Today's Blind Items - Wife Was A Punching Bag - Old Hollywood
There are a lot of a-holes to choose from when you are looking at actors in Old Hollywood. This particular actor was probably at or near the top when it comes to truly awful human beings. It didn't stop him from winning an Academy Award and being nominated for several others. I am utterly shocked his Academy Award nominated wife never was killed during one of his beat downs. It definitely was not for a lack of trying.
Whenever he drank he would beat her. Considering he drank several times each week, this was often a problem when she was filming. If they went out at night and anyone mentioned her previous husbands or boyfriends she would try and make an excuse to not go home because she knew she was going to get beaten.
An ax of the actress threatened the actor's life if he continued to beat the actress but the threat only lasted a few months and then he went back to beating the actress. Our actor would fly all over the world to see his wife just to beat her and make sure she was not cheating on him. There was the time he broke her arm and collarbone and tried to remove her hair with his bare hands. She stayed with him.
The beatings continued until one day our actor almost killed them both. She left and filed for divorce. He then proceeded to spend the next year following her all over the world. He would break in to her hotel rooms or homes and beat her until he passed out. At one point she had her ex hire some men to beat the actor and they did so until the actor almost died. Apparently that finally got the message through and the pair never saw each other again.
Not enough to go on but Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks?
ReplyDeleteGig Young?
ReplyDeleteClint Eastwood/Sondra Locke
ReplyDeleteEntern let's cut a nice deal here--don't let it be Paul Newman, ok?
ReplyDeletei was thinking Sean Connery & Diane Cilento but that's not old Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteI could def see that.
ReplyDeleteRita Hayworth/Orson Welles?
ReplyDeleteNot old enough maybe.
ReplyDeleteMickey Rooney/Ava Gardner
ReplyDelete@back I don't really see that. Connery was a bodybuilder before he got into movies and I'd think he'd be pretty tough to beat up. You'd probably have to hire several guys to do that job.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say Jason Robards, who was married to Lauren Bacall, with Sinatra as the ex who sent the "cut it out" goons.
ReplyDeleteriiiight, and he's foreign....that counts out Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard too then..lol
ReplyDeleteFrank Sinatra and Ava Gardner.
ReplyDeleteFrank Sinatra & Ava Gardner?
ReplyDeleteI'd think that she'd kick his tiny ass!
ReplyDeleteI thought so, but wouldn't the item have mentioned "singer"?
ReplyDeleteoooh, i accidently skipped that whole paragraph about her having previous husband(S) and boyfriends.
ReplyDeleteThat was my only hesitation. But I think this horrible relationship was chronicled in the Godfather, with Johnny being Sinatra.
ReplyDeleteSteve McQueen and Ali McGraw?
ReplyDeleteLawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh?
ReplyDeleteOrson Welles/Rita Hayworth?
ReplyDeleteNM, nominated never won, ARRRGHH, we need more clues Entern
ReplyDeleteClint/Sondra never married.
ReplyDeleteI seriously doubt it was Paul Newman, I mean REALLY.
ReplyDeleteCharlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard?
ReplyDeleteWhat's "Old Hollywood" round these parts? Is the 70s "Old Hollywood?" Because that would open up a whole lot more possibilities.
ReplyDeleteSean Peen and Buttercup
ReplyDeleteI like this guess & It fits for Ava G. & they definately had a violent relationship but Frank was only nominated for 2 Oscars not "several"-From Here To Eternity & The Man With The Golden Arm-he won the 1 for FHTE...he did get an honorary award & a humanitarian award from the Academy so if Enty's mixing that up maybe.
ReplyDeleteSidenote: my father couldn't stand frank sinatra-didn't want his records in the house b/c he was quote: "a crook & he hit women" unquote.
Vivian Leigh and Joann Woodward both won Oscars so I don't think it's either pair.
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, what is the cut off for old now? seems like it should be adjusted
ReplyDeleteRita Hayworth was never nominated
ReplyDeleteLiz Taylor/Richard Burton?
ReplyDeleteLa Liz has won 2 Oscars.
ReplyDeleteAva Garner and Frank Sinatra.. and somewhat jealously embroiled her friend Lana Turner in that jealous stop the wandering eye of her not me cheating mess..
ReplyDeleteThe only couple I can think of that has a drinking man and a woman with famous and powerful and multiple exes is Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. However, they are BOTH Oscar winners, and their history is pretty well documented. (e.g. No broken collarbone for Liz ever.)
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely gotta be Ava Gardner, but the person I am thinking of was not married to her. George C. Scott. Sinatra would have been the one was the one trying to protect her with his thug crew. From Google: 'On the other hand, she (Gardner) details her romances with Howard Duff and Robert Taylor, as well as her violent relationship with George C. Scott. Booze and beatings ended this love affair, but Ava writes, "Even today, if I so much as see him on television, I start to shake all over again and have to turn the set off." '
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-03/entertainment/ca-1662_1_ava-gardner-s-memoir
My mother felt the same way. Hated his guts.
ReplyDeleteI think we have a winner: (thanks Mr Google)! What a disappointment, this guy was one of the greatest actors of all time IMO.
ReplyDeletehttp://calitreview.com/1878/hollywood-lives-george-c-scott-and-tony-curtis/
"However, far from appeasing him, success did nothing to calm Scott’s torment. According to Sheward – who gathered his information from printed matter (mostly journalism) and interviews with dozens of people who knew the actor – Scott was, to say the least, a piece of work. A hardcore alcoholic, he confessed to a fellow actor that he downed a quart of vodka a day, washed down by beer. He would frequently go into drunken rages and get into fights. In the early chapters of the book it is almost comical how many of these fights end up with the actor’s nose getting broken. (So many fractures gave him, to say the least, a distinctive mask.) His violent episodes were so numerous that at a certain point, Scott hired bodyguards – not to protect him, but to protect other people from him.
After a while the anecdotes are no longer funny, particularly when they involve beating women. Ava Gardner suffered a broken arm and collarbone, and had a hank of her hair torn out by the actor, and actress Marian Seldes says that Scott tried to strangle her while drunk, apparently mistaking her for a random demon. Scott was one of those actors who drank while he worked, and often functioned, except for those binges in which he would disappear during three days’ shooting of a film (costing the producers hundreds of thousands of dollars) or miss a week’s worth of shows (to the disappointment of theatergoers who paid good money to see him)."
Interesting! I knew he was a jerk but didn't know he was with Ava.
ReplyDeleteMe neither! Shocking stuff.
ReplyDeleteSometimes ignorance really IS bliss.
ReplyDeleteBut George and Ava were not married.
ReplyDeleteRyan O'Neill is a confirmed piece of shit so he's my guess.
ReplyDeletewow - Ava sure liked the assholes. I hate Frank Sinatra.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was why I thought this blind was written kind of weird. But the GCS guess seems to make sense as a guess since the one article I found mentions the physical injuries to AG. Maybe the interns are doing the writing for Enty today? :D
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking "old Hollywood" applies to Hollywood being relatively new and involving the studio system.
ReplyDeletefunny b/c i looked at George C. Scott & read that he was married to Colleen Dewhurst TWICE(which I didn't know) and I figured that she wouldn't marry him AGAIN if he was this violent & physical having 2 young sons under her roof.
ReplyDeletegood sleuthing @ ryan!
ReplyDeletehis Wiki page states that Scott's buried in an unmarked grave & has a picture of it-kinda weird.
ReplyDeleteTwo guesses:
ReplyDelete1. Frank Sinatra (won for From here to Eternity) and Ava Gardner (nominated for Mogambo)
2. Rex Harrison (won for My Fair Lady) and Rachel Roberts (nominated for This Sporting Life)
Richard Burton was nominated many times, but never won an Oscar. Elizabeth was angrier about this than he was. And he was pretty pissed.
ReplyDeleteBurton was nominated 7 or 8 times but I don't think he ever won.
ReplyDeleteThat's because you're not in your 60's or 70's. All us oldies but goodies vividly remember their hell-on-wheels relationship.
ReplyDeleteRod Steiger
ReplyDeleteGood point. I'm getting up there in dog years but AG/Frank S were more my parents' era than mine
ReplyDeleteI thought that was weird too. I will always remember her from Annie Hall. She was a great actress. Maybe GCS was in a sober period when she took him back. (?)
ReplyDeleteHe never won an Academy Award (nominated, but no win).
ReplyDeleteHmmmm, i wonder what they knew that we don't know... ; )
ReplyDeletelol...you remember her from an award winning film & an award worthy performance & I remember her from the sappy Dying Young which i think some tv station has shown every miserable,rainy weekend since the 90s.(she was still great in it of course).
ReplyDeleteOh good, there's a language some of them understand: "you hire a few man to beat him down untill he nearly dies". That gets the messgae across.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has uncles, fathers, brothers, friends- ask them and get rid of your abuser.
Enough tears.
Bing Crosby/ Dixie Lee
ReplyDeleteSinatra DID have a "sudden" cut-off from Gardner. At one point the two obsessed lovers simply stopped seeing each other.
ReplyDeleteAva Gardner and Frank Sinatra stayed good friends until. the day she died, he even paid her medical bills when she ran out of money. I think he was the one protecting her not beating her..
ReplyDeleteYeah, he finally gets a taste of his own medicine and he stops.
ReplyDeleteGeorge C. Scott and Ava Gardner. Check out the passage from this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=enskE0KWMQ4C&pg=PA445&lpg=PA445&dq=ava+gardner+broken+collar+bone&source=bl&ots=BNbspYvRoN&sig=7fE33PfsZXrHRjlLdPR2gweYtns&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd3uqZnOfPAhWHzIMKHaLJBoUQ6AEILTAF#v=onepage&q=ava%20gardner%20broken%20collar%20bone&f=false
ReplyDeleteIt says she had a sling from a broken collar bone and a bald patch on the back of her head.
It's from her book, "Love is Nothing". She goes on to talk about how the night before, they had gotten into a fight and he had fallen into a fire place from being so drunk.
ReplyDeleteWell today this column is saying they are referring to George C Scott, and his beaten up wife being Ava Gardner. I don't know how this is possible considering these two were never married!
ReplyDeleteThere are few women in the entire history of the world who were worse at picking men than Ava Gardner.
ReplyDeleteLana Turner was about as bad with her choices.
George C. Scott. He lived in the same town as me and the cops were always getting called to his house for "domestic disturbances". He beat Trish Van Devere regularly. Total douchebag asshole.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it. I would not believe it unless the wife admitted to it. Only then would I believe Clint beats women.
ReplyDeleteConnery admitted to hitting women. So yeah I could most definitely see that. George c Scott I could see.
ReplyDeleteSteve McQueen ...yes
Whom ever sounds like a pos. And I'm 100% sure the ex was Sinatra. He's known to be a bit of a gangster.
Wells I could see
Mickey I could see. (Little man prob)
After looking up George C Scott I've realized his ex was colleen dewhurst and there was a roomer of her dating sean Connery. He's known for being a bad ass
ReplyDelete