The 10 most shocking scandals from the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood
Celebrity scandals have always been a source of endless fascination for the general public, regardless of how perverse it might be to derive intrigue and occasionally pleasure from another person’s misdeeds, downfall, and even death.
There’s something strangely morbid about ruination becoming a hot talking point, and in the social media era all it takes is for a rumour to gain traction and it’s off to the races in trying to tear down a famous person’s livelihood, even if the facts are far from being concrete.
Of course, it’s hardly a new thing, with Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ suffering through its fair share of scandalous moments, many of which forced studios, agents, and stars into full-blown damage control mode to stop the tide of tabloid tittle-tattle.
There’s probably a lot of scandals nobody ever found out about, but in terms of the most shocking to emerge from the ‘Golden Age’, it’s hard to look beyond the following ten based solely on the column inches they generated.
Scandals from Hollywood’s Golden Age:
10. The mysterious death of George Reeves
For the most part, superheroes don’t die, which made it all the more engrossing for the public when Superman actor George Reeves was discovered dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The star’s suicide would have been gossipy enough on its own, but it was the rumours that emerged afterwards that made it such a talking point. Most notably, Reeves was said to be having an affair with the wife of Eddie Mannix, an infamous and notorious Hollywood fixer.
It was even alleged that spouse Toni Mannix confessed on her deathbed her husband had Reeves killed in an act of revenge, and while there was no incontrovertible evidence to suggest the small screen’s Clark Kent had been murdered, the urban legend continues swirling to this day.
9. Gloria Grahame keeps it in the family
Gloria Grahame won an Academy Award for 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful, starred in It’s a Wonderful Life, shared the screen with Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place, and shone in Oklahoma!, but her personal life ended up ruining her professional one.
The day after she divorced her first husband, Stanley Clements, she tied the knot with her second wedding, Nicholas Ray, following an affair that began on set and ended up with Grahame falling pregnant to avoid the societal shame of bearing an extra-marital child.
However, her career was done irreparable damage when Ray is rumoured to have walked in on Grahame cheating on him with his own 13-year-old son. If that wasn’t scandalous enough, she married for a third time, and after divorcing Cy Howard, her fourth spouse was the very same stepson she’d allegedly been unfaithful with a decade previously.
The marriage wasn’t common knowledge until two years after they’d tied the knot in 1960, but after the public found out Grahame had married her former stepson at the same time her new beau’s father was trying to gain sole custody of the daughter, they shared together, her reputation and career were in tatters.
8. Spade Cooley murders his second wife
At the height of his popularity, Spade Cooley was one of the biggest names in country music, who appeared in movies and TV shows while selling records by the bucketload.
What most people didn’t know was that he struggled with the associated fame, leading to an increasing sense of paranoia and a short temper, which led him to snap under the belief his second wife, Ella Mae, was having an affair.
Cooley assaulted her so viciously and for such a prolonged period of time that she tragically died as a result of her injuries, with the courtroom trial drawing crowds from all over the country before he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in August 1961. Then-California governor Ronald Reagan was planning to issue a pardon eight years later, but Cooley died before it could be granted.
7. J. Edgar Hoover’s secret FBI files
It used to be the realm of fiction that the government kept tabs on its most famous residents until it transpired that J. Edgar Hoover had been doing exactly that after assembling files on Hollywood’s biggest names.
Anyone considered even remotely subversive or anti-American would more than likely have an FBI dossier, with Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, and Marlene Dietrich among the A-listers to have been documented by the FBI during Hoover’s tenure.
The Communist witch-hunt saw the federal authorities shine a harsher light than ever upon the world of celebrity, which were kept in Hoover’s back pocket as a potential blackmail tool should he ever find himself convinced that the dirty laundry contained within – whether it was true or not – needed to be aired.
6. The ‘Black Dahlia’ murder
One of the most famous unsolved murders in pop culture history, the discovery of Elizabeth Short’s mutilated and dismembered body shocked the nation, but the tabloid frenzy grew so all-encompassing that Orson Welles found himself named as a potential suspect.
The press and public alike combed through every scrap of information they could find regarding the harrowing crime, with accusations being levelled towards a number of potential killers, although the real culprit has never been found.
Eight decades later and sleuths are still seeking to find the truth behind the ‘Black Dahlia’, with the sensationalist nature of the crime and its resultant coverage turning it into one of the most scandalous moments Los Angeles has ever witnessed.
5. Tallulah Bankhead, in general
‘No fucks given’ is a decidedly modern phrase, but it was one embodied by actor Tallulah Bankhead during her career on stage and screen, where she became so used to scandal it became a key part of her persona.
She was open in discussing her regular use of alcohol and cocaine, and at a time when society was significantly more prudish than it is now, pearls were being clutched on a regular basis when she’d detail her sexual proclivities.
In her own words, Bankhead told an interviewer she agreed to star in 1932’s Devil and the Deep because she wanted to fuck Gary Cooper, while she was romantically linked to many of the biggest names in Hollywood, both male and female. She was never too far from scandal but wore it like a badge of honour.
4. Joan Crawford’s adult movies
The woman born Lucille LaSuer was so invested in her own mythology that she never confirmed exactly what year she was born, although Joan Crawford did go out of her way to suppress the release of some racy content she appeared in early in her career.
When she made it big, somebody somewhere sensed there was a money-making opportunity, with testimony from Crawford’s former husbands and the contents of FBI reports providing evidence that she’d made at least one film of a somewhat pornographic nature.
Lawyer J. Robert Rubin allegedly saw one of them and denied it was her after she’d been threatened with an expose, whereas documents compiled by the federal government intimated that MGM had paid $100,000 to cover up the existence of a ‘stag film’ that had been passed around at industry parties at her expense.
3. Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini
A United States senator told Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini “not to set foot on American soil under our immigration laws,” which offers an inkling of just how big a scandal their affair was.
The actor was married to neurosurgeon Petter Lindstrom at the time, but after embarking on her affair with the Italian neorealist pioneer and falling pregnant, Bergman rushed through a divorce from her current spouse to wed Rossellini the following week after arranging a hasty trip to Mexico.
Finding herself ostracised from Hollywood as a result, it would be years before Bergman appeared in another American-backed production, with the fallout from her scandalous affair being made public, setting her Stateside career back without quite ending it altogether.
2. Charlie Chaplin’s second divorce
History remembers Charlie Chaplin as one of the most influential figures in Hollywood history, but his split from second wife Lita Grey opened the doors to his reputation being torn to shreds in front of the entire world.
The actor and filmmaker had married his first two wives when they were only 16 years old, and in the case of the latter, the nuptials were rushed through when she claimed to be pregnant. That wasn’t the case, but they did end up having two sons together.
When they headed to the courtroom to finalise their divorce, the public was presented with the image of Chaplin as a terrible husband, absent father, abuser, and rampant womaniser with a penchant for teenage girls. Grey ended up with an $800,000 settlement – the largest in American history at the time – while his persona as a popular star had been forever tarnished.
1. Judy Garland’s studio-mandated addictions
Judy Garland was an era-defining star, but there was plenty of chemical assistance provided at the studio’s behest to ensure one of MGM’s most marketable assets would be able to maintain her exhausting workload.
While still a teenager, Garland was given amphetamines to keep up her energy levels and control her weight, with sleeping pills used to ensure she got a good night’s sleep. She defied the studio’s wishes to get married at 19, but because it held contractual dominion over her, she was back at work the next day.
Garland’s later years were crippled by the addiction issues she developed because the people who paid her salary were the primary enablers, and in no world should an 18-year-old be forced to subside on a diet of black coffee, chicken soup, 80 cigarettes a day, and diet pills every four hours as she was reportedly ordered to do.
