The feud between sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland was the longest running
in Hollywood history, spanning almost an entire century of slights, spite, and sniping in
the press.
But why?
Keep watching to find out!
Both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were Hollywood heavyweights during its Golden Age.
The feud between the two leading ladies has become Tinseltown lore, as they tirelessly
threw jabs at one another in what was ultimately a clash of egos.
Davis and Crawford's rivalry kicked off in 1933.
Crawford was already considered an A-list star, while Davis was still making a name
for herself, having finally scored a leading role in "Ex-Lady."
According to "Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr," Davis was thrilled at the possibility of newspapers
promoting the flick as front-page news, but Crawford's announcement that she was divorcing
her first husband, movie star Douglas Fairbanks Jr., suddenly took center stage.
Ultimately, publications gave scant reviews of "Ex-Lady," while Crawford's personal drama
snagged multiple pages.
The moment sparked a feud between the two women that lasted four decades, with jabs
both professional and personal being hurled both ways.
The pair did end up starring in a movie together, in 1962, for "​​What Ever Happened To
Baby Jane?"
According to the biography "Not the Girl Next Door," it was Crawford who reached out to
Davis, knowing that she would be perfect for the film.
Their time on set was anything but professional, with Davis even accusing Crawford of intentionally
injuring her while they filmed a scene.
Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds' legendary spat was due to a love triangle, which resulted
in the two not speaking for years.
Reynolds and Taylor met when they were teens and both signed to MGM.
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 Taylor's side to console her, and a
mere month later, he separated from Reynolds.
While the press had a field day with the news, Taylor and Reynolds' friendship came to a
halt.
Decades later, in 2010, Reynolds revealed to the Daily Mail that she believed Taylor's
affair with Fisher actually began in 1957, when he was away touring.
A lonely Reynolds phoned her friend and was horrified to hear her husband on the other
line.
Fisher ended up marrying Taylor, and the two women didn't speak for years, even after Taylor
and Fisher divorced.
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, with Reynolds extending the olive branch.
Jerry Lewis was a huge part of Dean Martin's climb to the top of the A-list.
In 1946, Martin was a nightclub singer when he met Lewis after a performance.
The pair hit it off, and their comedy act was born the following year.
They were so popular together that the duo made an incredible 16 films together between
the years of 1949 and 1956.
However, behind closed doors, the situation was less than stellar.
Martin was tired of being just the straight man to Lewis' wacky antics, while Lewis detested
that his partner in crime didn't have the same workaholic mentality as he did.
A significant point of contention came in 1954, when Look magazine cropped Martin out
of a promotional photo for their new movie "Living It Up."
Things never recovered after that, and by 1956, Lewis and Martin had gone their separate
ways.
According to People, the two refused to speak to one another for a whopping 20 years until
their mutual friend Frank Sinatra attempted a live, surprise on-stage reunion in 1976.
Although they were civil for the cameras, it would be another 10 years before they truly
reconciled, after Martin's son passed away in a plane crash in 1987.
When Martin died in 1995, Lewis took the blame for their bitter split all those decades ago.
He told TCM's Ben Mankiewicz that Martin was the best man he ever met.
"You still thought of him as your best friend?"
"Oh god, yes.
Oh yes."
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 knockoff version of Monroe, which clearly
irked Marilyn.
So annoyed was Monroe with her rival that she once snapped at writer Lawrence J. Quirk,
"All she does is imitate me [...] I wish I had some legal means to sue her."
After a confused Quirk asked her why she would want to take legal action against Mansfield,
Monroe said, quote, "For degrading the image."
But it wasn't just Mansfield's copycat behavior that annoyed Monroe.
As Quirk notes, Mansfield purportedly took note of her rival's alleged affair with John
F. Kennedy and decided she wanted a slice of presidential pie, too.
Utilizing the help of JFK's brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, Mansfield 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."
The feud between Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando began in 1954 when Brando snagged the
lead part in "On the Waterfront" — a role that Sinatra was gunning for himself.
Although there wasn't any bad blood from Brando's side, biographer James Kaplan told Closer
Weekly that, quote, "Frank detested the ground that Brando walked on."
When the pair became co-stars the following year for the musical-comedy "Guys and Dolls,"
things only worsened, and Brando started antagonizing Ol' Blue Eyes.
During a scene where Sinatra was eating cheesecake, Brando would purposely mess up his lines.
The result?
Sinatra would have to keep eating for multiple takes on end.
"Don't think I am impressed, but do yourself a favor.
Eat this last little bite of cheesecake.
You will thank me!"
The breaking point came when Sinatra's estranged wife, Ava Gardner, decided to visit Brando
in his dressing room, sending Sinatra into an alleged jealous rage.
According to the book "Brando Unzipped," Brando was kidnapped by three men who forced him
into a car and threatened to kill him at gunpoint for two hours.
After Brando was released, he was convinced that Sinatra, who had alleged mafia ties,
was behind it.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are considered comedy legends.
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.
While this made for some phenomenal on-screen chemistry, the two men grew to hate one another
off-camera.
In 1945, nine years after teaming up, their relationship soured when Abbott hired a maid
that had formerly worked for Costello.
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.
Under their contracts, Abbott and Costello were forced to keep working together, but
they didn't speak to each other when cameras weren't rolling.
Their most serious row happened in 1957, after Errol Flynn played a practical joke on the
pair and their families by inviting them for a film screening and instead playing a very
adult movie.
Flynn pretended he had no idea how the movies got switched, so Abbott and Costello blamed
each other for the tasteless joke, leading to their final break-up.
Jayne Mansfield's climb to Tinseltown's A-list was an interesting one, mainly because her
critics didn't exactly think she was that good of an actor.
Considered by The Hollywood Reporter as the first star to be "famous for being famous,"
Mansfield knew how to use the tabloids to her advantage.
One of Mansfield's most well-known publicity stunts involved the celebrated actor, Sophia
Loren, which allegedly irked the Italian star so much, it turned her off Hollywood as a
whole.
In 1957, Loren visited Hollywood, attending a press event in her honor.
After Loren had been seated at the table, Mansfield crashed the party.
As she leaned over Loren's table, Mansfield suffered a wardrobe malfunction, grabbing
headlines as much for Loren's side-eye as for Mansfield herself.
Many newspapers and magazines reportedly published photos from the event with the words "censored"
covering Mansfield's bosom.
Decades later, Loren told Entertainment Weekly,
"I'm staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate."
"If she moves, everything moves, so it could be disaster."
After Mansfield's tragic death in 1967, though, Loren would always decline to autograph copies
of the photo out of respect for Mansfield.
Orson Welles released his magnum opus "Citizen Kane" in 1941.
It's now considered one of the greatest films of all time, but it completely flopped at
the time of its release thanks to newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst.
The titular character of Charles Foster Kane was said to have been inspired in part by
Hearst.
Hearst was so offended by the on-screen portrayal that he prohibited newspapers from mentioning
the movie and banned movie theaters from showing it.
In 1970, Welles told Dick Cavett that the Hearsts tried to keep the movie from ever
being seen at all.
"They tried to have it destroyed, they even tried to frame me."
Hearst died in 1951, while Welles passed away in 1985.
The feud seems to have died with them: in 2015, Hearst's great-grandson Stephen Hearst
gave permission to screen "Citizen Kane" in the private movie theater at Hearst Castle.
Stephen Hearst told NPR that reporters questioned him about how his ancestor would have felt.
"One of them [...] said, 'Do you think your great-grandfather would be rolling in his
grave?'
And I let him know that, based on my current responsibilities, I also have control of the
mausoleum, and if necessary, I can check."
The feud between Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland goes past a Hollywood squabble:
it was a familial rivalry.
The sisters were born a mere 15 months apart, and their competitiveness reportedly began
while they were still children.
Joan, the younger of the two, believed their mother preferred Olivia, so the pair often
fought.
Their altercations ranged from small slaps to one occasion when Olivia broke her sister's
collarbone trying to pull her into a pool.
Disturbingly, Joan revealed in an interview with Life magazine in 1942 that when she was
9, she plotted to kill her sister if Olivia kept hitting her — a plan that luckily didn't
come to fruition.
By 1938, de Havilland was an established star, while Fontaine struggled to catch up.
Their feud only escalated when Fontaine took a job as her sister's chauffeur to make ends
meet.
Then they became professional rivals as the only siblings to both win an Oscar in a leading
acting category.
The two eventually stopped speaking to each other entirely after their mother's death
in 1975.
In 1978, Fontaine told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly
be livid because I beat her to it!"
"None of us are warm and cozy, it's not in our natures!"
Ultimately, they had the longest running feud in Hollywood history: Fontaine died in 2013
at the age of 96, while de Havilland died in 2020 at the age of 104.
They reportedly never reconciled.
German director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski produced some incredible films together,
having collaborated five times.
The pair knew each other since they were teens, as Herzog met Kinski when he moved into his
apartment building.
When they began working together, though, their professional relationship was messy
and volatile.
Although their movies were legendary, so were their spats off-camera.
The most turbulent flick the pair worked on together was 1972's "Aguirre, the Wrath of
God," which took place in Peru.
By this point in Kinski's career, he was already well-known for being an incredibly difficult
actor to work with.
And let's just say the intense jungle filming didn't lead to much harmony on set.
"There is some sort of a harmony.
It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder."
Herzog later recalled that when Kinski decided to just walk off the movie, Herzog bluntly
told him,
"If you leave the set now, you will reach the bend — the next bend of the river and
I will shoot you — will have eight bullets through your head."
Kinski stayed, but his dramatic antics during the filming of "Aguirre" didn't irk Herzog
alone.
According to The Guardian, at one point, the Native Peruvians playing extras in the film
actually offered to kill Kinski for Herzog, which he thankfully declined.
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