75 Years Ago Today…
Eleanor Boardman Divorces King Vidor
by Allan R. Ellenberger
Seventy-five years ago today, on April 11, 1933, a judge granted actress Eleanor Boardman a divorce from her director husband, King Vidor. After a bitter battle over the disposition of their holdings and the support of their two children, Boardman received custody of them, $500 a month for their support and a substantial share of property valued at one-million dollars.
At the proceedings, Boardman gave a history of her marriage and then launched into her suspicions and investigations about her husbands philandering with a script girl named Betty Hill:
“For many months Mr. Vidor would come home late at night and when I would ask him where he had been, he would reply that he was working,” Boardman testified. “However, an investigation revealed that he was not working.”
Boardman said that she employed a detective agency and one evening one of their operatives called and told her to go to a certain apartment.
“I went there and was told that the lights had been extinguished for perhaps an hour,” Boardman continued. ”We rang the front bell then went to the back door and knocked. Later we returned to the front door and after about twenty minutes, Mr. Vidor came to the door. He was in pajamas and dressing gown. Yes, the girl was there.”
Boardman talked to Vidor about Hill and he told her that he was “very fond of her.”
Boardman was awarded stocks and bonds valued in excess of $200,000, and certain valuable real estate. She was also given the furnishings of their home at
Betty Hill and Vidor continued to see each other and she co-wrote the director’s 1938 film, The Citadel and was nominated for an Academy Award. The couple eventually married in 1937. In 1952, she also commenced divorce proceedings against Vidor but the two eventually reconciled. She remained married to Vidor until her death in 1978.
Note: The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) wrongly gives the date of Vidor’s divorce from Boardman as 1931 and his marriage to Hill as 1932.
