Celebrities With the Saddest Backstories

ME

Joan Crawford. Daddy Cassin forced himself on her so she left, and got around, mama was jealous and blamed her.

She also had to work in a Kansas City laundry with her horrid mother. She also had to clean the school she was shuttled of to, for her tuition.

Richard Pryor was raised in a whore house owned by his grandmother. His mother turned tricks.

Lorna Luft

Tina Turner

Her mom didn’t like her. Sent to live with cousins in East St. Louis in her teens where she met Ike Turner at a night club.

The Jacksons

Kelsey Grammer. His estranged father was murdered when he was 13. His sister was abducted and murdered seven years later. Two of his half-brothers were killed in a scuba-diving accident five years after that. He could be a soap opera character.

R7 was there a curse on his family?

PLOT TWIST: Kelsey was the curse.

Vivian Vance: A Lifetime of Heartbreak!

Clara Bow. The recent film 'Babylon' has been presumed to be based upon her.

Gene Tierney

Ethel Waters

James Dean. Asshole father. Mother died when he was nine, then he was forced to ride on the train with her corpse. Father would never approve of him regardless of his accomplishments. Mistreated by that overrated fat cunt Marlon Brando. Then the whole thing with the Porsche. Church and casket broken into. Body mutilated. Headstone stolen multiple times. People desicrating his grave with ouija boards trying to contact his spirit. By all accounts, helluva nice guy who deserved better.

Veronica Lake. Her ashes were found in a thrift store.

Dorothy Dandridge.

River Phoenix

Dalida

Sandra Dee

Rob Kardashian.

Viola Davis. Her parents were slaves.

Suzanne Somers didn't have the happiest of childhoods.

Rest in Peace.

Barbara Stanwyck had one of the toughest childhoods I’ve read about. Born into poverty, she was four years old when her mother died after a miscarriage and father then almost immediately abandoned the family. She spent the rest of her childhood being passed around foster homes she ran away from and dropped out of school completely at age 14 - the same year she was raped by her sister’s husband. The toughness she projected on screen was the real thing.

Rita Hayworth

Louise Brooks

Poor Viola.

Anne He he

Judy Garland’s two sisters—

It's been a long time since I read his biography, but Charlie Chaplin had it pretty tough as a youngster. I know his mom was mentally ill and when he was later famous he had her well cared for at some institution in LA.

Some of you don't seem to understand the concept of "backstory." Things that happened when or after they died are not part of it.

Chaplin grew up in abject poverty in the London slums. Sent to a workhouse at age 7 because his mentally and physically ill mother could not provide any means of income and was shuttled around the terrible schools they had for destitute children at the time. His father was absentee most of the time, and when he was around, he was a violent drunk. Another childhood of hardship you can't imagine a famous person coming from today.

Marie Dressler. Although what she was able tp accomplish in the few years before her early demise, was extraordinary.

Cary Grant

Cary Grant has a lot of similarities with Chaplin.

Katharine Hepburn. Just kidding!!

Vicki Lynn Hogan

Thanks to the posters who describe the backstory.

Dorothy Dandridge was molested by her mother’s lesbian partner and the assault left her frigid. She married Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers dance team. He was verbally abusive to her and cheated on her. She was pregnant with their daughter and she postponed her labor because she was looking for him during his carousing. As a result, her daughter, Harolyn was permanently developmentally disabled. Dorothy put her in a fancy institution.

You know why.

Joaquin Phoenix had the same terrible childhood as River being raised in the Children of God cult but had the added bonus of watching his brother die

Gene Tierney. A fan she was being nice to gave her rubella while she was pregnant and the child was born deaf and severely intellectually impaired. The marriage eventually collapsed under the strain and she ended up having shock treatment for her own fragile mental state, which destroyed her memory. Eventually she attempted suicide, which she survived only to die early of emphysema.

R23 I've read many times that Stanwyck's mother fell off a streetcar when a drunk passenger bumped into her and that was the cause of her death.

A rough start -- including a brief period of living in hardscrabble Chelsea, MA -- and the a marriages to Frank Fay and the fey Robert Taylor. No wonder she was a tough broad.

Art Alexakis of Everclear

Stanwyck also had an abortion that left her unable to have children. Not that she ever was the maternal type…

[quote] Chaplin grew up in abject poverty in the London slums. Sent to a workhouse at age 7 because his mentally and physically ill mother could not provide any means of income

Oh, boo-hoo, we all have problems.

Goo Goo Dolls frontman/bassist/songwriter John Rzeznik lost both of his parents within a year of each other when he was a young teenager.

Thus, he was raised by his older siblings.

BTW: DL underlined in red 'frontman.' WTF? That's a word. Nobody says 'frontperson.'

[quote] River Phoenix

What was his story that was so tragic?

Mercedes McCambridge. Battled alcoholism and was sober for twenty years. Then her unstable son killed his family and then himself. He embezzled money from Mercedes before he died. His suicide note blamed her for everything.

Thank you to everyone who replied. I’m learning a lot.

I’m just now learning about Patty Duke’s backstory. I had no idea about her horrendous childhood.

Since you brought it up, OP - Birdie, Margo Channing’s personal maid. She was dropped after the first half of All About Eve.

R51 here's the backstory. 😂

Charlize Theron.

Eartha Kitt.

Born on SC cotton plantation. Mother was raped by plantation owner's son. Mother later met a man who didn't want Eartha because she was light skinned. Her mother sent her to live with an aunt and her family when she was three years old. Aunt and family physically and sexually abused her. Someone else in the family finally intervened and she was sent to live with an aunt in NYC who was comfortable in life. When she first arrived in NYC she was malnourished and hadn't spoken in a year. NYC aunt sent her to school, got her singing and dancing lessons.

Later in life, Eartha was blacklisted for a few years after she made a comment to Lady Bird Johnson about the war when she visited the White House that upset Mrs. Johnson. Jimmy Carter welcomed her back to the White House.

[quote]He could be a soap opera character.

More like a biblical character, r7.

Frances Farmer?

Hayden Panettiere

Charlene Tilton aka Lucy from Dallas.

Mentally ill mother, never met her father. Mother had several breakdowns including on a train when Charlene was five and she was taken to foster care until her mother was released from institution when she was eight. Mother still crazy and would only urinate in tupperware containers. She moved out of their rat-infested apartment when she was a young teen before Dallas. Mother arrested during Dallas for walking around Hollywood naked. Mother would also write crazy letters to Dallas producers.

R8 I think that's patently obvious to everyone except you.

Bobby Driscoll, the voice of Disney's "Peter Pan".

R60 I was surprised when Disney mocked Bobby Driscoll's fall from grace in that "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" movie last year via the Peter Pan character.

Barron Trump

Scotty Beckett, another child actor from Hollywood’s Golden Age whose life went downhill after he was unable to transition into adult roles.

R48 - raped/molested as a child in parents sexual cult growing up.

Robert Blake's was weird and sad. I don't know how he survived to adulthood.

Rita Hayworth's father, Eduardo Cansino, coerced Rita to take dance lessons since the age of 3. Rita didn't much like it but she had to obey her father. "Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood," she said. That doesn't sound too bad of a childhood, but at the age of 12, she became papa's professional dance partner, and at age 13, papa began sexually abusing her. Rita would marry five times, all to men who were mentally abusive. "Basically, I am a good, gentle person," she reflected, "but I am attracted to mean personalities."

Timothee Chama... wait. I misread this as "Celebrities With the Saddest Backsides"

r60: What did they do??

r61: I meant...what did Disney do?!

R68 & R69 The movie is like ROGER RABBIT -- animated Disney characters interacting with the real world and taking place in Hollywood but in the present.

Peter Pan is depicted as a Disney has-been with a huge chip on his shoulder who became resentful after being unceremoniously dumped by Disney once he grew up, which mirrors Bobby Driscoll's fall from grace almost exactly.

In the film, he's the villain who starts a gang to kidnap Disney toons and make his own bootleg Disney movies to sell abroad.

R60 a clearer picture of what happened to Bobby…

Also, the Find-a-Death webpage has an extensive list of many celebrities and their hard knock lives before and after their fame. For some reason, the owner of the site has a deep hatred of Elizabeth Taylor.

r61: Thats fascinating - the tragic story of Bobby Driscoll is kind of an insider reference and most of the audience for the Chip & Dale film probably know nothing of it. It sounds like a Disney film that shreds the legend of "Uncle Walt",

The Reeve family’s lives were tragic. Christopher became a quadriplegic after his horseback riding accident. He was wheelchair-bound for 9 years before suffering cardiac arrest at 52. His wife Dana, an actress, succumbed to lung cancer less than a year after her husband died. She was 44.

Paul Michael Glaser’s wife Elizabeth contracted HIV in 1981 from a blood transfusion while giving birth to her daughter Ariel. She unknowingly passed the virus to her daughter through breastfeeding. Her son Jake contracted HIV from Elizabeth in utero in 1984. Ariel died in 1988. Elizabeth died in 1994 at 47. Jake is still living.

R35, Kate was the one who discovered her brother’s body after he hung himself. No doubt that had an impact on her life…

^hanged himself

Oh r76, captain of the RMS Pedantic.

Spin fucked Marty…and then Walt dropped his option faster than Marty’s underpants hit the dirt.

I read it in Hollywood Babylon!

R77 that’s not pedantry, it’s basic English grammar.

As my grandmother used to say, "Pictures are hung; people are hanged."

Being a nepo baby in Hollywood.

Tierney's tragedy was the basis of Agatha Christie's The Mirror Cracked novel and movie.

Tommy Kirk was a big star at Disney until Unca Walt found out he was Gay. Contract was cancelled. Struggled through the acting industry before dropping out. Suffered drug problem but recovered. Started carpet cleaning business he ran for 20 years. Passed away in 2021.

I still say ME

Billie Holiday owns this thread.

In just 44 years Billie Holiday saw more highs and lows than people twice her age – no wonder Lady Day sounded like she really sang from the heart.

She only wrote a handful of songs herself, 10 or so, but she sang others’ lyrics as if she had lived every minute of the joy and pain in them.

When she wrote a sensational book, Lady Sings The Blues, detailing her life story in all its shocking, inspiring glory, the proof was there for all to see.

Scrubbing floors and running errands for a brothel as a kid, raped at 10, a prostitute by 13, in and out of jails, battles with the law, drug and alcohol addiction, abusive relationships… the fact she got past all this to become one of the greatest singers of all time is beyond belief.

She was born plain Eleanora Fagan on April 7 1915, in Philadelphia, and by July 17 1959 was dead – but in between she turned music on its head and changed the way people sang.

Her unmarried teenage parents were Sarah Julia “Sadie” Fagan and budding musician Clarence Holiday.

Sadie’s own parents had kicked her out after she fell pregnant, and her mother would often live in terror that Billie would also fall pregnant to some young man who would drop her like a stone as soon as he knew.

I was dumped by my husband in my 70s.