20 Old Hollywood Breakups That Became Huge Scandals

Actress Marilyn Monroe wed former baseball star Joe DiMaggio on January 14, 1954, at San Francisco City Hall. DiMaggio wanted a simple domestic life; Monroe’s stardom only continued to soar. In September, DiMaggio grew livid on a New York set as photographers snapped the famous dress-blowing-up scene from The Seven Year Itch. The scene would become one of Monroe’s most famous images, but DiMaggio was hardly a fan. On October 6, 1954, Monroe announced her split from DiMaggio after 274 days of marriage.

In late 1957, Sammy Davis Jr., an entertainer, and Kim Novak, a Columbia Pictures star, were quietly dating. In 1958, when columnists revealed the relationship, studio head Harry Cohn worried about public reaction to the then-taboo interracial romance. According to Davis’s autobiography and accounts from friends, Cohn enlisted mob help to threaten Davis with physical harm if he did not wed a Black woman within nine days. He married dancer Loray White on January 10, 1958. Nine days to find a wife is quite the Hollywood deadline.

Filmmaker Charlie Chaplin had wed the 16-year-old Lita Grey in secret in Mexico in November 1924 after she became pregnant while filming The Gold Rush. Grey filed a 42-page divorce complaint on January 10, 1927, alleging Chaplin was cruel to her and unfaithful. Copies were available from street vendors in pamphlet form. Yes, people could literally buy the divorce drama on the street. Chaplin’s assets were frozen. That August, the parties settled out of court for $825,000, including a trust for their two sons, who were born during the marriage.

On May 6, 1950, Elizabeth Taylor, 18, married hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr., 23, son of the founder of the hotel chain, at a Beverly Hills wedding arranged by MGM to promote her upcoming movie Father of the Bride. The movie publicity practically wrote itself. The marriage, unfortunately, didn’t cooperate. The couple’s European honeymoon ended in drinking, gambling, and domestic abuse, and Taylor petitioned for divorce. An uncontested divorce was granted on January 29, 1951, 205 days after their wedding.

On July 8, 1942, actor Cary Grant married the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. The tabloids dubbed them “Cash and Cary,” which Grant reportedly found distasteful because he had agreed not to accept any money from her fortune. Hutton filed for divorce in July 1945; the divorce was granted on August 30 of that year. In the divorce, Grant, a star in his own right, requested nothing from Hutton. So much for the nickname!

Actress Rita Hayworth married filmmaker Orson Welles on September 7, 1943. Their marriage was marred by his constant work schedule and travel, and they separated sometime around 1946. However, they made the film noir The Lady from Shanghai together in 1947, for which Welles cut and bleached Hayworth’s signature red hair blonde. Changing one of Hollywood’s most recognizable heads of hair was bound to get someone’s attention. This decision reportedly infuriated Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn. The couple was divorced on December 1, 1948.

On November 7, 1951, singer and actor Frank Sinatra married actress Ava Gardner, shortly after divorcing his first wife. As Sinatra’s music career declined, Gardner’s rose; their marriage became increasingly volatile. Gardner used her leverage to lobby directors and producers for Sinatra during auditions for From Here to Eternity (1953), which led to a career resurgence. MGM announced their separation in October of that year. Sinatra and Gardner later divorced in Mexico in 1957, and remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Actress Rita Hayworth wed Prince Aly Khan, a diplomat and son of the Ismaili Muslim spiritual leader Aga Khan III, at Cannes on May 27, 1949. She took a break from films but felt estranged by his frequent travels and extramarital liaisons, and went back to the U.S. in 1951 with her daughter, Princess Yasmin. Hayworth’s divorce was granted in Reno on January 26, 1953. The separate issue of child custody and a financial settlement was not settled until that November.

Actor Humphrey Bogart married stage actress Mayo Methot in 1938. Called “the Battling Bogarts,” they were known for their excessive consumption of alcohol, and memoirs contain an account of Methot stabbing Bogart with a knife. The nickname was doing very little exaggerating. After Bogart became enamored with 19-year-old Lauren Bacall during the making of To Have and Have Not, Methot granted him a divorce on May 10, 1945. Bogart married Bacall eleven days later.

In June 1931, actor Clark Gable wed Texas debutante Maria “Ria” Langham. The couple separated in 1935, but Langham refused to grant Gable a divorce despite his falling in love with actress Carole Lombard. In early 1939, Gable used a salary advance from MGM for Gone With the Wind to pay Langham approximately $500,000 for an uncontested divorce, which was granted in Las Vegas on March 7, 1939. Gable eloped with Lombard three weeks later.

After making the 1926 film Flesh and the Devil, actress Greta Garbo and her co-star John Gilbert planned a double wedding with director King Vidor and actress Eleanor Boardman. Garbo never appeared and broke off the engagement. Skipping your own wedding certainly gets the message across. MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer made a derogatory remark about her absence. Gilbert lost his temper and struck Mayer. Gilbert remained one of MGM’s top-paid stars for years. The myth that Mayer destroyed his career is false.

Silent-film star Rudolph Valentino married Jean Acker, also an actress, on November 5, 1919, following a brief two-month romance. On their wedding night, Acker locked him out of their hotel suite. After he spent twenty minutes banging on the door, he left. That is one way to end the honeymoon before it starts. The couple never had sexual relations, and Acker filed for divorce in 1921. Valentino was later arrested for bigamy after marrying again before his divorce was final due to a paperwork error; the charges were dropped. Their divorce became final in March 1923.

In August 1933, 18-year-old Austrian actress Hedwig Kiesler, later known as Hedy Lamarr, wed Fritz Mandl, an Austrofascist arms dealer who sold arms to Mussolini’s Italy. Mandl was controlling, forcing her to give up acting and attempting to buy up all copies of her controversial film Ecstasy. In early 1937, she fled to Paris and then London, divorcing Mandl and signing on with MGM. Her memoir states she escaped disguised as a maid.

Mary Pickford married fellow actor Douglas Fairbanks on March 28, 1920, and the two became one of Hollywood’s earliest power couples, living at their famous estate, Pickfair, while also co-founding United Artists. As talkies arrived and Fairbanks spent extended stays overseas, he had a relationship with British socialite Lady Sylvia Ashley. Mary Pickford filed for divorce in December 1933 and was granted a final divorce decree on January 10, 1936. She retained ownership of Pickfair, residing there until her death in 1979.

In August 1932, actress Bette Davis married bandleader Harmon “Ham” Nelson. As she rose to stardom, Nelson fell into obscurity and grew resentful of being paid less than Davis. In 1938, after Nelson learned that she had conducted an affair with businessman Howard Hughes, he filed for divorce and told the court under oath that Davis recited scripts aloud to guests at parties to an “unnecessary degree.” Of all the complaints to make it into divorce testimony, reading too many scripts at parties is certainly specific. He was granted a divorce in November 1938.

Mexican-born actress Lupe Vélez married American Olympic champion and “Tarzan” star Johnny Weissmuller on October 8, 1933. They were together for six years but their constant screaming matches often turned into fights, leading to bruises studio makeup artists routinely tried to conceal. She asked for a divorce three times, in 1934, 1935 and 1938, and they got back together twice until an uncontested divorce was granted in August 1939. On the witness stand, she said her husband had been cruel and jealous.

Actor Errol Flynn married the French actress Lili Damita on June 19, 1935, after they eloped to Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was fraught with quarrels, and Flynn disappeared on occasion, as well as having numerous other relationships. In 1941, Damita filed for divorce; the final decree was granted on April 8, 1943. Damita was awarded substantial alimony and the estate known as Mulholland Farm; the settlement strained Flynn’s finances for years.

Mickey Rooney, then the biggest name in movies at the age of 21, was dating Ava Gardner, a 19-year-old MGM contract player who would not earn any screen credit until several years later. Even their boss had reservations: Louis B. Mayer allowed the two to marry only under protest. They wed on January 10, 1942. It was a short-lived, 16-month union; Rooney gambled and was unfaithful. Gardner received a divorce on May 21, 1943, citing mental cruelty, coincidentally the same day her mother died.

Actor Ronald Reagan, who would later serve as president of the Screen Actors Guild, married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. But the couple’s marriage was on shaky ground by the late ’40s. In June 1947, their daughter Christine died just hours after being born prematurely. Wyman’s career then skyrocketed, and she won an Academy Award for the 1948 film Johnny Belinda. Wyman filed for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty in 1948, and the decree was granted in July 1949. Reagan would go on to be the first divorced U.S. president.

Actress Ingrid Bergman had been married to Swedish neurosurgeon Petter Lindström since 1937 when she went to Italy in 1949 to star in Stromboli, directed by Roberto Rossellini. Bergman and Rossellini began an affair which resulted in a child, but in America it caused a media storm. After she delivered her son, Roberto, Bergman’s Mexican divorce was finalized in February 1950. Then, on March 14, U.S. Senator Edwin Johnson referred to her on the Senate floor as “a powerful influence for evil.” Yes, her love life had literally reached the U.S. Senate.

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