and ended his feud with Gore Vidal by putting them together for Esquire magazine.
As for Lennon’s claim that Mallory “picked up” Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty and Sean Connery, she says they pursued her: “Stars came to me.”
Mallory said Church held a grudge because Mallory called the Arkansas native “a former pickle and onion factory worker” in her memoir, “Loving Mailer.”
“I didn’t get pregnant like Norris (entrapping Mailer) and end up his wife with nothing to do but be his empty vessel,” Mallory wrote.