In her new memoir, “You Thought I Was Dead,” Van Doren recalls her steamy affair with the revolutionary while shooting a film in Argentina.

Old Hollywood icon Mamie Van Doren recalls ‘wonderfully heart-stopping’ sex with Che Guevara

In her new memoir, "You Thought I Was Dead," Van Doren recalls her steamy affair with the revolutionary while shooting a film in Argentina.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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June 6, 2026 5:00 p.m. ET

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Mamie Van Doren; Che Guevara. Credit:

Screen Archives/Getty; Bettmann Archive

- Mamie Van Doren is opening up about a sexual encounter she had with Che Guevara in 1961.

- The Old Hollywood icon spills all the details about the "ecstasy" they shared after meeting at a party in her new memoir, *You Thought I Was Dead*.

- "I thought: 'Charming smile, soft Spanish accent, an altogether dashing presence in fatigues. What could go wrong?'" she writes.

What happens when a silver screen icon meets an icon of Marxist revolution? Apparently, "ecstasy."

At least, that's how it went down for Mamie Van Doren — one of the final blonde bombshells molded in Marilyn Monroe's image to make a real impact on Hollywood before its own revolution of the 1960s. Van Doren, born Joan Lucille Olander, spares no detail of her rollicking ride through film business's golden age in *You Thought I Was Dead*, her new memoir out now from Post Hill Press.

In one scintillating section, Van Doren recalls an unexpected erotic encounter she had while shooting the 1961 film *An American in Buenos Aires *on location in the Argentine capital. After one grueling day on set, she and costar, Jean-Pierre Aumont, a former freedom fighter in the French Resistance during WWII, planned to let off some steam at a ritzy party thrown by a local industrialist.

Van Doren writes of seeing Aumont sporting a "wide grin" while talking to an equally dashing compatriot at the function, a man he introduced as "Generalissimo Ernesto Che Guevara." Though his mustache "was a bit sparse and scruffy" and his hair "not quite ready for prime time," Van Doren writes, "We sipped, eyeing each other. I thought: 'Charming smile, soft Spanish accent, an altogether dashing presence in fatigues. What could go wrong?'"

Che Guevara in 1965.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, nicknamed Che, rose to prominence a handful of years before his meeting with Van Doren. A native of Cuba, Guevara traveled the world, building a potent and influential philosophy of anti-capitalist, anti-colonial revolution, that held guerrilla warfare as a central tenet. He played a critical role in the Cuban Revolution, and thereafter traveled to countries like Algeria and Bolivia to help foment and follow through on nascent revolutionary movements.

When he met Van Doren in 1961, he was just days from traveling to Congo to help quell an increasingly explosive political crisis. By 1967, he would be dead, executed by a U.S.-backed Bolivian firing squad after working to organize a resistance group in Santa Cruz.

But down in Buenos Aires, Guevara plotted a "little subterfuge," Van Doren recalls. "'I asked our host to switch my placard so I could sit next to you,'" Van Doren says he told her, adding that he "once wanted to be an actor" but lost interest because there was "too much waiting" involved.

Chatting at the swanky soirée, Van Doren asked Guevara if he liked American movies. He told her that he loved "American cowboy movies," explaining that "Gene Autry movies are classic blueprints for revolution... [Autry] rides into a town where there is trouble. The townspeople's cattle are being stolen. They’re being forced off their lands. They’re being overcharged for their food, and they are being underpaid for what they produce on their farms and ranches... He exposes the plotters and cleans up the mess, fighting off the hired guns with a rain of bullets... you could say that Mr. Autry and I are in the same business — getting justice for the helpless and the weak."

Van Doren accepted the charming revolutionary's offer to drive her back to her accommodations. There, things took a wild turn.

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"There are love scenes, and there are love scenes. Nearly always, they are spiced by the promise of the unexpected. An armed guard at the bedroom door was about as unexpected as it gets," Van Doren writes.

"Che and I wasted no time. He took me in his arms and kissed me. My tingles merged into a cosmic jolt and I was instantly aflame with desire," she continues. "Before I realized it, we were naked, and Che was carrying me to bed," inspiring a feeling in her that "champagne in the proper quantities will do, [a] tidal ebb and flow, setting me adrift from all reality except sensation. In short, Che was a wonderfully heart-stopping f---. My earlier fatigue melted away. I closed my eyes and gave myself up to his strength and agility. We orgasmed simultaneously more than once. I can't remember the delirious words either of us spoke. I closed my eyes in ecstasy."

The way Van Doren tells it, she and Guevara didn't get much sleep, and had to be dragged out of bed the following day. Van Doren got Aumont to cover for her on set ("'You naughty girl! You're not under the weather, you're under the Guevara,'" she remembers him joking). But the crisis in Congo would not wait for Che.

Mamie Van Doren in 1960.

Herbert Dorfman/Corbis via Getty

"'When I'm done in the Congo, I will go back to Bolivia. Would you like to come visit me? Bolivia is a beautiful country,'" Van Doren syas Guevara asked her. "It was an invitation I did not expect. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The prospect immediately appealed to my sense of adventure."

Something just wouldn't let her say yes.

Guevara described "'an encampment in a remote area of the rainforest,'" complete with jaguars and exotic flowers and flowing champagne. Still, "Warning bells were clanging in my head. But an adventure conjoined with a lover, whether breaking studio rules with Tony Curtis or tracking down John Dillinger in the person of Lawrence Tierney, never failed to activate a reckless tingle in me."

It was a call from her young son, Perry, that jolted her back to reality. "I have a young son who needs me, Che. I also have a career with movies lined up to do. Infatuated as I am with you, I couldn't risk my life because I'd be risking my son's too." In characteristically flamboyant style, Van Doren rejected Guevara's appeal that her visit could be brief. "I went to him and kissed his cheek. 'Revolution is temporary. A bullet is forever.'"

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