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

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.

yep--meanwhile:
Jack Fisk, who may well get another Oscar nom for his design of Killers of the Osage Moon, has been married to Sissy Spacek since 1974.
They met

while working on Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands, where she portrayed the aloof and distant version of Caril Ann Fugate. They married on April 12, 1974. They have two daughters, Schuyler Fisk (born 1982), also an actress, and Madison Fisk (born 1988), a painter.

Fisk was art director on Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), in which his wife, Sissy Spacek, played the title role. He frequently collaborates with directors Terrence Malick and David Lynch (whom he has known since childhood). His production design and art director credits include all of Malick's first eight feature films and Lynch's The Straight Story (1999) and Mulholland Drive (2001). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. He received his second Academy Award nomination for the film The Revenant at the 88th Academy Awards.[2]
Fisk appeared in Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) as the Man in the Planet, and the film's credits give "special thanks" to him and to Sissy Spacek (who reputedly held the slates between takes).[citation needed]

Fisk directed Spacek in the films Raggedy Man[3] and Violets Are Blue with Kevin Kline.[4]

Wait, stop the presses! Natalie Schafer apparently had a relationship with Ernst Lubitsch.

She might have married him too if he hadn’t had a coronary and died whilst shtupping someone else while they were on opposite coasts.

All this info can only be found in the Scott Eyman bio, as far as I know.

What else can known about Natalie Schafer? She was a friend and neighbor of Mary Martin and she hated working with Fritz Lang, that’s all I got.

So Jeanette MacDonald was happily married to an actor named Gene Raymond, although they never had any kids. He is totally lost to the sands of time for me, but seems to show up in the bios of other actors. For instance, he has twenty mentions in Victoria Wilson's monumental if partial Stanwyck bio, co-starring with her at least once and introducing her to her publicist Helen Ferguson, who was also his and Jeanette's publicist.

He was in Zoo in Budapest, which is still only a title to me. Morbius gave it 6/10.

Raymond was in Red Dust as they guy whose wife Clark Gable chases, the wife being Mary Astor.

The male lead in Flying Down to Rio. Upstaged by Fred and Ginger, obviously.

I remember being really shocked when I found out Vigo Mortenson was married to Exene Cervenka.

I won an advanced-level trivia game with that…

Q. Name a movie with two of Exene’s husbands in it.
A. The 1997 remake of Vanishing Point

Ooh v good! She and Vigo have a son! I'm sure this one is one here somewhere but I don't want to search - I love that Gary Oldman and Uma Thurman were briefly married.

Albert Finney and Anouk Aimée.

She was also married to Nico Papatakis for a few years before that and had a child with him.

Donna Reed and make-up artist William J. Tuttle.

Zsa Zsa Gabor and George Sanders. Can you imagine?

Linda Darnell was married to some award-winning cinematographer I never heard of before, Peverell Marley.

This thread does not seem to mention that George Sanders was also married to Magda Gabor. Although it is mentioned on this other thread by amateurist: Who was George Sanders?

Speaking of these last two mentions, the second wife of the German-born director of Hangover Square, John Brahm, was German-then-American actress Dolly Haas who, a few years after divorcing Brahm married caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and a few years later gave birth to, you guessed it, Nina.

Robert Wolders, mentioned upthread, played a handsome ski instructor on an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show #onethread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYaPvU8q9A4
Bonus points for Lisa Gerritsen.

Was watching an Italian James Bond knockoff from the ‘60s in which French actor Jacques Bergerac (Gigi) played essentially the Dr. Evil character.

Didn’t know Bergerac was once married to Ginger Rogers. Not just that, but she “discovered” him and brought him to MGM.

Also didn’t know that Bergerac was subsequently married to Dorothy Malone.

Wow

not quite the thread topic, but i was unprepared to learn that greta scacchi was married to both tim finn and vincent d'onofrio

She's in this video for Tim Finn's Carve You In Marble:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_oOZz--Xfg

I love this song.

Evelyn Keyes was married to someone I never heard of, then Charles Vidor, then John Huston, then later Artie Shaw, although being married to Artie Shaw, similar to being married Mickey Rooney, should probably not count.

― Vini C. Riley (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, June 30, 2019 8:46 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was coming here with this one (just watched here comes mr. jordan the other night). to be fair, she was married to artie shaw for almost 30 years, his longest marriage by a significant amount

also charles vidor is a different person than king vidor (something i did not realize initially)

King Charles... Vidor

Denholm Elliott and Virginia McKenna.

Not quite old timey and never married but... Patti Lupone and Kevin Kline.

Even less old times and definitely married: Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates

*timey

Technically doesn’t quite work but: Walter Matthau’s wife Carol, who was supposedly the inspiration for Holly Golightly as well as Glenn Close’s portrayal of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, had previously been married to William Saroyan.

She's in Mikey and Nicky. Her memoir, Among the Porcupines, is a great read and talks about the making of the film.

i learned last week that james mason was belinda carlisle's father-in-law

Feel like I just read or heard something about him coaching another, younger actor or actress, telling them to close their eyes right before the camera started rolling, both as a way to concentrate and to dilate the pupils

Two actors: Betty Garrett and Larry Parks

Beata Tyszkiewicz and Andrzej Wajda