7 scandalous confessions Old Hollywood actors kept buried for years

The Golden Age of Hollywood was far from chaste. Despite restrictions on what could be played on screen, behind the scenes there were plenty of salacious secrets hidden from public knowledge.

In 2013, Shirley Jones revealed that her marriage to Jack Cassidy involved a steamy threesome with a third party. She warned readers on opening the book: "Hold on to your hats", stating "I never would have written this book if I weren't the age I am now". 

Ghosting might seem like something of a modern phenomenon but it dates all the way back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Per her memoir, By Myself and Then Some, Lauren Bacall revealed that she was ghosted by Frank Sinatra after the couple called off their engagement.

Via Vanity Fair, she wrote: "Actually, Frank did me a great favor — he saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. The truth is, he was probably smarter than I: he knew it couldn’t work. But the truth also is that he behaved like a complete sh—t.”

Marlon Brando might have had a leading man reputation, but the bright lights of Hollywood didn't call to him in the same way they did plenty of other stars during the decade.

The actor revealed that he wasn't keen on acting itself; rather, the appeal came from his ability to earn easy money as an actor. "Acting is just making stuff up, but that's OK," he said, per NPR. "Life is a rehearsal. Life is an improvisation. I'm going to have a special microphone placed in my coffin so that when I wake up in there, 6 feet under the ground, I'm going to say, do it differently."

Ava Gardner was one of Old Hollywood's biggest stars, so it's no wonder that she kept certain facets of her life and relationships away from prying eyes during the height of her fame.

But in 1990, the actress revealed intimate details of her life in Ava: My Story, stating she had two abortions while married to Frank Sinatra. She recalled these procedures again in Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations, with the New York Post suggesting their relationship began and ended with "fighting all the time, boozing and fighting."

Elizabeth Taylor had plenty of scandal to her own name – including her infamous eight marriages to seven different men. But she revealed a far sadder fact from her life later on that gave an insight into the personal ties between Old Hollywood legends.

In a resurfaced interview clip, Elizabeth explained her confusion on learning that James Dean had died and revealed that she had seen him earlier on in the day: “He was so alive, he was so vital. He was only 24 and it seemed impossible — I had just been with him that day, driving around the studio in his Porsche."

It wasn't all glitz and glamour in Old Hollywood: there were plenty of feuds and instances of in-fighting, some of which were apparently solved in incredibly childish ways. Terms of Endearment stars Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger might have taken the top spot with their ridiculous on-set behaviour.

Shirley MacLaine revealed in her memoir My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir that Debra Winger had taken their feud to a new level while filming. When Debra yelled at Shirley to get to her mark, Shirley wrote: "I said. 'I know marks when I see them.' 'Good,' [Winger] said. 'How's this for a mark?' She turned around, walked away from me, lifted her skirt slightly, looked over her shoulder, bent over, and farted in my face."

Lauren Bacall brought her modelling expertise to the world of acting with a signature look. The actress' trademark dropped chin and focussed gaze became famous in 1944 film To Have and Have Not. But The Look had a secret, more practical purpose.

She explained, via Time, "I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of the Look. I still get the shakes from time to time."