It’s a love story that could only have happened in Hollywood.
Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson met on the set of her mother’s R-rated movie about free love,
moved in when she was 15, got engaged on her 18th birthday. They got married and divorced twice,
all in the public’s eye. All while battling their own and each other’s demons. How come Melanie
married Don to END their relationship? What kind of horrific event drove Johnson to ask for help
and eventually put an end to their marriage? Did his reputation as Don Juan-son \have anything to
do with it? We’ll tell you all about their chaotic marriages in today’s video. So put your seatbelts
on, and let’s go on this crazy 80s ride! In today’s time, the relationship between
the two would have created an uproar because of her being underage. Melanie
was 14 when she first spotted Don, her mother’s 22-year-old co-star in The Harrad Experiment.
Understandably, Tippy Hedren , Griffith’s mother, had her doubts. “They were two wonderful people,
and here, my daughter was showing signs that I had never seen before in her, with an older man,
and there was just sheer panic,” she said. “How do you handle that?
There was a very strong attachment between the two of them.”
After being booted from a Catholic high school for “questioning the religion,”
Griffith moved in with Johnson when she was 15. “By the time we were 14, half of my girlfriends
had had abortions,” Melanie once said. Don elaborated that their first time wasn’t in the
back seat of a car, “like people of our parents’ generation. At least we were upfront about it.”
Engaged on Melanie’s 18th birthday, the couple wed in 1976. In retrospect,
omens for the marriage were bad. In the evening before the wedding, Johnson spent most of the
night with ex-Miss World, Marjorie Wallace , which he later admitted. “Melanie called at about 4 or 5
in the morning. We professed undying love and flew to Las Vegas and got married.”
Sadly, their life as a married couple lasted only for six months. Griffith said the relationship
wasn’t working for them. And at the same time, they couldn’t split up. They honestly believed
that it might work better if they were MARRIED. Eventually, she walked away from the marriage
with little more than the tattoo of a pear, reportedly a pet name for Johnson, on her butt.
The marriage didn’t last long, but their relationship would become an enduring
saga, itself fit for the big screen. In the meantime, Melanie’s mom enlisted
the whole family to live amongst hundreds of wild animals on their compound while filming
the movie Roar. Griffith was actually mauled by a lion and had to undergo facial reconstructive
surgery due to her mom’s idea. It must’ve been tough to get out of a chaotic marriage
just to be thrown into the wildlife. From then on, both actors went on to
earn well-deserved reputations as hard-core Hollywood partygoers. Always precocious,
Melanie nearly flamed out on cocaine and alcohol before she hit 20.
In 1983, she settled down long enough to marry actor Steven Bauer and have a son, but the couple
separated two years later, and the marriage does not bring back fond memories for Griffith.
Johnson was equally adventurous in affairs of the heart. Twice-married at an early age,
he began a four-year live-in with an actor Patti D’Arbanville after meeting her — and
dumping then-girlfriend Tanya Tucker . “Patti moved in that night, and we stayed in bed for
about eight days,” Johnson once said. “The houseboy kept bringing in food and water.”
By that point, Don was an international superstar thanks to his starring role in Miami Vice.
Melanie was also at the height of her fame thanks to her hit movie Working Girl.
And she had a reputation for hell-raising — most infamously, before her second attempt at marriage
with Don when she dated Ryan O’Neal. His daughter Tatum later accused Griffith of taking her to a
drug-fuelled orgy when she was just 12. Woooow. In 1987, Johnson called Griffith and said he had
the “perfect” part for his ex-wife — a high-class madam in a Miami Vice guest spot — and the two
then began dating sporadically. Eventually, she ended her affair
with an investment banker and an advisor on the set of Working Girl
and reconciled with Johnson. She completed rehab and “was finding being with him wonderful again.”
Sceptics were sceptical, of course. It was only a year prior, after all, when Johnson was eyeing
Barbra Streisand . And she was crazy about him. While Don was in the middle of his affair with
the famous singer (and several other women) and Melanie was shooting Working Girl,
their star-crossed lives crossed again. This was when rumours of struggle were rampant,
though Griffith insists she never drank on the set, as she usually drank to relax.
“I drank at night. It was a never-ending story. It’s a terrible thing to be in.”
Johnson came to her rescue, persuading her to check herself in for the treatment program.
He’d been trying to have her do that for about two years.
“That makes me sound like I was shooting up or something. One drink is poison.
I went into the clinic because I just realized finally that I couldn’t stop by myself,”
Melanie says. Johnson, a confessed drug and alcohol addict who joined AA in 1983,
helped pull Melanie through. They talked all the time. He was there for her. What can we say?
Three months later, when Griffith went to Miami to visit family, she and Johnson rekindled their
romance. He was still seeing Streisand, and for a few weeks, ricocheted between the two women.
Barbra was “very, very crushed by what happened,” said a close friend.
By February 1989, Melanie Griffith was basking in the glow of her newly brilliant career.
She’d won a Golden Globe for Working Girl, and her future had never looked brighter.
But at that point, the one thing more dazzling to her than her professional prospects was a
four-carat rock on the third finger of her left hand, a gift from her once-and-future husband,
Don Johnson. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? It looks like it came out of a bubble-gum machine,”
she burbled in her little girl voice. At that time, she had a lot more than
a diamond ring, a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination to crow about.
On Valentine’s Day, no less, she and Don ended weeks of speculation with the happy announcement
that they are going to have a baby! “She’s up in the clouds, she’s so happy,” said her mom.
The pregnancy was a surprise but a welcome one. “I got completely stupid,” says Johnson.
“I’ve been mush-faced ever since.” Melanie had made no secret of her wish for his child,
and when she told Don, he was as thrilled as she was. And the wedding plans that
have been vague-almost-nonexistent for the last few months were starting to firm up.
It seemed like they’ve already been through the worst with each other. Their first rocky marriage
barely outlasted the wedding cake. Along the way, each had to conquer addictions to alcohol and
drugs. But, having found each other on the other side, they were swearing that love is sweeter the
second time around. “We always stayed in touch. There was always this connection. I can’t explain
it. Sometimes I wanted not to love him. But maybe it was karma, and you have to go through all that
to get to where we are now. It’s like it was in the very beginning, but there is so much more.”
She was eager for the wedding, believing some relationships were fated,
and theirs was one of them. Even Melanie’s mom, who objected to the couple’s first marriage,
seemed optimistic about their odds the second time around. The first time they married in a
little chapel in Las Vegas. “This time she wants to have a big wedding. And when they marry,
it will be till death do us part,” said Hedren. At the time, Melanie and Don were ideals of
clean living. “Don and I run together,” Griffith says. “He does about 5½ miles,
but I only do four. Then I tell him, ‘I’ll wait here until you come back on your way home!’” Home
could’ve meant either Johnson’s ranch near Aspen or the couple’s equally pricey Miami pad, which
Melanie’s decorated in a favourite theme — hearts. All this domesticity altered Griffith’s image.
She reportedly turned down the starring role of notorious stripper Blaze Starr
opposite Paul Newman because Johnson preferred his fiancée not to do nude scenes anymore.
Johnson seemed equally happy at home. Melanie was sleeping a lot but not experiencing morning
sickness. Her son, Alexander, who lived with the couple, and Jesse, Don’s offspring,
frequent visitor, were clamouring for a baby sister (spoiler alert: Dakota Johnson!).
And for Don and Melanie, the pregnancy seemed to come as a signal reward for facing and beating
their demons. “The more time that goes by, the more life just looks better and better.”
Don couldn’t agree more. “When you’re straight,” he says, “all kinds of good things happen.”
For a while, it seemed that Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith truly had it all.
But that redoubt of domestic bliss came tumbling down when Johnson — after a binge of boozing
and partying — had to undergo treatment for alcoholism and abuse of prescription drugs.
Being sober for years, the actor once again was out of control, and his five-year second
marriage to Griffith was no longer on the rocks but probably in ruins. “Some people fall off the
wagon. I fell off a building.” The couple’s sprawling home in Colorado now was empty.
Griffith herself admitted to falling off the wagon after six years of sobriety.
Johnson, meanwhile, didn’t just hit bottom again — he began bouncing wildly from heavy-duty
party to scary car accident to drunken radio interview as he intermittently sought help.
Don and Melanie seemed to be there for each other. But there were rumblings
that all was not as it appeared. His first public alcohol-related
embarrassment came late one night when Gary Oldman declined Johnson’s offer to have a nightcap.
Don reportedly started a heated argument that turned into a shoving
match before bystanders had to break it up. Johnson was also pretty out of it when he
appeared on the Ron & Ron radio show. Before the nasty exchange was over, the actor, slurring his
words, claimed the right to say anything he wanted because “I’m rich and famous and bigger than you.”
Then, Don took his bad-boy act on the road when he and his son Jesse jetted to Hong Kong. He seemed
sober enough, but at the pre-opening-night party, “he had very glazed eyes, and he was wired,” says
one attendee. “He was not a well man. I felt sorry for the kid,” a local entertainment reporter said.
For Johnson, the wake-up call came on when he returned to Aspen to drop Jesse off with his mom.
While driving with his young son in the car, Johnson went off the road and rolled down an
adjacent slope. The vehicle was smashed and had to be towed, but luckily landed on its wheels.
He didn’t report the accident until FIVE hours later, and authorities did not issue a citation.
Thankfully, Jesse was unhurt, and Johnson suffered “a bump on his head,” said a highway patrolman.
But, being so close to unthinkable, he flew to Los Angeles the next day.
After three days there, he sounded “very strong and very determined,”
according to his manager. Aside from drying out, Johnson knew what he wanted: “You have to
forgive and forget and get the hell on down the road — Melanie and I will always be together.”
But real life is rarely so simple. Unfortunately, the couple once again parted ways just five years
after their dream wedding, but this time forever. “It is hard for me to imagine life without him.
But we are changing in different ways.” Griffith said at the time. Even though
they weren’t a part of each other’s lives daily, they remained close. Johnson said there “still
is” a strong bond between the two of them. “It’s pretty simple: when you love your
children and want to share your life with them, it’s foolish to denigrate or have any animosity
with their mother,” the Miami Vice star said. “Children model you more than they listen to you.”