Inga: Kennedy's Great Love, Hitler's Perfect Beauty, and J. Edgar Hoover's Prime Suspect

by Scott Farris New York Times bestselling author of Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies E

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493045365
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/04/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	488
Sales rank:	657,120
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Scott Farris is the New York Times bestselling author of Kennedy & Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure and Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation.A former bureau chief for United Press International and a political columnist, he has interviewed most of the men and women who have sought the presidency over the past thirty years, and has managed several political campaigns. He appeared on the 2011 C-SPAN television series The Contenders, and has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Melissa Harris-Perry.” His work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue: September 26, 1943 xv

Part I 1941: Inga and Jack Meet 1

Part II Inga before Jack 51

Part III Jack before Inga 85

Part IV Love during Wartime 101

Part V Inga and the Nazis 113

Part VI Headhunters and a Billionaire 157

Part VII Winchell Tells All 187

Part VIII The Break Up 225

Part IX From Tulagi to Hollywood 267

Part X Prime Ministers and Cowboys 321

Epilogue 377

Acknowledgments 381

Notes 385

Bibliography 435

Index 443

About the Author 457

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

She was the great love of President John F. Kennedy’s life, but also Adolf Hitler’s special guest at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She was an actress, a journalist, an explorer, an MGM screenwriter, and also a suspected Nazi spy. Inga Arvad lived where gossip intersected with history, and her story, as told by author Scott Farris in Inga, demonstrates the great influence of the private life on public events. In addition to her romance with Kennedy, Arvad married four times — including to an Egyptian prince, the brilliant filmmaker Paul Fejos, and the famed cowboy movie star Tim McCoy. She had affairs with Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, the noted surgeon Dr. William Cahan, and Winston’s Churchill’s right hand man, Baron Robert Boothby. She was Miss Denmark in 1931, but by all accounts her admirers among the European and American elite loved Inga not for her physical beauty, but for her joie de vivre. She was a genius with people, she was daring and adventurous, and she was their equal. Like Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, and Clare Boothe Luce, Inga Arvad led a life that both sheds light on and defies the stereotypes of women of her time.

Editorial Reviews

Scott Farris pulls back the curtain on a fascinating era in American history and an intriguing woman who lived through it. Inga Arvad’s complexity is what makes the book so compelling. It seems she lived multiple lives and was part of the brightest and darkest moments in twentieth-century American history.

Kate Andersen Brower

In this beautifully detailed biography, Scott Farris shines a light on the complex life of Inga Arvad, a woman who received admiration from Hitler and sincere love from JFK. With exhaustive research and a fast-paced narrative, Farris reminds us that Arvad was more than just a pretty face, but a woman of tremendous influence and ability, one whose story deserves to be told.

Nathalia Holt

Scott Farris has written a meticulously researched, scrupulously sensitive account of Inga Arvad’s truly remarkable odyssey and her genuine romance with the young John F. Kennedy. A page-turner par excellence, Inga disentangles fact from fiction about the woman who enchanted everyone from Hitler to Hollywood stars.

Andrew Nagorski

[Almost President is an] engaging study of men who came up short in the presidential arena but still had a significant effect on the life of the nation….

The Wall Street Journal

04/24/2017
A mysterious woman who captivated powerful men gets a dramatic portrayal in this lively, sometimes swoony, biography. Journalist Farris (Kennedy and Reagan) details the picaresque life of Inga Arvad, a Danish-born pageant queen, actress, and journalist deemed “the most perfect example of Nordic beauty” by Adolf Hitler, who gave her exclusive interviews. When she moved to America in 1940, her Nazi associations sparked suspicions that she was a German spy and provoked a comic-opera FBI investigation with phone taps, bugs, and break-ins. Farris’s focus is the married Arvad’s months-long affair with young ensign John F. Kennedy. He portrays their relationship as sparking Kennedy’s presidential ambitions and then falling victim to them, as marriage to Protestant divorcée Arvad would have ruined his political career. Farris makes this a colorful, entertaining piece of Kennedy-clan gothic—the FBI recorded Inga and J.F.K.’s lovemaking; gruesome patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy manipulated everyone from offstage—but the romantic weight he accords it (J.F.K.’s “Inga Binga” was the only woman “worth the price of fidelity,” he writes) seems overstated: the “great love” feels like a mere hiccup in Kennedy’s history of callous womanizing, while the good-natured Arvad is overshadowed by more charismatic personalities around her. Photos. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Here is the incredible, never before told story of the blonde bombshell who won the hearts of John F. Kennedy and Adolf Hitler. Inga was among the most compelling people of the twentieth century. Scott Farris reveals the secrets she tried to take to her grave in a masterful, suspenseful book that reads like a spy thriller but is, in fact, all true. I could not stop turning pages until the end.

Chris DeRose

Scott Farris’s Inga is a jewel of a book—for Inga Arvad led a life that no novelist could have invented. Danish by birth, an immigrant American by choice, she bewitched men by her beauty, her journalistic flair, and that rarest of talents: to make others feel better about themselves than perhaps they had a right to. Inga’s extraordinary life story takes us across whole continents, featuring financiers, filmmakers, adventurers and politicians—including, most spectacularly, the young JFK. It is the stuff of legend—yet every word is true, told by a biographer of great sensitivity, narrative skill, and unremitting honesty.

Nigel Hamilton

[A] a revealing and startling new book.. .. a great read in this stressful election season.. .. Hollywood’s leading men were mad for Inga.. .. a notorious, fascinating, and unpredictable life!. .. it would make a fabulous movie.

Liz Smith

Danish journalist Inga Arvad is the complex woman who is purported to be the greatest love of JFK’s young adult life. She was also a special guest of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Inga was a gossip columnist who was suspected of being a Nazi spy. The countless Hitchcockian twists and turns of her story are articulately recounted, though the author’s narration leaves much to be desired. Farris takes a workmanlike approach. His delivery lacks any notable flair to engage listeners to follow the breakneck tour of Arvad’s life. Sadly, several French expressions are mangled in pronunciation. A little-known great beauty who led an intriguing life is brought to life— but without much listening appeal. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2017 - AudioFile