The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur by Mark Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

filed a libel suit against muckraking reporters Drew Pearson and Robert Allen (Eisenhower described them as “two newspapermen of the lower order”), who were the authors of the gossipy “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column. The lawsuit involved claims that the writers made about MacArthur and that were based on a series of interviews they had conducted with Louise Brooks, who had been linked amorously to Pershing and was MacArthur’s former wife. Brooks fed Pearson and Allen all the gossip she could think of about MacArthur, including his private views on Hoover and Roosevelt. Her depiction showed MacArthur as narrow-minded, opinionated, vain, egotistical, and dismissive of civilian authority.
    But while Louise, now rotund and fighting alcoholism, was willing to make claims to Pearson and Allen in private, she was terrified of having to talk under oath. When MacArthur filed suit for personal damages (of $1.75 million), she panicked and said she couldn’t testify. With their star witness gone, Pearson and Allen scrambled, searching for a way to pressure MacArthur to drop his suit, which could ruin them. They found it in the person of a young and beautiful Filipino woman whom (in the wake of his failed marriage to Louise) MacArthur had brought to Washington as his mistress. Pearson and Allen got wind of this liaison, but they had little to go on. Then, as fate would have it, they were able to track her down. “You know, MacArthur’s been keeping a girl in the Chastleton Apartments on 16th Street,” one of the residents of the building told them. The information was solid, the source impeccable—it was that “Mississippi cracker,” congressman Ross Collins.

CHAPTER 2
Fort Myer
    That cripple in the White House.
    —Douglas MacArthur
    The “girl in the Chastleton Apartments,” whom Ross Collins had referred to, was Isabella Rosario Cooper, and she was beautiful. A former Shanghai showgirl and Philippine film star, Cooper had met MacArthur in Manila, then followed him to America when Hoover named him army chief of staff. But while she was thirty-four years younger than MacArthur, Cooper wasn’t naive. A 1926 Christmas card shows her smiling coyly at her Manila film fans, who flocked to watch her in
Ang Tatlong Hambog
(The three beggars), in which she received the first Philippine on-screen kiss. The card is signed “Dimples.” The two were often seen together in Manila, but that wasn’t the case in Washington, where MacArthur rented Cooper a spacious suite at the Chastleton Apartments, bought her an expensive wardrobe, and provided her with a poodle to keep her company when he wasn’t around. He visited her nearly every day at the Chastleton, taking several hours at lunch to do so. Knowledge of this dalliance was kept from his mother, who remained a looming figure in his life and a resident at his official quarters at Fort Myer.
    While the presence of mistresses in Washington wasn’t unusual, the army chief’s relationship with Cooper was potentially embarrassing,particularly for a public figure who aspired to higher office. So Isabella was kept firmly under control and was instructed by MacArthur to stay at home where he could visit her at his leisure. But Cooper had something different in mind when she came to Washington, dreaming that her life in America would follow the course it had in the Philippines, albeit on a much larger stage. She wanted to go to Hollywood. She wanted to be a star. So, predictably, she chafed at her imprisonment, and by early 1934, she and MacArthur were arguing. MacArthur responded to her entreaties by plying her with money and sending her on vacation to Havana; he then suggested she return to the Philippines. She refused. Finally, discovering that she was engaged in a relationship with a Georgetown University law student, MacArthur sent her a brusque note: “Apply to your father or brother for any future help.” That is when, with the help of Ross Collins, Drew Pearson and Robert