The Glass Character: 06/22/12

It's waaaaaay too late, and I am waaaaaaay too sick with this flu-thingama-jiggy to even be out of bed right now. But just a short time ago, while looking for something else, I came across a couple of pages that fascinated me. In fact, it made my jaw drop. It was an account of someone who had special duties during World War II: to keep Hermann Goering supplied with lacy panties, silk stockings and all the latest Paris creations so he could dress his chubby frame in elegant satins and high heels and parade around in front of the mirror. Just for the sake of comfort: those stiff Nazi uniforms do chafe in some very private places, don't you see?

The only trouble is, though I remember parts of this information in excruciating detail, probably more detail than I want, I don't remember which book it was in! This is worse than Mary Astor's diary (which I finally found in a really filthy book called Hollywood Babylon, not that I actually have a copy). I went through both David Niven books (again, because I really did think it was in there: it's the sort of story he loved to tell in his memoirs, very Carry-On/Catch-22-ish military stuff).

It's not there. Not in the Babble-on book either. So what does that leave? What have I been reading lately? Is it in my book of medical myths (when you sneeze, does your heart stop? If you cross your eyes will they get stuck that way?) or somewhere in the Marion Meade biography of Dorothy Parker, one of my favorite books in the whole wide world? Doesn't seem too damn likely. Dorothy Parker liked men who were men (in spite of the fact that she repeatedly referred to her effeminate husband Alan Campbell as "a fawn's ass").

So I don't have the hard evidence I was hoping for, but these photos do offer compelling hints of those private passions which he practiced behind closed doors. So it's up to you to decide: WAS Hermann Goering a transvestite? Was one of the most vicious human beings who ever lived just a strutting, primping, mascara-slathering, boa-swishing drag queen?