Did You Know…The Things We Do For Love Edition

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were together for twenty-six  years until his death at 67 of a heart attack. They were staying in the guesthouse of their friend, the director George Cukor when it happened.

 Hepburn heard a cup shatter. When she got to the kitchen Tracy was already gone. Since he was still legally married to Louise, the mother of his two children he hadn’t lived with for years, Kate still technically the other woman, quickly packed and left. She wasn’t even at the funeral after Louise played her role as wife acting as if Kate never existed.

  Rumor has it she cruelly said to her, I thought you were just a myth.

Elizabeth (Eliza) Schuyler married Alexander Hamilton despite his reputation of being a tomcat.

 They lived happily for twenty-four years at their home called The Grange in what was then considered the country, now Hamilton Heights on 141st Street in northern Manhattan. They had 8 children.

 Scandal lurked in 1797 when Alexander was canoodling with a young woman named Maria Reynolds after she came to him for help, claiming her husband abused her. Not long after, she and her husband blackmailed him. Alas, as smart as Alex was, still got snookered.

 James Madison serving in the House of Representatives got wind of something fishy, assuming Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury was embezzling money.

 When Hamilton found out, he went home and told Eliza everything before writing what would now be an op-ed tell-all, preferring to be known as a tomcat rather than a thief.

 His dear Eliza forgave him.

Jackie Kennedy knew of her husband’s  infidelity escaping to her Middleburg, Virginia horse farm he bought to keep her happy, along with insuring more canoodle time in the White House. When God created Jack, he forgot to add a conscience.

The writer Pete Hamill dated a variety of women before meeting his wife Fukki of 33 years.

  Jackie Kennedy was one, the actress Shirley MacLaine another. 

  Both relationships would come to haunt Pete.

  He had written a snide piece on Jackie way before he knew her, that his publisher at the New York Post unbeknownst to Pete, ran as a feature. Despite apologizing profusely, Jackie never spoke to him again.

This brings us to Shirley whom he lived with for two years. Pete had two daughters by his first wife, Ramona, that Shirley refused to acknowledge. So Pete to placate her, didn’t either the whole time they were together.

  The late great writer said many times, how much he regretted what he did.

Not just women were hurt by the actions of those they loved.

  Frank Sinatra left his first wife Nancy and their three children for the actress Ava Gardner. It was the biggest mistake he ever made, and not just morally either.

  When Frank sang, I’m a Fool To Want You, they weren’t just words. She broke him to his core…cheating, brawling, belittling him to the point that now seems unimaginable.

  But his strength pulled him up, and like any great love, his for her never stopped.

  Years later when she was so broken from alcoholism, he took care of her till the day she died.

  A man came home in 1945 after four years of war to a woman he so loved, but who no longer loved him. Twenty-seven years later when he died of alcoholism, he still loved her. She was his Ava.

 His name was Frank too.

 She was my mother. He was my dad.

The things we do for love.

  SB