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

I wouldn't count Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini since I believe this is relatively well-known but I certainly would count:
Jeanne Moreau and William Friedkin

As well as Wim Wenders and Ronee Blakley.

And today's big find, Beth Howland and Michael J. Pollard.

I'll have to wrack my brain a bit--I come across these all the time in various books and documentaries.

Paulette Goddard and--wait for it--Burgess Meredith.

Oh, and PJ Soles & Dennis Quaid.

Great one! I'd sell my soul for a couple of years with late-'70s P.J.

Paulette Goddard and--wait for it--Burgess Meredith.

I just recalled walking by the Bobby Van Steakhouse the other day. I almost tried to figure out how to add him and his widow to this thread or spin off a new one but then I remembered and checked that she remarried, so
Elaine Joyce and Neil Simon

(Screenwriters welcome)

The new thread would be called something like Celebrity Couples of the 70s Known Mainly For Appearing on Game Shows

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dnA74lpIOtE/hqdefault.jpg

Now seen 12 times a day on Buzzr.

Paulette Goddard had the Tramp, the Penguin, and the Pacifist

Ha. Just watched an entire episode of Tattletales with Bobby and Elaine along with Orson Bean and Alejandro Rey and their wives, neither of which I was familiar with.

A lot of the '70s Match Game regulars had surprising spouses at one time or another:

Brett Somers => Jack Klugman
Joyce Bulifant => James McArthur ("Dano" of Hawaii Five-O)
Richard Dawson => Diana Dors

Oh yeah, Dawson & Dors is a great one.

I've known for a long time but initially was surprised that Burt Reynolds was married to Judy Carne of Laugh-In

These are all great, thanks!

Knew Klugman/Somers, had forgotten Reynolds/Carne, rest all new to me. Had being trying hard to remember Joyce Bulifant at all, but kept getting interference from Joyce Van Patten. Who, it turns out, was married to Martin Balsam for five years. As a bonus for this thread, this union produced a daughter, Talia Balsam, who was married to George Clooney for four years.

...and who is currently married to John Slattery, whom also played her ex-husband on Mad Men.

More Match Game:
Mary Ann Mobley => Gary Collins

God is she annoying on Match Game or any other game show

Haven't watch one with her in ages. Does she make goo-goo eyes at Gene or something?

It's the combination of her dumb, ill-considered answers with the fact that she's clearly so full of herself. Dim and haughty and yeah, goo-goo eyes at everybody.

Caught her on Tattletales the other day and she bitched about not hearing a question because her rooting section was too noisy. Missing the question allowed another celeb to win the game, and at the end of the show she announced that she was going to "file a protest." So a sore loser as well

B-b-but... oh wait

Lol at description of Mobley/Collins as the "Brangelina of the '70s"

Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan.

Don't think I knew that either. Believe they were neighbors later when she was married to Leland Hayward.

RIP Tattletales regular Dick Gautier.

Not both actors - you could argue neither were - but the one that always surprises me is George Lazenby and Pam Shriver.

Nicky Henson and Una Stubbs

http://img5.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/8/c/8c4gfbdxfrfrfrd.jpg?djet1p5k

Jack Klugman and Brett Somers had that thing some couples have where they kinda look like they could be brother and sister.

Indeed.

Tbh, trying to remember who Dick Gautier's actress wife was at the time of Tattletales and what I would have seen her on.

Barbara Stuart. You probably knew her from her role as "Bunny" in Gomer Pyle: USMC

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

Because Beth Howland. And Valerie Harper + Richard Schaal, which I didn't know about until after posting.

I don't know how old-time this is, but Alan Pakula and Hope Lange.

http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/c4/3e/a0c43ef2906994d6fa594413a620fb8c.jpg

^a perfect addition

RIP Jeanne Moreau

had a romance w/ Lee Marvin!

And Peter Handke, apparently.

https://handkeonline.onb.ac.at/sites/handkeonline.at/files/styles/fullscreen/public/images/pool/sph-lw-s69-1.jpg?itok=18mynEyj

Not a director but a writer: Hugu Claus and Sylvia Kristel
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/64/5e/d7/645ed73c422c4575c0b263f2aa6e2d70.jpg

HugO, sorry

Cliff Robertson & Dina Merrill

Dave Vanian and Patricia Morrisson!

Bricolage
Decoupage

Ha! Meant to post ^^ in the “I always get those two mixed up” thread.

Lol

Not that obscure, but Rip Torn and Geraldine Page

Albert Finney & Anouk Aimee

Talk about punching above your weight.

https://hjordisniven.com/david-niven-1947/

Was rewatching Harry and Tonto last night and had to look up Harry's aging anti-capitalist friend who turned out to have been played by Herbert Berghof - who was married to Uta Hagen.

Miriam Hopkins and Anatole Litvak

An actor called Drewe Henley, who I've never heard of and don't recognize, was married to both Jacqueline Pearce and Felicity Kendall - which I'm pretty impressed by.

Always watchable British (comic) actress, Adrienne Posta, and former Rainbow lead singer, Graham Bonnet.

After Richard Avedon, Doe Avedon married Don Siegel (and some unknown actor in-between)

Henry de la Falaise was married to Gloria Swanson and Constance Bennett.

Nancy Olson, the 97-year-old surviving actress from Sunset Boulevard, and Alan Jay Lerner, in the 1950s. One of his eight wives.

Jack Fisk and Sissy Spacek

Still together after 52 years

The 1940s Hollywood starlet Marie McDonald had an interesting marital history. Married seven times in just 23 years. Got her sixth divorce at the age of 39. Died of a drug overdose at age 42 after which her three children were raised by Debbie Reynolds.

Her most show biz-connected husband was Victor Orsatti, a talent agent-producer and possibly gangster who is credited with convincing ice skater Sonja Henie to work in Hollywood films.

So that's how it happened---a unique career arc? Any of you seen her movies? (Was wondering about her while watching Winter Olympics---wonder what Alyssa Liu will do, too---)

I watched Iceland (1942) in preparation for a trip to Iceland. It really gave me some valuable insights into the country and its culture. The film also featured Jack Oakie, "America's Joy Boy".

Just saw the new 4K restoration of Bitter Rice at the Film Forum. The female lead who is not Silvana Mangano is Doris Dowling, who later moved back to the US where she married, and had a son with, Artie Shaw, but as far as I can tell she has yet to be mentioned on this thread.

Dowling and Shaw's son is Jonathan Shaw who was a tattoo artist and opened NYC's oldest tattoo parlor, Fun City Tattoo, back in 1976. Now is a novelist and lives in Rio de Janeiro, according to Wikipedia.

Simone!

Simon never married. She was at one time in a relationship with World War II double agent Duško Popov, codenamed "Tricycle", a notorious womaniser.[16] This relationship led to her being placed under covert surveillance by the FBI during the filming of Cat People. Simon had loaned Popov £10,000 in 1942 shortly before he left the country, likely her payment for the film (value circa £600,000 in 2025). They broke up in 1943 with him not repaying the money. [17]

It was alleged by Simon's secretary that she gave a gold key to her boudoir to any man she was interested in, including George Gershwin. The film historian, Greg Mank, reports in his audio commentary for the DVD of Cat People, that the secretary was then on trial for extorting money from her employer, and her word on this matter cannot be taken at face value (the secretary was later convicted, and the terms of her probation required that she never speak of the "gold key" scandal again). In the 1950s, Simon was romantically involved with the French banker and racehorse owner–breeder Alec Weisweiller whose wife Francine was one of Jean Cocteau's patrons.

Gershwin was a real Tom Cat People.

Erica Wexler, occasional actress and daughter of screenwriter Norman Wexler, went from being Roy Liechtenstein's girlfriend to Andy Partridge's wife.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080615221645/http://www.artieshaw.com/books-ily.html

^

Here is the new literary cocktail: Marriage-on-the-rocks. The bartender? Celebrated bandleader Artie Shaw. The book, long out of print, recently fetched up to $75 a copy.
Artie Shaw, who was himself married seven times, knows much about marriage and its disintegration. His wives have included movie actresses Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Evelyn Keyes.

Shaw, a most evocative storyteller, describes three examples of love gone bad.

When these three short novels were originally published, Terry Southern wrote: "Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene. I flipped over it!"

Came to see that Actor/Crooner Tony Martin was married to Alice Faye and then Cyd Charisse until her death.

Debra Paget and Budd Boetticher. An all-Mexican marriage... married in Tijuana in '60, divorced in Juarez in '61. Stuck it out for 22 days before the separation.

(Was just watching Fritz Lang's The Indian Tomb (1959) where the female leads are Debra Paget and Luciana Paluzzi, both stunning, and both still alive at 92 and 88 respectively).

Oh, the things you find while bouncing around Wikipedia!

In the early 1920s, composer Harry Partch was in a romantic relationship with a pre-fame silent film actor Ramon Navarro (still under his real name Ramon Samaniego).

I have two or three complicated ones that may or not fit the letter of the law of topic but are definitely threadworthy but I still can't figure out how to summarize concisely and post

Before she wed fellow screenwriter Ben Barzman, Norma Barzman had been married for a year to Claude Shannon, the father of information theory.

Favorite Norma Barzman story thus far is a not-yet-famous Marilyn Monroe tipping her off that the Feds were looking for her on the way up the mountain to Judy Garland's cocktail party which exchange of course included the line "my name is Norma too!"

The second wife of Alan Napier, who played Alfred on television's Batman, was Aileen Dickens Hawksley, a great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. This made Napier the step-grandfather of child actor Brian Forster, who played Chris Partridge on The Partridge Family. In addition to this, Hawksley's daughter/Forster's mother Jennifer Raine was the third wife of Time Tunnel/Time Machine/Star Trek TOS actor Whit Bissell.

The Searchers/Star Trek TOS pilot actor Jeffrey Hunter was the first husband of actress Barbara Rush. Rush was later married, twice, to hugely influential film publicist Warren Cowan. Through his final marriage, to Barbara Gilbert-Cowan, Warren Cowan was the stepfather of actors Melissa, Sara and Jonathan Gilbert.

And that's all for today

Hmm. Maybe one more thing. Barbara Gilbert-Cowan was born Barbara Crane. Her father, Harry Crane, was a comedy writer who, among other things, helped create The Honeymooners and made The Dean Martin Show in part by introducing the celebrity roast to television.

Music business not the movie business but Roy Wood was quite ladies man in the 70s - despite looking like he'd spent the night sleeping in a cardboard box. Girlfriends:

Ayshea - singer, actress, TV presenter, who was very, er, popular with teenage males in the early 70s.

Lynsey de Paul - singer, songwriter (see next post).

Annie Haslam - singer with Renaissance.

More on Lynsey de Paul.

She was romantically involved with Dudley Moore, Chas Chandler, Roy Wood, Ringo Starr, James Coburn, Bill Kenwright, Dodi Fayed, George Best, Bernie Taupin and David Frost

^ Lot of drinkers in that crowd, or at least people who gave the impression of being drinkers

David Lynch was married for about a decade to Mary Fisk, making him the brother-in-law of Jack Fisk and Sissy Spacek.

Candy Clark and Marjoe Gortner (briefly in '70s)

Richard Foreman and Amy Taubin

And from the music biz:
Robin Lane and Andy Summers

Neither’s wikipedia mentions that - was it that acrimonious that they prefer it buried?

Maybe. I saw it in some interviews which made it seem to be true

There's an interview where she mentions it, at least, nothing from him.

While I was looking I thought I remembered that she and Leroy had been in a relationship for a while but couldn't really verify.

https://jimsravesnrants.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/robin-lanes-life-goes-from-wrong-to-right/
Her Wikipedia page *does* mention it but says "citation needed."

Has John Osborne been mentioned yet? Don't think so.

Robert Downey Sr.

was married three times. His first marriage was to actress Elsie Ann Ford (1934–2014) in 1962, with whom he had two children: actress-writer Allyson (b. 1963) and actor Robert Jr. (b. 1965). The marriage ended in divorce in 1975...
Downey's films were often family affairs. His first wife appears in four of his films (Chafed Elbows, Pound, Greaser's Palace, Moment to Moment), as well as co-writing one (Moment to Moment). Daughter Allyson and son Robert Downey Jr. each made their film debuts in the 1970 absurdist comedy Pound at the ages of 7 and 5, respectively; Allyson would appear in one more film by her father, Up the Academy. Robert Jr.'s lengthy acting résumé includes appearances in eight films directed by his father (Pound, Greaser's Palace, Moment to Moment, Up the Academy, America, Rented Lips, Too Much Sun, Hugo Pool), as well as two acting appearances in movies where his father was also an actor (Johnny Be Good, Hail Caesar).[15][16][17]

I did not know that Martin Scorsese was briefly married to Julia Cameron of The Artist's Way fame

Knew that but forgot it so good post

Glenne Headly, did a lot of interesting stuff, plays and movies, prob best known for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Married her Steppenwolf Theater Company cohort John Malkovitch in 1982, divorced his ass in '88 for having an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer during the making of Dangerous Liaisons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenne_Headly
He was the director in the family:

In 2011, he directed Julian Sands in A Celebration of Harold Pinter in the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.[32][33] In 2012, he directed a production of a newly adapted French-language version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris.[34] The production had a limited engagement in July 2013 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.[35]

Malkovich in 2015
He returned to theatre, directing Good Canary in Spanish in Mexico, then in English at the Rose Theater in London in 2016. Ilan Goodman, Harry Lloyd, and Freya Mavor were in the cast. Malkovich won the Milton Schulman Award for Best Director at the 2016 Standard Theatre Awards.[36][37]

Quatermass mastermind Nigel Kneale and children's lit legend Judith Kerr!

yeah i think about this regularly, he's the dad in the mog books! also presumably there's some sort of race memory of being enslaved by aliens present in the tiger that came to tea.

There's some footage of the two of them looking at Quatermass props.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naI2TM6TwF4