Some Hollywood feuds never die. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most bitter and notorious rivalries from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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00:00 Alright, alright, break it up, break it up.
00:03 What is this here?
00:04 Welcome to Miss Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most bitter and notorious
00:10 rivalries from the golden age of Hollywood.
00:12 There were so many people who profited from them being at each other's throats.
00:18 Number 10.
00:20 Irving Thalberg and Eric Von Stroheim
00:23 Before he was the wunderkind of MGM, the early 20-something Irving G. Thalberg was a high-ranking
00:29 producer at Universal Studios.
00:32 One of his most controversial actions there changed the film industry, and was the climax
00:37 of a feud with actor-director Eric Von Stroheim.
00:40 Thalberg wanted Von Stroheim to very carefully note that there were to be no added scenes.
00:46 And I'm sure that Thalberg thought that Von would take that to heart, but he wasn't the type who would.
00:53 An early auteur who starred in many of his own films, Von Stroheim was respected, but
00:59 he was also infamous for movies that went over budget and over long.
01:03 Thalberg's repeated warnings went mostly ignored if they weren't downright refused.
01:08 There are even accounts of the two nearly coming to blows in the producer's office.
01:13 Von Stroheim decided to take his case to Carl Laemmle, who was in New York.
01:17 Thalberg had another director on the lot, Rupert Julian, and while Von Stroheim was on a train
01:24 chugging its way across country, Thalberg put the picture right into production.
01:29 During the making of Merry-Go-Round in 1923, Thalberg stunned everyone by firing Von Stroheim.
01:36 It was a warning that not even directors were untouchable under the studio system.
01:41 When the film was released, Von Stroheim's name was nowhere on the credits, and only a few of his
01:46 scenes were still in the picture.
01:48 For many years, they were the very image of a successful comedy duo.
02:05 Bud Abbot and Lou Costello had spirit, charisma, and most of all, they had undeniable chemistry.
02:11 But things were not always rosy for the pair.
02:14 Both performers had started to experience a significant amount of burnout from performing,
02:19 whether it was because they were sick of performing the same old slapstick routines,
02:23 or because they were sick of being around each other.
02:25 Many reasons for their acrimony have been put forward over the years,
02:29 from Costello's unhappiness with being second-billed to a disagreement about a maid.
02:34 In their later years, the two comedians faced tax problems and were dropped from their contract at Universal.
02:40 Though they tried to continue the act, it proved impossible.
02:44 Financial woes, contractual disputes, alcohol use disorder, and personal spats
02:50 ultimately led the pair to end their partnership.
02:53 When the megastar crooner was offered to headline 1955's Guys and Dolls,
03:05 he had his eyes on the role of Skye Masterson.
03:08 Instead, Marlon Brando was given the role,
03:11 while Sinatra was cast as professional gambler Nathan Detroit.
03:15 Famously used to getting what he wanted, Sinatra was not pleased.
03:26 He was also reportedly unimpressed with Brando's method acting and naturalistic approach,
03:31 and often referred to him as "mumbles".
03:34 Needless to say, the two did not have a warm relationship on set.
03:38 Brando reportedly made it so Sinatra had to do a scene where he eats cheesecake for multiple takes.
03:51 Their feud is said to have culminated in Sinatra having some likely mafia tough guys threaten Brando's life.
03:58 If anything, it probably served as inspiration for Brando's most famous role.
04:04 For decades, the reactionary Hedda Hopper and the grandiose Luella Parsons
04:19 were locked in a professional rivalry that turned personal more than once.
04:24 These two old broads terrorizing everyone and hating each other.
04:31 As widely syndicated gossip colonists,
04:34 scandals such as the controversial release of Citizen Kane
04:37 and Ingrid Bergman's extramarital affair became their field of battle.
04:42 They would spend the better part of 20 years trying to out-scoop each other.
04:46 I didn't go to Luella about my divorce from Philip. No, she came to me.
04:51 And you confirmed it. And after, I gave you your career back.
04:55 Box office poison, that's what they called her.
04:57 Until I started promoting her in my column because I felt sorry for her.
05:01 Despite their habit of digging up dirt,
05:03 Hollywood gossip colonists were completely at the disposal of the studio publicity departments.
05:09 In their long-standing feud, Hopper and Parsons were clawing for job security
05:14 as much as they were clawing at each other.
05:16 They left a long trail of tarnished and broken Hollywood stars behind them.
05:21 Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were the be-all and end-all.
05:25 It's hard today to think that people have that kind of power.
05:30 No. 6 Faye Dunaway and Roman Polanski
05:33 The star and director of Chinatown are both infamous in Hollywood for wildly different reasons.
05:39 It's nothing personal, Mrs. Mulroney.
05:41 It's very personal. It couldn't be more personal.
05:44 Professionally, Roman Polanski is known for his demanding, if not sadistic methods.
05:50 Dunaway's complicated history of questionable set behavior
05:54 doesn't suggest she'd be a good fit for his rigid way of working.
05:57 Well, I'm judging only on the basis of one afternoon and an evening,
06:00 but if this is how you go about your work, I'd say you'd be lucky to get through a whole day.
06:07 She describes the experience of making Chinatown as humiliating.
06:11 During one scene, the director was reported to have pulled a hair from her head
06:16 because it was catching the light.
06:18 There is also a long-standing rumor that Dunaway was so angry with her director
06:23 for not letting her use the bathroom that she urinated in a cup and threw it in his face.
06:28 Years later, the two expressed mutual admiration.
06:31 Apparently, the movie was worth the headache.
06:34 I see you like publicity, Mr. Giddes.
06:37 Are you going to get it?
06:40 Number 5. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
06:43 We will be just like brothers, you and I.
06:47 I'm for you, I'm for me, and I'll love you 'til I die.
06:53 Before they became synonymous with roasts and telethons,
06:57 Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a successful comedy act
07:00 who made the jump to films and television.
07:03 Soon, they were the highest-paid act in the entire business.
07:07 However, after 16 films and endless tours,
07:10 Martin grew tired of Lewis' better reviews and their tireless touring schedule.
07:15 To forget that he sang and mention only the crazy stuff they did together, that's terrible.
07:21 And it was unfair.
07:24 And I said, "This is going to explode before too long."
07:27 Things came to a head in 1956 during production of their last film, Hollywood or Bust.
07:32 They would not speak for two decades.
07:35 However, their friendship resumed after Martin surprised Lewis
07:39 during his annual Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1976.
07:44 I think it's about time, don't you?
07:46 Thank you.
07:48 I think it's about time.
07:49 Number 4. Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor
07:53 Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor met when they were being primed for stardom at MGM.
07:58 Elizabeth and I were good friends. We were 17, 18, 19, 20, blah, blah, blah.
08:02 And then, of course, our lives changed because my husband became her husband.
08:05 After the death of Taylor's husband, Hollywood producer Mike Todd,
08:09 she was newly single and decided to pursue a relationship with singer and actor Eddie Fisher.
08:14 There was just one problem.
08:17 Eddie Fisher was married to Debbie Reynolds.
08:20 When the news broke, it blindsided Debbie and became a media frenzy of epic proportions.
08:26 This made marriage to my mother awkward.
08:31 And so he was gone within the week.
08:34 Needless to say, their friendship took a major hit.
08:38 For a decade or so, the former friends didn't speak.
08:42 Sometime after Elizabeth and Eddie's divorce, they put their feud on ice and ended their feud.
08:47 These things happen. Best friends should stick together.
08:51 Number 3. Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst
08:55 There were few men as powerful as newspaper magnate, film producer, and politician William Randolph Hearst.
09:02 Considering this, it's fair to say that novice filmmaker Orson Welles was pretty brave to base the corrupt, lonely, and broken tycoon protagonist of Citizen Kane on Hearst himself.
09:14 I don't propose to have myself made ridiculous.
09:17 When word got out, all mention of the upcoming film was forbidden from Hearst-owned newspapers.
09:23 But this wasn't nearly enough.
09:25 Hearst used the full force of his publishing empire to smear Welles, who became the subject of targeted libel and vicious rumors, and even a blackmail attempt or two.
09:44 Apparently, Orson Welles' little movie touched a nerve.
09:48 There is only one winner in the story of Citizen Kane, and that's the film which couldn't be killed.
09:54 Number 2. Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland
09:58 You'd think the only pair of siblings to ever win Academy Awards for Best Actress would be able to celebrate the achievement together.
10:06 That was not the case here.
10:09 It's absolutely true.
10:11 Oh my God.
10:12 She never got over it. I talked to a child psychologist about it once, and he said, "If it hasn't cured by the time you're, oh, 20, it will never change."
10:23 Sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland were famously cagey about their lifelong feud.
10:29 Drama over their respective Oscar wins, as well as lingering childhood resentments over their mother preferring Olivia, seemed to haunt their relationship.
10:39 They maintained a distant but cool relationship until their mother's death in the late 1970s.
10:45 You weren't even notified of her death.
10:48 Olivia sent me a telegram, but I was on tour, so it got mailed to me two weeks later at my next stop.
10:58 She didn't bother to find out where I could be reached or to telephone me.
11:02 The sisters were said to have never spoken again. Fontaine died in 2013.
11:08 De Havilland later sued Ryan Murphy at the FX network over the series' feud, which dramatized her comments on their relationship.
11:16 "So there is no feud between you two?"
11:19 "A feud implies continuing hostile conduct between two parties. I can't remember an instance where I instigated hostile behavior."
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11:46 "But we're very different kind of women, very different kind of actresses. Yes."
11:56 There was no way this one wasn't number one, right?
12:00 The TV show about them is literally called Feud.
12:04 By the time they had made their singular movie together, Joan Crawford and Betty Davis had racked up years of mutual disdain.
12:11 The set of 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane became the site of their long-awaited battle.
12:18 "You trying to tell me that she's violent?"
12:20 "Yes! Yes, she is!"
12:23 Tales of their mischievous and downright hateful behavior to each other during the shoot have since become legendary.
12:30 How their rivalry started is a mystery.
12:33 Although some cite that it began in the 1930s with Davis' failed attempt to seduce a co-star.
12:39 This co-star happened to be Crawford's then-fiancée.
12:43 It could have also been a case of professional rivalry.
12:47 Regardless, it's a Hollywood feud we'll never forget.
12:51 "Are you hurt by the memory of that?"
12:54 "I was furious."
12:56 Did we cover your favorite classic Hollywood feuds? Tell us in the comments.
13:00 "Only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good."
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