About this item
Inga Arvad was the great love of President John F. Kennedy's life, and also Adolf Hitler's special guest at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She was an actress, a foreign correspondent, a popular Washington columnist, an explorer who lived among a tribe of headhunters, one of Hollywood's most influential gossip columnists, and a suspected Nazi spy. The latter nearly got Kennedy cashiered out of the Navy, but instead set in motion the chain of events that led to him becoming a war hero. Inga lived where gossip intersects with history, and her story, as told by author Scott Farris in Inga, is a rollicking story that demonstrates how private lives influence public events. It is also a Hitchcockian tale of how difficult it can be to prove innocence when unjustly accused, and how, as Inga phrased it, what was once a halo can slip down and become a hangman's noose. In addition to her romance with Kennedy and the attention of Hitler, Arvad married three times - to an Egyptian diplomat who insisted they never had divorced, the brilliant filmmaker Paul Fejos whom Charlie Chaplin considered a genius, and the famed cowboy movie star Tim McCoy. She also had affairs with noted surgeon Dr. William Cahan, the prolific writer John Gunther, and Winston's Churchill's right hand man, Baron Robert Boothby. She was pursued by Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, and Swedish industrialist Axel Wenner-Gren, reputedly the richest man in the world at the time, offered her $1 million to have his child.Inga was Miss Denmark of 1931, but by all accounts her admirers among the European and American elite loved Inga not for her physical beauty alone, but for her joie de vivre. She was a genius with people, she was daring and adventurous, and she was their equal in intellect. Like Isak Dinesen and Clare Boothe Luce, Inga Arvad led a life that both sheds light on and defies the stereotypes of women of her time.
About the Author
If there is a lesson to be learned from my experience, it is that it is never too late to start writing books. I began my first book, "Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race But Changed the Nation," when I was fifty-one, and it was published by Lyons Press the month before my fifty-fifth birthday. It is the story of how men who ran for president and lost still made a significant impact on history."Almost President"did well (thank you, Readers!) , and so Lyons Press published my second book, "Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure," on November 5, 2013. It later made the New York Times bestseller list under the e-book category. I call it a comparative biography that underscores the surprising similarities between two men who remain among our most popular presidents. In a time of political polarization, it is a reminder that there is a vital center in American politics.Now, Lyons is publishing my third book: "Inga: Kennedy's Great Love, Hitler's Perfect Beauty, and J. Edgar Hoover's Prime Suspect," in October 2016 A slight departure from my earlier work, it is a rollicking biography of an amazing woman (Inga Arvad) who played a key role in John F. Kennedy's life. Inga, who had been Miss Denmark of 1931, an actress, an explorer who lived among a tribe of headhunters, a columnist in Washington, D.C., and later a popular Hollywood gossip columnist, was a suspected Nazi spy because she had been a foreign correspondent in Germany, secured many interviews with leading Nazis, and became a favor of Adolf Hitler.While an amazing tale, there are deeper themes at work, such as how can an innocent person "prove" they are innocent, why does the perfect relationship often not work out, and how can what seems like gossip have a significant impact on history. Kennedy, for example, was nearly cashiered out of the Navy because of his romance -- and it was a genuine romance, not a fling -- with Inga, which set in motion the chain of event that made him a war hero. At other periods of her life Inga was married to an Egyptian aristocrat who later became one of his nation's top diplomats, the filmmaker Paul Fejos whom Charlie Chaplin considered a genius, the brilliant surgeon William Cahan, British MP and Churchill's right-hand man, Robert Boothby, the noted author John Gunther, and, finally, the real-life and movie cowboy Tim McCoy. Other key players are Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, and the Swedish industrialist Axel Wenner-Gren, who became the richest man in the world by popularizing the home vacuum cleaner. It is quite a story.While writing books is new to me, writing is not. I was a long-time journalist, including as a bureau chief for United Press International in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during the 1980s. At that time, Wyoming had one of the earliest caucuses of the presidential election season, and so I had the opportunity to interview many, many presidential ca
