Heartbreaking Facts About Tragic Hollywood Love Stories

“So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”―E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

Tragic romance isn’t just for the sad songs and sad movies. It’s also for the sad songwriters and sad filmmakers who make that stuff. Hollywood and the entertainment history are ripe with stories of broken hearts… and other broken body parts. Although many romantic tragedies end in death, the end of conjugal bliss doesn’t necessarily mean the end of life. Sometimes, “tragedy” is just the name we give to the series of conflicts that lead up to the lackluster end. With such grim possibilities, is it any wonder that tragic romance is such tabloid fodder?

From mysterious plane crashes to deadly disease, many random factors can bring a romance to its tragic conclusion. Grab a tissue and get ready for these 42 starstruck facts about tragic Hollywood love stories.


Tragic Hollywood Love Stories Facts

42. Finished at the Bottom

Dorothy Dandridge was one of Hollywood’s first black sex symbols and the first black actress to be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars.

Unfortunately, her love life was much less illustrious; in 1959, she married a club owner named Jack Denison. He turned out to be abusive, including financially abusive, as he mismanaged her finances into bankruptcy.

He then had the audacity to divorce Dandridge in 1963. This story doesn’t have a happy ending: unable to get more acting roles, Dandridge died penniless from an apparent drug overdose in 1965 at the age of just 42.

Tragic Hollywood Love Stories Facts

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41. He’ll Always Be With Us

After the tragic suicide of Kurt Cobain in 1994, his wife Courtney Love kept part of his ashes in a teddy bear.

The rest of Cobain’s remains were scattered to other places, including the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in New York, where they were blessed and mixed into the clay to make memorials.

Tragic Hollywood Love Stories Facts

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40. Til the End

John Travolta was in the middle of filming Saturday Night Fever when he got horrible news: his partner Diana Hyland had only a few days to live. The couple had been together for a year, but Hyland had been diagnosed with breast cancer just three months into their relationship. Not one to abandon her, Travolta immediately moved in and looked after Hyland’s son as his own. She passed away in Travolta’s arms in 1977, and the actor would not pursue a serious relationship again for 15 years.

Tragic Hollywood Love Stories Facts

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