20 Old Hollywood Feuds That Got Seriously Out Of Hand

Singer Frank Sinatra had parted ways with bandleader Tommy Dorsey in 1942 on terms that gave Dorsey 43 percent of his future earnings for life. Talent agent Jules Stein negotiated a cash buyout of roughly $60,000 to $75,000, paid to Dorsey in 1943. Dorsey remained publicly bitter about it long afterward. The idea that mobsters forced Dorsey to release Sinatra at gunpoint has never been proven and is just a myth that was borrowed from The Godfather.

Filmmaker Orson Welles was just 25 when he wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane (1941), a movie based on newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst ordered his newspapers to ban all reference to the film, threatened RKO Pictures with exposé stories, and offered RKO $800,000 for the negative. Yes, he tried to buy the movie he hated. RKO declined the offer, and the picture opened in May of 1941. But Hearst’s influence still kept many theater chains from booking the film, limiting its initial box-office performance.

A fight between silent-film star Charlie Chaplin and film producer Louis B. Mayer, the future head of MGM, happened in the lobby of the Alexandria Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in April 1920. It’s often mistakenly placed at a nightclub in the late 1920s, but it happened here. Mayer was counseling Chaplin’s estranged wife, Mildred Harris, during their divorce and disparaging his conduct. The animosity never really faded.

In May of 1938, an exhibitors’ group labeled actress Katharine Hepburn as “Box Office Poison.” RKO Pictures tried to get rid of her by sending her on a cheap, throwaway assignment; instead, she paid RKO $75,000 that year to buy out her own contract. If they wanted her gone, she was going to leave on her own terms. Her partner, the businessman Howard Hughes, then bought the film rights to the play The Philadelphia Story for her. It relaunched her career at MGM.

Director Michael Curtiz and actor Errol Flynn made 12 films for Warner Bros. between 1935 and 1941, from Captain Blood to The Adventures of Robin Hood. On The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Curtiz used “Running W” tripwires, which were cables that violently jerked horses’ legs, causing dozens of them to tumble and die during filming. An enraged Flynn attacked Curtiz on set. And somehow, that wasn’t the end of their working relationship. Studio boss Jack L. Warner kept putting them together because the films kept making money.

In the early 1940s, actor George Raft was a bigger Warner Bros. star than fellow actor Humphrey Bogart, while Bogart was stuck playing supporting roles. Raft passed on High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and All Through the Night (1942), and Bogart accepted the roles and was established as Warner Bros.’ leading dramatic actor. Raft tried to persuade producer Hal Wallis to give him the lead role in Casablanca (1942), but he was not offered the part. Wallis had already given Bogart the part. Three passed-up movies later, there was no getting that career momentum back.

Actors Edward G. Robinson and George Raft, co-stars in the film Manpower, came to blows on Warner’s lot on April 26, 1941. Raft didn’t like Robinson’s superior billing, had a habit of cutting Robinson off mid-dialogue, and the two of them were also vying for the affections of their co-star, Marlene Dietrich. It all came to a head when Raft shoved Robinson, who pushed back. They actually started hitting each other. And because this was Hollywood, there was a photographer nearby. A Life photographer snapped shots of the fight, which appeared in the magazine’s May 1941 issue. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) had to intervene to keep the two actors apart on set.

Actress Bette Davis walked away from her contract with Warner Bros. in 1936 after becoming disgruntled over her scripts and went to England to seek outside employment. Jack Warner, the head of the studio, sued her in a British court to enforce the contract’s anti-compete clause. In October 1936, the court ruled that she had to return to Warner Bros. But the public nature of the trial shamed the studio into offering Davis better parts, including Jezebel (1938).

Throughout most of the 1940s, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper repeatedly attacked Charlie Chaplin for his politics, his foreign citizenship, and his relationships with younger women. She publicized a 1943 paternity suit against Chaplin by Joan Barry even after blood tests exonerated him, since California law at the time allowed child-support orders regardless of the test results. Hopper coordinated with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the U.S. government revoked Chaplin’s re-entry permit while he was traveling abroad in September 1952.

From 1925 to 1942, MGM actresses Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer vied for the studio’s best parts. Crawford once grumbled that Shearer had first dibs on the studio’s prestige pictures because she was married to MGM’s production chief Irving Thalberg. “How can I compete with Norma?” Crawford asked. “She sleeps with the boss.” Shearer herself had a respectable box-office draw. The women’s feud reached a peak during the shooting of The Women (1939), where director George Cukor managed their billing and scene-stealing.

Hedda Hopper had been an actress before becoming a rival to Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who wrote for William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper chain. When Hopper began her own syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times in 1938, the women hated each other, vying for the same scoops. They both threatened to write negative articles about anyone who scooped them. Getting on the wrong side of either woman could therefore become everybody’s reading material. Parsons and Hopper reached an estimated 75 million readers in newspapers nationwide, and they wielded some influence over movie casting through the 1940s and ’50s.

Actress Mae West’s risqué films brought her to Paramount’s box office crown, but they also put her increasingly at odds with Hollywood’s censors. When strict enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code (Hollywood’s censorship rules) began in July 1934 under Production Code enforcer Joseph Breen, she drew heavy scrutiny. Scripts were heavily cut or renamed entirely; the script for It Ain’t No Sin became Belle of the Nineties (1934). West found her own way of fighting back: she is said to have included lines that she knew would be cut, like decoys, so censors would leave her better ones intact.

In 1922, director Erich von Stroheim blew through Universal Pictures’ budget for Foolish Wives by buying real silk underwear for the extras. Real silk underwear. For the extras. The studio’s 23-year-old general manager, Irving Thalberg, attempted to keep the director in check. When von Stroheim again went overboard with the production while filming Merry-Go-Round, Thalberg fired him on set in late 1922. It was the first time that a studio boss had ever fired a big-name director. From now on, executives would make movies, not directors.

By 1924, film producer Samuel Goldwyn had already been booted from his own company, Goldwyn Pictures, by investors. In April of that year, theater owner Marcus Loew combined Goldwyn Pictures with Loew’s Inc., as well as a production company run by another producer, Louis B. Mayer, to create Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Mayer didn’t like Goldwyn and made sure he wasn’t involved in management. His name made the cut; he didn’t. Goldwyn never worked a day at the studio that bore his name.

From 1924, studio executive Louis B. Mayer and producer Irving Thalberg had built MGM into Hollywood’s leading studio. By 1932, however, Mayer was bitterly resentful of Thalberg’s fame and of his contractual 20 percent of any profits the studio made. When Thalberg had a heart attack in December 1932, Mayer restructured MGM’s management in 1933 into an executive committee that diluted Thalberg’s control rather than removing him outright. Thalberg continued to run his own unit until he died in September 1936, at the age of 37.

In the 1940s, comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were Universal’s premier comedy duo. Their relationship soured in 1945 when Abbott hired a maid Costello had recently dismissed—a personal slight that compounded ongoing money disputes between them—and Costello stopped talking to his on-screen partner behind the scenes. They could do comedy together; conversation was another matter. However, they continued working together in movies, radio, and television until officially breaking up in 1957. They made peace shortly before Costello’s death in 1959.

Universal gave comedy stars W.C. Fields and Mae West both creative input and top billing for 1940’s My Little Chickadee. West said Fields was a drunk and tried to take all the credit for the story. Fields resented her insistence on having her own scenes left alone. In fact, Universal gave them joint writing credit for their contributions.

Actresses Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins reportedly had a personal hatred for each other, stemming from Davis winning the lead role in Jezebel (1938), which Hopkins had played on stage. Hopkins also suspected that Davis was having an affair with her husband, director Anatole Litvak. Davis and Hopkins were cast opposite one another twice more, in The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Both times they engaged in theatrical upstaging tricks with late entrances, and while a scene in Old Acquaintance where Davis shakes Hopkins had extra intensity from their real tension, it wasn’t an unscripted assault.

Actor-director Gene Kelly and director Stanley Donen had worked together at MGM as co-directors on a number of successful musicals such as On the Town (1949) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), but their partnership ended with the making of It’s Always Fair Weather (1955). Donen, who had made real directorial contributions of his own on Singin’ in the Rain, wanted sole credit and resented Kelly’s control of the choreography and publicity. The two had also argued throughout filming about camera placement. Donen would not work with Kelly again.

Director John Ford and actor Henry Fonda had already made a string of classic films together, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and My Darling Clementine (1946), but when shooting Mr. Roberts on location in Hawaii in 1954, Fonda, who had played the title role on Broadway for years, pushed back on Ford’s changes to the script and the pacing. In Ford’s private quarters, the dispute became physical, with Ford striking Fonda in the jaw. That is one way to end a creative disagreement! Ford tried to apologize, but they never collaborated again.

This content was created with the help of AI.