Why Hollywood Gets Cold Feet

From money problems to murder, seven reasons that screen spouses split.

Jan. 25, 2013 2:53 p.m. ET

In her authoritative and perceptive "history of marriage in the movies," Jeanine Basinger counts seven ways screen marriages can go kaput, or threaten to. The couple might be drowning in debt (Money Problems), as happens to James Stewart and Carole Lombard in 1939's "Made for Each Other." The wife could take up with a handsome stranger, as Greta Garbo does in 1934's "The Painted Veil." (Infidelity, ever popular.) An intrusive mother-in-law or a demonic child could disturb the peace (Family Trouble), or the spouses on the screen can decide that they never should have gotten hitched in the...

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