Adele Carolyn Morales (June 12, 1925 – November 22, 2015) was an American painter, actress, and memoirist. Morales studied painting under Hans Hofman and was known for her abstract
expressionist paintings
and her work in papier mâché. She also performed at the

Actors Studio The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights located on West 44th Street in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. The studio is best known for its work refining and teaching method actin ...

and was active in the New York art scene of the 1950s. While best known publicly for her marriage to Norman Mailer and the stabbing incident, Morales maintained an independent creative career throughout her life.Moore, M.J. (2020). "Blood in the Morning: The Turbulent Relationship of Norman Mailer and Adele Morales" https://www.criminalelement.com/blood-in-the-morning-the-turbulent-relationship-of-norman-mailer-and-adele-morales/ (Retrieved April, 7, 2025)

Early life

Morales was born in New York City, to a family of Peruvian origin. She grew up in

Bensonhurst Bensonhurst is a residential neighborhood in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bordered on the northwest by 14th Avenue, on the northeast by 60th Street, on the southeast by Avenue P and 22nd ...

but moved to

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, where she studied painting with

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

and took up a

bohemian lifestyle Bohemianism is a social and cultural movement that has, at its core, a way of life away from society's conventional norms and expectations. The term originates from the French ''bohème'' and spread to the English-speaking world. It was used to ...

, being involved for several years with Edwin Fancher (who, together with

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...

and Dan Wolf, founded ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...

'') and briefly with

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

. Mailer's biographer

Mary Dearborn Mary Dearborn is an American biographer and author. Dearborn has published biographies of Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journal ...

says of those days:

Adele thrived in the city. She frequented the Village bars, especially those, like the San Remo and the Cedar Tavern, favored by artists and writers, and she dressed in fantastic, gypsylike outfits. By all accounts, she had extraordinary physical presence. With striking dark good looks and a beautiful body, she seemed to exude sexuality. (It was widely known that her lingerie was ordered from Frederick's of Hollywood.)

Life with Norman Mailer

In 1951 she moved in with

in an apartment upstairs from Wolf's, on First Avenue near Second Street in the East Village; they were married in 1954 and lived in a "loft on Monroe Street in the shadows of the Manhattan Bridge," which became a "popular salon" for the New York intelligentsia. But after visiting Paris in the summer of 1956 Mailer and Morales decided to leave New York; Mailer wrote "the city was not alive for me. I was on edge. My wife was pregnant. It seemed abruptly too punishing to live at the pace we had been going for several years." In the fall of 1956 they moved to a rented "sprawling white saltbox farmhouse" in

Bridgewater, Connecticut Bridgewater is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 1,662 at the 2020 census, a decline from the figure of 1,727 tabulated in 2010. The town is part of the Western Connecticut Planning Region. Bridgewater ...

, near a literary and artistic community that included

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

and

William Styron William Clark Styron Jr. (June 11, 1925 – November 1, 2006) was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work. Early life Styron was born in the Hilton Village historic district of Newport News, Virginia, the so ...

in nearby Roxbury. In 1957, she gave birth to her first daughter, Danielle. Although Adele was happy at first in the country, there was "a constant low-level hostility between Norman and Adele, which got worse when they drank." They moved back to New York in the fall of 1958, renting an apartment at 73 Perry St. in the Village; Adele bore another daughter, Elizabeth Anne, in 1959. In the summer of 1960, in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Provi ...

, Adele danced in a production called "The Pirates of Provincetown," and

James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'' has been ranked ...

praised her performance, "though she had no lines beyond one scream, which she delivered with gusto in high 'method' style"; later that summer she had to bail Norman out of jail after a drunken run-in with the police.

Stabbing

On Sunday, November 20, 1960, Mailer stabbed Adele with a penknife after a party, nearly killing her. He cut through her breast, only just missing her heart. Then he stabbed her in the back. As she lay there, hemorrhaging, one man reached down to help her. Mailer snapped: "Get away from her. Let the bitch die." He was involuntarily committed to Bellevue Hospital for 17 days; his wife would not press charges, and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault, and was given a suspended sentence. In the short term, Morales made a physical recovery, and the two divorced in 1962.

Later life and legacy

In 1997, she published a memoir of her marriage to Mailer titled ''

The Last Party ''The Last Party: Scenes From My Life with Norman Mailer'' is a 1997 book by Adele Morales, second wife of Norman Mailer, whom she married in 1954. It was published in the US by Barricade Books. The book is a memoir of Morales' and Mailer's ...

'', which recounted the violence and its aftermath. This incident has been a focal point for feminist critics of Mailer, who point to themes of sexual violence in his work. She spent her last years in a rent-controlled Manhattan tenement in relative poverty. The former couple had two daughters: Danielle "Dandy" Mailer (born 1957) is a painter, and Elizabeth Anne "Betsy" Mailer (born 1959) is a writer. Morales died in New York City on November 22, 2015, from pneumonia, at the age of 90. Shortly after her death, her daughter Danielle Mailer explained: "She wanted to be remembered as a gifted painter and actress and as a mother who was fiercely devoted to her (two) girls."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Morales, Adele 1925 births 2015 deaths American memoirists American people of Peruvian descent American stabbing survivors Deaths from pneumonia in New York City People from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn People from the East Village, Manhattan Writers from Manhattan People from Bridgewater, Connecticut