9 Notorious Old Hollywood Feuds That Were So Messy I Can’t Believe I Wasn’t Around To Witness Them
From newspapers to tabloids to social media, celebrities have always been at the forefront of American popular culture, and nothing makes us all tune in more than a good feud.
If you think that celebrity messiness couldn't get any worse than it is nowadays, well, I'm here to tell you that Old Hollywood called and said, "You can steal the recipe, but the sauce won't taste the same." So, let's get into it and talk about some very wild Old Hollywood feuds:
1.Debbie Reynolds vs. Elizabeth Taylor
What you're looking at here is the beginning of a very scandalous love triangle between very close friends (who also used to double date with their husbands). In 1949, when Debbie was 17, she made her way to MGM, and Liz had already turned into a star with the company. They went to school together on the lot while Liz was in between filming, and while Debbie admits the two were nothing alike, they got along very well. By 1955, Debbie was married to singer Eddie Fisher, and by 1957, Liz was married to director Mike Todd. The two couples were like the It Squad in Hollywood. It was like an old-school equivalent to Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Chris Martin, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Just four icons creating a power squad and hanging out together.
In 1958, Elizabeth's husband, Mike, died tragically in a plane crash just a year after they married. According to Liz's website, Liz and Debbie were so close, and Liz was so distraught after the crash. Debbie tried to help Liz cope through the loss, even sending Eddie over to lend emotional support. That emotional support turned into a lot more than that, and then the press caught wind and the entire thing blew up. After divorcing Debbie, Eddie married Liz in 1959. While the tabloids painted a picture of a home wrecker and America's scorned sweetheart, according to Liz's website, "Behind closed doors, Eddie was failing as a husband, and though hurt and blindsided, Debbie was silently thanking Elizabeth for taking him off her hands as she knew it was over."
Five years later, Liz had her eyes set on her costar Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra and ended her marriage with Eddie. Debbie also moved on and found new love. Debbie and Elizabeth were finally able to reconcile in 1966. They both unexpectedly found themselves aboard the Queen Elizabeth, which was set to sail to Europe. According to Debbie, the two passed notes on the ship, finally met up to have dinner, and "got smashed." The pair stayed friends after their reconciliation and even went on to make the film These Old Broads together in 2001. Liz passed away in March 2011, while Debbie passed away in December 2016. Debbie said this about reconciling with Elizabeth: "You have to look at what life is all about, and is it worth it? And is he worth it? The friendship was perhaps worth more."
2.Johnny Carson vs. Joan Rivers
It's no secret that women in comedy have fought their male-dominated industry battles for eons. However, while things may have gotten better, when Joan Rivers was coming up, comedy was "all older, white men." While the older white men were using reused jokes and the infamous degrading of women as comedy, Joan thought she would just talk about her life. She was a rising star with the likes of Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield, and Dick Cavett, all men who had their breakthroughs way ahead of her. Back in the day, scouts were coming around to comedy shows looking for people to be on the Johnny Carson show. Over a period of three years, Joan was rejected from the show seven times. It was actually Bill Cosby who persuaded the show producer to use Joan in the show as a comedian. Well, they brought her on the show...as a writer.
In 1965, Johnny did tell Joan live on air that she was "going to be a star." She adored him, and throughout the 1970s, she did a lot of work for his show. While all of the men were leaving Johnny Carson, Joan stayed for 18 years, and then they finally offered her her own late-night show. Naturally, the first person she wanted to call and tell was Johnny, who promptly hung up on her and never spoke to her again, and then tried to deny the whole thing ever happened. He died in 2005. Joan had this to say about it: "He was not angry at anybody else. I think he really felt because I was a woman that I just was his. That I wouldn’t leave him. I know this sounds very warped. But I don’t understand otherwise what was going on. He didn’t like that as a woman; I went up against him."
3.Jerry Lewis vs. Dean Martin
This comedy duo first started performing together on July 25, 1946. After a scheduled singer dropped out of the lineup at a show at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, Jerry convinced the owner to hire Dean, giving us their first performance together. The performance was a hit and became the foundation for their decade-long comedy act. In 1995, Jerry would go on to tell People, "I don't think we would have ever been heard of without the other."
The pair quickly signed a movie deal and would end up making 16 movies together over a 10-year period. Although the pair were wildly successful, things weren't perfect between Jerry and Dean. Dean started to feel like Jerry was controlling their work lives far too much. When Dean started talking about starting up his solo act again, Jerry felt totally betrayed, and not too long after, they stopped speaking altogether. On July 25, 1956, exactly 10 years after the duo's formation, they performed their final show at the Copacabana. Dean went on to become a member of Frank Sinatra's rat pack, and Jerry went on to do movies like The Nutty Professor.
In 1976, during Jerry's annual telethon fundraiser for muscular dystrophy, Frank Sinatra facilitated the gag of all gags. After performing his set, he presented Jerry with a couple of donations. Then he proceeded with, "I have a friend who loves what you do every year and who just wanted to come out. Could you send my friend out, please?" And to everyone's disbelief, for the first time in 20 years, it was none other than Dean; the two hugged, and Dean so cutely kissed Jerry and Frank on the cheek. They received an over-one-minute-long standing ovation.
As time went on, Jerry told People in 1983, "Our lifestyles and careers are separate and apart. But if you told me he was outside right now, it would be a joy to jump on his neck." In 1987, after Dean's son was killed in a plane crash, Jerry attended the funeral, and the pair officially made up. They continued to speak on and off until Dean passed away in 1995.
4.Olivia de Havilland vs. Joan Fontaine
Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are sisters who were born only 15 months apart (Olivia is the eldest). Their feud basically started at birth; they shared a room when they were younger, and according to Joan's 1978 memoir, she remembers the "animus we'd felt toward each other as children — the hair-pullings, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone." Yeah, the two were no strangers to coming to blows and physically harming or plotting to physically harm each other.
When Olivia became a working actress first by being cast in a screen adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream at 18, Joan reportedly "lobbied" her sister to help her become an actor as well. Well, being who they are, Olivia only agreed to help her if she changed her last name so people wouldn't confuse the two. So, Joan took her stepfather's last name and became Joan Fontaine. In 1942, the sisters were both nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. The two were both seated at the same table when Joan won the award for Suspicion. Joan said, "I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair. I felt like age 4, being confronted by my older sister. Damn it, I'd incurred her wrath again!"
In 1975, when their mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Olivia was reportedly by her side until the end, while Joan was on tour for a play and claimed that no one even notified her that her mother was dying, nor was she invited to the funeral. When Joan inevitably showed up to the service, the sisters did not talk. In a 1978 interview, Joan had this to say about her sister: "Olivia has always said I was first at everything — I got married first, got an Academy Award first, had a child first. If I die [first], she'll be furious, because again, I'll have got there first!"
Joan passed away in 2013 at the age of 96. In 2016, Olivia revealed to USA Today that she still referred to her sister as "Dragon-Lady" and then proceeded to deny that there was a "feud" per se between the two. Olivia passed away in 2020 at 104 years old.
5.Orson Welles vs. William Randolph Hearst
Film director, writer, actor, and producer Orson Welles and founder of Hearst Communications (Esquire, Cosmopolitan, San Francisco Chronicle), William Randolph Hearst, feuded back in the '40s to the point of blackmail. In 1941, Orson Welles produced, directed, and starred in the movie Citizen Kane, a movie about a media mogul born rich who went on to create a massive newspaper empire. It was a classic story about how corruptive too much power can be. Oh, did I forget to mention it was basically a movie where the main character was just an interpretation of Hearst? Orson was only 24 when he fired those major shots at someone who was basically the Logan Roy of their time.
When Hedda Hopper, the leading lady in gossip back in the day, attended the preview screening for Citizen Kane, she was livid. She called the movie "a vicious and irresponsible attack on a great man." When Hearst got wind, it was really game-on. Hollywood executives rallied behind Hearst and attempted to buy the movie from Orson just to burn the negatives and protect William's reputation. They even went as far as blackmailing, smear campaigns, and FBI investigations for anyone who dared to show the movie.
William's smear campaign on Orson was horrible. He had all of Hollywood literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. He threatened to expose long-buried Hollywood scandals that were only kept quiet at the request of studios; he used Orson's private life against him; he basically told everyone Orson was a communist and unwilling to fight for his country; and he also had major theaters refusing to play Citizen Kane. At the 1942 Oscars, when Orson and the film were mentioned at the awards, he was booed. The movie was nominated for nine Academy Awards and only won Best Original Screenplay, which was just as much writer Herman Mankiewicz's award as it was Orson's. After the horrible display at the Academy Awards, RKO silently retired Citizen Kane into their vault. The movie wasn't revived until almost 25 years later.
6.Bea Arthur vs. Betty White
It's devastating to believe that these two women who played onscreen best friends actually did not get along in real life. Their lack of compatibility was very evident in how they approached their work. Bea came from a sitcom background that involved filming shows like stage plays and using up-close reactions. Betty came from a background where she learned that the best approach was to be less in your face. In an exclusive interview with Closer, Bea's son even recalled his mother during filming: “It would make my mom unhappy that in-between takes Betty would go and talk to the audience. It wasn’t jealousy. It was a focus thing." He even went on to explain, “My mom unknowingly carried the attitude that it was fun to have somebody to be angry at. It was almost like Betty became her nemesis, someone she could always roll her eyes about at work.”
However, things weren't always like this. In an archived interview with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, their Golden Girls costar Rue McClanahan spoke on her relationship with Bea: "Bea and I didn't have a lot of relationship going on. Bea is a very, very eccentric woman. She wouldn't go to lunch [with me] unless Betty [White] would go with her." Trying to figure out what went wrong? It was widely suspected (even by Rue McClanahan) that it was Betty's Best Actress Emmy win in 1986 (she was the first to win and be nominated of the group) that caused the riff. Bea's son even mentioned, "My mom was the real deal; I think she felt she was more of an actress than Betty. Mom came from Broadway. Betty starred on a game show at one point."
7.Vivian Vance vs. William Frawley
This pair spent six seasons playing husband and wife Fred and Ethel Mertz on the beloved series I Love Lucy. Wildly enough, William was 64 when they began filming the show, and Vivian was only 42. William had already spent 40 years building up his career before he landed his role on the hit show, and he was the oldest in the cast by far. The whole conflict with Vivian began at the first table read for the show. As they were all preparing for the read, Vivian said to Lucille loud enough for William to hear, "You can't be serious — I'm married to that old coot?"
Even though it was that one instance that possibly sparked their hatred for each other, according to Audrey Kupferberg, who cowrote Meet the Mertzes: The Life Stories of I Love Lucy’s Other Couple, she detailed William in an exclusive with Page Six as "a mean, rough man,” continuing, “He was a woman-hater, known throughout Hollywood for very bad language and just antisocial behavior.” She also detailed his alleged heavy drinking on the My Three Sons set, claiming "he drank all day."
In the same Page Six interview, one of William's costars from My Three Sons, Tim Considine, even recalled that during the filming of the show, William was asked about what it was like to work with Vivian, and even years later, he still allegedly referred to her as a "miserable c*nt." William died in 1966 after suffering a heart attack, and Vivian died in 1979 after losing her battle with breast cancer.
8.Marlon Brando vs. Frank Sinatra
In 1954, Marlon Brando starred in the movie On the Waterfront in the lead role of Terry, much to the dismay of Ol' Blue Eyes. Marlon had beaten Frank out for the part, and that was the catalyst for what would be the start of a feud between two of Old Hollywood's greatest. In 1955, the pair would go on to star alongside each other in Guys and Dolls, and yeah, Marlon got the starring role in the musical, and Frank was the second lead. James Kaplan, the author of Sinatra: The Chairman, stated, “It was really one-sided, with Frank detesting the ground that Brando walked on.”
Of course, Marlon had no disdain for Frank, but he quickly grew to. To add fuel to the fire, Marlon ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in On the Waterfront right before the Guys and Dolls filming began. On the set of Guys and Dolls, Frank started referring to Marlon as "mumbles," and as the berating continued, Marlon caught on and started his own jokes. During a scene where Frank has to eat cake, Marlon would intentionally blow his lines to force Sinatra to eat cake over and over again. The hostility was reaching new heights, and the pair refused to talk. They would only communicate through other people.
Things really escalated when Frank's wife, Ava Gardner (who he was separated from), was spending time in Marlon's dressing room when Frank wasn't around. It's believed this is what directly led to Marlon's abduction. He was riding around on his motorcycle and had stopped at a rest stop when a car with "three goons" showed up and pulled a gun on him, forcing him into an unknown vehicle. Marlon's close friend Carlo Fiore's account was detailed in the book Brando Unzipped by Darwin Porter: "Marlon told me, 'One of the goons told me he was going to offer me a choice. He could kill me — a quick and easy death with a bullet in the heart. Or else he'd let me live. If he let me live, he'd castrate me and carve up my face so that no plastic surgeon could ever repair it...' Marlon told me he had never been so frightened in all his life." Brando was eventually dumped in the Hollywood Hills, and he was able to flag down a car for help.
Although there wasn't any hard evidence, Carlo firmly believed it was Frank. "I'm sure Sinatra was behind this whole thing. He threatened and intimidated other people in his life, or so I heard. Why not Marlon? His arch-enemy number one." After the abduction, Marlon kept his distance from Frank and even hired a bodyguard for his own personal protection.
And finally, here's a true rivalry that went on for decades. It was so bad that it literally didn't "end" until BOTH women had passed. It was so iconic that Ryan Murphy even told their story in the first season of his anthology series, Feud. It's a 40+-year rivalry, and I still didn't cover every detail, so gear up:
9.Joan Crawford vs. Bette Davis
Oh, settle in, because this one is a lot. Let's start with some quick background. Joan made her first appearance on screen in 1925, and Bette didn't even move to Hollywood until 1930. In 1933, Bette was finally set to have her name featured above the title in the Warner Brothers movie Ex-Lady. The studio had already planned a massive promotional campaign for the movie, which included an announcement of Bette's new phase of her career. Well, that same day, Joan announced she was divorcing her first husband, and newspapers quickly pushed Bette's announcement to a small box in the corner of the page while Joan's divorce was a multi-page spread in a plethora of newspapers. After only a week of premiering, Bette's movie was dropped from theaters for low ratings.
Thought it couldn't get any worse? Well, let's continue. In 1935, Bette starred in a drama called Dangerous and fell in love with her costar, Franchot Tone. Yeah, you could probably guess that Joan got to him first. She ended up marrying him during the filming of Dangerous, which devastated Bette. In a 1987 interview with Michael Thornton, more than 50 years after the incident, Bette told him, "I have never forgiven her for that, and never will." In Joan's personal biography titled Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford: A Personal Biography, she had this to say about Bette's crush: "Franchot thought Bette was a good actress, but he never thought of her as a woman."
These women went at it for the rest of their lives. In 1943, it's reported that Joan attempted to reconcile by sending Bette gifts and flowers, which fell flat. Then, in 1945, Joan won her first and only Oscar for a role Bette turned down. In 1946, Joan received another Oscar nomination for a role Bette turned down. According to Joan's friend Jerry Asher, in 1950, Bette had suspicions that Joan — who, according to her daughter Christina, was likely bisexual had taken an interest in her, which is why she was probably so antagonistic. He mentioned that Joan used to make jokes like, "Franchot isn't interested in Bette, but I wouldn't mind giving her a poke if I was in the right mood." However, he never knew if she was truly just joking or not.
Somehow, after a previous movie starring the two was scrapped when Bette walked out on it, they finally made it work when Joan convinced Bette to do What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The beef, of course, continued on set and brought this whole thing to a head. During the filming, there's a scene where Bette's character beats Joan's. Rightfully so, Joan was not down with that and requested a body double, which couldn't be used in closeup shots. So, when Bette's time came, she kicked Jane very, very hard in the head, to the point where it's reported that she needed stitches. Bette said she "barely touched her." Hollywood definitely helped add fuel to the fire by giving Bette the Best Actress Oscar nomination for the movie and paying Joan complete dust. Iconically, though, if anyone won and wasn't present to accept their award, Joan made sure she could be the one to do it. Well, when Best Actress was read and it went to Anne Bancroft, Joan was the one to go on stage and accept it; she even ended up in the official pictures with all of the other winners.
To bring this very long story around, in 1964, Joan walked out on a movie the two were supposed to do together after their last success. In May 1977, Joan died, and Bette died in October 1989. While they spent their lives feuding, Bette did come to Joan's defense when Joan's adoptive daughter wrote a memoir slandering her mother after she had already died. Wildly enough, the two had far more in common than they thought because, after Bette's death, her daughter went on to do the same thing.
Well, that was enough shade to get me through the next 24–48 hours. Do you think Old Hollywood has our modern day shenanigans beat? Let me know in the comments!
