After being attacked by segregationists he was arrested by the police and held for a few hours on unspecified charges. Two reports by Life in January 1959 recorded the success of communists in Cuba led by Fidel Castro in finally overthrowing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Villet was present in Cuba during the last days of the revolution and, for a time, accompanied Castro in the back of his car as he drove into Havana surrounded by his supporters. In 1962 Villet visited the controversial Synanon House drug rehabilitation center in Santa Monica, California, and produced a feature called A Tunnel Back into the Human Race. In 1961, Barbara Cummiskey, a writer for Life, had the idea of writing three essays about the myths associated with the American dream, i.e. fame, success and wealth. For the "success" segment she developed the story around Victor Sabatino, who owned a chain of foam-rubber stores and was driven by a desire for wealth and power, while "sacrificing his humanity in pursuit of success". Villet was assigned to the story, to be titled the Lash of Success. This resulted in a report that was highly regarded both at the time of publication and subsequently. Writing in The New York Times, Stephen Crowley, also a photographer, said that his appreciation for this work led to a bit of Grey Villet DNA being in every one of his own photos. According to Mary Panzer, Villet got “an almost unthinkable proximity” to his subjects, bringing "viewers uncomfortably near them" by spending several weeks with Sabatino and "melting into the woodwork". The article was reproduced in the 1978 publication Great Photographic Essays from Life. Villet considered it his best work. In March 1966, Life published photos by Villet of Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial couple who were sentenced at the end of the 1950s for violating Virginia's laws prohibiting mixed marriages. Married in the District of Columbia in 1958 they had not realized that their marriage was illegal in Virginia and were only able to avoid imprisonment by agreeing to leave the state. After a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court found unanimously in their favor in 1967. Villet was assigned to the story in 1965 and spent two weeks with the Lovings. However, Life held the story and only published it in 1966. Despite the eventual Supreme Court finding interracial marriage was a sensitive issue at