The Joker was Wild

Actress Karen Mayo-Chandler delivers the goods on ex-lover Jack Nicholson

When girls are asked what they look for in a man, they always talk about the sensitive things, like intellect, kindness and a sense of humor. Well, that's all very nice, very nice, indeed, but what I also want is a guaranteed nonstop sex machine, and that's exactly what I got with Jack. He's into fun and games in bed, all the really horny things that I get off on, like spankings, handcuffs, whips and Polaroid pictures. Now, that's a man to die for!" The man in question is Jack Nicholson, still a hot box-office star at 52, and the 28-year-old actress confirming his enduring sexual prowess is Karen Mayo-Chandler, a hot British beauty who spent the best part of a year in the Joker's bed. Brits are renowned for their delight in naughty bedroom stuff, and you'll notice a startling British insouciance when it comes to Karen's attitude about bedtime frolics--attitudes that wouldn't pass muster at the National Organization for Women. Classically trained at the prestigious Italia-Conti and Guildhall drama schools in London, the auburn-haired, hazel-eyed Karen made her big-screen debut in Ken Russell's controversial Lisztomania and was in John Osborne's biting TV drama You're Not Watching Me, Mummy at 18. By the time she was 22, Karen's face and figure--36-23-34--had placed her on the covers of more than 100 fashion magazines, Vogue and Harpers included, while she still found time to chase her theatrical dreams, appearing world-wide on stage in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit and even Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam. Five years ago, she went to California on vacation, copped a TV guest-star role alongside Bruce Boxleitner in Bring 'Em Back Alive and a cameo role with Eddie Murphy in the original Beverly Hills Cop. Hollywood became home. After a stint on the CBS soap The Young and the Restless, she was back on the big screen playing a string of bad girls--hookers, strippers and junkies--in the B-movie business. But 1989 saw her breakthrough, with a part opposite Karen Black in the current RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video release Out of the Dark and the lead in Roger Corman's cult sequel Stripped to Kill 2, which led to a five-picture Corman contract. Most recently, she completed a major starring role in the upcoming African Express, playing a feisty American pilot in the World War Two adventure. In the midst of all this, she found time for a secret 12-month fling with "Joker" Jack, or, as she prefers to call him, "Spanking" Jack. With good reason, as we shall see. "I kept quiet about it for a long time," she says, "because I really don't like to kiss and tell, but you know how gossip starts in the movie business. You just can't keep it down. The tabloids made me out to be Jack's little British bimbo, so I simply had to set the record straight. The fact is that I was in love with Jack, and he treated me like a princess during our time together. It was champagne and flowers all the way. Added to that, he spent hour after hour making love to me night after night. Could any girl resist? He's not a selfish lover like so many men, only interested in satisfying themselves. No one, and I do mean no one, can compare with Jack in the sack. He really ought to write a book about it: How to Make Love to a Woman, by Jack Nicholson. Now, wouldn't that be a best seller? I could talk forever about Jack's bedroom technique. With some men, making love is just a physical thing; with others, it's emotional or intellectual. It's rarely all three. With Jack, it's everything. Really, it's a life-or-death thing to (text concluded on page 211)Joker was Wild(continued from page 101) him and he made it like that for me, too." From the moment he seduced her on green-silk sheets at his Mulholland Drive mansion, Karen openly admits she had the time of her life. When they met, on a skiing weekend in Aspen, she had played hard to get, thinking he was just another aging Hollywood wolf looking for a one-night stand. "I remember he gave me that killer smile of his and whispered, 'Baby, you're a tough nut to crack!' But he was so persistent, so exciting, so sexy I simply couldn't resist. If Jack had been married, I wouldn't have agreed to see him. I wouldn't touch a married man with a barge pole. Of course, I knew that Anjelica Huston had been his steady lady for years--you can't miss the one picture of her he keeps in his bathroom--but I rather gathered their relationship had become a friendship thing by that time.

"I do remember that when her father, John Huston, died, Jack was very upset. I knew that the three of them had made Prizzi's Honor together and that Jack admired the old man immensely. But on the night before Mr. Huston's funeral, Jack called me up to his house and I had to wonder why he wasn't consoling Anjelica instead of making love to me. My God, he was passionate that night!

"But that's Jack all over, you see. He really is a horny little devil. He has this image of being a bit like Bogart, a lovable rogue, a naughty little boy, if you like, and that's just how he is."

On the other hand, Karen says, Jack is a culture vulture, a man of high taste and style who loves the arts, classical music, the opera, the theater. His home is packed with priceless antiques and paintings: There's a Picasso on his living-room wall.

The other side of Jack is a fun-lover, a devil-may-care hedonist who adores to indulge himself in the pleasures of the flesh.

"Jack just loves to play sexy games, and so do I. He always wanted me to walk about in saucy underwear, garter belts and stockings, that sort of thing. I was always buying little knickknacks to please him at night.

"He liked to take naughty pictures of me with his Polaroid camera. Sometimes he would want me to be totally submissive to him. He'd smile and, with that glint in his eyes that all his female fans would recognize, he'd say, 'I'm going to have to tie you up and spank you for being a bad girl.'

"I'd run off giggling and screaming, but he'd always catch me, naturally.... Then he would hold me down, rip off my clothes and make incredible, mad, wild and wonderful love to me. Jack really is the most exciting man in the world at times like that. Sex with him is both a pleasure and a pain, in every sense....

"One night, he got so carried away, so passionate, he left me with a real problem in the morning. I was filming Out of the Dark at the time and it took the make-up girl all of two hours to cover up the impact of Jack's lovemaking!

"There's only one time of day when Jack doesn't want to do it...in the mornings. Now, I love to have sex when I wake up, but Jack gets very grumpy. Any other time, he's there, ready and randy as the devil; but when he's snoring away after a long night of love, you'd better not wake him up! I learned not to do that pretty quickly.

"Jack's a very noisy love-maker when he gets going, a real grunter, and he likes a lot of verbal encouragement, too, but the strangest thing about him in bed is his ability to make his hair stand on end to the point of no return. I never could understand how he did that. It was as if he had been electrocuted! I used to spend hours going through his bathroom cabinets to see what brand of styling mousse or hair spray he used, but I never did find anything.

"The other funny habit he had was eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in bed. He said he had to keep his strength up!

"Jack was like a drug to me. He was very addictive. Life was one big high when he was around. He had me completely hooked for a long time. Of course, all good things must end.

"Sometimes when men throw themselves at you, the only way to treat them is badly. You lose respect for them and you move on. So Jack went to London to make Batman and I got on with my career. I guess the age difference told in the end. Actually, Jack is about the same age as my mother. Perhaps I should have introduced them--that's a joke. Ha, ha! My mum will kill me for that."

So what's in the future for this spunky, outspoken actress the British critics are calling the new Joan Collins?

Currently, she's studying with acting coach Jeff Corey--he worked with Nicholson, too--and looking for bigger, better and more challenging movie roles. "I love to play bad girls, characters who are psychologically complex, living on the edge."

Karen is also working on a book--she won't say what it's about--and rehearsing with a new rock-and-roll band to be launched in the new year.

"I simply love to perform, you see. There's always this desire to be a little self-indulgent. No, very self-indulgent! But for an actress, that's not a good thing, so I have to make up for it in my personal life in every way I can.

"When I was a little girl, my very proper, very British father used to say to me that good little girls should be seen and not heard, and I guess I've been rebelling against that particular piece of advice ever since." And how!

"He would hold me down, rip off my clothes and make incredible, mad, wild and wonderful love to me."