Singer Elvis Presley and his bride Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, pose for photograph following their wedding at the Aladdin Hotel in 1967. –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Celebrity weddings in the 1950s and ’60s<\/h2>\n
These days, news of celebrity weddings reaches the general public almost instantaneously thanks to social media and smart phones. From venues to guest lists to dresses, every detail tends to make headlines long before the nuptials take place, like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s upcoming 2026 wedding<\/a>.<\/p>\n But decades ago, an air of mystery and exclusivity surrounded the unions of the rich and the famous. Celebrity weddings were truly glamorous affairs in the 1950s and 1960s, and the public ate up every detail. Fans swooned over images of stunning brides and handsome grooms as they exchanged kisses and cut elaborately decorated wedding cakes.<\/p>\n Wedding gowns like those worn by Grace Kelly and Jacqueline Bouvier were endlessly copied, as were the choices of pearl chokers, veils, and flowers in the bouquets of countless others. The glamour whisked us away into a glittering world of big diamond rings, limousines, yachts, and exotic honeymoons.<\/p>\n Of course, all was not so shiny behind the scenes.<\/p>\n Some of the most closely followed romances were scandalous, riddled with adulterous affairs, jilted spouses, and children born out of wedlock. Many of the era’s marriages were short-lived. Some fell apart in a matter of months, collapsing under the weight of alcoholism or professional jealousy. Others ended up rife with accusations of cruelty, violence, and ugly custody battles.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, romance did prevail at times. Some of the love stories lasted until death did them part.<\/p>\n Stacker<\/a> took a look at celebrity weddings in the 1950s and 1960s, drawing from news accounts, biographies, fan sites, photo archives, and historical accounts.<\/p>\n Take a look for a glamorous step back in time.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Elizabeth Taylor<\/a>\u00a0was 18 years old when she wed Conrad Nicholson “Nicky” Hilton, who was 23. He would be the first of her seven husbands. She wrote in a 1965 memoir that her happiness with Hilton was brief, quickly replaced by “disillusionment rude and brutal.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini married in 1950 after a scandalous affair in which Bergman, who already was married, had a child by Rossellini born out of wedlock. They had two more children, twins born in 1952, but the rocky marriage ended within a few years.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Each of them already married, actress Bette David and actor Gary Merrill fell in love while filming the 1950 movie “All about Eve.” During their 10-year marriage, the couple adopted<\/a> a son and a daughter, but their relationship struggled under Merrill’s alcoholism.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n When Janet Leigh married Tony Curtis at age 23, she had already been married twice before. She had eloped at age 15, although her parents had that marriage annulled, and married again at age 19. It was the first time at the altar for 26-year-old Curtis. The couple had two daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee, who became actresses.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Frank Sinatra married Ava Gardner in 1951, a week after his divorce from Nancy Sinatra, the mother of his three children, became final. Gardner was still married to actor Mickey Rooney when they met. The singer and the actress separated within two years, and they were divorced in 1957.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Joan Collins and Maxwell Reed <\/a>were married for four years. In a 2014 documentary, she revealed that the actor, who died in 1974, had drugged and raped her at age 17 when she was starting her Hollywood career. She said she went on to date and marry Reed because he had taken her virginity. “I really hated him, but I was so filled with guilt,” she said<\/a>.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Actor Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood playboy and president of the Screen Actors Guild and actress Nancy Davis briefly dated Clark Gable before the couple married in 1952. She published a book of their love letters in 2000 called “I Love You, Ronnie.” Their marriage lasted 52 years until his death in 2004.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n John F. Kennedy<\/a>, at the time a U.S. senator, married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island, before more than 800 guests, and the reception was held on the terrace of a 300-acre oceanfront estate belonging to the family of her stepfather Hugh Auchincloss. They honeymooned in Mexico. Daughter Caroline was born in 1957 and in 1960, the year Kennedy was elected U.S. president, their son John Jr. was born.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio married less than two years after the baseball star had asked a friend to set him up on a date with the movie star. The marriage ended after just nine months, and Monroe cited “mental cruelty” in her divorce filing. Years later, DiMaggio\u00a0cared for Monroe after she split from playwright Arthur Miller. He also arranged her funeral in 1962 and sent roses<\/a> to her grave regularly for years afterward.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Anne Buydens turned down Kirk Douglas<\/a>‘ first offer of a dinner date in 1953 when she was a publicist, and he was shooting a movie in Paris. She told him “No, thank you, I think I’ll go home and make myself some scrambled eggs,” the star recounted later. When they did marry, the union lasted 65 years, until his death in 2020. The German-born Buydens died in April 2021 at age 102.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Actress Anne Bancroft was married to lawyer Martin May<\/a>, who came from a wealthy Texas oil family, for four years. Bancroft, who played such notable characters as teacher Annie Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker” and Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” later married actor Mel Brooks. They stayed married until her death in 2005.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Movie stars Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer <\/a>went to great lengths to keep their wedding in Switzerland a secret to avoid the crush of the press. The pair first met on Broadway on the set of the play “Ondine.” Ferrer already had been married twice and had four children. They stayed married 14 years and had a son, Sean.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Grace Kelly was one of the most successful and admired actresses in the world when she met Prince Rainier III of Monaco at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival in France. Once married, the actress who had starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s films “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief,” and “Dial M for Murder,” gave up acting. Kelly’s iconic wedding dress<\/a>, designed by costume designer Helen Rose from MGM, reportedly inspired Kate Middleton’s choice of her gown when she married England’s Prince William.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller were married five years after they first met. Monroe converted to Judaism to wed Miller, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for his play “Death of a Salesman.” During their marriage, Monroe used her celebrity influence to help Miller clear his name after he was convicted of contempt by the House Un-American Activities Committee, for refusing to name literary figures suspected of Communist sympathies. The couple divorced in Mexico on grounds listed as “incompatibility.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Actor Henry Fonda married Italian baroness Afdera Franchetti, his fourth wife, two years after his divorce from Susan Blanchard, the stepdaughter of theater producer Oscar Hammerstein II. Fonda, 51, and Franchetti, 24, had been introduced in Italy by Audrey Hepburn when she and Fonda were filming “War and Peace.” Fonda’s son Peter, who also would become an actor, served as best man. The marriage lasted four years.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Conrad Hilton and Elizabeth Taylor \u2014 May 9, 1950<\/h2>\n
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Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini \u2014 May 24, 1950<\/h2>\n
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Bette Davis and Gary Merrill \u2014 Aug. 2, 1950<\/h2>\n
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Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh \u2014 June 4, 1951<\/h2>\n
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Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner \u2014 Nov. 7, 1951<\/h2>\n
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Joan Collins and Maxwell Reed \u2014 May 24, 1952<\/h2>\n
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Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis \u2014 March 4, 1952<\/h2>\n
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John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier \u2014 Sept. 12, 1953<\/h2>\n
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Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio \u2014 Jan. 17, 1954<\/h2>\n
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Kirk Douglas and Anne Buydens \u2014 May 30, 1954<\/h2>\n
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Anne Bancroft and Marty May \u2014 July 1, 1954<\/h2>\n
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Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer \u2014 Sept. 25, 1954<\/h2>\n
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Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly \u2014 April 19, 1956<\/h2>\n
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Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe \u2014 June 29, 1956<\/h2>\n
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Henry Fonda and Baroness Franchetti \u2014 May 9, 1957<\/h2>\n