Howard Hughes & Jean Peters

Following a thirty-three day marriage to a Texan oilman (Stuart Warren Cramer III) which ended in a whirlwind divorce, Jean Peters finally married Howard Hughes in a secret ceremony in 1957 and left public life for the next thirteen years. The couple had been dating for a decade. She refused to give interviews and retreated to an isolated hilltop mansion above the Santa Monica Mountains. In 1969 she resurfaced, studying for a degree in sociology at UCLA under an assumed name. The former Miss Ohio (1945) was a staunch Republican who gave much of her time and money to a host of conservative political causes. She also attended several Republican fund-raisers and galas, and was active in the campaigns of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Although she died in October 2000, she was still able to vote for George W. Bush for president in that year’s presidential election by means of an absentee vote.

Director Robert Aldrich claimed that her intense personal dislike of her co-star Burt Lancaster had been crucial to the excellence of her performance opposite him as his Indian squaw in Aldrich’s film Apache (1954).

Marilyn Monroe & Joe DiMaggio

Marilyn Monroe began calling herself by that name in 1946, although her name was not legally changed until 1956. In 1949, in order to get her car out of hock, she posed for a nude calendar and was paid $50 for the photo-shoot. The calendar returned millions of dollars but Marilyn never saw a cent of that money. Screenwriter Joseph Mankiewicz spotted her in a small role in The Asphalt Jungle and gave her a part in the 1950 classic All about Eve. In 1953, she became the very first centerfold for Playboy magazine, and the following year starred in Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Because she was still under contract to Fox she was paid just $500 a week for her performance. The make-up man was paid considerably more, yet these movies made her a star. The next year she married baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, although the union only survived a year. Joe hated the fact that she was a celebrity sex symbol, whereas Marilyn enjoyed her celebrity status and the fame that went with it. Oddly enough, she was never overly interested in sex. However, she was only too aware that men desired her. Consequently, she often repaid kindnesses with sex. It meant little to her but a lot to the men she rewarded.

While living in London, Queenslander Margot Robbie attended a party with her Suicide Squad (2016) co-star Cara Delevingne and unknowingly took a photo-booth photo with Prince Harry of Wales. Margot had mistook him for British singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran.

Sterling Hayden

Sterling Hayden was the first choice of producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown to play the role of Quint in Jaws (1975), but the man had tax problems with the US government. At the time he was living outside the country, and if he entered the US he would have been arrested, which precluded his taking the role. He was also the first choice to play the knife-throwing Britt in The Magnificent Seven (1960), but he was unavailable so the role went to James Coburn instead.

When the US entered World War Two, Hayden changed his name to John Hamilton (to obscure his Hollywood past), and joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – the predecessor of the CIA. Trained in guerrilla warfare, Hayden operated a fishing boat off the coast of Yugoslavia, picking up downed Allied pilots. He also ran supplies to Josip Broz Tito’s Communist partisans. He was awarded a Silver Star and was promoted to captain by war’s end.

Horst Buchholz

Having established himself in theatre and radio work and able to speak several languages fluently, Horst Buchholz (he played Chico in the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven), got into film work by dubbing voices on foreign films. One of these was Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) which, due to the war, was not released in Germany until 1951. Horst dubbed the voice of Lampwick. His participation in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961) was the reason he was unable to be in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Omar Sharif received his only Oscar nomination for playing the role originally intended for Buchholz. In 1964, along with many others, Horst turned down the lead in A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The role went on to make Clint Eastwood a star.

Out of the many films in which he featured, Robert Vaughn was convinced whilst making The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Bullitt (1968), that both pictures would be unwatchable box-office poison. Incidentally, he also landed the role of Steve Dallas in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), but was drafted into the US Army before he could film any footage. Marty Milner took the Dallas role in his stead in what has since become a classic New York City drama.

The California Democratic Party originally wanted Vaughn to challenge Ronald Reagan for Governor of California. Even though Vaughn was a Liberal Democrat and disliked Reagan, he refused and stood behind Governor Brown who lost to Reagan. Another possible candidate considered was actor Gregory Peck.

Vaughn was offered the role of E.K. Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind (1960), but turned it down in order to go to Mexico to film The Magnificent Seven, even though his entire role in the western consisted of just sixteen lines of dialogue. The Hornbeck role went to Gene Kelly.

Lilli Palmer, a former wife of Rex Harrison, was at one time the junior table-tennis champion of Europe. She was born in Berlin, Germany in 1914.

David Janssen

David Janssen is probably best remembered today for his portrayal of Richard Kimble in the 1963 TV series The Fugitive. According to actress Debbie Reynolds in her 2013 memoir titled ‘Unsinkable’, he always believed he was the illegitimate son of Clark Gable. Indeed, he bore a remarkable resemblance to the ‘King of Hollywood’. Interestingly, at the beginning of his film career David declined to have surgery to make his ears less prominent.

Janssen had an intense affair with actress Suzanne Pleshette in the mid-1960s while having marital problems with his first wife Ellie. By the time he and Ellie were divorced in 1970, Suzanne had gotten married to another man. In 2007, actress Angie Dickinson described David as ‘a great gentleman, a great date and a great love.’