LITMIR.BIZ

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when it seemed nothing could interrupt a happy future, tragedy struck the Jenner family. His younger brother Burt died in a car crash. Bruce was visiting his parents’ home in Connecticut and during his stay was loaned a Porsche by a local car dealer. Eighteen-year-old Burt volunteered to fill her up with petrol, but ended up crashing into a telegraph pole. He died in hospital, along with his young girlfriend, who had skipped school to go for a ride in the top-of-the-range sports car.

      Bruce named his first child Burt in honour of his much-loved brother. His son was born in 1978, six years after he and Chrystie were married. Sadly, the cracks had already begun to appear in their relationship. Faced with a future that did not contain eight hours of athletics practice a day, the reality of Bruce’s gender dysphoria – the technical term for his gender identity crisis – was making him unhappy and discontented with his situation.

      He and Chrystie separated for the first time the following year, and he met the woman who would eventually become his second wife at a celebrity tennis tournament. It was held at the Playboy Mansion in upmarket Holmby Hills, LA, where he had been staying temporarily. Bruce won the tournament and the beautiful Linda Thompson presented him with the trophy.

      She provided another bizarre link with Elvis Presley in the Kardashian family saga. His relationship with her was probably the most important Elvis had after Priscilla. She was a 5ft 9in willowy blonde, who was the reigning Miss Tennessee when she met The King. He moved her into Graceland, his famous mansion near Memphis, in 1972, and she was with him for four years.

      Linda had been a speech and drama major at MSU (Memphis State University) and, by all accounts, was the brightest of Elvis’s women. She was popular with the notorious Memphis Mafia – the entourage who seemed to be ever present with Elvis – and she had looked after him well. Marty Lacker, the unofficial foreman of the group, explained, ‘She was like a mother, a sister, a wife, a lover, and a nurse.’

      Elvis had bought an apartment for her in Santa Monica so she could pursue her acting ambitions. After he died in 1977, she became a regular member of the cast of a variety show called Hee Haw as a singer of country music.

      Bruce was immediately struck by Linda’s statuesque presence. He told her he and Chrystie were separated and they hit it off right away. He was uncertain about his future, however, and briefly reconciled with his wife. After Chrystie fell pregnant, he wanted her to have an abortion, because their marriage had failed. He told Playboy magazine in July 1980, one month after the birth, ‘My first reaction was that I didn’t want it.’

      Initially, Chrystie went along with his wishes, and even paid for an abortion, but changed her mind after a conversation with a friend made her realise she didn’t want to go through with the termination. She said at the time, ‘I thought, “What an idiot I am.” I wanted the baby very, very much. But I was conditioned to make decisions that were best for him [Bruce]. It was totally my choice to have the baby.’

      Bruce now says he too rejected the idea of an abortion, but when Cassandra, his eldest daughter, was born, he was in the middle of divorce proceedings and sitting in a hotel room far away in Kansas City. In his famous ground-breaking interview with Vanity Fair in July 2015, he told Buzz Bissinger that he wasn’t present at the birth: ‘Under the circumstances I could not even see myself being there.’

      Instead, he resumed his relationship with Linda. They married soon afterwards, in January 1981, in a beautiful setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii at the beachfront house of Allan Carr, the producer of Can’t Stop the Music. Bruce’s son Burt was best man, even though he was only two, and spent the entire ceremony tugging at his father’s sleeve, saying, ‘I want up.’ Linda walked down the ‘aisle’ to the sound of Elvis singing ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’. It was very romantic.

      At the time, Linda was already three months pregnant with their first child, Brandon, who was born the following June. Fortunately, she got on well with Bruce’s older children, both of whom came to the hospital to visit their new brother.

      Linda and Bruce became fixtures on the celebrity circuit around Los Angeles, making friends with stars like Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Sugar Ray Leonard, who would later feature in the Kardashian story. They appeared on the front cover of Playgirl magazine in May 1982: she revealed an impressive cleavage; he showed a lot of chest hair.

      The cover headline on the article read ‘The Fall and Rise of an American Hero’. This bolstered the Bruce Jenner image of a man fighting against the disadvantages of life, including dyslexia. His story was one of triumph over adversity and was a considerable money-spinner during his years as a media personality and motivational speaker. It was an image he later promoted in his 1996 book Finding the Champion Within.

      At no stage did he reveal to his audience his real struggle within. He would bounce on stage, all vigour and enthusiasm, wearing a pair of silk panties underneath his three-piece suit. Bruce, it appeared, was a master of living up to an image created for the general public. It wasn’t real.

      The offers flooded in after the Olympics and soon Bruce was a very wealthy young man. He appeared on all the top talk shows, including The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and The Merv Griffin Show. He became a well-known face on sports programmes, at one time co-presenting the popular Wide World of Sports.

      He also revealed an entrepreneurial streak that would later fit in very well with the Kardashian flair for business. Their philosophy is all about making the most of every opportunity. Bruce bought his first plane in 1978 and started Bruce Jenner Aviation, which sells aircraft supplies.

      He was marketed as a personality much more than the usual famous sportsman. He became the spokesperson and face on the packet of the iconic cereal Wheaties, the ‘breakfast of champions’, and a million families breakfasted with Bruce on the kitchen counter every day for years.

      His acting ambitions didn’t reach the hoped-for heights, however. He wasn’t going to be the next James Bond any time soon. He tried out for the Superman movie, but the role went to Christopher Reeve.

      He ended up in Can’t Stop the Music, a musical comedy based on the New York disco group Village People. Kris Jenner refers to it as Can’t Stand the Music. The film cost $20 million to make and returned $2 million at the box office. It was the first winner of the Golden Raspberry Award (Razzie)for Worst Picture. Bruce was nominated as Worst Actor, but the judges decided Neil Diamond deserved the award for The Jazz Singer.

      On one level, the film could be viewed as compulsive viewing. Bruce plays a sober-suited lawyer who undergoes a transformation when he becomes involved in the world of the Village People and ends up dancing down the street in a crop top and cut-off denim shorts. If it were released today, as a snapshot of the age, Can’t Stop the Music would probably be hailed as a must-see, glorious camp classic.

      Bruce’s acting career stalled at the first hurdle and didn’t much improve with a guest-starring role in the popular motorcycle cop series CHiPS. He played Officer Steve McLeish, who took over from the lead, Frank Poncherello (Erik Estrada), for six weeks. He started off as a movie star and became ‘made for TV’ in the space of a year.

      Bruce and Linda, meanwhile, shared an idyllic life by the ocean in Malibu, strolling along the beach together at sunset, playing sports, going to all the best parties and welcoming another son, Brody, into the world on 21 August 1983. Nothing could upset their happiness – or so Linda thought.

      Just after New Year 1985, Bruce sat his beautiful wife down and told her his secret. It wasn’t a confession she could ignore. The first time round with Chrystie, Bruce had been fairly light and matter of fact about things; this was far more serious and heartfelt. ‘I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside.’

      The couple tried therapy, but the counsellor confirmed that there was no cure or fix for what Bruce was going through. Linda would later write movingly that the enormity of what she had been told ‘broke her heart into a million pieces’.

      While

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