Old Hollywood Feuds That Got Out Of Hand

The Golden Age of Hollywood came to be in the early 1920s, with the industry being controlled by five major studios: Paramount, MGM, Fox, Warner Brothers, and RKO, per History. These studios were essentially given carte blanche over their talent, often controlling every aspect of their stars' lives, from the way they looked, the abhorrent hours they worked, to even approving who they were allowed to date (via Reel Rundown).

According to FSR, it seemed like everyone wanted to become a star in Old Hollywood, and thousands of people flocked to Los Angeles with one end goal in sight: to see their names lit up on a marquee. Of course, with such stiff competition (and the pressures associated with succeeding once an actor actually landed a contract), The Golden Age of Hollywood became a breeding ground for conflict and rivalry.

Image was everything in Old Hollywood, and as representatives of their studios, actors were obligated to behave a certain way both on camera and off. Of course, things didn't always go according to plan, and Tinseltown employers sometimes found great difficulty keeping their talent in check. Let's take a look at some of the most legendary Old Hollywood feuds that got out of hand.

Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds' legendary spat was due to a love triangle, which resulted in the two not speaking for years. According to People, Reynolds and Taylor met when they were teens and both signed to MGM. Per Biography, the pair remained friends as they grew into adulthood, with Reynolds marrying Eddie Fisher in 1955 and Taylor tying the knot with Mike Todd two years later — with Reynolds serving as the matron of honor.

Sadly, Taylor's marital bliss was cut short in 1958 after Todd tragically died in a plane crash. Curiously enough, it was Fisher who immediately ran to the "Cleopatra" star's side to console her, and a mere month later, he separated from Reynolds (via Biography). While the press had a field day with the news, Taylor and Reynolds' friendship came to a halt. Decades later, in 2010, the "Singin' in the Rain" actor revealed in an interview with Daily Mail that she believed Taylor's affair with Fisher actually began in 1957 when her husband was away touring. A lonely Reynolds phoned her friend and was horrified to hear Fisher on the other line.

Fisher ended up marrying Taylor (although they divorced in 1964), and, of course, the two women didn't speak for years. According to Closer Weekly, seven years after Taylor betrayed her friend, the two finally reconciled after discovering they were stuck together on a ship heading from New York to England. It was initially Reynolds who extended the olive branch.

When Jayne Mansfield finally reached the A-list in the late 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was already a bonafide Hollywood icon. The pair were already on bad terms before they even met: according to the Vintage News, Mansfield was considered by many a cheaper version of Monroe, which certainly irked the original blonde sex symbol (via Biography).

So annoyed was Monroe with her rival that she once snapped back at Lawrence J. Quirk, author of "The Kennedys in Hollywood," declaring, "All she does is imitate me ... I wish I had some legal means to sue her" (via The Washington Post). After a confused Quirk asked her why she would want to take legal action against Mansfield, the "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" star quipped, "For degrading the image."

But it wasn't just Mansfield being an imitation of her that annoyed Monroe. As Quirk notes, Mansfield purportedly took note of her rival's alleged affair with John F. Kennedy in the mid-1950s and decided she wanted a slice of presidential pie, too. Utilizing the help of JFK's brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, the "Promises! Promises!" actor had her own secret tryst with Kennedy, later telling Lawford, "Everyone in Hollywood and Washington knows about it anyway ... I'll bet Marilyn's pissed," at the concept of Monroe finding out (via The Washington Post).

Comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are considered legends in the world of rapid-fire, slapstick comedy, having performed together in films, television, on stage, and on radio (via Britannica). Formed in 1936, they've influenced countless comedians to this day, such as Jerry Seinfeld, who even dropped subtle references to the icons on his now-legendary series, "Seinfeld" (via the New York Times)

The winning formula for the duo was the roles they played. Abbott, who acted as more of a straight man, was the serious schemer, while Costello played the more childlike, comedic role. And while this made for phenomenal on-screen chemistry, the two men grew to hate one another off-camera. While the actors had their own personal problems they were dealing with (Abbott struggled with alcoholism while Costello had severe issues with rheumatic fever), in 1945, their relationship soured after Abbott hired a former maid of Costello's, per The Telegraph. This resulted in Costello telling the tabloids that Abbott was a drunk, while Abbott himself publicly declared he'd get physical with his on-screen chum. Sadly, Abbott and Costello were forced to keep working together under contract, but they didn't speak when cameras stopped rolling.

According to The Telegraph, their most serious row happened in 1957, after Errol Flynn played a practical joke on the pair and their families: inviting them for a screening and "accidentally" playing an adult film in front of them. While Flynn acted innocent, Abbott and Costello blamed one another, thus leading to their final break-up.

When Orson Welles released his magnum opus "Citizen Kane" in 1941, he was already a Hollywood heavyweight, having terrified audiences three years prior with his infamous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," which caused alleged widespread hysteria that aliens were invading America (via Smithsonian Magazine). "Citizen Kane," which has since been lauded as one of the greatest films of all time, completely flopped at the time of its release, per History — all thanks to newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst.

According to the National Post, the role of Charles Foster Kane was said to have been "partially inspired" by Hearst himself, who was so offended by the on-screen portrayal that he prohibited newspapers from mentioning the movie and banned movie theaters from showing it. "[He] tried to have it destroyed," recalled Welles while on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1970, adding that he actually met Hearst for the first time during the opening night of the film, running into him in an elevator in San Francisco. Welles introduced himself to the publisher and invited him to the premiere, while Hearst merely ignored him. "I said, 'Well, Mr. Kane would have come,'" Welles quipped.

Hearst died in 1951, and in the years to follow, it appears his younger family members don't harbor any sort of similar hatred. As his great-grandson and president of the Hearst Corporation, Steve Hearst, said in a statement in 2012 (via National Post), he sees "Citizen Kane" as a "remarkable" movie, noting that it should celebrate both the publisher and the director.

Working together on 1957's "The Prince and the Showgirl" was anything but easy for co-stars Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. According to The Telegraph, the two actors were in completely different parts of their careers by the time they collaborated, with Olivier already a heavyweight in the industry both in front of the camera and behind it. On the other hand, Monroe played stereotypical dumb blonde roles in the early 1950s (via Biography), which led Olivier to consider her his "inferior."

However, acting talents weren't the only reason Monroe and Olivier's relationship immediately turned sour. Kenneth Branagh, who played Olivier in 2011's "My Week with Marilyn," revealed to NPR that Monroe would constantly show up late to set (or not at all) and had trouble memorizing her lines. "That created, often, comic frustration for Olivier," noted Branagh. Of course, Olivier's treatment of the blonde bombshell irked Monroe — along with the fact that he simply couldn't see her as the sex symbol that others so openly acknowledged. "She never forgave him for saying to her once, 'Try and be sexy,'" explained the flick's cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, to The Telegraph.

Sadly, when Monroe died of a drug overdose in 1962, even the circumstances of her death did nothing to soften the hatred Olivier carried for his former co-star. According to Cardiff, when he ran into the actor in 1984 and asked him about his time with Marilyn on set, Olivier merely replied, "She was a bi**h" (via The Telegraph).

The fight between Faye Dunaway and Roman Polanski on the set of Academy Award-winning flick "Chinatown" will go down in history as one of the most notorious Old Hollywood feuds — and with good reason, too. "The friction between Roman and I began from the start," Dunaway reflected in the years after completing the 1974 flick, per The Telegraph. As the "Bonnie and Clyde" star further explained, Polanski had already left a bad impression during the initial makeup test, after he wasn't happy with the actor's look. According to Dunaway, Polanski grabbed the makeup brush himself and aggressively applied it to her with disastrous results.

On Polanski's end, he claimed Dunaway displayed a "certifiable proof of insanity" — a claim he deduced after plucking a strand of hair from the star during a scene where he believed it was ruining his take (via Far Out). Dunaway, who insisted the director harmed her, marched off the set after the incident.

But neither of these quarrels will ever be as legendarily horrific as the following story. According to The Guardian, during the filming of one scene, Polanski instructed Dunaway to wait in a car. After asking the director if she could go to the washroom, Polanski demanded she stay in the vehicle. When he later returned to talk to Dunaway, she threw a cup of liquid out of the car window and at his face, leading the director to yell, "You c**t, that's piss!"