50 Doses of Hollywood Dish

26. Gloria Cabs

Newspapers around the world had a field day when, in 1958, the young daughter of screen sex goddess Lana Turner stabbed to death her mother's gangster gigolo boyfriend. When syndicated columnist Walter Winchell wrote passionately in defense of Turner (whose daughter was later acquitted through "justifi-able homicide"), Gloria Swanson zinged Winchell publicly: "I think it's disgusting that you are trying to whitewash Lana. She is not even an actress...she is only a trollop." (10, 10)

27. Battling Bombshells

In the early '50s, the international press had a field day with the alleged rivalry between sexpot star Gina Lollobrigida and then-rising star Sophia Loren, both of whose careers were furthered by producer Carlo Ponti, whom Loren eventually married. In 1954, the Italian newspaper Il Messagero quoted Lollobrigida saying of the younger Loren, "Sophia is a very pretty girl but she cannot threaten me because she is incapable of playing my roles." At an Italian film week in London later that year, Loren told a reporter, "Why is Gina so mad at me? I want to be friendly with her, why not? It is true that my measure-ments excel hers, but is that a rea-son to be furious with me?" (Lollobrigida: 10, 9; Loren: 10, 10)

28. Bowlegged

The charismatic Clara Bow, one of the silent era's great sex symbols and box-office supernovas, was a studio publicist's nightmare. In a 1930 interview, she raided through a list of her household-name sexual conquests as follows: "Gilbert Roland was the first. He's got another mama now, but I still got tender thoughts about him. Not that I want him again. Not me--I wouldn't have him on a bet. Then I met Victor Fleming, the director. There's a man for ya. He gave me a lotta good advice, but he was too darn old for Clara--and besides, I had Gary Copper comin' up. Gary was a swell boy, but jealous. I didn't wanna get married. I went everywhere and did everythin.'" And how. (9, 8)

29. St. Paul the Apostle

The 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was full of dish from and about larger-than-life characters from the '70s. Particularly notable, though, considering the power and image of the person being skewered, was writer/director Paul Schrader's com-ment about fellow artist Steven Spielberg: "He probably still has the first dollar he ever made--screwed to the wall." (8, 8)

30. Week and Neck

Also in Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, wild-man producer Don Simpson, a man who aroused extreme reactions in everyone he met, is quoted on the subject of director Robert Altman, with whom he made Popeye: "None of us really wanted to make Popeye, and we hated Altman, who was a true fraud... he was full of gibberish and full of himself a pompous, pretentious asshole." (10, 9). In the same book, Altman says of Simpson, who died in 1996, "Simpson was a bad guy, a bum... It's a big plus to our industry that he's not here anymore. I'm only sorry he didn't live longer and suffer more." (10, 8)

31. Hello, Gorgeous

Omar Sharif, who romanced costar Barbra Streisand while making Funny Girl with her, let Rex Reed know that the romance was over when, in an interview after the movie won Streisand an Oscar, he said, "She's a monster. But she's a fascinating monster. I think her biggest problem is that she wants to be a woman and she wants to be beautiful and she is neither." (10, 10)

32. Hello, Gorgeous II

Streisand seems to inspire any number of people to be un-nice about her. Walter Matthau, after battling the singing diva throughout the film-ing of Hello, Dolly!, told the press, "I'd love to work with her again, in something appropriate. Perhaps Macbeth." (10, 9)

33. Faye, Dearest

On completing the now-classic Chinatown, director Roman Polanski made a pointedly unaffectionate remark about his leading lady, Faye Dunaway, describing her as "a gigantic pain in the ass. She demonstrated certifiable proof of insanity." (10, 10)

34. And God Created Woman...

Beefy Stephen Boyd described the pleasures of making the 1968 Western Shalako with sex kitten Brigitte Bardot as follows: "All I can say is that when I'm trying to play serious love scenes with her, she's positioning her bottom for the best angle shots." (9, 9)

35. Some Like Her Not

In the late '50s, Marilyn Monroe drove her coworkers to distraction with her chronic lateness, erratic behavior and inability to remember dialogue. While making the now-classic comedy Some Like it Hot, Billy Wilder gave an interviewer this description of his legendary star: "She has breasts like granite and a brain like Swiss cheese." (10, 9)

36. Cruise-O-Matic

James Woods called Tom Cruise "a kid off a Wheaties box." (8, 8)

37. Coming Up Short

Esteemed acting giant Meryl Streep said of meeting fellow acting giant Dustin Hoffman, her Kramer vs. Kramer costar, "He came up to me and said, 'I'm Dustin--burp-- Hoffman,' and he put his hand on my breast. What an obnoxious pig, I thought." (10, 10)

38. City Slicker

When Jack Palance won a 1991 Oscar for his role in City Slickers, he paid tribute to the picture's star (and evening's Oscar host) Billy Crystal by cracking, "I crap bigger than him." (10, 7)

39. Doin' la Del Rio

Director John Ford won no points from the most gorgeous Latin star and playgirl of the '30s and '40s when he said, "As a beauty, Dolores Del Rio is in a class with Garbo. Then she opens her mouth and becomes Minnie Mouse." (9, 9)

40. Sisters of Mercy

Oscar-winning Joan Fontaine said of Oscar-winning sister Olivia de Havilland, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" (9, 9)

41. Dolphin-Safe

Alan Ladd had been a romantic, tough-guy leading man since the '40s when he was paired with young, sexy Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin. The 43-year-old complained that "working with her is like being bombarded by water-melons," and told New York Herald Tribune columnist, "[the director] fell in 'love' with her, so she got all the good close-ups. All you ever saw of me in most scenes was the back of my neck." (9, 9)

42. Valentine

Martin Rackin, the producer of Two Mules For Sister Sara, called his star, Shirley MacLaine, "a disaster, a fucking ovary with a propeller who leaves a trail of blood wherever she goes. A half-assed chorus girl, a pseudo-intellectual who thinks she knows politics, thinks she knows everything, wears clothes from the ladies of the Good Christ Church Bazaar." (10, 10)

43. Slammin' Raquel

The 70s sex symbol Raquel Welch did not wow everyone. "She's silicone from the knees up," declared George Masters, one of Holly-wood's leading hair stylists and makeup men. (10, 10)

44. Goddard Gabs

When early thirtysomething Paulette Goddard made So Proudly We Hail with fortyish Claudette Colbert and twentysomething Veronica Lake, she was asked by an interviewer which costar she preferred. Goddard answered, "Veronica, I think. After all, we are closer in age." (8, 8)

45. The Evans Treatment

In a 1993 interview with Movieline, the colorful and controversial producer Robert Evans recalled the "horrendous fights" he had with the then-relatively untested director Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather. "He only became the macho of the Industry from that film; then he became a genius. If his cut was shown, it would have been on television." (10, 9)

46. Dueling Divas

Larger-than-life Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were rival divas on the Warner Bros, studio lot in the '40s, and when they got thrown together 20 years later in the hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, little had changed. Crawford withdrew from the proposed rematch Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but it was not until she appeared at a Town Hall lecture series in New York in 1973 that she explained, "Bette and I work differently. Bette screams and I knit. While she screamed, I knitted a scarf that stretched clear to Malibu." (10, 10)

47. Bette Noir

Movie queens Bette Davis and Joan Crawford never tired of dissing each other, Davis gleefully skewered Crawford's sexual history by saying, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie." (10, 10)

48. Misleading Lady

Joan Crawford was the star of the Freudian Western Johnny Guitar in 1954, but that didn't mean her coworkers actually had to like her. On finishing the flick, straight-shooting costar Sterling Hayden told an interviewer, "There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford." Even the film's director, Nicholas Ray, declared: "As a human being, Miss Crawford is a very great actress." (Hayden: 10, 8; Ray: 10, 10)

49. Gone with the Good Manners

In a 1993 biography of Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh is quoted as saying about the notion that she might have considered starring with Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte: "I could just about look at Joan Crawford's face at seven o'clock in the morning but I couldn't possibly look at Bette Davis's."

(9, 9)

50. Not a Team Player

Sabrina star Humphrey Bogart called costar William Holden "a dumb prick," said that costar Audrey Hepburn was "awright... if you don't mind a dozen takes," characterized director Billy Wilder as "the kind of Prussian German with a riding crop," and called the movie "a crock of shit." (9, 9)

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