Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton

in the beginning they were civil to each other, a part of Marche hoping that hewould return to his family and that she would awaken from what seemed like a bad dream. For a time Jon treated his estranged wife almost like a mother confessor, revealing intimate details of his relationship with Stacey. He was almost too honest about his new life, telling Marche about his drug use and bedroom antics. Krisann recalls: “She would say things like, ‘They go to the bathroom in front of each other!’ She was horrified. I told her that if she wanted to win Jon back, she was going to have to step up her sexual game. She was very straitlaced and conventional when it came to sex. At that time, Jon was a very sexy man. He walked into a room and he turned heads.
    “I can tell you that Angie does not get her sexuality from her mother, that’s for damn sure. It comes from her father. Marche was graceful, sweet, and kind, but she became a bitter, scorned woman and she never let that anger out of her heart. She never moved on when she lost her role as Mrs. Jon Voight, and made sure she clung to that fame for as long as possible. Don’t get me wrong—I loved and adored Marche. But she never let go of her anger. Jon took away her fairy tale, and she felt bereft. I felt sorry for her.”
    After he moved out, Jon rented an apartment on the fifth floor of the same building on Roxbury where he had lived with Marcheline. It was a white, unfurnished room that he planned to use as a business address to which his mail, film scripts, and other work-related materials could be delivered.
    Shortly afterward, Marche had Angie’s white crib taken to Jon’s fifth-floor apartment. This was the “Ivory Tower” where Angie lived for more than a year, with a random assortment of babysitters looking after her twenty-four hours a day. Marche’s brother, Raleigh, would often recruit out-of-work actors or acquaintances to work in shifts at three dollars an hour.
    Meanwhile, Angie’s older brother, Jamie, stayed with his mother on the second floor. For a long time Jamie and Angie remained apart, except for occasional outings together to Roxbury Park. Randy Alpert, a friend of Marche’s brother Raleigh, helped out for a time, making both Angie and James breakfast and taking them to the park. “I loved working for them,” he recalls. “Marche was so gorgeous and sweet and kind. Truly an angel.”
    When I interviewed Krisann Morel for this book, she painted a ratherdifferent portrait of the household. Two years younger than Marche and a part-time model herself, at first she was confident, in control, chatting amiably about her days working at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset, remembering the night John Lennon was thrown out by overenthusiastic bouncers.
    Nestled deep in her story lay a dark secret she had struggled to keep for more than half a lifetime. Now was time for confession. First, though, she wanted to set the scene. So she talked about Jon Voight; his blooming wife, Marche; the birth of Angie.
    Her voice, so strong and firm, began to crack as, in her mind’s eye, she journeyed back in time to what she called the Ivory Tower, the white room with the white carpet, the white doors, the white drapes, the white walls, and the white crib. And the baby girl, helpless and alone.
    Remembering those days, Krisann twisted her wedding ring, and her face contorted in an effort to suppress the welling emotion. “This has been my burden for thirty-three years. I saw what happened to Angelina Jolie, and it haunts me to this day. As much as I wanted to help, I couldn’t fix the hurt. I loved Marche, and I think she really loved her daughter, but the truth is the truth.
    “Marche took her pain out on that child. She separated herself from that child because she looked a lot like Jon. She was fair like him and had his eyes.”
    Not surprisingly, Angie was very different from her brother, who enjoyed a close relationship with his mother. She learned to talk