Old time actors and directors that you were surprised to find out were married to each other once upon a time

Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney - twice!

Especially surprising since I believe he was kind of a bad husband. Or maybe nothing about it should be surprising at all.

Okay, while I am still mining this harborvein:

The ceremony in the chapel of Roosevelt Navy Base, at Terminal Island, San Pedro, might have been titled “Here Comes the Groom.” It was all about Gene Markey, who on his wedding day sported navy dress blues with the wide gold commodore’s band on his sleeve, and on his chest displayed the Bronze Star he’d won for leading a reconnaissance mission in the Solomon Islands. He had served in the Pacific on the staff of Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey’s Third Fleet, and because Gene wanted Admiral Halsey as his best man, the date of the wedding was chosen to accommodate Halsey’s schedule. Halsey would be in the Los Angeles area to lead the Tournament of Roses parade, so an early January date was chosen. Gene also wanted his old sailing and drinking buddy, John Ford, who became a navy captain during the war and had reconnected with Markey during service in New Delhi, to participate in the wedding party. Ford, who had directed Myrna in The Black Watch and Arrowsmith but had seen little of her since, gave the bride away. Myrna didn’t even know he would escort her down the aisle until the day of the wedding.

Myrna Loy: the only good girl in Hollywood, Emily W. Leider.

Okay, I’ve had about enough of this guy. Time to put the Admiral in the rear view mirror and say goodbye to this screenname.

Jack Jones & Jill St. John

I hope they released a single or two as Jack and Jill

Ha, was thinking something similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpTNoq2np_4

Lt. Hookstratten: Did you ever run into a musical group works out of Kansas City call themselves "Four Jacks and a Jill"? They've been at a Ramada Inn there for about 18 months. If you're ever in Kansas City and want to hear some good music, you might want to drop by.

How did I not know she’s been married to Robert Wagner for decades.

St. John was in a children's ballet company with Wagner's late wife Natalie Wood and his TV wife Stefanie Powers.

Self-XPS

That 'Spinal Tarp' clip reminds me: Michael McKean & Annette O'Toole.

Mildly surprised to find out that Billy Dee Williams is married to Wayne Shorter's ex-wife Teruko Nakagami.

Which is the thread for newer-timey couples I never knew about for some reason like Chloë Sevigny and Jarvis Cocker.

How about this guy: Dutch actor Robert Wolders, who played a lot of Latin lover roles on US television, was married to Merle Oberon until her death, then dated Audrey Hepburn until her death, at which point he dated Leslie Caron for a year then started a two-decade relationship with Henry Fonda’s widow Shirlee.

Michel Piccoli and Juliette Gréco were married for a decade? Stop thread!

Nobody took the bait of my previous post so was worried the thread had run its course for a while there.

UK athletics 400 metres blonde bombshell (and later bodybuilder) Donna Hartley and not-as-famous Northern comedian (and later actor) Bobby Knutt.

Fredric Forrest & Marilu Henner

Stewart Granger and Jean SImmons

Carlos Saura and Geraldine Chaplin

As far as I know, Rebecca De Mornay has only directed "The Conversion," a 1995 episode of the Outer Limits reboot, but also

...she appeared in the 1995 drama film Never Talk to Strangers opposite Antonio Banderas, for which she was also the executive producer....
De Mornay dated actor Harry Dean Stanton in the early 1980s. They met in 1981 on the set of One From the Heart[19] and dated until De Mornay and Tom Cruise began an affair while filming Risky Business in 1982.[20] De Mornay and Cruise broke up in 1985.

De Mornay married writer Bruce Wagner on December 16, 1986; they divorced in 1990.[21]

De Mornay subsequently dated and was briefly engaged to singer Leonard Cohen.[22][23] She co-produced Cohen's 1992 album The Future, which is also dedicated to her.

De Mornay was in a relationship with actor turned sportcaster Patrick O'Neal. They have two daughters together.[24][25]

(Harry Dean Stanton?! What's he got that I oh never mind)

Having just seen that movie whoooooo boy

This must have been well-covered in the celeb mags at the time, but I didn't know Ryan O'Neal was married to Leigh Taylor-Young from 1967 to '71. Their son was Patrick O'Neal, the actor turned sportscaster mentioned above who has daughters with Rebecca De Mornay.

Wonder if they fraternized with the Hopper-Haywards.

Constance Dowling

Dowling had been involved in a long affair with married director Elia Kazan in New York. He couldn't bring himself to leave his wife and the affair ended when Dowling went to Hollywood under contract to Goldwyn.[11] She was later linked with the famous Italian poet and novelist Cesare Pavese who committed suicide in 1950 after a lifelong depression aggravated, at one point, by having been rejected by Dowling who, in Pavese's poetry, is often linked to spring ("face of springtime").[12] One of his last poems is entitled "Death will come and she'll have your eyes".[13][14]

In 1955, Dowling married film producer Ivan Tors, writer and producer of her last film. (Another source, published two years earlier, refers to Dowling and Tors as "honeymooning.")[15] She then retired from acting, going on to have three sons and a foster child with Tors: Steven, David, Peter and foster son Alfred Ndwego of Kenya.[16] (An obituary listed Ndwego as an adopted son rather than a foster son and spelled his last name Ndewga.)[17]

Talia Balsam, not that well known, but has done a lot, married to actor-director John Slattery:

Balsam married actor George Clooney in Las Vegas in 1989; they were divorced in 1993.[5] In an interview with Vanity Fair after their divorce, Clooney stated, "I probably (definitely) wasn't someone who should have been married at that point. I just don't feel like I gave Talia a fair shot."[6] Since 1998, Balsam has been married to John Slattery, with whom she has a son, Harry Slattery.[7] They married in Kauai, Hawaii.[1] They played husband and wife Roger and Mona Sterling in Mad Men. Balsam lives with her family in SoHo, Manhattan.[8]

Balsam was born in New York City on March 5, 1959, to actors Martin Balsam and Joyce Van Patten.[1] Her ancestry is Russian Jewish (father) and Italian, Dutch, and English (mother). She is the niece of actor Dick Van Patten, actress Pat Van Patten and actor and director Tim Van Patten. Her cousin is actress Grace Van Patten.

Anthony Newley & Joan Collins

William Friedkin & actress/studio executive Sherry Lansing

#onethread

... and Jeanne Moreau and Lesley-Anne Down!

The late Gayle Hunnicutt and David Hemmings

Oliver Reed anecdote from his thread:

When he met Gayle Hunnicut, then the wife of David Hemmings and later of Simon Jenkins, he thought he was being charming by announcing, ‘Give me a kiss, you fucking lovely Texan whore.’

Edward Woodward and Michele "Ooh Betty" Dotrice.

Was just watching the CinemaScope ancient world costumer Land of the Pharaohs (1955) in which a beautiful French actress named Kerima plays the consort of the Pharaoh. Turns out Kerima was married to James Bond director Guy Hamilton for over 50 years (until his death). Also, she’s still alive today at 98. #onethread

***spoiler alert*** Kerima’s character is murdered by Joan Collins in the film

Nice. Have you seen her in Outcast of the Islands?

No, it looks like the only other thing I would have seen her in is The Quiet American

Screenwriters not directors but
Robert Riskin and Fay Wray
Niven Busch and Teresa Wright

Also just learned that Fay Wray’s first name was Vina, which makes me think of a certain Star Trek character.

Not married, but John Ford dating Katharine Hepburn (I think in the '30s?) is still a crazy one to me - maybe the war changed him more than I realized, but he never struck me as having a fraction of, say, Spencer Tracy's warmth or humor.

Also Howard Hawks dating a very young Sherry Lansing who was then an actress but later a powerful studio CEO (and married to Friedkin!)

Jackie Coogan and Betty Grable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y1hiapJzh4

Shelley Fabares and Mike Farrell, married since 1984

This is on the blindingly obvious side of obvious but - I knew Jamie Lee Curtis was Tony Curtis's daughter, but didn't realise the Lee was from his wife, Janet Leigh of Psycho

And that she's married to Christopher Guest (and is technically The Right Honourable the Lady Haden-Guest)

And previously dated Adam Ant!

Yeah, work's going fine, why?

Shelley Fabares and Mike Farrell, married since 1984

And Shelley's prior husband was music biz legend Lou Adler (married in '64, separated in '66, finally divorced in '80).

Orson Welles and Chicago-born actress and socialite Virginia Nicolson (1916–1996) were married on November 14, 1934.[17]: 332  "Regardless of his later comments, the two were very much in love," wrote biographer Patrick McGilligan, "and she was his salvation."[157] The couple separated in December 1939[20]: 226  and were divorced on February 1, 1940.[158][159] After bearing with Welles's romances in New York, Virginia had learned that Welles had fallen in love with Mexican actress Dolores del Río.[20]: 227 

Infatuated with her since adolescence, Welles met del Río at Darryl Zanuck's ranch[22]: 206  soon after he moved to Hollywood in 1939.[20]: 227 [22]: 168  Their relationship was kept secret until 1941, when del Río filed for divorce from her second husband. They openly appeared together in New York while Welles was directing the Mercury stage production Native Son.[22]: 212  They acted together in the movie Journey into Fear (1943). Their relationship came to an end due, among other things, to Welles's infidelities. Del Río returned to Mexico in 1943, shortly before Welles married Rita Hayworth.[160]

Welles married Rita Hayworth on September 7, 1943.[22]: 278  They were divorced on November 10, 1947.[93]: 142  During his last interview, recorded for The Merv Griffin Show on the evening before his death, Welles called Hayworth "one of the dearest and sweetest women that ever lived ... and we were a long time together—I was lucky enough to have been with her longer than any of the other men in her life."[161]

In 1955, Welles married actress Paola Mori (née Countess Paola di Gerfalco), an Italian aristocrat who starred as Raina Arkadin in his 1955 film, Mr. Arkadin. The couple began a passionate affair, and they were married at her parents' insistence.[26]: 168  They were wed in London May 8, 1955,[17]: 417, 419  and never divorced.

Croatian-born artist and actress Oja Kodar became Welles's long-time companion both personally and professionally from 1966 onward, and they lived together for some of the last twenty years of his life.[26]: 255–258

In the 1940s, Welles had a brief relationship with Maila Nurmi, who, according to the bio Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi, became pregnant; since Welles was at the time married to Hayworth, Nurmi gave the child up for adoption.[170] However, the child mentioned in the book was born in 1944. Nurmi revealed in an interview weeks before her death in January 2008 how she met Welles in a New York casting office in the spring of 1946.[171]

Lots of other offscreen storylines in here, like

Welles is thought to have had a son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (born 1940), with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet.[32][163] When Lindsay-Hogg was 16, his mother reluctantly divulged pervasive rumors that his father was Welles, and she denied them—but in such detail that he doubted her veracity.[164][165]: 15 

Fitzgerald evaded the subject for the rest of her life. Lindsay-Hogg knew Welles, worked with him in the theatre and met him at intervals throughout Welles's life.[163] After learning that Welles's oldest daughter, Chris, his childhood playmate, had long suspected that he was her brother,[166] Lindsay-Hogg initiated a DNA test that proved inconclusive. In his 2011 autobiography, Lindsay-Hogg reported that his questions were resolved by his mother's close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who wrote that Fitzgerald had told her that Welles was his father.[165]: 265–267  A 2015 Welles biography by Patrick McGilligan, however, reports the impossibility of Welles's paternity: Fitzgerald left the U.S. for Ireland in May 1939, and her son was conceived before her return in late October, whereas Welles did not travel overseas during that period.[11]: 602

Two actors but omg:
Louis Calhern and Natalie Schafer

No buts about it, that’s a good one

🙏👍

She apparently pretended to everyone including her husband that she was twelve years younger than she was. They never quite believed her but nobody knew the real number for ages.

The first of Calhern’s four wives was actress Ilka Chase, who I’m afraid is just a name to me. Chase was married thrice. Her second husband had kind of an interesting bio I can’t summarize here.

Music critic of the Brooklyn Eagle (the 2nd husband). I think that paper has been digitally archived so we could probably check out his work.