David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

A simple, uneducated Bavarian girl, 18-year-old Klara joined the household of her second cousin, ‘Uncle’ Alois Hitler, whose mistress she became and whom she eventually married. Three of her children died in infancy prior to the birth of Adolf, and Klara was always fearful of his death as well. Disappointed in her marriage, she pinned all hopes on her surviving son. When she died of breast cancer in 1908, Hitler was overcome with grief.

Married at the age of 17, Zerelda went west with her husband Robert to homestead in Missouri in the early 1840s. Jesse was their second son. The elder James died while Jesse was still a boy, and Zerelda then married a man named Simms. The marriage failed, but she embarked upon a third marriage, this one to Dr Reuben Samuels. Throughout the bank-robbing careers of Jesse and his younger brother Frank, Zerelda remained loyal to her sons. A very pious woman, Zerelda would often attend church in Jesse’s company. Zerelda was described by a newspaper reporter who interviewed her in later years as ‘graceful in carriage and gesture, calm and quiet in demeanor, with a ripple of fire now and then breaking through the placid surface’. Perhaps it was this fire which she had imparted to her sons.

Born in a small Italian village in 1858, Rosa Maltoni was known for her retiring and gentle disposition. While employed as a schoolteacher in the village of Dovia, she met and married the village blacksmith, Alessandro Mussolini. Benito, their first child, was constantly in trouble and the source of much anxiety to Rosa. She was worn out and disheartened when she died of meningitis in 1905.

The daughter of a Syrian merchant, Alia Ghanem married Mohammed bin Laden, a prominent Saudi citizen of Yemeni origin, when she was 22 years old. Having experienced a more worldly society, she did not fit into the bin Laden family and was known sarcastically as ‘The Slave’. Osama, who was mockingly called ‘The Son of the Slave’, was her only child by bin Laden. Pushed to the outskirts of the bin Laden clan, Alia had to watch as her son was raised by others. Mohammed died when Osama was 10 years old, and it was only then that he was sent to live with his mother. They lived together for only a few months, after which Osama went back to live with an uncle. Alia Ghanem later married another Saudi businessman, but she did remain in contact with her son.

Subha’s husband, Hussein al-Majid, either died or abandoned the family before Saddam’s birth. Subha considered having an abortion, but was talked out of it by a midwife. She gave birth to Saddam in a mud-brick house outside Tikrit belonging to her brother, Khairaillah al-Talfa. Subha, in a deep depression, could not take care of her newborn son, so she left him with Khairaillah. Saddam did not live with his mother until he was three years old, when Khairaillah was imprisoned for taking part in an anti-British, pro-Nazi uprising. By this time, Subha had married her first cousin, Hasan al-Ibrahim, known as ‘Hasan the Liar’. Hasan refused to send his stepson to school and forced him to steal chickens and sheep. At the age of 10 Saddam, wanting to go to school and fed up with his stepfather’s abuse, ran away from home to live with his uncle Khairaillah. Despite her indifferent parenting, when Subha died in 1982 her son ordered a huge shrine built at government expense in Tikrit to honour the ‘Mother of Militants’.

Cast as lovers in Fire over England (1937), Leigh and Olivier had little difficulty playing the parts convincingly. They were both married when they became powerfully infatuated with each other. Leigh was the opposite of Olivier’s cool, calm wife, and he was a contrast to her intelligent but rather dry and unromantic husband. The affair was ill-timed: Olivier’s wife was about to give birth and she guessed what was going on. At the christening party for his newborn son, Olivier stepped outside with Leigh and returned with lipstick on his cheek. On the set they were known as ‘the lovers’. This was all too true for Olivier, who complained to another actor that he was exhausted. ‘It’s not the stunts,’ he groaned. ‘It’s Vivien. It’s every day, two, three times. She’s bloody wearing me out.’ He also felt guilty, ‘a really wormlike adulterer, slipping in between another man’s sheets’. Eventually the two passionate actors divorced their respective spouses and married in 1940. Twenty years later they divorced, and Olivier married his third wife, actress Joan Plowright.

Jane Wyman had a hard time getting going with Ronnie, as he was known on the set of Brother Rat (1938). Even before they were cast as lovers she had noticed him around the studio and suggested, ‘Let’s have cocktails at my place.’ He innocently replied, ‘What for?’ Wyman didn’t realise how straightlaced Ronnie was — although she was divorcing her husband, she was still officially married. When they finally began dating, they discovered they had little in common. She liked night-clubbing; he jabbered away about sports. Wyman loathed athletics, but she took up golf, tennis and ice-skating to be near Ronnie. ‘She’s a good scout,’ Reagan told his mother after one date.

Reagan lived near his parents and visited them every day. Jane found his devotedness and general goodness intimidating. It wasn’t until the sequel to Brother Rat — Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) — that they began to date seriously. While their courtship was romantic, the proposal, Wyman recalled, ‘was about as unromantic as anything that ever happened. We were about to be called for a take. Ronnie simply turned to me as if the idea were brand-new and had just hit him and said, “Jane, why don’t we get married?”’ They were wed in 1940 and divorced in 1948.

Having seen Tracy’s work, Hepburn got him to act opposite her in MGM’s Woman of the Year (1942), in which they would play feuding columnists who fall in love. The first time they met she said, ‘I’m afraid I’m a little tall for you, Mr Tracy.’ Their producer, Joseph Mankiewicz, turned to Hepburn and said, ‘Don’t worry, Kate, he’ll soon cut you down to size.’

After a few days of sparring on the set — at first Tracy referred to his co-star as ‘Shorty’ or ‘that woman’ — an attraction began to develop between them. Tracy was married and, although he lived apart from his wife, was a Catholic who wouldn’t consider divorce. As the pair fell in love, their relationship was treated with unusual respect by the gossip columnists and was rarely referred to in print. One of the great Hollywood love affairs, their romance lasted 25 years, until Tracy’s death in 1967 from a heart attack.

Explaining the phenomenal success of their screen chemistry, Hepburn said, ‘Certainly the ideal American man is Spencer. Sport-loving, a man’s man… And I think I represent a woman. I needle him, I irritate him, and I try to get around him, yet if he put a big paw out, he could squash me. I think this is the sort of romantic ideal picture of the male and female in the United States.’