Hollywood Marriage - Opposing Views

Opposing Views

Sympathetic views of celebrities point out that in Hollywood, it is mostly the bad marriages that are documented by the media, giving a skewed perspective that might make "Hollywood marriages" appear to have a worse success rate than they have in reality. In the St. Joseph's article from 1938, cited in the above paragraph, the paper only studied "Hollywood marriages" that had ended in divorce and ignored those couples still married at that time. For a more modern example, when Tiger Woods was not experiencing marital problems, the public hardly heard of his married life. But, after his infidelity was exposed, the media continually dealt with his marriage, in sharp contrast to the times when the marriage was untroubled.

Negative views of Hollywood marriages take the position that the divorce rates are indeed unusually high among celebrities and that this is caused by faults within Hollywood as a culture or by personal faults of the celebrities themselves. They point to the usage of weddings as publicity stunts, the egotism or immaturity of celebrities or "celebrity culture", and high rates of infidelity or promiscuity. Bee Wilson, in an article for The Daily Telegraph, critiqued "Hollywood marriages" for often being based on the unrealistic dreams of what she termed "permanent children," although she points to some classic Hollywood couples, like Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart or Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, as exceptions to these criticisms.