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Bob and Delores Were Never Married?


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I just heard this the other day.  Am I late in learning about this?  The story goes that Bob and Delores claimed they were married in February 1934, and also that there had been rumors for decades that Bob had been married previously but he always denied those rumors.  Then a few years ago a biographer discovered an official divorce record from first wife (whom he had denied ever marrying) dated November 1934.  So if he had married Delores in February 1934, but did not divorce the first wife until November of that year, he was either a bigamist, or the February 1934 marriage didn't actually take place.  And this biographer was unable to find any marriage document related to Bob and Delores, nor any photographs of a wedding. 

 

This is all very strange.  Why would he spend his life denying the first marriage, which obviously did happen.  And if he never married Delores, why not?  Also, he was known to be a major philanderer, so why did she stick around?  Among his many affairs was one he had in the late '40s with Doris Day, whom he nicknamed JT, which stood for Jut Butt (very classy, Bob).  And according to something else I read, at the time she married Marty Melcher -- which was a couple years after the Bob Hope affair -- she was sleeping with four or five men contemporaneously.  (How could she manage that keep them from wanting to kill one another?)  I guess Melcher married her so he could be the only one.  For the last few decades, though, she has supposedly wanted nothing more to do with men and has been content with the love of her animals.

 

This DD chatter may be nothing more than made-up gossip, but there seems to be legitimacy to the BH stories.

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It's hard to believe Bob and Delores didn't marry at some point, maybe later than they wanted people to believe.  The reason Delores (like a lot of other Hollywood lives) stayed with Bob.  Without him, what would she be?   Denying early marriages is not unique to Bob.  Mae West did it.  And Viv!  Her first 2 marriages were excised from any official biography until the "Vivian Vance" authors uncovered them.  Did she keep those marriages from Lucy too?   Viv divorced Phil and married Dodds at roughly the same time Lucy divorced Desi and married Gary prompting Lucy to remark to Viv on the 1968 Mike Douglas interview "The second time around ain't bad is it, girl?"

 

The rumor mill (with input from Herb Kenwith) implied that Desi was not the only one who stepped out of monogamy in that marriage.   I find Herb's recollections a little suspect and self-serving.   But if true, how could Lucy be so aghast about Desi's flings? And what of all those sincere and sweet romantic letters back and forth?

I just heard this the other day.  Am I late in learning about this?  The story goes that Bob and Delores claimed they were married in February 1934, and also that there had been rumors for decades that Bob had been married previously but he always denied those rumors.  Then a few years ago a biographer discovered an official divorce record from first wife (whom he had denied ever marrying) dated November 1934.  So if he had married Delores in February 1934, but did not divorce the first wife until November of that year, he was either a bigamist, or the February 1934 marriage didn't actually take place.  And this biographer was unable to find any marriage document related to Bob and Delores, nor any photographs of a wedding. 

 

This is all very strange.  Why would he spend his life denying the first marriage, which obviously did happen.  And if he never married Delores, why not?  Also, he was known to be a major philanderer, so why did she stick around?  Among his many affairs was one he had in the late '40s with Doris Day, whom he nicknamed JT, which stood for Jut Butt (very classy, Bob).  And according to something else I read, at the time she married Marty Melcher -- which was a couple years after the Bob Hope affair -- she was sleeping with four or five men contemporaneously.  (How could she manage that keep them from wanting to kill one another?)  I guess Melcher married her so he could be the only one.  For the last few decades, though, she has supposedly wanted nothing more to do with men and has been content with the love of her animals.

 

This DD chatter may be nothing more than made-up gossip, but there seems to be legitimacy to the BH stories.

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I never knew about Doris and Bob. It makes sense, though.

 

If Bob and Delores weren't married or even just got married later I don't think it's a huge deal. Even if they were married from the beginning, Bob still was running around sticking it in anything with a perm and heels. Let's face it- if it meant basically having an economic grip on most of the land in California, I'd marry the guy!

 

Now Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, there's a good, legitimate, wonderful, long-lasting Hollywood marriage.

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I never knew about Doris and Bob. It makes sense, though.

 

If Bob and Delores weren't married or even just got married later I don't think it's a huge deal. Even if they were married from the beginning, Bob still was running around sticking it in anything with a perm and heels. Let's face it- if it meant basically having an economic grip on most of the land in California, I'd marry the guy!

 

Now Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, there's a good, legitimate, wonderful, long-lasting Hollywood marriage.

 

How does someone your age even know who Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss are???  I doubt many people my age know who they are!

 

Re: Bob and Delores, what's strange is that they claimed they got married in February 1934, even though he was married to someone else at that time.  And then the author not being able to find any proof that they were ever married.

 

As for Bob owning most of the land in California, I remember him causing some controversy in the early '90s over some land he bought, or was trying to buy, and some environmental groups were concerned about his plans for that land.  I remember Dick Van Dyke being interviewed on television, trying to appeal to Bob to please stop, remarking that he was already plenty rich and didn't need it.  This side of Bob Hope, which seemed rather greedy, didn't appeal to me.  Actually, I never found him funny, either.

 

About the Doris Day affair, this is what an article about the book states:

 

Mostly, the book alleges, Hope enjoyed one-night stands with showgirls and beauty queens — avoiding romantic entanglements with his beautiful co-stars in movies, who included such actresses as Lucille Ball, Jane Russell, Madeleine Carroll, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine and Dorothy Lamour.

 

But some of his affairs were of longer duration, Zoglin writes, and involved higher-profile women, a few of whom he worked with — and who sometimes met unhappy ends:

 

“Hope claimed to a friend years later that he and Day had a brief romantic fling while they were touring together in 1949,’’ Zoglin writes. “When they returned home to Burbank, Dolores was at the airport to greet them, giving Bob an ostentatious welcome-home hug. According to Hope, Day saw the gesture as a wife’s symbolic marking of her territory, and she ended the relationship then and there. Day [now 90] never commented on the alleged affair.’’

 

http://nypost.com/2014/10/31/bob-hope-sex-machine-often-cheated-during-his-69-year-marriage-new-bio/

 

Interestingly, the article I read about Doris's many trysts doesn't suggest there was anything between Doris and Bob.  This is all it said about the two of them:

 

Over the next four years, she became Hope's regular guest on his shows. And despite his initial dislike of her, the two became friends. He always addressed her as 'J B' even on the air. This was a private joke, for the initials stood for 'Jut Butt', on account of her shapely derriere.  It was Hope who introduced Doris to the man that would make her a movie star  -  her first agent, Al Levy.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1026353/The-dark-days-Doris-Day-The-girl-door-dark-squeaky-clean-public-image.html

 

 

 

 

It's hard to believe Bob and Delores didn't marry at some point, maybe later than they wanted people to believe.  The reason Delores (like a lot of other Hollywood lives) stayed with Bob.  Without him, what would she be?   Denying early marriages is not unique to Bob.  Mae West did it.  And Viv!  Her first 2 marriages were excised from any official biography until the "Vivian Vance" authors uncovered them.  Did she keep those marriages from Lucy too?   Viv divorced Phil and married Dodds at roughly the same time Lucy divorced Desi and married Gary prompting Lucy to remark to Viv on the 1968 Mike Douglas interview "The second time around ain't bad is it, girl?"

 

The rumor mill (with input from Herb Kenwith) implied that Desi was not the only one who stepped out of monogamy in that marriage.   I find Herb's recollections a little suspect and self-serving.   But if true, how could Lucy be so aghast about Desi's flings? And what of all those sincere and sweet romantic letters back and forth?

 

I think it was you who told me a certain story Herb Kenwith claimed about Lucille Ball during her Dream Girl tour.  I don't know how seriously to take his comments because he came across to me as a rather bitter man, and I have no idea why he was bitter.  Did Lucy fire him at some point?  Maybe he had an axe to grind.  Jerry Hausner also seemed bitter towards both Lucy and Desi and others.  I understand why he was upset with Desi, having basically been humiliated in front of 300 people sitting in the studio audience, compelling him to quit, apparently over something that was not his fault.  But he also seemed to have it in for Lucy to some extent.  And years ago I was reading some book that was at least partly about Fanny Brice.  He was interviewed for that book and had some unflattering comments about her, too.  What I'm remembering may be from this book, starting on page 190:  https://books.google.com/books?id=oH7mCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=jerry+hausner+fanny+brice&source=bl&ots=9Zzp5c040A&sig=w2x5Z-Frzi8oz4Mx8xhgqTf8Bxo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj92LfrtfXUAhVs9IMKHS7MAIMQ6AEISjAL#v=onepage&q=jerry%20hausner%20fanny%20brice&f=false

 

Here's one of his last interviews regarding his I Love Lucy days:

 

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/101013/NOT-EVERYONE-LOVED-LUCY-AND-DESI.html

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Put Herb and Maury in the same pot. Those 2 had an ax to grind with Lucy for whatever reasons. There are a few books where they paint Lucy in a bad light and I have a Joan Rivers Show from the early 90s where those two rag on Lucy so much Joan says for being friends with her they were talking a lot of shit about her. On that same Rivers show Bob Osborne says that the only man Lucy would have left Desi for was George Sanders (Dream Girl tour came right after Lured). This is not the first or last time I’ve heard this, and we’ve discussed a potential George affair on the Lounge before. Bob O. over the years has repeated the George thing and did make sure to say he didn’t know if she ever slept with him. Recently another fan on FB sent me an interview where Bob also said that John Hoediack was another guy Lucy had told him she was seriously interested in back in the 40s. Then last year at the Dark Corner panel on the TCM cruise Lucie says the only guy she knew her dad was jealous of was Mark Stevens. Lucy seemed to really like her film noir costars. I also came across a book that says in Desi’s collection of stuff donated to San Diego State was a list he kept of all the costars he thought Lucy bedded while they were married. I’ve heard numerous times he thought Bob Hope was one of them. I can’t see her with Bob. I think they were too friendly and as stated above, too messy to have an affair with a leading lady.

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Put Herb and Maury in the same pot. Those 2 had an ax to grind with Lucy for whatever reasons. There are a few books where they paint Lucy in a bad light and I have a Joan Rivers Show from the early 90s where those two rag on Lucy so much Joan says for being friends with her they were talking a lot of shit about her. On that same Rivers show Bob Osborne says that the only man Lucy would have left Desi for was George Sanders (Dream Girl tour came right after Lured). This is not the first or last time I’ve heard this, and we’ve discussed a potential George affair on the Lounge before. Bob O. over the years has repeated the George thing and did make sure to say he didn’t know if she ever slept with him. Recently another fan on FB sent me an interview where Bob also said that John Hoediack was another guy Lucy had told him she was seriously interested in back in the 40s. Then last year at the Dark Corner panel on the TCM cruise Lucie says the only guy she knew her dad was jealous of was Mark Stevens. Lucy seemed to really like her film noir costars. I also came across a book that says in Desi’s collection of stuff donated to San Diego State was a list he kept of all the costars he thought Lucy bedded while they were married. I’ve heard numerous times he thought Bob Hope was one of them. I can’t see her with Bob. I think they were too friendly and as stated above, too messy to have an affair with a leading lady.

 

Shelly your post reminds me of a brief "encounter" with Maury and Herb at one of the Loving Lucy conventions, where between panels they were in a little huddle with a few other folks and from what I vaguely recall it was all negative, nasty remarks about their former friend, whom they were ostensibly there to help celebrate. It was a rather unpleasant, eye-opening occurrence for this then-still  naive Lucy fan... to this day, I can't help wondering what they were doing there -- save for some "reflected glory" -- due to their former association.  Just struck me at the time that they seemed to be two bitter old queens who were there to try to "out bitch" one another...but for what? Wasn't she the one that gave them opportunities when perhaps no one else might have,  particularly back in the 40s and 50s??? If Maury was as femme back then as he was at the convention, I'm surprised he ever got hired at all!! :blink:

 

And I love what Joan had to say to them to call them out on their remarks/behavior....that's exactly how I felt after what I overheard. 

 

Gawd I miss Joan Rivers....and what a field day she'd be having with the current Administration etc. etc. :HALKING:

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Shelly your post reminds me of a brief "encounter" with Maury and Herb at one of the Loving Lucy conventions, where between panels they were in a little huddle with a few other folks and from what I vaguely recall it was all negative, nasty remarks about their former friend, whom they were ostensibly there to help celebrate. It was a rather unpleasant, eye-opening occurrence for this then-still naive Lucy fan... to this day, I can't help wondering what they were doing there -- save for some "reflected glory" -- due to their former association. Just struck me at the time that they seemed to be two bitter old queens who were there to try to "out bitch" one another...but for what? Wasn't she the one that gave them opportunities when perhaps no one else might have, particularly back in the 40s and 50s??? If Maury was as femme back then as he was at the convention, I'm surprised he ever got hired at all!! :blink:

 

And I love what Joan had to say to them to call them out on their remarks/behavior....that's exactly how I felt after what I overheard.

 

Gawd I miss Joan Rivers....and what a field day she'd be having with the current Administration etc. etc. :HALKING:

I'm not surprised at what you overheard. I was giving some book recommendations to a new fan a few months back. She asked me if there was anyone in those books who might not say the most true things. I gave her the low down on these two.

 

As for Joan. I'm sure she would but I wonder as she was a Republican and from reading the book Last Girl Before the Freeway she was good friends with a woman was married to a Trump family member. But maybe Joan would have been smart enough to call out the bullshit.

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I'm not surprised at what you overheard. I was giving some book recommendations to a new fan a few months back. She asked me if there was anyone in those books who might not say the most true things. I gave her the low down on these two.

 

As for Joan. I'm sure she would but I wonder as she was a Republican and from reading the book Last Girl Before the Freeway she was good friends with a woman was married to a Trump family member. But maybe Joan would have been smart enough to call out the bullshit.

 

That's just it, friends or no I think Joan would be honest enough to call #45 out on all the BS....or maybe I'd just like to think she would, given honesty and bluntness were her stock in trade.

 

Sad we'll never know.  :lucymeh:

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