Now some of these relationships may or may not have gone the distance and some of them may have even been left forsaken, but let us reminisce over them as the time when these respective romances were rapt, ripe and long before any such differences of the irreconcilable variety reared their none too attractive heads severing their once bountiful bonds.
Cosmic Couple #1 - Douglas Fairbanks Sr & Mary Pickford.
The original King of Hollywood, Douglas Fairbanks (and oh my was he livid when those honors were parlayed on to Clark Gable) In 1917, when still married to wife and mother of infamous son of shared namesake, he embarked on a most torrid affair with silent-age siren Mary Pickford and they would spend sixteen swellermost years together in a kind of unholy matrimony, that early on earned them the coveted title of Hollywood's sweethearts. Fairbanks Sr moved on with British beauty Sylvia Ashley in 1936 while Mary took up with jazz instrumentalist Charles Rogers shortly thereafter.
Now these two were set up by mutual friends and had an intense attraction towards one another and who could blame either one of them. Taylor was in ever such a pickle, as he was bound and chained by the studio system that forbid the actor to get hitched. It was at the mercy of an expose in Photoplay magazine, shedding light on the subject of single studio stars that not only changed the studio's mind, encouraged the pair to take a stroll down the proverbial aisle. In the twelve years of their legal union, there was no such shirking in the kerfuffle department, theirs was a volatile love - and various theories exist, but in my opinionation even in the post-rift, they were truly Taylor made.
Cosmic Couple #3 - John Gilbert & Greta Garbo
It was sheer kismet, when Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were cast as star-crossed lovers in Clarence Brown's 1926 powerhouse Flesh and the Devil. What nobody banked on was the formidable flames of desire that would abound for two of the most charismatic leads in the history of Nitrocellulose. Gilbert was irrefutably a ladies' man and played the bedroom shuffle many times before and was still on spouse number two, recently separated when he wooed lady Garbo, famously asking for her hand in marriage as he was still in the eyes of the law married to silent actress Leatrice Joy, there was some scuttlebutt that Mr Gilbert was abandoned at the altar in a private ceremony with Miss Garbo, but it's all apples and oranges if the trees in the forest made the earth move that day.