There is some sensational interest in the new book:
A portrait of Uma's mom, etched in acid
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-355511c.html
Details of the mind-bending marriage of Uma Thurman's mom, Nena von Schlebrugge, to Timothy Leary are *revealed in a new biography of the LSD guru.
Uma Thurman isn't keen on talking about her mother's first marriage, to LSD frontiersman Timothy Leary. ("People shouldn't be defined by these early alliances in their lives," she tells Julia Reed in June's Vogue.) Then again, how many of us wouldn't love a mom as shagadelic as Nena von Schlebrugge Thurman?
It's easy to see how Uma came by her beauty and spunk, based on Robert Greenfield's exhaustive new bio, "Timothy Leary."
According to a Ford agency catalogue from the '60s, the 5-foot-9 von Schlebrugge was a prototype of today's supermodel. She earned $60 an hour (the highest rate at the time), posed for Vogue, Mademoiselle and Harper's Bazaar, and was never seen without her Pekingese.
Nena was 28 when she met Leary, who was then 45, at his annual Fourth of July party upstate in Millbrook. According to Greenfield, she told the mind-altering Harvard professor that she "wanted to go to India to seek ultimate wisdom, not to mention the secret sexual practices of the Orient."
"They took LSD and three days later they decided to get married," recalls Leary's ex-girlfriend Peggy Hitchcock.
By Monday, Nena had called modeling maharani Eileen Ford to tell her to cancel all her bookings.
Their Millbrook nuptials were a "phantasmagoric, magical mystery tour, the first real big coming-out party for all the A-list, jet-set, high-fashion beautiful people from New York who had recently discovered LSD," writes Greenfield. "Guests lined up to present the newlyweds with hash, grass and psychedelic mushrooms, as well as snuffboxes filled with LSD and cocaine." The wedding cake was crowned with the Hindu deities Shakti and Siva having sex.
The honeymooners headed to India, where they "ate psychedelic mushrooms to imprint a kabuki performance" on their memories. But it wasn't long before the marriage began unraveling. They took LSD once more to try to mend it. The drugs only made Leary flip out, says Greenfield. The pair called it quits, divorcing in 1965, a few months after returning to the United States.
Nena later met a student of Leary's, Robert A.F. Thurman, a serious explorer of Buddhism, at a New York party. They married in 1967. Leary had no hard feelings. Nena and Robert made him the godfather of their daughter, Uma. She became a goddess in her own right, and the group remained close until Leary's death in 1996.