Cite?
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Not exactly an actor, but based on a series of memoirs I’ve read, apparantly NO ONE at CBS (either on or off camera) could stand Charles Kuralt, and Kuralt pretty much reciprocated. Everyone admired his talent, but felt that his “On the Road” segments were the best way to use his talent while keeping him away from them. The story goes that Bill Moyers was approached to co-host a program with Kuralt and told the executives. “I will watch any show with Charles Kuralt. One thing I won’t do is BE on any show with Charles Kuralt.”
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Apparently he enjoyed being ‘on the road’ himself. When he died people were surprised to learn he had a secret family.
The Rat Pack was of course super volatile. Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., generally got along with anybody and everybody but Frank Sinatra it depended on what mood he was in that day and if he was pissed at you for some real or imaginary reason. When Lawford was excommunicated he was totally 100% excommunicated- Frank once refused to go on at a casino where Lawford had been spotted until they got him out, and when Joey Bishop made quips about the Cal-Neva (a casino Frank had an interest in) Sinatra stopped speaking to him. He went years without speaking to Sammy also because he heard (probably correctly) Sammy was using cocaine and other hard drugs- they later reconciled. He and Dean had ups and downs but from everything I’ve read threatening to never speak to Martin again would get you an “Okey dokey pardner” as he really didn’t bond with others anyway.
Friends of Belushi, like John Landis, always cite the famous scene in Animal House where Belushi smashes a folk singer’s guitar to bits, then moments later says sweetly (and seemingly sincerely) “Sorry.”
That, apparently, was Belushi. Either a genuinely sweet guy or an out of control maniac at any given moment.
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I love the story about Bob Denver, not just because it showed he was a nice guy, but also that it showed he was nothing at all like his on-screen persona: a very shrewd negotiator who used his influence and power wisely.
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He was also a voracious reader who could talk about any period of history (had been a social studies teacher for a while) or politics on a scholarly level, though he preferred not to in mixed company. He got tired of Hollywood in the '80s and bought land on a mountain in his wife’s home state of West Virginia where he lived most of his later years.
The movie Surviving Gilligan’s Island, a docudrama about the making of the series, is one I’d recommend to any pop culture afficianados. It got huge ratings as well. You learn a lot of anecdotes about the cast and the Tina Louise bitchiness is in there (she’s the only [then] surviving castaway not to be in the movie) but Natalie Schafer comes across as the one you’d most want on your speed dial. (She was pissed when the show was picked up because she’d only taken the pilot [which unlike the series was filmed on location] to get a free trip to Hawaii.)
In Alison Arngrim’s memoir Confessions of a Prairie Bitch it seemed the cast of Little House got along for the most part except that none of the kids got along with Melissa Sue Anderson. She comes across as either a bitchy ice queen or somebody with a major anxiety disorder, but she wouldn’t befriend or play or interact with other kids on the set more than she could help it nor did she stay in contact with anybody on the cast. There was occasionaly friction twixt Katherine MacGregor (Mrs. Oleson) and Michael Landon but nothing serious. Landon was popular with the kids for the most part but would separate himself to chain smoke and drink whiskey. (I’ve read elsewhere that Dean Butler [Almanzo] and Melissa Gilbert didn’t get along and Arngrim tells a funny story about their lack of sexual chemistry, and Karen “Ma” Grassle was a bit of a “serious actress” diva but generally nice.)
I don’t know how they get along on the set, but Dexter stars Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter, who plays his sister on the series, married, and divorced since the series began and still have many scenes together. Evidently it’s at least not super nasty. (Kirk Douglas and his first wife [and Michael’s mother], Diana Dill, have acted together several times on stage and screen since divorcing, most recently with their real life son and [now incarcerated] grandson in 2003 more than 50 years after their divorce.)
He’s still getting work, but only in “Christian” films. Apparently he’s the Duggar family’s favourite actor. He was on their show awhile back promoting his new film. He won’t even pretend to kiss a woman other than his wife. They went into detail about how he had his wife double for the actress playing his character’s wife, wearing her dress and a wig, and had the director shoot the scene so her face couldn’t be scene.
There was also Ellen Cleghorne in the early '90s.
I’d wager that those are the only films in which he’s interested in performing nowadays.
And of course he’s responsible for the Bananatological Proof of the Existence of God.
Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell (Steptoe and Son) hated each other pretty much from the start.
John Cleese divorced his wife Connie Booth between seasons 1 and 2 but they still wrote and acted together for the 2nd season of Fawlty Towers. The 2 seasons were 4 years apart. (75 and 79)
On most of these shows/movies it seems that usually it was just one actor or actress who was really disliked and the rest got along more or less okay.
Not a TV or movie cast, but the composers Gilbert and Sullivan are probably the most frequently cited examples of creative teams who couldn’t stand each other. There is a flaw to this: for most of their collaborations they had their squabbles and differences but were able to patch it up and get along well enough to make it work. They only truly despised each other after their major falling out (an incident biographers call their “Carpet Quarrel”) after which they stopped working together.
I saw an interview with him a year or so ago in which he said he and Booth are still very good friends. He also said that he would far rather his once very large fortune have gone to her or to his second wife rather than to his third who somehow managed to absolutely take him to the cleaners. There are actually articles in law journals about his third/last divorce, a woman he married long after he found fame and fortune but who evidently walked away with the lion’s share of his wealth due to no pre-nup and some kind of partnership agreement with his businesses. He said that if he dies in the next few years that her children (by a previous marriage) will inherit far more of his money than his own children (by previous marriages).
On the topic of Python, I don’t know if there’s any outright dislike, but Eric Idle seems to be odd man out. Terry Jones and Michael Palin collaborated a lot, Cleese and Chapman were partners, and Gilliam did the animations, but of the on-camera performers Idle was usually solo and since the breakup he doesn’t seem to work with the others much. In an interview for his movie Splitting Heirs, which he produced and wrote and directed and starred in, he was asked “was it great to work with John Cleese again?” and said something like “it would have been nicer if he hadn’t been half the budget of the movie” and that Cleese earned more for his few minutes of screen time in that than it cost to make Holy Grail.
Idle gets the lion’s share of credits for Spamalot, but I’ve wondered what financial splits were worked out with the other Pythons for writing most of the original source material the play was based on.
Sammy was reportedly upset with a stunt Martin pulled more than once, picking Sammy up and saying “I’d like to thank the Academy for this award”. The audience would roar, but Sammy didn’t like it.
Other members of the Rat Pack also made lots of jokes at his expense about watermelon, cotton-picking, and other black stereotypes (probably particularly irritating to a professional tap dancer), though Sammy later said his girlfriend/later wife Mai Britt used to get far more upset about them than he did.
I am picturing Jesus Christ himself going, “oh, for me sake, come on!”
A couple of years ago, I saw Michael Palin on Craig Ferguson’s show, where they talked about a mini-Python reunion at Royal Albert Hall in honor of some milestone (30 years since “Holy Grail”?) or another, and when CF asked Palin if John Cleese would be attending, Palin used the opportunity to take a rather mean-spirited shot at Cleese.
I think I actually started a thread about it, asking if anyone knew what the apparent Bad Blood between the Pythons was based on, but I don’t think that anyone seemed to know.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Cheech and Chong yet.
They had a huge falling out and I remember in the 90s Cheech saying all sorts of nasty stuff about each other.
Also while it wasn’t the hit that many other mentioned shows have been, Roswell was quite popular in the 90s among teens and teen girls in particular and the descriptions of the show sounds like a soap opera.
Supposedly Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr couldn’t stand each other which is why Emily De Raven was brought on to be his new love interest.
Also Behr and Katherine Heigl, who played his sister were going out and the producers were terrified that the chemistry they shared would come across in scenes of the two together.
Also the guy who played Michael and the girl who played Shiri’s friend IRL had a very stormy on-off relationship that caused all sorts of problems.
Also, supposedly most of the cast wanted off the show and didn’t want it to be renewed for a third season. Katherine Heigl actually deliberately got a really ugly haircut in an attempt to get fired.
Lucille Ball and Danny Kaye clashed when they co hosted a 1964 Emmy show and the few times they appeared on each other’s show.
Joan Crawford has come up several times, but I didn’t notice anyone mentioning the animosity between her and Mercedes McCambridge on the set of 1954’s Johnny Guitar. The source supposedly was Crawford’s preference for another actress in McCambridge’s role. Since their characters were supposed to loath each other in the script, however, it seems to have all worked out for the best.
Apprently there was plenty of tension on the set all around, as co-star Sterling Hayden apparently wasn’t too happy with Crawford or the production as well.
Yeesh. Assuming that’s as baldly egocentric as it appears to be, I think I lost whatever respect I may have had for Paul Reiser.
She was good, too. I’ve had early '90s SNLs on in the background lately (they’re all available on Netflix, FYI), and she impresses me as a pretty undervalued castmember.