Bad Boy Boyfriend (Part 1)

Before there was Wojciech Frykowski... there was Jim Marshall. 

While the relationship between a high society heiress and a twice divorced Polish immigrant raised a few eyebrows, it was nothing compared to Abigail Folger's other publicly known relationship with music photographer, Jim Marshall. (left).
 Abigail and Jim met in San Francisco, where and how is anyone's guess and probably only theirs to confirm, but in contrast to Jim's wild lifestyle, he dug poetry and theater, the kind of past-times that didn't quite go with the image he projected. And the kind of past times, a certain heiress was known to enjoy too.

After speaking to a close friend of Jim's, she told me several anecdotes of their time together, which included a motorbike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge; Jim was touched that Gibbie- this "classy girl" - trusted Jim completely and encouraged him to drive faster.

Gibbie accompanied Jim to the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Also among the party was Dr. John Luce, a doctor in SF and someone else I've had a pleasant conversation with, here is what he told me:

"The other person I remember most from Monterey is Gibby (sic). I had always thought of her as a quiet and intellectual woman. Jim Marshall by contrast was in those days a fast driving and dirty talking man whose photography was as well served by his aggressiveness as it was by his artistic sensibilities. Seeing Jim and Gibby together made me wonder how rock music and, perhaps the drugs which were part of rock, produced bedfellows I could never anticipated."
 
Fellow photographer Elaine Mayes also didn't understand the relationship between Jim and Gibbie. 

I remember her as a pleasant person, friendly, and also that I did not really understand her relationship with Jim. They were very different kinds of people.

No pictures of Gibbie have surfaced from Monterey which has always confused me, given that she accompanied several photographers to the event.
Jim Marshall died in 2010 before I could get the chance to speak to him. However, I did learn from a personal life-long friend of his, that his feelings towards Gibbie remained warm, often finding it hard to discuss the nature of her death. He harbored feelings of anger about it, saying if Charles Manson was ever released from prison, he'd be waiting for him at the gates with a shotgun.

RIP Jim.