off the leash

Gennifer Flowers was an unknown Arkansas state employee and former TV reporter before 1992. That was the year Bill Clinton, a former Arkansas governor, was running for President. And Flowers launched herself front and center into that campaign by claiming she had a 12-year affair with Clinton and that furthermore, he helped her get her state job. Clinton denied the affair, at first, but years later would admit to a one-time tryst with Flowers. I wouldn’t vouch for the credibility of either of them on this issue so I assume the truth lies somewhere in between.

Flowers was once quoted as saying “If that man becomes President, I’ll never have to work again.” (New York Times, Jan. 27, 1993) If she was referring to her state job, she didn’t have to wait for the election for that prophecy to be fulfilled. UPI reported on Jan. 29, 1992: 

“Gennifer Flowers, the former cabaret singer who alleges she had a 12-year affair with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, was fired from her state job Wednesday for being absent without leave for three days.

“Don Barnes, chairman of the State Board of Review, said he followed state disciplinary rules that are routine in such cases of unexplained absence from work. He said Flowers would be informed by registered letter.

“’Gennifer Flowers has abandoned her job with the Arkansas Appeal Tribunal by failing to report for work or call in for three days. This is pursuant to the agency’s disciplinary rules,’ he said in a statement.”

Flowers, however, had found ways to surpass her $17,000 a year gig at the Arkansas Appeal Tribunal. We would later learn about this during a deposition in the Paula Jones (another of Clinton’s other women) suit against Clinton. 

“Under questioning in a deposition last Nov. 14, by Mr. Clinton’s lawyer Robert S. Bennett, Ms. Flowers seemed almost to lose track of her earnings: $150,000 from The Star, a supermarket tabloid, for telling her story; $250,000 from Penthouse magazine for her story and pictures, san clothes.

“Then there was $25,000 to appear on ‘A Current Affair’ and $15,000 to appear on television in Spain. There was also a fee of $5,000 to $7,500 (‘something in there,’ as Ms. Flowers put it) to appear on a German television program, several hundred dollars to appear as a Marilyn Monroe look-alike on a cable television show, and so on. And so on.” (New York Times, March 21, 1998)

In 1996, Flowers was briefly involved in a traveling show called “Gennifer Flowers in Oh! Calcutta.” Richard Landsberg of the AP offered this review (May, 15, 1996):

“By the time it played in Reading last Tuesday night, the production of ‘Gennifer Flowers in Oh! Calcutta!’ was missing Ms. Flowers, who had walked out of the theater during intermission in Dayton the week before, complaining she hadn’t been paid. This seemed not to bother the audience in Reading a bit. The biggest cheers of the evening, in fact, were reserved for the announcement that Ms. Flowers wouldn’t be performing. Which isn’t exactly the way it was said.

“Actually, what cast member Scott Baker announced to the audience about Ms. Flowers cannot, in its entirety, be repeated here. But then, neither can much else that was said from the stage that night. Let’s put it this way: After announcing that Ms. Flowers’ parts were being performed by Melissa McGovern, Dawn Monaco and ‘yours truly.’ Baker brought down the house by adding: ‘Let me reassure you that not one of us had to (graphic reference to a common sex act) the president to get the job.’ Cheers.”

Flowers had another brief venture into musical theater in 2004 when she joined the cast of “Boobs: The Musical.” Joyce Walter, writing in the New York Times (Jan. 25, 2004), interviewed Flowers about that role:

“She is scheduled to open in ‘Boobs’ this Wednesday. The show, which originally opened last May, features the songs of Ruth Wallis, who in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s wrote and sang what were known as party songs. Songs like ‘She’s Got Freckles on Her But She Is Nice’ and ‘Johnny Had a Yo-Yo,’ in which, Ms. Flowers explains, she and another actress come out dressed like little girls and discuss, well, Johnny’s yo-yo.

”’My boobs’ — oh, and did we mention that ‘Boobs: The Musical’ is the name of the revue in which she’s starring — ‘which are large, by the way, are real,’ Ms. Flowers offers. ‘Large is not always good. For this show, they had to make me my own corsets. Some of the gowns are held up with a string.’”

With the backing of her wealthy stockbroker husband, a man with the unlikely name of Finis D. Shelnutt, Flowers purchased and operated a club in New Orleans’ French Quarter named the Kelsto Club. Writing in the Washington Post 11/29/2012, Suzy Parker describes her visit to the Kelsto Club:

“In 2003, I visited her night club ‘Gennifer Flowers Kelsto Club,’ which was housed in a former brothel, during research for my book ‘Sex in the South: Unbuckling The Bible Belt.’ Flowers hosted a night of erotic literature readings at the bar, which was adorned with plenty of pictures of her, including the cover of Penthouse. She sold white T-shirts with her image and a red lip print that she had branded as her logo. A sign on the bar stated, ‘No photographs of Gennifer Flowers may be taken by customers.’”

Los Angeles Times reporter Hillary E. MacGregor (Dec. 8, 2002) also caught her act:

“Flowers wears a white tuxedo jacket and a lace camisole. Her bottle-blond hair is piled atop her head in her trademark up-do. Her eyes are turquoise. Her lips are red, luscious, always freshly painted. When she receives a business card from a patron she smiles, then tucks it into her cleavage. ‘I don’t have anywhere else, baby,’ she drawls.

“She sings jazz, blues and R&B. She sings Billie Holiday and some Patsy Cline. Always, she sings about love gone wrong.”

But Flowers wasn’t done playing the Clinton card. She would claim that in 2005 he tried to contact her. 

“‘I was at home by myself, and the phone rings, it said unavailable, and I picked up the phone and it was him,’ Flowers told WGNO reporter Susan Roesgen over a glass of red wine while the cameras were rolling. ‘And he wanted to come by my house and talk to me…. I said, No, you can’t come over here, no way. And he said, I’ll put on a hoodie and I’ll jog up there. I said no… And that was it. That would have been 2005.’” ABC News, Nov. 29, 2012.

Sometime later Flowers teamed up with Paula Jones to offer the public a souvenir, a piece of this sordid history. 

“Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones are offering Internet viewers the lurid details of encounters they claim they had with former President Clinton — for $1.99 a pop. The women, who gained notoriety in the early 1990s after claiming to have had sexual encounters with Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, have created a Web site offering videos of their thoughts on Clinton, his wife Hillary and other matters. Each video segment is available for $1.99. ‘It’s a way we can get our story out there in our own words, without someone making their own interpretations or corrections,’ Jones said.” (Newport News Daily Press June 11, 2008)

Sorry folks, the genniferandpaula.com web site is no longer available. But the Kelsto Club is still around. It closed after Hurricane Katrina, but Flowers reopened the club in the past year.

And 24 years after Flowers became a talking point in the 1992 Presidential election, she made something of a cameo in the 2016 election. Ever the one to make a classy move, Donald Trump suggested he would bring Flowers in as his guest and sit her in the front row during his debate with Hillary Clinton. Flowers seemed ready to go but either the invitation was rescinded or never in fact offered.

Looking over Flowers career I can’t help but think of the lede to the Washington Post story I cited earlier by Suzy Parker. “It’s sometimes best to fade into history. That’s especially true if your claim to fame has been an affair with a famous politician who later became president.”

(Photos are from genniferflowers.com web site.)

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