When The Smiles Stopped

Old Hollywood sold a polished fantasy, though the people inside it were often furious with each other, their studios, or the press waiting outside the gate. These fights didn’t stay on set for long. They spilled into lawsuits, gossip columns, marriages, Oscar campaigns, and family wounds that never really healed. Some started over roles, some over control, and some because the studio system gave powerful people far too much reach into other people’s lives. These 20 feuds all started somewhere specific, and the fallout was usually much worse than one bad day at work.

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1. Bette Davis And Joan Crawford

This feud took shape in the mid-1930s, when Davis believed Crawford had stolen Franchot Tone’s attention during the making of Dangerous. The fighting only deepened through years of mutual sniping and career comparison. By the time they made What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1962, the hostility was already old. The 1963 Oscar season turned it public again when Crawford positioned herself to accept Anne Bancroft’s award onstage after Davis lost.

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2. Olivia de Havilland And Warner Bros.

De Havilland’s fight began because Warner Bros. kept suspending her for refusing roles, then tried to tack that lost time onto the end of her contract. Her 1944 court win freed her from the studio and weakened the whole contract system in California.

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3. Bette Davis And Warner Bros.

Davis rebelled in 1936 because Warner Bros. kept assigning her routine parts while blocking her from better work. She lost the case and came back to Hollywood broke, but the fight made her a symbol of resistance to studio control and helped push Warners to treat her with more care after that.

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4. Judy Garland And Louis B. Mayer

This feud began during Garland's teen years, when MGM executives began policing her weight, energy, sleep, and appearance with pills, diets, and punishing schedules. The repercussions were brutal and lasting: addiction, physical collapse, repeated breakdowns, and a firing from MGM in 1950.

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5. Kim Novak And Harry Cohn

Cohn’s war with Novak escalated in 1957 when she fell in love with Sammy Davis Jr., and Columbia feared the public response to an interracial relationship. Davis was pressured to end it. Novak’s private life became studio business, and her distrust of Cohn only deepened after learning how little control she actually had over her own image and choices.

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6. Rita Hayworth And Harry Cohn

This conflict started the moment Columbia began remaking Margarita Cansino into the star we know as Rita Hayworth. While she suffered a name change, painful electrolysis, dyed hair, and relentless image control, Hayworth became one of the studio’s biggest stars. This didn't stop Cohn from monitoring her every move, though.

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7. Louella Parsons And Hedda Hopper

The feud took off when Hopper reinvented herself as a gossip columnist in the late 1930s. She began stealing scoops from Parsons, who had ruled Hollywood coverage for years. Their rivalry split the town into camps, forced stars and studios to manage two competing power centers, and turned both women into kingmakers who could help or hurt anyone's career.

Lowell Sun, December 23, 1941; International News Service photo with earliest date stamp October 9, 1937 on Wikimedia

8. Hedda Hopper And Charlie Chaplin

Hopper’s campaign against Chaplin hardened in the 1940s around the Joan Barry paternity case, his younger romantic partners, and suspicions about his politics. Even after Chaplin won parts of the legal battle, the damage stuck, and by 1952, he was effectively shut out of the United States.

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9. Hedda Hopper And Ingrid Bergman

Hopper turned on Bergman after Bergman left her husband, became pregnant by Roberto Rossellini, and embarrassed the columnist who had defended her against early rumors. The consequences were huge: Bergman became a national morality scandal, was attacked in the U.S. Senate, and had to flee from the Hollywood scene.

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10. Orson Welles And William Randolph Hearst

This feud began because Hearst recognized pieces of himself and Marion Davies in Citizen Kane. He decided Welles had gone too far. Hearst’s newspapers refused ads, pressured exhibitors, and tried to bury the film, which hurt Kane commercially.

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11. Erich von Stroheim And Irving Thalberg

Their conflict came to a head on Greed in the 1920s, when the movie faced financial cuts. Von Stroheim lost control of the film, his reputation as unmanageable hardened, and his directing career never fully recovered.

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12. James Cagney And Warner Bros.

Cagney’s break with Warner Bros. came from salary disputes, broken billing promises, and the studio’s habit of suspending him. He eventually won a better deal with the independent studio Grand National Pictures.

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13. Dean Martin And Jerry Lewis

Martin and Lewis split in 1956 after years of tension over billing, control, and how much the duo's act had tilted toward Lewis. The breakup hurt because they had built so much together. Luckily, they reconciled in 1976.

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14. Bud Abbott And Lou Costello

Money fights, resentment over percentages, and personal strain after Costello’s illness and family tragedy all fed this feud throughout the 1940s and 1950s. By the time they split for good, the partnership that had made them national stars was finished. Neither man regained the same cultural force on his own.

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15. Elizabeth Taylor And Debbie Reynolds

This feud started in 1958 when Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor, shortly after Mike Todd’s death. Reynolds became the wronged wife in the press, Taylor became the villain of the story, and the scandal followed all three of them long after the marriage itself burned out.

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16. Marlon Brando And Frank Sinatra

The friction was already there before Guys and Dolls was shot in 1955, because Sinatra wanted the leading role, which, of course, went to Brando. The set eventually turned hostile, and the two men carried that dislike forward without any real reconciliation.

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17. Charlie Chaplin And Marlon Brando

Their feud began during A Countess from Hong Kong when Brando clashed with Chaplin’s hyper-controlling directing style, and the way he treated people on set, including his own son. The film flopped, Brando later blasted Chaplin in print, and what should have been a prestige collaboration ended up souring both the project and their relationship.

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18. Olivia de Havilland And Joan Fontaine

This childhood feud only got worse once both sisters became stars competing for roles, men, status, and eventually Academy Awards. Fontaine’s 1942 Oscar win over de Havilland sharpened the bitterness, and the result was a family rupture so deep that the sisters spent decades barely speaking.

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19. Joan Crawford And Christina Crawford

The feud grew out of a difficult mother-daughter relationship that Christina later described as abusive, controlling, and humiliating. It exploded after Joan died in 1977, when Christina and Christopher were cut out of the will. Mommie Dearest turned the family fight into a national argument and damaged Crawford’s image permanently.

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20. Frank Sinatra And Ava Gardner

Their marriage started in scandal because Sinatra left Nancy Sinatra for Gardner. Eventually, the marriage collapsed under jealousy, infidelity, drinking, and two careers pulling in different directions. The divorce in 1957 ended the legal relationship, though the fallout lasted for years after.

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