Hollywood couples tend to follow a curious plot line when they decide to tie the knot
When you work on a movie studio lot, the first thing you learn is that every corner is haunted. Hollywood may not have been around a long time, but the place still has layers of history on every soundstage and bungalow office, and the backlots and crannies of every major studio echo with the arguments, love affairs, successes, failures and career twists spanning back to the early days of show business.
My first office – a tiny little nook on the Paramount studio lot – was, an old-timer informed me on my first week, the original office of Preston Sturges, the genius writer and director behind such classics as Palm Beach Story and Sullivan’s Travels. It seemed like an insulting small space for such a giant talent, until it was explained to me that over the years his office had been sliced up into almost a dozen smaller offices, of which mine was the smallest. It seemed fitting for a writer at my level. I was just happy to be there, and spent my days imagining the ghost of Sturges looking over my shoulder as I tapped out sitcom dialogue.
The staircase leading to the second floor of that office building, another old-timer told me, was the exact spot where television legend Lucille Ball – the irrepressible ginger star of one of the earliest television sitcoms, I Love Lucy – was finally fed-up enough with her husband and co-star’s serial infidelity to demand, loudly and publicly, a divorce. It happened, I was told, on the 10th step from the ground floor.
Marriages have a hard time surviving Hollywood in any case, but they’re under particular stress when both parties are unequally busy and famous.
Ball’s husband, the Cuban bandleader and singer Desi Arnaz, never quite adjusted to his wife’s superstardom. He was a smart operator and a financial mastermind – it was Desi who invented the modern sitcom, and it was he who figured out the best and cheapest way to shoot a television comedy. But it was Lucy, after all, who was the bigger star, which meant that it was she who was irreplaceable. This led, no doubt, to Arnaz’s almost pathological need to cheat on – and embarrass – his more powerful wife.
Men, back in those days, didn’t like to take second-billing to their wives. And not just back in those days. Directly above my second office was the elaborately designed Tudor-style office occupied, over the years, by Joseph Kennedy — the scion of the Kennedy political dynasty, and the owner of RKO Studios, the creators and writers of the original Star Trek series, and for a few years, Tom Cruise and his then-wife Nicole Kidman. Their marriage also faltered, due in part (it was said) to Kidman’s series of hit movies coinciding with a few of Cruise’s box office disappointments.
Years before he became president of the United States, Ronald Reagan was at a similar career crossroads. His movie roles were becoming fewer – and smaller – just as his then-wife, Jane Wyman, was hitting her stride. Her smash-hit picture, Johnny Belinda, was the final straw that broke their marriage. They divorced soon after its release, and Reagan went on to marry the devoted and resolutely minor star Nancy Davis, who became Nancy Reagan, who went on to support and encourage her husband to set his sights on the biggest gig of all.
Hollywood has told this story many times. In 1937, Frederic March and Janet Gaynor starred in A Star is Born, which was remade in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, and then again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. All three versions are essentially illustrations of the Lucy/Desi, Tom/Nicole and Ronald/Jane story: once famous husband becomes less famous while younger wife becomes more famous. There’s even talk about a re-remake with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga.
And in 2012, the French film The Artist won the Academy Award for Best Picture, despite being entirely silent and entirely French. It was about a once famous husband becoming less famous while his younger wife becomes more famous. Hollywood really, really understands this story, perhaps because it’s so utterly believable.
Celebrity couples get married and unmarried for a variety of reasons, of course, not all of them based on some kind of fame imbalance. But you have to wonder, when you consider a rich and famous couple such as Jay Z and Beyoncé, if their relative positions on the celebrity ladder will have an effect on their marriage. Beyoncé, as everyone on Earth knows, is a supernova of fame. When she posts a photograph on Instagram, the web goes bananas and servers overheat. She’s an international news item when she loses an award, let alone wins one. When she releases a new album, she does it without advance publicity or notice, trusting that her immense fame and fanatical followers will create a blizzard of noise and commotion and fuss.
Jay Z, on the other hand, is ... what, again? Some kind of rapper? Sure, he was famous once. But his smaller star has been eclipsed many times over by his former wife. Whoops. Wait. They’re still married. I guess they haven’t seen the movie.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl