Old time actors and directors that you were surprised to find out were married to each other once upon a time

Well, there were these bees...

Michael Caine needed a new pool.

And he wasn't going to let a little bit of bee excrement stand in the way.

The Swarm apparently received an Oscar nomination for costume design?

I guess normal clothes but with thousands of fake bees stitched in?

Oh wait isn’t olivia de haviland in the swarm too

Unless it's Olivia Hussey.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/03/michael-caine-on-honesty/71900/

Given how many great films you've made, does it disappoint you when people want to talk about the ones that didn't do so well?
No, what annoys me is when, as happened today, you're doing a day's worth of interviews and the very first question you're asked if, "Why did you make Jaws: The Revenge?" When things like that happen, the interview becomes very short indeed.

Just out of interest, how did you reply?
I just said what I've always said - I made it because they paid me a lot of money! It's like when people ask me why I made The Swarm - I made The Swarm because my mother needed a house to live in. Then I made Jaws 4 because she was lonely and I needed to buy her a bigger house which she could live in with all of her friends. It's that simple.

Or Olivia's sister, the former Mrs. Collier Young.

Gloria Swanson was in The Killler Bees (1974 TV movie). You can get a pretty good list going with bees alone.

Ben Johnson in The Savage Bees (1976, TV)

He was also in The Swarm!

John Carradine in The Bees (1978, Mexico)

The Beeatles in Let It Bee

new thread proposal: "bedrock Hollywood stars slumming in crap bee-movies at the tail end of their careers."

Okay, sure, go ahead, please.

I have a pretty strong memory of the run-in between Desi and Lucy and Ida and Howard, especially since I had no idea who Howard was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RseZL4_5kvg

Mel Tormé & Janette Scott... the surprising part of that union being that Thora Hird was therefore Mel Tormé's mother-in-law!

Laura Antonelli and Jean-Paul Belmondo were an item for about a decade, it seems.

Also not married but Pam Grier and Freddie Prinze.

Now that gets more interesting... Freddie Prinze was actually briefly engaged to Kitty Bruce, who is Lenny Bruce's daughter. Kitty Bruce was mainly a singer but acted in a couple of films, including the Jack Hill-directed Switchblade Sisters (1975). The year before he directed that film Jack Hill directed Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier.

I had to blink and check if it was April Fool’s Day when I saw that Liza Minnelli was once married to Jack Haley Jr. I guess John Lahr was unavailable.

Omg Nicholas Ray, what an epic life or three---this may look like a lot, but so much more:
...As 1932 ended, Ray left college, and, now calling himself Nicholas Ray, sought new opportunities, including, with the help of Thornton Wilder, meeting Frank Lloyd Wright, with the hope of joining Wright's Fellowship at Taliesin. Lacking the tuition fee, in 1933 Ray ventured to New York City, where, staying in Greenwich Village, he had his first encounters with the city's bohemia.[100] There, shortly before his stint at Taliesin, Ray met young writer Jean Evans (born Jean Abrahams, later Abrams), and they started a relationship.[101][102] After he returned east, they lived together, and married in 1936. When Ray took a position at the WPA in Washington, by January 1937 they had moved to Arlington, Virginia.[103] They had one son, Anthony Nicholas (born November 24, 1937), known as Tony, and named for Ray's friend and fellow Federal Theatre director Anthony Mann.[104] Washington government life wore on both Ray and Evans, and Ray's drinking and unfaithfulness strained their marriage. Evans moved back to New York in 1940, having found a job at PM, the new leftist newspaper. Ray returned to New York as well, in May of that year, but soon the couple separated. A few months later he again attempted to reconcile, while also living at Almanac House, a Greenwich Village loft occupied by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell, core members of the Almanac Singers. He committed himself for a time to psychoanalysis, but in time fell back into old habits. Evans filed for divorce in December 1941, and the process was finalized the next summer.[105][106]

...Relocating to Los Angeles to work with Elia Kazan, Ray first lived in a flat at the Villa Primavera,[108] on the corner of Harper and Fountain, that became the model for the apartment building in In A Lonely Place, before moving into a house in Santa Monica. While at Fox, he socialized with fellow transplanted east coasters and theatre folk at Gene Kelly and Betsy Blair's house, among them Judith Tuvim, soon to be known as Judy Holliday, whom he had briefly, unsuccessfully pursued in New York, after his marriage ended. On one occasion, fueled by alcohol, they waded into Santa Monica Bay, an excursion that turned into a halfhearted double suicide attempt, before they changed their minds and struggled back to dry land.[109]

While directing A Woman's Secret, he became involved with the film's co-star, Gloria Grahame, later remembering, "I was infatuated with her but I didn't like her very much."[110] Nonetheless, they married in Las Vegas on June 1, 1948, just five hours after her divorce from her first husband was granted, and five months before the birth of their son, Timothy, on November 12. (RKO announced that he was born "almost four months before the date he was expected.")[111] Tensions in their marriage were known early on, and by autumn 1949, while shooting In A Lonely Place, they had separated for the first time, keeping the split a secret from studio executives.[112][113] At the end of the year, they announced that they planned to travel to Wisconsin, to spend the holidays with Ray's family there, but he went alone, reuniting with his mother and three sisters, and then on to New York and Boston, to prepare his next project, On Dangerous Ground, and to see his ex-wife and firstborn.[114][115] In 1950, as that project was ending and as In A Lonely Place was opening, Ray and Grahame were reported to have reconciled, living in Malibu, though their marriage remained dysfunctional.[116] Ray stated that he had discovered Grahame in bed with his son, Tony, who was 13 years old at the time*.[49][117][118] Although they were irreparably estranged, Ray and Grahame were nominally connected again, when he was called on to help rescue Macao (1952), a project Josef von Sternberg was directing for RKO. Ray directed additional scenes, but evidently none in which she was featured.[119] Grahame filed for divorce, and she testified in court that Ray had struck her twice, once at a party and once in private, at home, before the divorce was granted, on August 15, 1952.[120] Gloria Grahame and Tony Ray married in 1960 and divorced in 1974. Tony Ray died June 29, 2018, age 80.[121]

The HUAC investigations of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, which largely coincided with Ray's marriage to and divorce from Gloria Grahame, further weighed on him...Although he had been wary of therapy, by court order in the divorce, he started seeing psychoanalyst Carel Van der Heide. Even so, he continued womanizing (columnist Dorothy Kilgallen called him "a well-known movie colony heartbreaker"[124]) and drinking, both prodigiously. He had romances with both Shelley Winters and Marilyn Monroe, who were roommates at the time, as well as Joan Crawford—with whom he was planning a suspense film, Lisbon, in 1952, and who later starred in Johnny Guitar—and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
...Johnny Guitar was preposterous to Ray, and a trial for him to work with Joan Crawford, but it also placed reasonably well on Variety's list of "1954 Boxoffice Champs," increasing his professional capital.[127] By now, he had moved into Bungalow 2 at the Chateau Marmont, his headquarters while shooting Rebel Without A Cause, a project of particular importance to him, about troubled young people. That was where he pitched his need to make such a film to Lew Wasserman, prompting his agent to send him to Warner Bros. The hotel residence also became Ray's headquarters and rehearsal space, and it was where James Dean arrived, aiming to meet the director. Dean started to attend Ray's "Sunday afternoons," his regular gatherings of friends at the bungalow, where scenes of the film to come were starting to take shape.[128] Natalie Wood remembered Ray's relationship with Dean as "fatherly," and attributed the same quality to Sal Mineo's and her own connection to their director, even though the sixteen year-old also was sexually attracted to him, and his bungalow became the site of their assignations, while she was also involved with supporting player Dennis Hopper. Ray himself was also busy with roommates Monroe and Winters, Geneviève Aumont (then the professional name of Michèle Montau), and even Lew Wasserman's wife, Edie, while also interested in Jayne Mansfield, whom he tested for the role Wood won in Rebel.[129]

Ray and Wood continued their affair for several months after production wrapped, and while he was shooting his next project, Hot Blood (1956), a pregnancy scare, which turned out to be false, prompted her to break off the romance.

Returning to Europe, in London, Ray met Gavin Lambert, with whom he had corresponded since Lambert's pioneering positive review of They Live By Night.[133] Talking about In A Lonely Place, Lambert remembered Ray's comments about Dix Steele, Bogart's character, at the film's end: "Will he become a hopeless drunk, or kill himself, or seek psychiatric help? Those have always been my personal options, by the way."[134] After a night of vodka and conversation, after 3:30 am, Ray and Lambert, who was gay, had sex, and Ray cautioned "that he wasn't really homosexual, not really even bisexual," advising that he had slept with many women, "but only two or three men."[135] The next day, Ray urged Lambert to accompany him to Hollywood to work on what became Bigger Than Life, and Lambert remained a sometimes-sexual partner, while Ray continued to pursue women. According to Lambert, Ray "behaved like a possessive lover, expecting me to be always here on call...," while Ray continued to dwell on the loss of James Dean.[136]

igger Than Life tells the story of a man who grows reliant on his abuse of medication, and consequently more and more broken. The connections to Ray, who had grown increasingly dependent on both alcohol and drugs, were not lost, even on Ray. In 1976, Ray confessed to himself, in a private journal entry, that he had lived in a "continuous blackout between 1957 or earlier until now,"[137] and his wife Susan, on seeing the film, commented to her husband, "This is your story before you lived it."[138] Ray's drug use was abetted, while he was shooting Bitter Victory, by his new girlfriend, a heroin addict named Manon, and his gambling losses led him to a pitiable state that broke his friendship with Gavin Lambert.[139]

Seventeen year-old Betty Utey first crossed paths with Nick Ray in 1951, at RKO, when he was assigned to direct some additional scenes for Androcles and the Lion (1952), including one with a troupe of bikini-clad dancers. He described it as the "steam room of the vestal virgins."[140] Some weeks after shooting the scene, in which he featured her, he asked her out to the ballet and dinner, and then took her to the house he was renting, having split with Gloria Grahame. At the end of their evening, like In A Lonely Place, he called a cab and sent her home. She subsequently did not hear from him for almost three years, when he called her to come to his Chateau Marmont bungalow for an assignation. He then disappeared again, until 1956, when he called again.[141] In 1958, she won a place as one of the chorines in Party Girl, and after shooting ended they eloped to Maine, where Ray hoped to start his third marriage by drying out. En route, he collapsed at Boston's Logan Airport, suffering from the DTs. He recovered sufficiently to travel on to Kennebunkport, where the couple spent several weeks, before marrying on October 13, 1958.[142] They had two daughters, both born in Rome: Julie Christina, on January 10, 1960, and Nicca, October 1, 1961.[143][144] Ray's mother Lena had died in March 1959.[145]
That's enough, gotta go take nap---read so much more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Ray
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Grahame
*Grahame's lover Peter Turner, who wrote Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool about her, disputes the claim that Tony Ray was only 13 when they first hooked up.

It's remarkable how many high profile men Pam Grier almost married. To this day she's never been married at all.

Dickey Betts married Cher's assistant, Paulette (can't find her last name, but think it was Coelho?

No relation to Paulo Coelho, one presumes

Claude Chabrol and Stéphane Audran, who he directed in Les Biches (which is great)(& many other films) where she had sex scenes with her ex, Jean-Louis Trintingant.

*whom

It's remarkable how many high profile men Pam Grier almost married. To this day she's never been married at all.

Didn't know she and Rosey Grier were cousins until a minute ago.

Oh wait, that is not true, I don't think. More internet amping of RONG.

Her story about her and Richard Pryor is something too (see Wikipedia).

After I read her autobiography, Foxy, I very much wanted to start a "10 Most WTF Moments in Pam Grier's Foxy" poll, but chickened out. I mean, with some of her stories, I'm not sure how factually I'm supposed to take them. They sound so fanciful, often relying on strange coincidences and serendipities and odd assumptions.

Yeah, I left the Richard Pryor story for you to mention. Plus it's Richard Pryor so somewhat expected, I think. I had my eye on Foxy recently. Do you recommend?

Sure, Foxy is fun to read whether or not there is an unreliable narrator issue clouding the narrative

So you are saying maybe the KAJ story is not quite true?

Yes. I'd like to hear his version of the story, which I have a hunch would be different.

For years, I thought Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were married.

Polly Platt and Peter Bogdanovich were a fantastic creative team. I'm sure he regretted dumping her for Cybill Shepherd.

The Pryor-Grier story being referred to popped up once as one of Ilana's WTF deep pop culture references on Broad City.

KAJ story here.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/15/magazine/pam-grier-interview.html
It seems to get more embellished every time I see another version. I can believe the gist of it is true but not sure about all the details.

Also, Stanley Donen and Yvette Mimieux from 1972 to 1985.

― Hideous Lump, Monday, February 25, 2019 9:58 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Noticed that in her obit, had heard it before...ON HERE!

Hmm well the dates almost check out, since KAJ married the other woman two days after Grier’s birthday and the supposed ultimatum

Ernest Borgnine & Ethel Merman were married for almost five hot months in 1964.

Thrice-wed Merman married twice-wed Ernest Borgnine in 1964. The couple separated just 11 days after the wedding and Borgnine filed for divorce on October 21, charging extreme mental cruelty. They had announced their impending nuptials at the legendary New York night spot P.J. Clarke's, but Borgnine, who was riding high as the star of McHale's Navy (1962) at the time, said the marriage began unraveling on their honeymoon, when he received more fan attention than she did. The competitive Merman was left seething. "By the time we got home, it was hell on earth," Borgnine recalled in a 2001 interview. "And after 32 days I said to her, 'Madam, bye'." Merman filed a cross-complaint shortly thereafter charging Borgnine with extreme cruelty. She was granted a divorce on November 18, 1964, after 22 minutes of testimony. Borgnine went on to marry a fourth time, but Merman remained single after her divorce. In her 1978 biography, she devoted a chapter of her autobiography to the marriage: It consisted of one blank page.

We never mentioned that one before? Borgnine was also married to Katy Jurado at one point.

Guess not. We’ve been saving it up I guess. Morbs mentioned it on the TCM alert thread.

María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (July 18, 1908 – December 14, 1944), known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, dancer, and singer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Lupe_V%C3%A9lez_in_1941.jpg/330px-Lupe_V%C3%A9lez_in_1941.jpg

Relationships and marriage
Vélez was involved in several highly publicized and often stormy relationships. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she was linked to actors Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable.[53] Her first long-term, high-profile relationship was with Gary Cooper. Vélez and Cooper met while filming 1929s Wolf Song and began a two-year relationship that was passionate and often stormy.[60] When angered, Vélez was reported to have physically assaulted Cooper. Cooper eventually ended the relationship in mid-1931, at the behest of his mother Alice who after meeting her, strongly disapproved of Vélez.[51] With plans to marry him gone, she spoke to the press in 1931: "I turned Cooper down because his parents didn't want me to marry him and because the studio thought it would injure his career. Now its over, I'm glad I feel so free ... I must be free. I know men too well they are all the same, no? If you love them they want to be boss. I will never have a boss."[51] The rocky relationship had taken its toll on Cooper, who had lost 45 pounds and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Paramount Pictures ordered him to take a vacation to recuperate and while he was boarding the train, Vélez showed up at the station and fired a pistol at him.[52]

After her breakup with Cooper, Vélez began a short-lived relationship with actor John Gilbert. They began dating in late 1931, while Gilbert was separated from his third wife Ina Claire.[61] Rumors of an engagement were fueled by the couple,[62] but Gilbert ended the relationship in early 1932, and attempted to reconcile with Claire.[53][61]

Vélez and Johnny Weissmuller photographed shortly after their wedding in October 1933
Shortly thereafter, Vélez met Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller while the two were in New York. They dated off and on when they returned to Los Angeles, while Vélez also dated actor Errol Flynn.[63] On October 8, 1933, Vélez and Weissmuller were married in Las Vegas.[64] There were reports of domestic violence and public fights.[49] In July 1934, after ten months of marriage, Vélez filed for divorce citing "cruelty". She withdrew the petition a week later after reconciling with Weissmuller.[65] On January 3, 1935, she filed for divorce a second time and was granted an interlocutory decree.[66] That decree was dismissed when the couple reconciled a month later. In August 1938, Vélez filed for divorce for a third time, again charging Weissmuller with cruelty. Their divorce was finalized in August 1939.[67]

After the divorce became final, Vélez began dating polo player Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in late 1940. The couple were engaged,[68] but never married.[69][70] In late 1941, she became involved with author Erich Maria Remarque. Actress Luise Rainer recalled that Remarque told her "with the greatest of glee" that he found Vélez's volatility wonderful when he recounted to her an occasion where Vélez became so angry with him that she took her shoe off and hit him with it.[71] After dating Remarque, Vélez was linked to boxers Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey.[53]

In 1943, Vélez began an affair with her La Zandunga co-star Arturo de Córdova. De Córdova had recently moved to Los Angeles after signing with Paramount. Despite the fact that de Córdova was married to Mexican actress Enna Arana with whom he had four children, Vélez granted an interview to gossip columnist Louella Parsons in September 1943 and announced that the two were engaged. She told Parsons that she planned to retire after marrying de Córdova to "cook ... and keep house".[72] Vélez ended the engagement in early 1944, after de Córdova's wife refused to give him a divorce.

Vélez then met and began dating a struggling young Austrian actor named Harald Maresch, whose stage name was Harald Ramond. In September 1944, she discovered she was pregnant with Ramond's child. She announced their engagement in late November 1944.[36] On December 10, four days before her death, Vélez announced she had ended the engagement and kicked Ramond out of her home.[73]
Committed suicide, left a note saying why, but also much ridic and some fugly in section Alternative Theories and Urban Legend, incl. ridic x fugly passage in Hollywood Babylon, later a runny joek,
that kind of treatment sure didn't start with Britney
---but also Velez had quite a career in Mexico and Hollywood:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupe_V%C3%A9lez

Although the Alternative Theories don't always read as contrived: she was known for wild behavior, and
In the book From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture, Rosa-Linda Fregoso wrote that Vélez was known for her defiance of contemporary moral convention, and that it seems unlikely that she could not have reconciled having a child out of wedlock. Fregoso believes that in the final year of her life, Vélez exhibited signs of extreme mania and depression. Fregoso goes on to speculate that Vélez's death may have been the result of an untreated mental illness such as bipolar disorder.[41]

I’ll get around to reading that post over the next 6 months or so, but I just wanted to say, “From Bananas to Buttocks” is a great title

Indeed---back to thread relevance:

Barbara Ann Loden (July 8, 1932 – September 5, 1980) was an American actress and director of film and theater.[1][2] Richard Brody of The New Yorker described Loden as the "female counterpart to John Cassavetes".[3]

Born and raised in North Carolina, Loden began her career at an early age in New York City as a commercial model and chorus-line dancer. Loden became a regular sidekick on the irreverent Ernie Kovacs Television Show in the mid-1950s and was a lifetime member of the famed Actors Studio. She appeared in several projects directed by her second husband, Elia Kazan, including Splendor in the Grass (1961). Her subsequent performance in a 1964 Broadway production of After the Fall earned her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress.
...In 1960, Loden appeared in Elia Kazan's film Wild River as Montgomery Clift's secretary. She was perhaps better known for her role in Splendor in the Grass (1961), in which she played Warren Beatty's sister.[14]

She famously portrayed Maggie, a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe, in Kazan's Lincoln Center Repertory Company stage production of After the Fall (1964), which was written by Monroe's former husband, playwright Arthur Miller.[15] Loden received a Tony award for best actress for her performance in After the Fall as well as an annual award of the Outer Circle, an organization of writers who covered Broadway for national magazines.[1] After the Fall reviews called Loden the "new Jean Harlow" and a "blonde bombshell." Loden recalled in 1980 that she was drawn to the part because the script reflected her own life experiences.

Loden married her first husband, film and television producer and film distributor Larry Joachim, in the 1950s, and they had a son, Marco.[16] After an affair while they were both married to other people, Loden married film director Elia Kazan, who was 23 years her senior, in 1966.[17] She had another son, Leo, with Kazan, and though estranged and considering divorce, they were still married at the time of her death from breast cancer at the age of 48.[10]

Kazan could be contemptuous when describing his relationship with Loden. In his autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, he revealed his desire and inability to control her. Kazan wrote about Loden "with a mix of affection and patronization, emphasizing her sexuality and her backcountry feistiness."[10] In a "condescending" way, Kazan bemoaned that Loden had depended on her "sexual appeal" to get ahead and that he was afraid of "losing her."[18] But Kazan was also, in his words, "protective" of Loden.[10] In turn, Loden felt inferior to Kazan.

Her acting career on film had a troubled history. Her first major film role was to be in the Frank Perry-directed The Swimmer starring Burt Lancaster, but during post-production there was a dispute about the scene between producer Sam Spiegel and the film's writer-director team, the Perrys. According to notes by screenwriter Eleanor Perry, Spiegel began showing the troubled rough cut of the film around Hollywood, polling several of his famous film director friends about what he should do with it.[19] Kazan was a major film director who had great influence. He had also secretly been shown a private screening of the film by his friend and producer Spiegel (producer of Kazan's On the Waterfront) and had reportedly interfered with the final cut.[19] Perry was ultimately fired from the film. Several of the film's scenes were recast and reshot by Sydney Pollack, who was hired to replace Perry, with Lancaster reportedly paying for some of the reshoots himself.[19][20] Among the scenes that were entirely recast and reshot was the notorious Loden scene, with Broadway stage actress Janice Rule replacing Loden. Neither Loden nor Pollack was credited on the film. All that remains of the lost scene are still photos taken on set, which appear in Chris Innis's 2014 documentary The Story of The Swimmer.[20]

1967–1980: Film and theater directing
At some point during her acting career, Loden came across a newspaper article about a woman who, when on trial for accomplice to bank robbery, thanked the judge for her own sentencing.[21] Intrigued by this story, she eventually wrote the screenplay for Wanda, an existential[dubious – discuss] rumination on a poverty-stricken woman adrift in Pennsylvania coal country who becomes embroiled in a similar plot. After sending the script to a number of potential directors, Loden felt that they "didn't seem to understand what this woman was about."[22] Fortuitously, her friend Harry Schuster had offered Loden financing for the film, so she directed it herself in collaboration with cinematographer and editor Nicholas T. Proferes on a meager budget of $115,000.[10]

Wanda is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a "passive, disconnected coal miner's wife who attaches herself to a petty crook."[10] Innovative in its cinéma vérité and improvisational style, it was one of the few American films directed by a woman to be theatrically released at that time. Film critic David Thomson wrote, "Wanda is full of unexpected moments and raw atmosphere, never settling for cliché in situation or character." The film was the only American film accepted by the Venice Film Festival in 1970, where it won the International Critics' Prize, and the only American film presented at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.[10][23] In 2010, with support from Gucci, the film was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and screened at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.[10]

Although Wanda never received proper distribution, screening briefly in New York and at universities but never nationally on the theater circuit,[24] it was noted for its groundbreaking anti-Hollywood view of a woman adrift in the American underworld. Loden said of her title character, "She's trying to get out of this very ugly type of existence, but she doesn't have the equipment"—an independent-minded idea for a cinematic heroine at the time, making Wanda an anti-heroine.[25] In 2017, Wanda was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[26]

While Loden never made another feature film, she directed two educational short films for the Learning Corporation of America.[27] The first one, The Frontier Experience, was released in 1975. It depicts a widowed pioneer woman, played by Loden, in Kansas attempting to survive the harsh winter with her children. Described as a "political prequel"[28] to Wanda, the short explores similar themes. The second, The Boy Who Liked Deer, was released in 1978.[29] It is a cautionary tale about vandalism, in which two boys accidentally poison a deer.

Four months before her death, Loden was interviewed in Katja Raganelli's 1980 documentary I Am Wanda.[30] The film documents Loden's final months, when she taught acting classes.

Death
In 1978, Loden was diagnosed with breast cancer.[31] At the time, she had completed several other screenplays with Proferes that Kazan described as "devoted to the neglected side of American life." She and Kazan were estranged at the time of her cancer diagnosis and planning to divorce, but her illness precluded their separation.[31] In June 1980, Loden was working with her acting teacher Paul Mann on a one-act play to be shown on Off-Off-Broadway. She had planned to work as director, producer, and leading actress, but lost the energy to complete the project. In a retrospective, she said "my life was hard too much of the time", but also that she had made her peace with life.[32]

At the time of her diagnosis, Loden was prepared to direct a feature about Kate Chopin's The Awakening, but her cancer treatments prevented her from starting it.[13] She died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City from the disease on September 5, 1980.[1][10]

Style and themes
Wanda has a cinéma vérité style. Loden rejected Hollywood style, wanting to only present the world "as it actually is".[33] She worked mainly with non-professional actors, which resulted in the film's original script being loosely referenced. The film was made with a skeleton crew of only four people. These two factors led to the film's improvisational style. The visuals in the film were inspired by several Andy Warhol films.[34]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Loden

Sorry for the Velez post, which isn't thread-relevant and hella long, but what a life.

Lesley-Anne Warren & Jon Peters

Griffin Dunne & Carey Lowell