Celebrities seem to always be cheating these days. But really, this isn’t some kind of new phenomenon. Stars have been unfaithful to their spouses pretty much since the dawn of time. It can’t be easy to remain faithful when you’re rich, desirable, and constantly being presented with the opportunity to hook up with equally attractive and hot people, but that still isn’t an excuse.
John Wayne is primarily known for his larger-than-life presence onscreen, but his fans also know him for his rather fascinating, albeit complicated, love life.
Wayne married three times. His first wife was Josephine Alicia Saenz. After that marriage fell apart, Wayne got married to Esperanza Baur. Soon enough, that marriage too failed. Wayne’s third and final marriage was to Pilar Pallette. Wayne remained married to Pallette until his death in 1979, although they did separate in 1973..
Wayne had four children with Josephine and three more with Pilar. Several of his children have since followed in his footsteps by entering the film and television industry.
While his divorce from Saenz certainly was a bit dicey, Wayne’s stormiest divorce was with Baur. The former Mexican actress strongly believed that Wayne had been cheating on her with his co-star Gail Russell. Although this was a claim that John and Gail both vehemently denied, it is well-known that Wayne did in fact cheat on his wives with a number of women.
In this video, we’ll be discussing everyone that John Wayne hooked up with while trying our best to determine why the famed Western star was so unfaithful. This is one video that John Wayne fans won’t want to miss.
Josephine Alicia Saenz
Saenz was only 15 or 16 years old when she first met Wayne. She was the daughter of the Dominican consul, Dr. Jose Saenz. John was attending college at the time that he and Saenz got together, and he was still trying to get noticed in Hollywood.
Wayne and Saenz relationship was met with considerable resistance from her family since Wayne was not Catholic. After dating for several years, John’s financial status had improved substantially owing to his newfound success at the box office, and he was able to persuade the Saenz family that he was actually good for her. The couple eventually got married on June 20, 1933, and subsequently had their four children together.
After a few blissful years of marriage, Wayne and Saenz relationship began to experience some troubles. Wayne would often work long hours with his acting career – something Saenz wasn’t very happy about. They also experienced differences in opinion about how to raise their children.
After years of difficulties, Wayne and Saenz separated in 1943 and divorced on Christmas Day in 1945.
Saenz, who later remarried, died of cancer in 2003.
Esperanza Bauer
Wayne and then-Mexican actress Esperanza Baur met while John was vacationing in Mexico City. At the time, John was still married to his first wife, but they already seperated. Despite being quite passionate at the start, Wayne and Baur’s marriage would end up being quite tumultuous.
Reportedly, Bauer was intensely jealous of Wayne’s passion for his work and children. Wayne would even later be quoted as saying that their marriage was like ‘shaking two volatile chemicals in a jar’.
Bauer started suspecting that Wayne was cheating with his Angel and the Badman co-star Gail Russell. After the film had finished shooting, Wayne celebrated with the cast and crew late into the evening. When Wayne came home, Bauer was waiting for him, drunk and livid – convinced that he had just come from Russell’s hotel room.
After he returned home, Baur tried to shoot John as he entered the door of their home. Charges ended up being filed against her, but counter-charges were made against Wayne for unfaithfulness, emotional cruelty, drunken violence, and ‘clobbering’. All charged ultimately ended up getting dismissed.
Wayne would later claim that his wife was a drunk who would fall down then accuse him of having pushed her. He also accused her of having had her own clandestine affair with hotel Heir Nicky Hilton during their divorce proceedings.
Wayne and Baur separated in May of 1952. Their divorce was finalized on November 1, 1954.
Baur died of a heart attack on March 10, 1961, at the age of 40.
Pilar Palette
Wayne married his third and final wife – another Latina actress named Pilar Palette – in 1954.
The two first met when Wayne was scouting for film locations in her home country of Peru. Years later, they reconnected when Palette flew from Peru to America to dub a film in English.
Wayne and Palette tied the knot in Hawaii. After having three children together, Palette quit acting to focus on raising her family. While they never divorced, the couple did end up separating from each other two decades after exchanging marriage vows.
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Don’t go anywhere just yet. Keep watching to learn about several more of John Wayne’s Hooked Up affairs and love interests.
Pat Stacy
After separating in 1973, Palette moved out of the home that she and Wayne had shared, and John subsequently struck up a relationship with his former secretary Pat Stacy.
Pat was Wayne’s live-in love interest during the last seven years of his life. He even ended up leaving her $30,000 in his will.
During his final years, Wayne suffered immensely after being diagnosed with cancer. Stacy might have been one of The Duke’s shortest romantic relationships, but she was there for him when he needed it the most.
After his death, Stacy wrote a book about her life with Wayne titled Duke: A Love Story which was published in 1983.
Marlene Dietrich
Dietrich was one of the biggest Hollywood symbols of the early 1940s. She was a woman that was known for getting whatever she wanted, so after she saw John Wayne one afternoon at the Universal lot, she knew that she was going to sleep with him.
After spotting Wayne, Dietrich told her Seven Sinners director, Tay Garnett ‘Daddy, buy me that’.
Wayne and Dietrich quickly started having an affair – with neither party attempting to conceal their relationship. Whenever Wayne would arrive on set, she would run up, leap into his arm, and wraps her legs around him.
Wayne would never comment on his three-year affair with Dietrich, but he would later speak highly of her.
The FBI was actually surveilling Dietrich at the time of her affair with Wayne to figure out if she was a Nazi sympathizer. They not only learned that she had been hooking up with the Duke, but they also discovered that she was having an affair with French movie actor Jean Gavin, best known for starring in Le Grand Illusion.
When asked by his friend Cecilia Presley, the granddaughter of the legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMile, what his single most exciting intimate experience was in his wife, Wayne said that it was the time that he and Dietrich had hooked up on the stairs of the Excelsior Hotel in Rome.
Dietrich died of kidney failure at her apartment in Paris on May 6, 1992. She was 90 when she died.
Merle Oberon
Best known for her roles in films like 1933s The Private Life of Henry VIII and 1935s The Dark Angel, Oberon was an Indian-Born British Actress who John Wayne had an on-again-off-again affair with between 1938 and 1947.
Oberon died in Malibu, California, after having a stroke in 1979. She was 68 when she passed away.
Maureen O’Hara
Actress Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne starred in five films together. It’s known that the two stars were lifelong friends, but according to biographer Scott Eyman, Wayne and O’Hara also had a lengthy romantic affair.
The two shared an uncanny chemistry onscreen, and whenever they were out and about together, people would often mistake O’Hara for being Wayne’s wife. O’Hara denied that she and Wayne were ever romantically involved, but one of Wayne’s close friends told Eyman that John had a long affair with her during his third marriage and that the two would often meet up at John’s ranch in Arizona.
O’Hara died of natural causes in her sleep at her home in Boise, Idaho on October 24, 2015. She was 95.
Why Did John Wayne Cheat
Well, why do any famous actors struggle to remain faithful? For one thing celebs are generally speaking highly desirable and thus have many potential options for partners.
Psychologists point out that when people know that there are other high quality partners that they could be with, it undermines their commitment and greatly increases the chances of them committing infidelity.
In John Wayne’s case, he was not only one of the most sought-after male leads of his day, with dashing good looks and basically all the money and power he could ever ask for, but he also showed signs of being a flagrant womanizer. Perhaps he didn’t care that he was hurting the one’s he loved back at home, or maybe their jealously and controlling ways pushed him to cheat.
Regardless, it’s pretty clear that remaining faithful to his three wives never seemed to be a high priority.
Can you think of anyone else that John Wayne hooked up with? And why do you think The Duke slept around? Let us know in the comments.
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