5 Weird Women of Old Hollywood — Blue Fairy Film Blog

Unlike today, where stars are heavily showcased and their scandals spilled across the headlines of supermarket tabloids, Old Hollywood was rife with incognito lovers, abortions, and double lives in foreign countries. Among the legions of golden haired beauties with scarlett lips lay weird women in hiding, beautiful and seductive yet secretly very interesting and intelligent. Here are five women who were actually pretty different than the norm, who conquered Old Hollywood with their talent, bravado, and glamour.

1. Hedy Lamarr

There’s actually a lot that remains problematic about the Austrian émigré and MGM starlet. She caused a scandal as a teenager when a pornographic scene, in a banned film, became public in her native country. To cover it up she married a Fascist arms dealer, who she then escaped from. She then moved to America where she persuaded Louis B. Mayer himself to give her a contract. Though she acted throughout the thirties and forties, she became more heavily focused in adapting technologies during WWII. During that time period she invented radio-technology for torpedoes that would eventually lead to the advent of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and drone warfare. Hedy isn’t all that well known today as her star faded sometime in the fifties. She spent the rest of her life either in obscurity or in publicly embarrassing situations.

2. Clara Bow

Deemed the first It Girl, Clara Bow commanded a huge amount of respect as a star of silent film. She was the epitome of the Roaring Twenties, and was the first sex symbol of that time period. Bow had a horrible childhood, as she was raised by a mentally ill mother, and an alcoholic, abusive father. She watched her friend die in her arms, was raped by her father at 16, and nearly murdered by her mother. By the early thirties she was overworked, having made 46 silent films, and 11 talkies in a ten year career. She was then embroiled in a completely false sex scandal and had a nervous breakdown, which ended her career in 1931. She married a rancher, later tried to commit suicide, and died of heart failure at the age of sixty.

3. Greta Garbo

This Swedish star was intensely interesting and wildly popular at the box office, even transitioning from silent to sound without issue. Much of her life is unknown, as she was extremely private, to an excessive point. This may be because she was a notorious bisexual, even rumored to have had a relationship with Marlene Dietrich in Berlin, sometime in the 1920s. Garbo never married, stayed out of public life, and abruptly retired from show business in 1941 after making just twenty-eight films. She spent the rest of her life travelling, seeing friends, and just doing whatever she wanted. Though she had a short career she was named the fifth greatest female star by AFI, and was nominated for three Oscars during her career.

4. Gloria Grahame

Grahame is best known for her work at RKO in multiple noirs, and her supporting role in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but her personal life was anything but. Grahame’s most scandalous exploit came when she married legendary director Nicholas Ray, and then had an affair with his thirteen year old son, Tony, which eventually led to their divorce in 1952. Grahame later married Tony, and her former step-son became the step-father of his half-brother. (I know). The couple stayed together for fourteen years (her longest marriage) before divorcing in 1974. During that marriage she became obsessed with plastic surgery, and at one point had to undergo electro-shock therapy after a nervous breakdown. She died in 1981 from breast cancer, after choosing not to seek treatment, at the age of 57.

5. Lana Turner

Turner was dubbed the Sweater Girl, named for her ability to fill out a sweater. A mainstay star at MGM during the forties and fifties, Turner was seen as a sex symbol and sometime femme fatale. By the fifties she was starring in truly interesting and classical works that would lend to a personal Renaissance. Her world was considerably altered in 1958 when her only daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed her abusive boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato after he broke into their Beverly Hills Home and threatened to kill them both. Cheryl was only fourteen at the time, and had also been the victim of her stepfather’s sexual abuse a year earlier. Cheryl was then sent to a boarding school, escaped, later tried to commit suicide, and came out to her mother as a lesbian later in life. Lana then starred in Imitation of Life, in 1959, which includes a plot involving a daughter pining over her mother’s boyfriend.

A lot of the research that went into writing this short little list came from Karina Longworth's podcast "You Must Remember This" which has so many great episodes on things like Charles Manson's ties to Hollywood, MGM stories, the loves of Howard Hughes and so much more. You can find the podcast on the show's site, ITunes, and even Spotify. Go listen for more wild scandals and stories from the Golden Era.