Hollywood legend Joan Bennett didn't always want to follow in her family's footsteps as an actor. The youngest of the Bennett Sisters, her siblings Constance and Barbara were already film stars by the time Joan determined to hang a shingle as an interior designer, but motherhood got in the way. After her first short marriage and divorce, she had an extra mouth to feed, which launched her on a decades' long career that spanned dozens of films, including Puttin' on the Ritz, She Wanted a Millionaire, and Little Women, where she played Amy alongside Katherine Hepburn's Jo. But her storied career hit a significant obstacle in 1951, when her third husband opened fire on her manager, believing them to be having an affair, and Joan, more than either man, was sidelined for the scandal. Until a little show called Dark Shadows premiered, anyway.
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S20E05: Joan Bennett

A Good Podcast About Bad Relationships. Every Wednesday and Sunday, Alicia and Stacie take you on a comedic ride through stories of marital misconduct and love gone wrong, blending biography, pop culture, history, and politics. "It’s one part Vanity Fair meets Town & Country, one part country music song—and an all-around good time." - The Atlantan. "Enjoying the juicy details of other people’s relationships is having a moment." Sunday Times Style Magazine (UK). "When this shameless show about bad relationships kicks off with astrological analysis of the couplings discussed in the episode, you know it’s going to be a party." AV Club

Comedy

History

Society & Culture

Alex Kingston's career really took off in the mid-1990s, first portraying Dr. Elizabeth Corday on NBC's ER, and then in the late 2000s, as River Song, the mysterious friend who knew Doctor Who's future on the hit BBC series. Spoilers! All of it followed a devastating split from her partner of 12 years, and husband of two years, Ralph Fiennes. While playing Hamlet, Fiennes fell in love with the actress playing Hamlet's mother Gertrude - launching a decade long relationship that would itself implode amid infidelity allegations.
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S22E07: Alex Kingston and Ralph Fiennes, ft. Francesca Annis

Media mogul William Randolph Hearst can be cast as a hero or a villain of the 20th century, and plenty of writers have taken a stab at pinning down his legacy definitively. But one of the lesser remembered aspects of Hearst's life was his abandonment, in 1917, of his wife, Millicent, and their five sons, to spend the rest of his life with actress Marion Davies. One quirk of this arrangement is that Millicent never consented to a divorce from her husband, and while this scandalous state of affairs might have sunk a less powerful person, Hearst's ability to manipulate the vast media empire he owned protected him, and allowed Marion's life and career to flourish on the West Coast.
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S22E06: Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst (Done & Dunne Crossover)

Baseball legend Babe Ruth, nicknamed "The Sultan of Swat" during his 22-season career, is a treasured piece of Yankees history, but not exactly a family guy! Turns out, he might even have gone to great lengths to limit the financial damage a divorce from his first wife could have inflicted.
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S22E05: Babe Ruth

It's a big week for Tortured Poets, so we decided to take a long look at history's most famous one: William Shakespeare himself. Alicia explores the mystery around the true identity of the author of some of the world's most famous pieces of literature. Was it really the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon penning Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and all the sonnets, or was that a convenient pseudonym for someone else, or a group of someone elses?
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S22E04: The William Shakespeare Mystery (Trashy Royals Crossover)

Beverly Hills 90210 alum Brian Austin Green has grown up in the public eye. His first serious relationship was with Tiffani Amber Thiessen, who eventually became his co-star on the hit series, and then became his ex-girlfriend. Then, he moved on with another castmate, Vanessa Marcil, and while they got engaged and had a baby, they never married. It was with the 13-year-younger Megan Fox that Brian finally walked down the aisle after six years together, and it was with Megan Fox and her new (now former?) partner Machine Gun Kelly that Brian got to experience the joys of divorce a decade later.
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S20E05: Joan Bennett

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