Did You Know…Boys Will Be Boys Edition

During the 1992 scandal when Woody Allen left his girlfriend, Mia Farrow for her 21 year-old daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, 35 years his junior, Frank Sinatra,   

  Mia’s ex-husband, offered to have Woody’s legs broken.

  As angry and hurt as Mia was (and still is 31 years later) declined Frank’s chivalrous offer he no doubt would have carried out.

  To quote the writer Pete Hamill, perhaps this is why Sinatra mattered, always showing up for former damsels in distress. He supported his second wife, actress Ava Gardner, alcoholic and down on her luck till the day she died.

The director, Francis Ford Coppola, after the success of his groundbreaking film Apocalypse Now, had a very public affair with a young girl causing his longtime wife, Eleanor and the mother of his three children, considerable embarrassment as well as pain.

 When he made up his mind to leave Ellie, switching her out with his new paramour like an actress in one of his films, the latter said, I’m crazy about you Francis, but no thanks. I’m kinda not interested in being a wife.

 As luck would have it, Ellie still was and took Francis back, and they’ve been together ever since. 

 The playwright, Harold Pinter, meeting Lady Antonia Fraser at a party when she was about to leave, uttered three words that would change the course of their lives forever…

 Must You Go? 

 They both in no time left their longtime spouses causing quite the British scandal.

 They married after Pinter’s bitter divorce from English actress Vivien Merchant, Fraser’s to esteemed politician Sir Hugh Fraser and father of her 6 children.

 They stayed together for 28 years till Pinter died of throat cancer in 2009 proving again…love bats last. 

 Their wedding day, November 27, 1980.

 SB

 Recommended reading: 

 Woody Allen: A Biography…John Baxter (1988) 

 Why Sinatra Matters…Pete Hamill (1998)

 The Making of Apocalypse Now…Eleanor Coppola (1995) 

 Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter…Lady Antonia Fraser (2010)