Top 10 Dark Truths About Classic Hollywood Actors

Many of us have our own insecurities about our physical appearance, and celebrities are no exception. Especially the women who have societal expectations on them that men often don’t have to deal with in the same way. And these expectations and insecurities can sometimes lead to rather extreme measures being taken to attempt to enhance one’s appearance. An example of which is Joan Crawford removing her teeth. No, she didn’t take them all out, but in her early 20s, she did remove some of her back molars in an effort to accentuate her cheekbones.

Not only was Shirley Temple the namesake of a delicious cocktail and one of the great child stars in the history of Hollywood. She was also the target of an assassination attempt when she was still a little girl. The perpetrator of the attempt was a sad and emotionally distraught woman who’d lost her daughter - supposedly at the same time that Temple was born. In her sorrow, the woman came to believe that Temple had stolen her daughter’s soul and that targeting her would release it from her. The woman took out a gun during a live performance, but was stopped before she could fire it. It’s a sad story all around, that thankfully ended without any physical harm to Temple.

Known for his roles in such films as “A Place in the Sun” and “From Here to Eternity,” Montgomery Clift was a big Hollywood star in the late 40s and 50s - until a car accident changed his life. Clift was filming “Raintree County” when, following a dinner party at co-star Elizabeth Taylor’s house, Clift crashed his car into a telephone pole. The accident required plastic surgery and two months of recovery before the actor could finish the film. Besides the changes to his appearance, the accident led to Clift becoming hooked on alcohol and pills to dull the pain. He continued to make movies, but he was never really the same until he died at 45.

The comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy brought joy and laughter to so many people throughout the first half of the 20th century. But one person who wasn’t laughing was Vera Shuvalova. Shuvalova was Laurel’s third wife and the recipient of some very scary threats from the beloved comic performer. Supposedly, Laurel had a problem with alcohol and needless to say he wasn’t a friendly drunk. When the couple divorced, Shuvalova made some very serious accusations. Claiming that her husband had threatened her with a gun and had even dug a grave in their backyard, telling her that he was going to bury her alive. Nothing funny about that.

John Huston’s path to becoming one of the greatest directors of all time began in 1941 with his directorial debut, “The Maltese Falcon.” However, prior to getting his shot at directing, Huston spent the beginning and the end of the 1930s as a writer in Hollywood. What about the middle years? Well, Huston spent those wandering around Europe following the death of actress Tosca Roulien. A death that he caused while driving intoxicated - although somehow a coroner’s jury did exonerate Huston of any blame. There was a rumor that Clark Gable was the one that killed Roulien and Huston was paid to take the fall. But given that Gable was elsewhere filming a movie at the time, the rumor doesn’t appear to have legs.

A number of famous actors had issues with stuttering as children, including - as fans of “The Big Bang Theory” know - James Earl Jones. But while people may be familiar with Marilyn Monroe’s many life troubles, did you know that she too had a problem with stuttering growing up? Many biographies have covered this fact and Monroe herself talked about it in interviews. It got so bad at times that she, like other stutterers, was so scared and embarrassed that she basically stopped talking for extended periods. How exactly it started is obviously up for debate, but many biographers have attributed it to the trauma of living with her mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, and her childhood in and out of foster care and orphanages.

Marlon Brando and Rita Morena met on the set of the 1954 film “Désirée” and, like often happens in Hollywood, they started dating. There’s no denying Brando’s brilliance as one of the greatest actors of all time. However, when it came to women, Moreno called him “a bad guy.” Besides the lying and cheating and bursts of rage, Moreno also revealed that Brando forced her to terminate a pregnancy while they were together. It was all too much for the young actress, who has also been open about how it led to her almost taking her life at Brando’s house with a bottle of pills.

Besides a small, uncredited role in 1950, Tippi Hedren made her big screen debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film “The Birds” and followed it up the next year in Hitchcock’s ”Marnie.” You’d think that after having such success with such a great director that the two would’ve worked together again. But they never did. Although it wasn’t because Hitchcock didn’t like Hedren, but rather because he liked her too much. The great director became obsessed with Hedren and her time on both films was filled with emotional and mental mistreatment and unwanted advances from Hitchcock. From isolating her from the rest of the cast by forbidding any of them to talk to her to demanding she be sexually available to him, which she refused.

Charlie Chaplin made over 80 movies. That’s a lot. However, it pales in comparison to the number of women he slept with - a number that he claimed was over 2000. And while we don’t know the ages of all of them, the ones we do know make us, shall we say, uncomfortable. He married his first wife, Mildred Harris in 1918 - Chaplin was 29 and Harris was only 16. Chaplin felt forced into marrying his second wife Lita Grey when the 35-year-old icon discovered that the 16-year-old-Grey was pregnant. In 1943, At the age of 54, Chaplin married for the fourth and last time. His wife, Oona O'Neill was 18, but the couple would have 8 kids and remain together until Chaplin’s passing in 1977.

Soap opera actress Judy Lewis’s life sounds like the script from an episode of afternoon television. But it isn’t. Lewis’ mother was actress Loretta Young and her biological father was Clark Gable. However, Gable was married at the time. So, attempting to avoid a scandal, Young hid her pregnancy and placed her baby into orphanages when she was born. After 19 months, Young “adopted” her daughter back, but her stunning resemblance to Gable meant that most of Hollywood knew the truth. Young even had a 7-year-old Lewis get her ears pinned back in order to try and hide the similarities. Eventually, Young admitted the truth to her daughter and claimed that she wasn’t conceived consensually.